1

You can get free access into that Wall Street Journal article with a netpass from: http://news.congoo.com

This was in several blogs last week.

2

Smear the democrats must have been on the top of the agenda at the Family Research Council's weekly meeting....

3

So let's see, they wiped out thousands of earmarks.

Joe cites an article which says congressmen are calling agencies demanding they pay for defunded earmarks out of their budgets...it is implied that this is a bad thing but actually it is an improvement. In order for, say, the Dept. of Defense to fund a hydrogen farm in Rep X's district someone at the dept. actually has to put his name to the project as worthy.

Might the dept of defense or any other agency cave in to Rep X because they are fear next year Rep X will cut their whole budget? Quite possible but at least the waste has to clear two branches of gov't; the Congress and the President (who is ultimately responsible for the agencies).

I haven't seen any convincing evidence that this one program was treated any different by the language of the bill than any other. Perhaps Joe feels President Bush prefers flirting classes as an AIDS prevention method so he would rather bring back earmarks...but he really should tell us why he is so distrustful of our President.

4

Boonton,
"I haven't seen any convincing evidence that this one program was treated any different ..."

So you think procedure is more important than the product of the program (people in need)? Even more important than the Liberal mantra of helping the needy? My how the tune changes in 60 days.

"...but he really should tell us why he is so distrustful of our President."
Despite your assertion, this is not a Joe or Bush problem. Reading the posts of these 2 parts, there is most certainly a problem with True Belivers on the Left.

5

george's orwell-to-english translator

"Smearing the democrats" = "reporting candidly on what democrats do and say"

6

Still waiting for an answer, Joe. By what logic do you support federal dollars to prevent AIDS in a baby, but not to treat leukemia in a 12 year old or heart disease in a fifty year old?

7

Collin

So you think procedure is more important than the product of the program (people in need)?

I don't think this has anything to do with people in need. I think the Congressman is trying to get the toe in the door to start earmarks up again. The real agenda here is not to save this program, which I doubt will really be cut in the end, but to shimmy the door open so a slew of earmarks can be pushed into the bill.

"...but he really should tell us why he is so distrustful of our President."
Despite your assertion, this is not a Joe or Bush problem. Reading the posts of these 2 parts, there is most certainly a problem with True Belivers on the Left.

Let's see, the President is the head of the Executive branch of government that implements the laws. The CDC is under the Department of Health and Human Services. Joe is saying unless Congress directs each penny in the CDC's budget, it will all get blown on orgies and sex parties. Can you explain to me how that would NOT be a problem for the current occupant of the White House? Can you show me which amendment says that the functions of the Executive branch are transferred away from the President and to the 'True Believers of the Left'...whatever that is?

8

BTW, speaking of Left I think the Right has just about reached full intellectual bankruptcy when it needs me to ask these very basic Conservative questions:

1. Why shouldn't the states adopt this program or something similar? The states are 'trusted' to make most other public health decisions.

2. Why can't private charity fund this program and even do it better for less? For example, the Southern Baptist Convention has 16.3M members. Catholic Charities had income in 2005 of $3.363Billion. The Baptists could fund the entire program for $3.68 per member. They probably spend more per member than that fighting gay marriage on behalf of 'the children'. Catholic Charities could do it for not even 2% of their revenue. Needless to say these organizations are already deeply involved with the most at risk individuals.

20, 30 years ago these are the questions Conservatives would be asking. They wouldn't accept for one second the brain dead assumption that just because the Federal Gov't doesn' t pay for it, it wouldn't happen.

9

Guilt by association? C'mon, Joe, you're better than that. Notice that abstinence.net does not provide any way for you to independently verify that the programs they list actually exist. But assuming they do, that does not mean that "your tax dollars" are paying for them. Stop AIDS Project is not a division of the CDC, nor is it a government agency. It does receive some of its funding from the government, but that doesn't mean those funds pay for those activities, any more than rent paid to a church for use of space on election day is the same thing as government funding that church's proselytization efforts.

The Stop AIDS Project's total 2006 assets were about $1.667 million, of which 76% ($1.267 million) came from "government grants." The CDC's total budget for HIV/STD/TB prevention less than $947,000 that year. So even if every penny the CDC spent on all those efforts went directly to the Stop AIDS Project and no one else (a risible premise), that still would only fund 57% of SAP's budget.

My guess is that if you had the numbers in front of you, you'd learn that the CDC sends a few thousand dollars a year (a tiny share of SAP's total annual funds) to the Stop AIDS Project explicitly to support their condom distribution programs.

So thanks to abstinence.net, Joe, and some giant leaps of logic, a few thousand dollars to fund condom distribution (or something similar) becomes "your tax dollars are used to finance gay hookups" or whatever. We have a word for that kind of argument. It's "disingenuous."

10

Tgirsch So thanks to abstinence.net, Joe, and some giant leaps of logic, a few thousand dollars to fund condom distribution (or something similar) becomes "your tax dollars are used to finance gay hookups" or whatever. We have a word for that kind of argument. It's "disingenuous."

Excerpted from Washington Post (06.14.03)

U.S. Warns San Francisco AIDS Group on Funding

On Friday, the Bush administration ordered San Francisco's STOP AIDS Project to immediately halt several explicit programs that "appear to encourage or promote sexual activity" or risk losing as much as $500,000 a year in federal grants. The order, delivered in a letter from CDC, was prompted by inquiries from Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.). A similar letter warned the San Francisco Department of Public Health to apply stricter oversight to groups like STOP AIDS Project.

