Buy Or Don’t Buy

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune and a nationally syndicated columnist. He is also an idiot.

In his latest bit of commentary for CNN.com, he criticizes some of the excess spending that the Democrats have tacked on to the $819 billion economic stimulus bill.

I’d settle for removing more of the ridiculous items that House Democrats slipped into the legislation to advance their sociopolitical agenda. Like $350 million for child care on military bases. Or $335 million to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

Okay, fair enough. Now’s not the time. This is not necessarily a bad argument.

But then he says this:

Another such item, which was removed from the bill, was a plan to spend more than $200 million on birth control funding as a way of stimulating the economy.

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When ABC’s George Stephanopolous asked Pelosi to explain how birth control helps the economy, here’s what the speaker said: “The family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now, and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those — one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”

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For a minute, it sounded as if the House speaker was channeling the ghost of Margaret Sanger. The 20th-century birth control advocate is a hero to those who worship at the altar of reproductive freedom. She even founded the American Birth Control League, which became Planned Parenthood.

But there is more. Sanger also embraced birth control as a means of social engineering. She was a leader in the eugenics movement, which had a number of influential supporters.

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When you make the argument that contraception is a cost-saving measure for state and federal government, some might think what you’re implying is that the babies who would otherwise have been born were destined to become dependent on welfare and other public services.

And for those who think wrongly that welfare dependents only come in two colors — black and brown — it’s easy to see which births need to be controlled. That’s how you connect the dots.

Seriously??? Are you SERIOUSLY accusing Nancy Pelosi of advocating eugenics??????

Nobody brought race into this argument other than YOU, buddy. The point of the provision was to allow states to “offer family planning services, including contraceptives, under Medicaid, the government health program for the poor, without having to obtain federal permission.” Guess what…it IS more cost-effective when people without the means to support babies DON’T HAVE BABIES. How do they not have babies? THEY USE CONTRACEPTIVES. Astoundingly, this applies to white people as well as “black and brown” people.

You can certainly argue that spending hundreds of millions on contraceptives isn’t what we need to do right now, but when you start claiming that being a supporter means you’re also a white supremacist, you sound really fucking dumb.