Paying for Prostitutes

Rush is again right.
But there's a bit more to it than he has so far pointed out.

Our pretty little woman, Miss Fluke, wants to be paid by the government for the expenses she incurs when she has sex. That is, she wants to turn her sexual activity into a government-funded subsidy.

Now, by itself, this isn't that unusual.

France, Sweden, Russia: many countries are giving their citizens money if they only succeed in having sex and having children.

We, however, are trying to give money to employees to prevent them having children.

Why the difference?

Well, children keep employees, students, etc., from dedicating their lives to the state.

If you want to set the state up as God, you can't have your citizens doting over their children.
If you want to set the the environment up as God, you can't have citizens having children.

Kathleen Sebelius put the point with beautiful concision. If you believe, as she does, that people are essentially cost items on your balance sheet, then reducing the number of children reduces social costs.  Of course, the unspoken flip-side is equally true: reducing the number of Baby Boomers reduces social costs.

And this is the second part of the equation.

Look at this from the bureaucrats' point of view.

The worker to retiree ratio available to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. is dropping.
We are running out of workers.
It takes 20 years to raise up a new worker, assuming that new worker is born today.

Every worker that has children will be one more worker who isn't able to contribute their full salary to paying for retiree benefits.

The politician who is in office right now can't afford to have the dwindling number of national employees go on child leave. And face it, that's what taxpayers are. Every taxpayer is employed by two companies - the one you nominally work for (your place(s) of employment), and the one you actually work for (the government).

Your place of employment gets your valuable time and pays you money for it.
Your government gets your valuable money and pays you... well... hmmmm.... it gets your valuable money, anyway.

Just as your employer doesn't like it when you take sick leave, so your government doesn't like it when you decide - without getting clearance from them first - to divert your resources to your children. Anything which trains you up in the idea that children are to be avoided is a net plus from the politician's perspective.

Sure, it may harm the nation in the long run, but the wave of retirees will get their benefits.

Retirees vote.
Parents vote.
Single people tend not to vote.

So, you keep people single, which is best accomplished by keeping them in sterile relationships, and they won't vote you out of office because they don't vote. By keeping them sterile, you keep them from becoming voting parents.

You pay the retirees off with the money the single people earn. Old people vote, and they'll reward you by voting to keep you in office.


Really, it's a win-win all the way around.

That's really what Sebelius means when she says contraception reduces social costs.
Sure, contraception increases pregnancy and abortion rates, but it reduces family cohesion and voting rates.
Which means the politicians get to keep more money, keep more power, and live in the style to which they have become accustomed.

And all that is needed to maintain this status quo is a little government-mandated subsidy for contraceptives.

On what grounds could anyone possibly object?