11

Boonton,
#1 It appears that the Dr. was calling the bluff of the Dems. And he is one of the who actually wants the government to do good. In this he could kill two birds with one speech.

#2 You made it a WH issue by extension. Why not just deal with the legislative branch that's politicing the issue? It's that framework, that unwillingness to deal with the issue's source, which here places you in the True Believer category.

12

Collin,

I'm not sure I follow you. Joe implies the CDC would spend money given to it on radical erotic stuff rather than actually fight HIV. Who ultimately runs the CDC? The President as it is part of the Executive branch. I don't think that is very hard to follow.

13

I think I'm going to appoint myself the official math-checker for this website.

tgirsch wrote: "The CDC's total budget for HIV/STD/TB prevention less than $947,000 that year."

I thought that sounded ridiculously low. It is. That chart expresses its numbers in thousands. The CDC's budget for HIV/STD/TB prevention that year was, in fact, $947 million.

14

B,
Have you forgotten who's fighting about the funding? Really, now. That's the whole of the discussion.

15

Joe:

Mea culpa. Although $500K would still be less than a third of their total operating budget. And that story dates from 2003, so apparently the use of funds was found to be legitimate, as indicated at the end of the WaPo story you linked.

ex-preacher:

Maybe I'm blind, but I looked all over the place on that chart for a scale, and didn't see it. Still don't, actually. But I agree that the number seemed low. Yet nearly $1 billion sounded awfully high (although I guess not, when you consider it's all STDs plus TB). I ultimately had to go to the 2006 US Budget, which lists the CDC's total budget at around $9-10 billion.

In any case, I hereby admit error and retract all of comment 9 except for the first paragraph.

16

It still seems there's more to this than meets the eye. Politics as usual. From The Nation Sep 2003:

Groups on the front lines, such as San Francisco's Stop AIDS Project, are feeling the heat. Stop AIDS runs workshops with names like "Bootylicious" and "In Our Prime: Men for Hire" (which offers guidelines for "safe relations with escorts"), designed to prevent HIV among sexually active gay men in the Bay Area--whose infection rates are rising--not high schoolers in Palo Alto. But Republican Congressman Marc Souder has led a two-year crusade against the group, claiming that it promotes sex with taxpayer dollars.

Stop AIDS faced fourteen solid months of back-to-back reviews by both the CDC and HHS--each activated by Souder's obscenity alarm. The group finally got a clean bill of health in February, and CDC director Julie Gerberding wrote personally to Souder telling him the news. Then it got personal. Beltway insiders said Souder pushed for Gerberding's resignation, and in April, Souder aide Roland Foster e-mailed the CDC demanding data showing "the effectiveness of erotic writing and sex with prostitutes" as disease prevention. Within weeks, CDC auditors were flying back across the country. Yet again, Stop AIDS passed muster--one auditor said to a CDC staffer, "I would take my mother to this."

The group got sanctioned anyway. In one more blatant victory of politics over public health, the CDC wrote to Stop AIDS on June 13 saying that the workshops violated the Public Health Service Act, which prohibits materials that might "promote or encourage, directly, homosexual or heterosexual activity." Gerberding, in an about-face, wrote to Souder, "I, too, share your concerns," and agreed that Stop AIDS was in violation, putting its federal funding in peril. This reversal from Gerberding, a former San Francisco AIDS doctor, stunned AIDS professionals, prompting a late June letter to George Bush with 151 signatories charging "censorship and intimidation."

17

Have you forgotten who's fighting about the funding? Really, now. That's the whole of the discussion.

Actually I don't think we fighting about the funding. No one here has come out against funding and not a single person has been cited as opposing the program. What this fighting is really about is whether a single Congressman will be allowed to shimmy open the door to pork by using this program.

18

You know Joe,

If I were a Christian concerned about how my tax money was being spent, I’d be much more upset with the fact that my tax money is being used to support the torture of human beings. As well as the rendition and “outsourcing” of detainees to other countries that also torture.

If I were a Christian, I’d be concerned with the fact that my tax money had been spent the last 4 years on a government in Iraq that contains, encourages and arms Shia death squads. And that my fellow Americans are continuing to die to support that regime.

If I were a Christian, I’d also be upset that my tax money and American blood has been spent in Afghanistan to support a regime that last year condemned a man to death for the “crime” of converting to Christianity.

But apparently I would be a lousy Christian, simply because I don’t think that the number one abomination to be worried about in the world today is somebody putting a condom on a banana. (And then spanking it apparently).

pfft!

19

Patrick (gryph),

I am christian and I am concerned with all the things you mentioned. Actually, it more like outrage rather than concern. I try to speak out, but it's hard. I don't know why many evangelicals just don't seem to care about the needless death and destruction being done in our name by our government. Maybe it's the news coverage, which doesn't really portray the situation in realistic manner. Maybe it's the influence of the Left Behind books. Who knows?

If you are any kind of christian: good, bad, or in between, I hope you'll keep speaking out. Actually, all americans: christian, jew, muslems, hindus, atheists, or agnostics, need to start speaking out to in all this war mongering, torture, and militarism.

I say just declare the "war on terror" over and spend the money where it's needed here and stop feeding the military industrial complex.

I sometimes wonder about Joe's priorities as well, but atleast he doesn't censor people on his blog and other viewpoints are presented.

20

system ultram