War on women

While most of us were sleeping Republicans in the house of representatives were hard at work. Under the guise of balancing the budget they passed legislation that will cut all funding to planned parenthood and would further impede on a woman's reproductive rights and safety.
The Republicans did not pass this obscene piece of legislation strictly to save money, oh no, it was passed because they want to send a clear message that abortion is wrong. The three and a half hour "budget" debate focused not on saving money but on attacking women and reproductive rights and safety.
John Boehner called it democracy in action,yes that's right stripping women of health care and family planning is something he thinks we should be proud of.
What they fail, or don't care, to realize is that planned parenthood has prevented unwanted pregnancy, not through abortion, but through education and contraception.
Without planned parenthood millions of sexually active people will have no place to go for STI screenings and tests. Millions of women will go without gynecologic exams. Millions of preventable pregnancies will drain other state programs and cash strapped families.
It is an outrage to me that in this decade men are climbing over each other to take away my right to protect myself from unwanted disease and pregnancy.
In the interest of full disclosure, I cannot imagine ever getting an abortion. That said I cannot imagine living in an America where I don't have the choice.
This legislation is sending a clear message to women that their health safety and well being do not matter at all to the Republican party.
I am shocked and horrified by this behavior, and whether you believe in abortion or not, whether you are religious or not, the thought that your rights as a woman can be cast aside so thoughtlessly should horrify you to.
This is the link to the article about the vote.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/19/AR2011021900503.html?hpid=topnews
This is a link to an earlier article about the debate that happened Thursday, this article has video of the bill's sponsor as well as quotes from both sides of the isle. Please read.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/02/house-debate-on-defunding-plan.html

Revolutions don't work-- Glenn Beck

I will not take up a lot of space on this.
I will just say, Glenn we had a revolution and we are doing okay. Maybe instead of digging in your founding father costume box you should read a little history.
I told you it was short.

Closing USDB schools

Well, the Utah legislature wants to close down the schools for the deaf and blind. The reason, they say, is that most students would do fine if left to their own school districts. This is not only a false statement it is a dangerous one. Most USDB students do go to school within their respective districts, but they are not well served by them. These students receive equipment and training from the USDB schools. They have special teachers that help them with work and these teachers help the school to be more accommodating to the student's special needs. For children with multiple disabilities mainstreaming is not possible or would be far to difficult for either the child the district or both, for these children the school for the deaf and blind is essential. Closing these schools would place an undue burden on cash strapped districts, it also could lead to students being denied their legal right to a quality education. I for example would have had a much harder time in school without my resource teacher, during eighth and ninth grade when I didn't have her the school forced me into resource and remedial classes with the profoundly disabled rather than give me printed material that I could read. The truth is, we live in a state that undervalues it's disabled community and this is a tactic to take education away from students who deserve it. In 1973 it was determined that all children deserved an education, this is Utah's way of superseding federal law.
Without doing any research to find out what it would cost for individual districts to provide for these new students they assume this measure will save them $19 million. With some common sense they would realize that either individual districts would end up expending this same amount of money to educated these children, or these children would get an inferior education.
Undoubtedly some of you are thinking, "Aaron, this is just a proposal." My answer to that is look back to two weeks ago when the legislative budget committee said that Utah was doing great but might need to cut 7% from every department. The Utah Statesman reported what that could mean to USU, and Gov. Herbert told us not to worry it probably wouldn't happen. Well now that the session has begun everyone is talking like that cut is a forgone conclusion. In Utah every time the legislature mentions a cut it almost always happens. The chance that this state could lose it's schools for the deaf and blind is real. I did not go to the school, but I did benefit from it, this isn't some unimportant program, this isn't frivolous wasteful spending. This is about educating peoples children.