Friday, February 18, 2011

Friday Good News And a Bit on Walker of Wisconsin



Those would be this one (as well as the protests in Wisconsin):
The Obama administration rescinded most of a federal regulation Friday designed to protect health workers who refuse to provide care they find objectionable on personal or religious grounds.



The Health and Human Services Department eliminated nearly the entire rule put into effect by the administration of President George W. Bush during his final days in office that was widely interpreted as allowing such workers to opt out of a broad range of medical services, such as providing the emergency contraceptive Plan B, treating gay men and lesbians and prescribing birth control to single women.
Calling the Bush-era rule "unclear and potentially overbroad in scope," the new, much narrower version essentially leaves in place only long-standing federal protections for workers who object to performing abortions or sterilizations. It also retains the Bush rule's formal process for workers to file complaints.
On the Wisconsin protests: I just listened to governor Walker's speech from this morning. It made me angry, because he applies so many political stunts during just one speech, including "the only way fix the budget is on THESE expenses" and "let's bust the unions while we have a good crisis" and "let's call everyone BUT the protesters tax-payers" and "let's compare apples with rotten oranges (in terms of how much worse things are in some private firms) to turn the apples, too, into rotten oranges."

But then the people in Wisconsin voted him in. I'm not giving them a pass on that.