The Season of Giving

A terrific blogger, Alias Mother, is doing a blog-link-y thing where she's writing about her favorite charities and encouraging readers to do the same.

To that end, a couple of MOMocrats will be posting about our favorites charities - ones that help women and their families - in the coming weeks.

APOPO - HeroRat
Apopo was founded in the 1990s and it works with rats. Special rats. Rats that detect land mines. Following the long civil war, many areas of Mozambique were virtually uninhabitable due to heavy mining -- children cannot play in open areas for fear they will lose a limb or worse.

The rats find the landmines (they find scent from the TNT) but aren't heavy enough to set off the mine. The mine then can be removed or detonated. And, just in case you think this sounds...odd...keep in mind that the rats passed official licensing tests according to IMAS standards under supervision of the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD).

You can watch a great video about the rats from PBS/Frontline here

UNIJECT
PATH, a non-profit with offices in Seattle and DC/MD, is devoted to improving the lives of women worldwide. To that end, they created Uniject.

Uniject can be used my minimally-trained people to deliver vaccines (Hep B, mostly) and drugs to prevent postpartum hemorrhage. It is single use, so helps lessen the worry about proper sterilization and transmission of HIV/AIDS.

Again, a great video is here.

My husband and I are tremendously lucky that our daughter will never have to run a gauntlet of land mines to attend school. And while childbirth carries risk, the likelihood that I or any woman in the first world would die from postpartum hemorrhage is infinitesimal compared to women in the developing world. And we won't lose our daughter to neonatal tetanus, a major killer in areas without access to vaccines.

"Off With Their Heads!" (Hey, They Aren't Using Them Anyway)

I'm sure by now most MOMocrats readers have seen the video of Billionaires for Wealth serenading Bill McInturff as he speaks to America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). But, if you haven't yet witnessed the spectacle, please feast your eyes:

I saw the video on Rachel Maddow. "Gleeful" might be too weak a word to describe my reaction. My husband, ever the professor, reminded me that I'd be all kinds of annoyed if someone interrupted a meeting of say, Trust for America's Health or the National Partnership for Women and Families.

I thought about that all evening. You know what? He's right. I would be FURIOUS. And if that makes me a hypocrite, so be it. I'm ready to fight for health care reform. 

Wonk 101: A Camel is a Horse Designed By (Conference) Committee. Also: How the Senate Parliamentarian Might Be King.

In our last installment, we highlighted the circus – complete with large steaming piles – that is floor action. This post will cover what happens when the House and Senate actually get round to passing a bill...but the House version, for example, includes a public option for health care and the Senate version says, “Well, we don't want anyone to die in the street but it could happen.”

Before the bother of a conference committee, the 2d chamber to consider the legislation will usually send a message to the 1^st chamber (where the bill started) asking them to concur with the amendment(s). If the 1^st disagrees with the amendment(s), then they request a conference and appoint conferees. The 2d chamber can either concur with the 1^st house or insist on their amendments and also appoint conferees.

Off to conference...

Wonk 101: Ringling Bros. Ain’t Got Nothing on This Circus

In our last installment, we introduced you to the bill drafting process, and some basics on committee action. This post will cover more of the committee process and floor action, including why your congressperson pouts like a two-year-old when the words “closed rule” are thrown around.

After a bill is introduced, numbered, and assigned to committee, the process generally goes subcommittee hearing--->subcommittee markup & vote--->full committee hearing--->full committee markup & vote. This is called “normal order.” It might also be called relatively-rare-order since there are places where this process goes off the rails, both for good and for ill.

Wonk 101: Mommy, Where Do Bills Come From?

MOMocrats is hosting a short series, Wonk 101, to cover some of the intricacies of the legislative process. Why? Well, while School House Rock remains the gold-standard for entertaining and informative, it does gloss over some of the weirder happenings. In an effort to make it easier to understand why there are three versions of health reform percolating in the House and Arlen Specter kept repeating, “There is no Senate bill,” we present this series. Got a burning question about something? Please leave a comment.

I thought this first post would cover how a bill gets written, introduced, and referred to a committee. And the inevitable exceptions to those rules. The next posts will focus on the chaos wonderment that is floor action and the conference process. Given the rage over health care reform, I thought it’d be good to provide a sort of blueprint for following the process.

When Two (or a Couple Thousand) People Love Each Other An Idea... From the thousands of constituent requests, meetings with lobbyists, and handed-down party priorities, a representative might cull a couple dozen ideas in which to actually invest staff time and draft a bill. Alternatively, an outside group might draft a bill and then shop it around to members. In either case, the actual drafting can take months as people duke it out over exact wording (think “It depends on what the meaning of “is” is.)

There are questions to be asked and answered: Will it alter (amend) or repeal existing laws or regulations? Where does it fit in existing federal statutes? Does the counsel’s office think it is constitutional? Is it likely to pass? Who can we partner with? How well funded is the opposition?

