Critique: Should Planned Parenthood Close?

After reading my classmate’s blog post on Texas Government News regarding Planned Parenthood, I was very intrigued by the facts that were shared.  I had not heard about the Government Accountability Office’s investigation into Planned Parenthood’s financial records or the $4.3 million lawsuit that a Texas Planned Parenthood affiliate paid to settle a fraudulent Medicaid billing claim out of court.

After doing some research of my own, I agree with the author that both financial concerns appear to be a clear blemish on the record of Planned Parenthood.  In addition, after looking into the statistic that claims the organization performed 333,964 abortions last year, I agree it does seem like a substantial amount of abortions performed. However, with the current state of the economy people are turning to Planned Parenthood as an affordable resource for abortions.  The rate of 1 abortion every 94 seconds includes all the clinics across the U.S. and thus should be examined from a broader perspective than just Texas.  Actually the author’s claim about Texas not having the capacity to perform abortions at this rate is the exact reason why Planned Parenthood was fighting the recent abortion bill that was passed in Texas.  By closing abortion clinics, women will have less access to affordable family planning and health services.

Ultimately, I believe we need to examine Planned Parenthood from a broader perspective.  It does appear to have some financial concerns, and similar to the Medicaid expansion program, the program is not perfect. However, it is important to understand the valuable services Planned Parenthood provides including: helping prevent unintended pregnancies, administering cancer screenings, administering STD tests and treatments, providing educational programs for youths and adults, and performing abortions.  While many people commonly associate Planned Parenthood with primarily abortions, the statistics show that only 3% of their services are related to abortions.  Their main focus is on prevention of unintended pregnancies with nearly 71% of their clients receiving pregnancy prevention services. Therefore, I believe that rather than saying Planned Parenthood should close based on two financial incidents and one debatable abortion fact, the author should take a more logical approach to examining the program. I will acknowledge that the program has some faults, but the services they provide benefit the health and well-being of millions of Americans and far outweigh the minor problems that draw the media’s attention.  

Overall, I felt that the author presented quality information and choose an interesting topic that was very informative to me as a reader. However, I did have a few minor criticisms. As previously mentioned, I believe that their analysis may have focused too much on the financial records of Planned Parenthood and abortions.  While these are relevant issues, I believe that next time the author should analyze the full spectrum issues before deciding that a government funded program should close their doors. Finally, while I enjoyed the opinionated blog post, I would avoid the overuse of exclamation points in the future unless they are really relevant to provide emphasis.    

Editorial: Sitting on a Gold Mine

After reading about many of the current political issues in the state of Texas, I have realized the importance of increasing revenue for state programs.  The more revenue the state can garner, the more flexibility they have to implement new programs or improve existing ones.  As I was driving past Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium last week, it dawned on me that the state is losing a clear opportunity to capitalize on a vacant 100,000 seat stadium that is right here in Austin.  Rather than limiting popular musicians such as Paul McCartney to play two nights at the Frank Erwin Center or having Taylor Swift play two nights at the Austin 360 Amphitheater, why don’t we have them play at the football stadium?  Rather than only utilizing the football stadium for UT home football games, why not try to bring in additional revenue for the city of Austin and the state of Texas?

Another possibility to explore is bringing in an MLS soccer team to Austin.  There would not be any major game conflicts with UT football games because they only play five or six home games per year.  With economic expansion driving Austin’s population growth, there would be a growing fan base for Austin’s only professional sports franchise.  While Dallas and Houston have MLS teams, San Antonio does not.  Therefore, Austin could draw the soccer fans in from San Antonio and further expand their fan base.  Currently Austin has been limited to only having the F1 race track, but I believe that now is the time to create an MLS franchise and capitalize on the positive momentum of the F1 race track.  By bringing a professional soccer team to Austin, the city could utilize corporate sponsorship funding to gain revenue for the state.  Also, the Austin MLS team could follow the lead of many other U.S. soccer teams and schedule exhibition games with teams from Mexico and South America similar to the Houston Dynamo to draw large crowds.

I believe that both the idea of utilizing Darrell K. Royal Stadium to hold concerts and to be the home stadium for an MLS soccer team are two outstanding ideas because the investment risk is so minimal for the state.  They do not need to raise funds to build a venue, its already made and waiting to be used 360 days per year.  In addition, the funds that they would need to contribute to hire staff and security would create jobs that would further bolster both the local Austin economy and the overall Texas economy.  Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems to me that we are sitting on a gold mine by not utilizing the empty Darrell K. Royal Stadium for more events.

Critique: Pulling Your Card, Texas

After reading Courtney Robertson’s post on her blog, Courtney Robertson / TX Justice, I definitely felt more informed about how Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department are working to preserve voting rights. In her post, Courtney provides quality background on several important elements and key stakeholders affected by the initiative.  First, she briefly described how the Justice Department’s initiative will affect Texas by forcing the state to get federal approval before making redistricting changes.  Then, she proceeded to describe Attorney General Holder’s goal for the plan to decrease discriminatory practices such as Texas’ frequent redistricting and gerrymandering.  While this information was helpful, it would have provided better context to include the fact that the initiative hopes to prevent problems such as the 2003 redistricting crisis from occurring in the future.

One key aspect in the beginning of the post that really stood out was the succinct, relevant quotes from both Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Governor Rick Perry.  By including their critical views that the Obama Administration is trying to work around the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Act of 1965, it helped the reader quickly understand the point of contention between the federal government and the Texas government.  Also, I thought that the sentence about the feds pulling Governor Perry’s calling card was a good insertion of humor into the post.  It made the post seem more personal in style, and it provided an interesting way to set up the following analysis.

The analysis portion of the post examined the rationale underlying the federal government’s enforcement of federal preclearance is constitutional.  While Section 4 of the Voting Rights act of 1965 was struck down, Section 5 is still in effect.  Therefore, the federal government is not trying to work around the Supreme Court’s ruling; rather they are instead fulfilling their duty to protect the rights of Texas citizens.  This information demonstrates that Greg Abbott’s “political theater” comment about the Obama Administration was based on political allegiances rather than facts.  Another excellent point Courtney made was that because Texas recently ranked last in voter turnout, it was only a matter of time before their voting practices were examined.  While I believe this a great point, I felt that the statistic of Texas being ranked last in voter turnout may have provided more impact and served as a quality attention-getter if it was placed earlier in the post.  Since Courtney’s conclusion is based around the idea that Texans should not be surprised that voting practices are being regulated, I think it would have provided better flow to introduce this rationale earlier in the post.

Overall, I thought that Courtney’s post was a quality piece of writing and was very informative.  The succinct nature of her writing and factual background information provided excellent context for the topic and made a complicated set of government actions easy to understand.