The Folly of Conservative Guerrilla Tactics: Open Note to Lila Rose and Hannah Giles

Two events in the last year, involving young conservatives using guerrilla media tactics, have been shortsighted and disgustingly partisan at the expense of the livelihoods of the less fortunate.

The first happened when UCLA student Lila Rose went into a Planned Parenthood with a camera, and a story about statutory rape. The worker told her to lie on her application, and it was all caught on tape. This whipped up the pro-life community (as if they were not whipped up already), and Planned Parenthood took the necessary actions to fire the worker. But, this wasn't enough. The video evidence was used as the reason for revoking funding from some Planned Parenthood locations.

Here's what grinds my gears: the worker at planned parenthood made a mistake, and the worker got fired. This is NO reason to consider revoking funding from such an organization. People who don't want to see planned parenthood on the streets are just looking for that one slip-up to throw the baby out with the bathwater (no pun intended). Lila Rose's ruse turned into a fiasco for reproductive rights and threatened to set us back 35 years. Planned parenthood is not only about abortion. Planned parenthood gives reproductive health counseling, parenthood advice and information about adoption. Abortion consultation is only one element. And, if funding is cut, it affects every aspect of the organization, which could have terrible implications for women seeking reproductive and/or parenthood counseling.

The pro-life movement is incredibly short-sighted and their reasoning is ethically and physically unproven. No one has the right to define where life starts. The argument that it starts at conception is arbitrary and ethically spurious. Ethics aside, other people's reproductive choices are none of their business! How dare someone even consider that they have the power to make decisions about the body of someone else! A woman has an inherent right to choose what she does with the baby that she carries. To pass any kind of law restricting abortion in any term would be an affront to privacy.

The second event involved Hannah Giles, young conservative, who dressed as a prostitute and went into ACORN. An ACORN worker gave her advice on tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution. The worker was fired and the conservative wingnuttosphere went...nutty. ACORN received flak stemming from voter fraud allegations during the election, and many criticisms levied against Obama during his run were stemmed from his work with ACORN. An outraged congress passed a resolution that cut all federal spending from ACORN.

There are two questionable things about the ACORN case. Congress passing a bill that targets ACORN is a bill of attainder and illegal under the constitution. If Congress wanted to cut spending from ACORN, it could have done it without a bill and not made it such a public humiliation for ACORN. If they applied the same rules in the ACORN bill to other federally funded contractors, half of the organizations rebuilding Afghanistan would have their funding cut. I guess the mistake of one worker is worth more punishment than the electrocution of American soldiers by faulty wiring or the rape and humiliation of a woman working for Halliburton. ACORN provides valuable services to underprivileged and underrepresented groups, employing ethnic and racial minorities to get them off the street and out of gangs. They register those communities to vote, train local leaders for social justice grassroots movements and do advocacy for communities that cannot advocate for themselves. And, because of this selfish, unbelievably short-sighted act, all of these programs will lose out. One can surely see the folly in it all.

When the LA Times did a cover story on Ms. Giles and her speech in Santa Barbara to young conservatives, her audience sounded like they were the oppressed minority of the CA political world. Here's some advice from our esteemed governor: Stop Whining! To add insult to injury, Giles had the audacity to quote great community organizer Saul Alinsky. Saul Alinsky was a champion of community organizations and grassroots movements that defined ACORN. If Alinsky were alive, he would have opposed, and probably organized a campaign against what Giles did. I'm sure he's turning in his grave.

Some Hearing Updates: CEJAP, Cap and Trade and Fraudulent Letters

These last couple weeks I haven't been updating my blog, mostly because I have been very busy. Busy with what? Well, other than busy not being paid, I have been rushing around the Hill from hearing to hearing over the new energy bill. That is: Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, Boxer-Kerry, CEJAP or S.1733. This is the Senate version of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, Waxman-Markey, ACES or H.R.2454. Here are a couple highlights from the last two weeks:

-I went to the Environment and Natural Resources Hearing on Cap-and-trade economics. The emphasis was on trying to find a way to give money back to the consumer, who would inevitably bear the brunt of cap and trade. The panel questioned witnesses from Academia and non-profits, including my favorite Resources for the Future (sounds cool, huh?) Senator Bingaman, Cantwell and Dorgan asked how rates of electricity would vary across regions and how money could be funneled back to low income communities for transitional support into new low energy appliances. Sen Murkowski harped on regional differences between her home state of AK and those "coastal regions." Bunning, Bennett and Barrasso made their usual diatribes about an energy tax and how carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, etc. Polemics aside, they had the same question about how the average consumer was going to be helped to transition to a green economy. Some good ideas from the witnesses were cap and dividend which gives money back in the form of a stimulus-like check, and a 15% rebate for low income communities.

-The big enchiladas were the Environment and Public Works hearings on the new bill, featuring various experts on national security, adaptation, trade and economics and a panel of Obama Administration secretary members (DOE, EPA, DOT, DOI, etc). Senator Boxer took control of the hearing quickly, and acted as a moderator for the witnesses and Sen Inhofe. Inhofe was surprisingly less crazy about his global warming denial and stuck to the tax complaint. Sen Alexander made his point about building 100 new nuclear power plants, electrifying 50% of the vehicle fleet and creating mini "Manhattan Projects." There were some questions about agriculture from Sen Klobuchar, but mostly the democrats asked about the need for regulation of GHG emissions and the availability of technology. The most interesting segments involved Boxer and Inhofe's exchanges and questioning of retired Vice Admiral McGill, of the Center for Naval Analysis. His reiteration that climate change was a threat to national security, and my experience reading over his work, has given me great respect for him.

-Lastly, I attended the Fraudulent Letters hearing by the House Selection Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. This was held by chairman Ed Markey, who I have great respect for from his authorship in H.R.2454. He questioned representatives from the NAACP, the American Association of University Women, Bonner and Associates and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). Fraudulent letters supposedly sent by a temp worker at Bonner and Associates, who was contracted by ACCCE, were sent to congressmen on behalf of senior, veterans and ethnic groups opposing the Waxman-Markey bill. These letters were fake, and the transgression was found out 2 days before the bill was sent to the floor. ACCCE and Bonner took slow action to remedy this, as the parties involved, representatives and groups who were victims of the fraud were not notified until almost 1 month after the vote. Markey and Rep Jay Inslee shamed Bonner and ACCCE and called what they did an affront to democracy. Markey and Inslee went a step further to say that the memos that ACCCE was putting out about higher energy bills were as fraudulent as the letters. Steve Miller of ACCCE gave contraditing statements about whether or not he intended on supporting the bill, which Markey did not believe. Markey concluded the hearing by telling Miller to go to global warming naysayers like Sen Inhoff and tell them that ACCCE supports a cap on emissions and thinks global warming is an important threat to deal with. Most importantly, Markey said that this kind of rhetoric about energy bills gets to the floor debate and hinders good discussion.

That's all folks.