Let’s say you had an abortion doctor in your town who also had a book store.
If you could make him stop all abortions, but he would still get to keep his book store would you agree to that?
My apology in advance, and I really don’t mean this as an insult you personally, but what a rather strange and ill-informed comment. Let me try to educate you just as I would attempt to educate the oh how brilliant Donald Trump – not that he would listen to me since he’d probably think I had blood coming out of my eyes or coming out of my, from wherever… / s
As it stands now abortion is “legal”- not moral or right in any way shape or form, should not be legal, RvW should be overturned, but at the present time it is “legal” (and FWIW - when has Donald Trump ever made a statement that RvW should be overturned and when has he ever made any statements as to who or what type of justice he would nominate to the SCOTUS if he was elected POTUS…….crickets…) And so is it also legal to own a book store, even a pornographic bookstore provided it meets local zoning ordinances – just saying.
Let us say that the abortion doctor was receiving government funds for performing abortions AND also receiving government funds for running his bookstore. That would really be more analogous and germane to the discussion at hand.
Then one day the federal government stopped directly funding his abortion services while still allowing it to be “legal” and allowing it to happen, the direct costs for the abortions he performed now coming primarily from fees he charges and or from private contributions or from the profits from selling “fetal” tissues. But hey, the federal government is not funding his abortions anymore. So far so good. Right?
And while one could say, “well he has to stop doing abortions all together before getting any tax payer funds for his bookstore” in reality all he has to do is create an arm’s length shell company, and perhaps with a few shell companies with proxy board members and share holders beholden to him in between to effectively separate the two sufficiently at least on paper to satisfy the requirement that he can’t receive federal funds for his bookstore if he’s still performing abortions. FWIW, I unlike Trump didn’t go to the Wharton School of Business, heck I don’t even have an MBA or even a BA in finance, and yet I understand how this sort of thing works in the business world.
Now Trump says that “we will not fund your bookstore, unless you stop doing abortions” sounds pretty good as a campaign sound bite and good on paper, but Trump keeps saying one thing one day and something completely different or even more dangerously IMO, he parses and nuances his words and says one thing one day and something somewhat different the next. Sort of like when he says “I’m going to build a big wall on our boarder and I will make Mexico pay for it” one day, but then the next says “and this wall will have a great big door in it to allow all the “good” ones to come back in”. And that’s not me and us other “TDS” – “Trump Haters” saying that, that’s Trump in his very own words.
But getting back to the PP thing, while the federal government stops funding the abortion Dr.’s abortion practice, the government does, especially with creative bookkeeping on the Dr.’s part, keeps funding his bookstore and perhaps even increasing the funding to his bookstore because the bookstore is doing some “good things” for the children (or for the women that Trump says he “loves” and likes to “service”) and even some things that many of us here would support; things like providing children’s books for free or at a low cost for poor and disadvantaged children, running summer reading programs, etc., all in order to promote childhood literacy; and who in their right minds wants to keep books out the hands of needy children who really want to read (or poor women from getting Pap smears and mammograms)? / s
Never mind the fact the PP provides very little if anything for “well woman” preventative exams and general GYN healthcare other than for providing birth control and sterilizations and I think, nothing for pre-natal care for women who don’t want to abort…. Regardless of what Trump thinks or says about abortion being only a small part of what PP does.
Also never mind the fact that the majority of the children’s books in this abortion Dr.’s bookstore have titles like, “Heather Has Two Mommies”, “Masturbation Makes You Happy”, Our Trans Loved Ones” or “It’s Perfectly Normal”. Never mind the fact that other book stores not owned by an abortion doctor also promote literacy, summer reading programs or that fact that publicly funded libraries and even church run school libraries do just as good if not a better job in providing those services without much of the propaganda and often at a lower cost, many without additional federal funding. Let’s just ignore that for the time being.
Furthermore while the money given to the Dr. was “earmarked” only for his bookstore operation, it wasn’t marked with some sort of magic ink or explosive dye pack nor was it put into a special lock box with instructions “Don’t use this money for your abortion practice EVAR or else it will explode in your face and blow off a limb!” Rather it all went into the Dr.’s one single bank account or interconnected accounts that he used for both his abortion practice and his bookstore and is therefore what is called “fungible”. Look the word up.
So while the government said – “this money we give you is for operation of your bookstore and is not to be used to fund or promote abortions”, since all the money eventually goes into the same pot, regardless of whether the Dr. can provide budgets and balance sheets and P&L statements that show the money from the government only went to his bookstore, since the bookstore is now more profitable because of the government funding, excess cash and capital can be easily diverted to the abortion business, spent perhaps not directly on performing abortions at least on the “books”, but on advertizing, promotion, equipment, personnel, etc.
FWIW, for a time worked for the Enoch Pratt Free Library at the main branch in Baltimore City in their “Development”, i.e. “fundraising” department managing their fundraising database - helping with sending out fundraising letters and entering and tracking donations and thank you letters among other administrative duties. While the library was funded by public, i.e. Baltimore City taxpayer monies, it also depended greatly on corporate and private contributions to stay afloat.
Many people donated funds without any use restrictions, but not all. You could then and still can designate where you want your donation to “go”, i.e.- go to replace and update the library’s computers, support neighborhood branches, even designate a specific branch, provide support to literacy programs, I even saw donations come in designating that their donation should only be used for the rare book collection or for only on history books or music collections, classic books, sci-fi books, books on “wymons’ or Black studies” etc. but at the end of the day, all the monies eventually went into the same pot.
Yes, the donor got a nice thank you letter with an acknowledgement that their donation would go toward whatever they designated it for (unless it was some sort of bat guano crazy like I sometimes saw – I can tell you some funny and a few scary stories in that regard). But at the end of the day, it all went into the operating budget. Yes, the line item budget might show more donations for certain endeavors but that only meant that non designated funds or public funds would be shifted to budget line items not receiving as much in earmarked donations or corporate funding. At the end of the day, it all balanced out. I.e. – it was “fungible”.
I am rather surprised that someone as supposedly as brilliant as he (Trump) so often claims to be, what with his billions and billions of wealth and his business successes and as he constantly reminds everyone of, being a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, is so oblivious to the fact, basic econ 101 sort of stuff, such as that you can’t fund the “good things” that PP supposedly does, without ultimately benefiting the not so good stuff (abortion) that they do.
All PP would have to do is set up a separate entity for their non-abortion services, the arm’s length sort of corporate structure I mentioned earlier and that entity could receive the federal funding since they are not performing abortions but the original PP org still performing abortions would still benefit from the funding.