What happens next?

So Much Shouting, So Little Laughter: A Maryland Health Care Town Hall

"Well, I won't be going inside." -- Jane Aitken, New Hampshire Teabagger in response to MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan's opportunity to pose a question on health reform to President Obama

And that, ladies and gentlemen, sums it up nicely. Anti-health care reform folks are very interested in appearing on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox but totally, completely, and utterly disinterested in the facts.

Such was the case last evening at Senator Ben Cardin's (D-MD) health care town hall. Despite the 97-degree heat, code red air quality, and oppressive humidity, hundreds of people turned out in an attempt to claim one of the 500 seats at Towson University.

"'I know some of you don't want me to mention the facts, but listen to the facts,' the senator said early on, drawing an angry response from opponents in the room and applause from supporters - who were both outshouted and outnumbered." -- Baltimore Sun

Go Read It: Pearlstein on Health Reform

Steve Pearlstein, speaking truth to power: "Can there be anyone more two-faced than the Republican leaders who in one breath rail against the evils of government-run health care and in another propose a government-subsidized high-risk pool for people with chronic illness, government-subsidized community health centers for the uninsured, and opening up Medicare to people at age 55?"

"If health reform is to be anyone's Waterloo, let it be theirs."

Abortion and Health Reform: What the Bills Actually Say

I've been reading – from the Washington Post to Time to really awesome blogs – that abortion is going to derail health reform.

I’d like to call a time-out and explain what is actually included in the legislation, both House and Senate versions. The amount of hysteria over health reform generally, and women’s reproductive health in particular, is alarming. What we need are some facts. And, of course, we need for women’s reproductive health not to be the sacrificial lamb. Again.

So, onto some facts...

House version: The House version does not contain the word abortion.

The House version had to be approved by three committees: Education and Labor, Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce. During debate on the bill before Ways and Means, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX) tried to amend the bill to prohibit coverage for abortion services except in cases of life endangerment, rape, or incest. His amendment failed, 19-22.

When Energy and Commerce took up the bill, an amendment by Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-PA), would have prohibited abortion coverage except in cases of life endangerment, or forcible rape or incest. Forcible rape or incest? Are there other kinds? And what is forcible anyway? Do bruises count or would you need broken bones? Anyway, his ridiculously offensive amendment failed, 29-30. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) offered a similar amendment – sans "forcible" – that also failed, 27-31.

What's a Good Source for Understanding the Health Care Bill?

Now THAT's the $64,000 question, isn't it? But that's what my friend Susan (aka WhyMommy) from Toddler Planet asked me and I didn't have a good answer at the ready.

Sure, you can read the original 615 page bill if you're battling insomnia. Oh, and don't forget to search for the boxes upon boxes of amendments that have gotten tacked on, too. Aside from the actual language of the bill, there are some things important to understand in this battle -- and yes, it is a battle.

Insurance companies, and the legislators who take money from them, want you to think they're protecting competition by opposing the current legislation. They are not. Competition should be a great thing, right? It's supposed to keep prices down and keep companies honest. That works unless you have an industry that's become a monopoly. Like cable TV and satellite radio companies, insurance doesn't have a lot of competition and at this stage of the game they're not trying to protect competition, they're afraid of losing money. If they really want competition, why would they be afraid of another option -- public or otherwise?

Breaking News and A Chance For You to Help Planned Parenthood

Today the House will vote on the FY2010 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies appropriations bill. This is the largest of the 13 annual measures that fund the government.

Labor-H funds a whole host of programs and agencies -- everything from the Maternal Child Health Block Grant to the State Children's Health Insurance Program to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Tossed in there is funding for Population Research and Voluntary Family Planning programs -- usually referred to as Title X, its place in the Public Health Service Act. Title X provides -- with preference for low-income individuals -- family planning and related preventive health services. Every year it receives about $280 million; though the proposed funding in 2010 is about $317 million. (And if that seems like a lot of money, it isn't. If Title X had kept pace with inflation since 1980, it'd be receiving about $725 million.)

Today on the House floor Reps. Pence (R-IN), Cao (R-LA), Lamborn (R-CO), Terry (R-NE), Pitts (R-PA), Smith (R-NJ), and Latta (R-OH) will be offering an amendment that would prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving any Title X funds.  About 15% of ALL the family planning clinics in the US are run by Planned Parenthood; some 4 million women a year access services at these clinics. And here I feel compelled to point out that Title X does not cover abortion services (see Section 1008 for the prohibition).

If you think women, especially poor women, should have access to Title X services, including at Planned Parenthood, please call your representative and tell them to vote against the Pence amendment to H.R. 3293.

Photo credit: Sarah Consolacion on Flickr. Creative Commons License.