Defund Planned Parenthood</

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

Now, I'm sure it's a very worthy aim. I'm sure that the US tax dollar would be better spent on education or healthcare. However, I have to wonder about this article.

Firstly, it's overly reactive. It's playing to an audience, sure, but it's also invoking Godwin's law, which seems a stupid thing to do if you've right on your side. It's unconvicning, whereas I'm sure it could be convincing.

Secondly, do Planned Parenthood really hand out bad condoms deliberately, or do they just give out mediocre ones because they're cheaper? I know that Family Planning CLinic condoms break a lot, but noone claims they do it deliberately. I'm sure that this is a case of incompetence rather than maliciousness.

Thirdly, surely the problem with Planned Parenthood is exactly the problem with other similar organisations - they don't give out enough information? I don't really know, I just know that it's something people froth at the mouth over, but that's the impression I got. They don't say 'this has this percentage failure rate and this has these, and here are the pros and cons'. Is that not the case?

(I'm writing this here so as to get a balanced view, so please don't jump down my throat saying 'PP aren't evil! Look, they do these good works'. I'm becoming aware of that. I genuinely want to know.)

Comments

[lnr]

The gist of the article seems to be that US tax money should not be spent on abortions, sex education in schools, or free condoms. I think the latter two are things which should be encouraged at all costs, and I think your third point is something the author of the article would disagree with, since it doesn't seem to think such information should be available to school-age children. I really can't imagine they are deliberately handing out bad condoms, and for this article to describe them as such does indeed seem unconvincing.

I do think it's odd that they're making a profit though!

[atreic.livejournal.com]

How many million is a billion? I assume they're using American billions, but I can never remember which is which.

[pling.livejournal.com]

US billion = 1000 million, ie 1,000,000,000
UK billion = 1 million million, ie 1,000,000,000,000

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

This is old information. The UK adopted the short scale billion (1,000,000,000) in 1974, to be used in all official statistics. The rest of Europe uses the long scale billion (1,000,000,000,000), though France and Italy used the short scale in science since the 1600s, converted mostly over to the short scale for most purposes in the 1800s, before officially moving back to the long scale (in the 1960s for France, and the 1990s for Italy).

ones / thousands / millions / billions / trillions

[ringbark.livejournal.com]

It's not American domination that has caused a billion, pretty much globally, to be a thousand million rather than a million million, but that it's a much more useful number.
Population of the earth: approximately six billion...much more convenient than six thousand million
Assets of the C------ Building Society: approximately four billion pounds...much more convenient than four thousand million
And if some number is so large that you do need to use the other one, then you can use the "American" trillion.

Re: ones / thousands / millions / billions / trillions

[http://users.livejournal.com/_kent/]

The genesis of the "American" billion comes from Renaissance scholars in France and Italy. It is not, however, true to say that it is a matter of convenience, since the long scale contains a number equivalent to the "American" billion, the milliard.You will hear a billion refered to as a yard in money markets, as a slang term that is derived from "milliard."


Even more entertainingly a thousand long-scale billions are called a billiard.

[atreic.livejournal.com]

There is a budget on page 24 of their annual report here

They have a turn over of about 800 million pounds. Making 40 million pounds surplus on that doesn't seem too mad.

I don't know anything about PP, but Campus Children's Holidays has a huge problem getting any more funding because we have enough reserves in the bank to run the project for a year if we don't manage to do any fundraising. This is sensible - we're mainly student run, our committee has a high turn over, our funding sources are often one off and unpredictable - but there will still always be kids we need to take away on holiday. But lots of UK grants will only give you money if you don't have any - if we tried to live hand to mouth with nothing in the bank we'd be able to apply for far more money.

This is daft! Charities should be able to do good work in a reliable, sensible way - you shouldn't have to proove that you're doing bad business to be a respected charity.

So if PP have a 5% profit margin built in to their projects, this strikes me as sensible. No-one knows what the future holds (after all, the American government might suddenly take their funding away), and a lot of people are dependant on PP for their wages; mortgages still have to be paid etc etc. OK, if the 5% is going to line fat cats pockets, then thats a bad thing, but if the surplus is sitting in PPs banks to fund new projects / cope with emergancies, why is that bad?

I mean, it's hard to tell, but all that surplus means is that they got more money in than they spent. It doesn't mean they were making a profit from the people they were trying to help (by charging over the odds for abortion or whatever.) Now they might be. That would probably be evil. But ending the year with more money than you started with* is a sensible thing

*and the numbers we're looking at arn't even money, they're assets. Maybe they bought 50000 minibuses, or something

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes I knew there was something else I wanted to say, and that was it.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Policy daft? Surely not!
http://mk.ucant.org/archives/000099.html#000099
"the proposal suggests that operating multiple bank accounts may be a sign of terrorist activity, but that the practice also constitutes a requirement of ... grants from the European Commission."

[lnr]

Thanks. That aspect had occurred to me, and would have been obvious if I'd thought to check their turnover.

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

The author seems to be mere millimeters away on the US political spectrum from the people who want "EVOLUTION IS ONLY A THEORY", so I think you're very right about him wanting less information about sex to be given to children.