If you ever need Stan Bingham in a pinch, we feel sorry for you. The state senator from Davidson County sold out an entire gender to save his own political hide.
Bingham showed some courage this summer when he made himself the lone Senate Republican to vote against a wrong-headed bill that gives North Carolina some of the nation's most extreme abortion restrictions. When it came time to vote on Gov. Bev Perdue's veto of that bill, though, Bingham took a walk. With Bingham gone, legislators overrode the veto. Had he stuck with his convictions, the veto override would have failed.
It's not just that it was a bad bill. It's that Bingham admits it was a bad bill, but that he had to consider his political survival.
The News & Observer reports that Bingham "said he felt strongly that the bill ... is wrong. But he did not want to take a position contrary to all other Senate Republicans."
Whatever you think of the abortion bill, what do you think of a legislator who declines to vote one way or the other on legislation he feels strongly about?
"I felt like I made the choice that was best for the circumstances," Bingham said.
What a guy. North Carolina's women, and the men who support them, in Bingham's district should also make the choice that's best for the circumstances next November.
-- Posted by Taylor Batten, for the Observer editorial board
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5 comments:
This editorial is a joke, isn't it?
For Senator Bingham, his political career was worth more than the future stability and progress of his state and nation.
We are heading for trouble if we block abortion and family planning services. For the nation, in 2006 the birth rate for women 15 to 50 years old receiving public assistance income in the last 12 months was 155 births per 1,000 women, about three times the rate for women not receiving public assistance (53 births per 1,000 women).
If people on welfare or in the lowest income brackets are producing the most children, we are guaranteeing a crashing failure of our social and economic systems. We can only sustain so many civic consumers in proportion to civic contributors. It is very clear from all that I have read that that the incarceration and welfare rates are much higher for children of the poor, especially of single mothers under eighteen who have not graduated from high school.
Now in regard to cost of the abortion delay law, recall the discussion in the N&O’s May 20, 2011, issue of “Under the Dome”
“The bill, which already passed one committee, was in appropriations because it would require the state to spend as much as $134,000 to develop a website and print materials.
“The biggest expense, researchers said, involves children born as a result of the bill. They estimate it could result in nearly 2,900 additional births a year, about 1,100 funded by Medicaid. The state Medicaid cost could be $6.6 million.
"’I'm a fiscal conservative,’ said committee member Bert Jones, an unaffiliated lawmaker from Rockingham County. But if we have to spend more money in the state because more children have the right to be born, then so be it.’" (End of quote.)
I disagree with Mr. Jones. I believe in God, but not a God that is bent on destroying our earthly Eden and mankind along with it through overpopulation and civil disintegration in the name of religion. Let us hope that Senator Bingham and other Republicans with a grip on reality, will at least support increased funding for family planning.
If people on welfare or in the lowest income brackets cannot exercise self control instead of resorting to murder to eliminate their "mistake", then perhaps we could spend the funds that would otherwise be used to handle the population overburden through handouts to avoiding the behavior that produces unwanted children to begin with. I believe in the God that says killing is wrong and provided a commandment in no uncertain terms that prohibits it. I am also concerned about the mental health of people who despise putting a sadistic rapist or multiple murderer to death but has no qualms about killing an unborn child as "the mother's choice". A conservative republican voting against the bill would have committed political suicide. He knew it, he took a walk, he might survive the next election. However, if he truly believed his stance he should have stood up for what he believed. We he is relying on, and is all too often true, is the faulty memory of the constituents and the elephant like memory of his jilted colleagues.
Makes me think of Senator "Present" Obama.
The statement "About this blog" says, in part, that the Observer ". . .has a problem with public officials who have forgotten that they report to citizens."
Have you expressed -- ever -- a concern with Democratic public officials who have forgotten that the citizenry they report to is partly Republican or conservative?
What about Mel Watt who would support the black caucus position regardless? Coward?
How about Brad Miller who never met a federal program or regulation which he didn't like (as long as it arose from Mme. Pelosi's desk)? Coward?
No, I'm pretty sure that the Observer -- along with the editor of its editorial page -- would regard them as "patriots". Only Republicans or conservatives or tea partiers warrant "coward".
Gotcha -- I understand.
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