Good news: Planned Parenthood is having some problems.

Harvard Business Review recently had an extensive article on the Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is the in the vanguard of the sexual revolution which means it's the chief proponent of sexual license and abortion. Of course this is all done under the meaningless euphemism, "Family Planning".

In a story written by Maricio Roman on the website Inside Catholic:

Despite profits of $85 million in 2008, Planned Parenthood is facing serious financial difficulties...Internally, Planned Parenthood's difficulties stem from the uneven strength of its affiliates, and President Cecile Richards is worried.

According to the Harvard case, her organization faces "tough economic times, a hostile political environment, and limited ability to raise philanthropic dollars in a resource constrained area of the country."

The "hostile political environment" involves competition from crisis pregnancy groups.

For one thing, past government funding of crisis pregnancy centers and abstinence-only sex education programs. No industry likes a product that can become a substitute for the one it sells. From this perspective, abstinence is a substitute for contraception, and adoption is a substitute for abortion. Unable to grasp that these are morally superior options to abortion, Planned Parenthood sees them only as threats to their established position.

It's not difficult to understand why: Young women seeking contraception account for 60 percent of Planned Parenthood's total clientele, while abortion is provided to 10 percent of its female customers. Even allowing for overlap, that's 60 to 70 percent of Planned Parenthood's customer base.

Happily, in some regions, Planned Parenthood is failing badly at its goal of countering the "hostile political environment."

The Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates (FAPPA) laments that "while we worked hard this session to zero-fund the $2 million appropriation for so-called crisis pregnancy centers in Florida, we were not successful in its defunding."

Difficulties such as these are driving down the number of Planned Parenthood affiliates, from 163 15 years ago to 91 in late 2009. And according to the Harvard case study, this consolidation is expected to continue with several of the remaining affiliates discussing mergers.

What does Planned Parenthood see as the answer to their problems? Expanding the number of women seeking their "services".

Yet Richards hopes to dramatically increase Planned Parenthood's client base. As she told the Harvard researchers, "If we see three million women and there are ten million more that need our services then our question is how do we get to them."

One obstacle to such expansion is the simple fact that most potential clients have low incomes and cannot pay for Planned Parenthood's services. Take, for instance, emergency contraception, a highly profitable new product line.

As a national organization, Planned Parenthood can negotiate a low price for such pills -- less than $5 -- and sell them for $25 on average, according to the American Life League. But even at this price, sales to low-income customers will be limited. In 2003, Planned Parenthood sold 750,000 emergency contraception kits. By 2006, sales had climbed to 1.4 million units. Yet the numbers remained largely unchanged in 2007, indicating that the market was saturated. If the organization wants to break that ceiling by expanding to lower-income women, they'll need government subsidies to do so.

Additionally, despite Planned Parenthood's strength as a drug distributor, the pharmaceutical industry is itself consolidating, which gives the remaining companies more power to set higher prices on new drugs. The Harvard case also reports that the number of generic contraceptives is increasing. As a result, Planned Parenthood faces both more competition and less per-unit profit.

Abortion remains a big deal for Planned Parenthood because it brings in lots of money.

The organization performed 305,310 abortions in 2007 -- at $400 each, that yields $122 million. So even though abortions account for only 3 percent of the services performed by Planned Parenthood, they provide 33 percent of the income from "health center" operations. Sales of emergency contraceptive kits add another $35 million to the top line.

Any business facing tough economic times needs to do three things to survive: retain customers, reduce costs, and increase sales of profitable products.

To ensure customer loyalty, Planned Parenthood has worked hard to enhance its brand awareness and confidence from actual customers -- most recently through its Web site, which dispenses "sexual advice" to 900,000 monthly visitors. To reduce costs, Planned Parenthood's affiliates have been pooling resources, merging their organizations, and closing less profitable clinics. Additionally, the organization has been aggressively promoting two of its most profitable products: "emergency contraception" and medical abortion (both kill unborn children).

Medical abortions -- which involve delivering the dead baby at home -- are promoted as cost-effective alternative to surgical abortions, which is especially appealing to financially fragile affiliates.

Take, for example, the Springfield, Illinois, location. In 2008, all of Planned Parenthood's affiliates in Illinois consolidated into a single affiliate and pooled their resources. This enabled the Springfield clinic to offer medical abortions -- something they were unable to do before, owing to lack of expertise.

Steve Trombley, CEO of Chicago Planned Parenthood, stated that the organization "will provide medication abortions in Springfield, rather than surgical abortions, because the medication approach requires less space, expense and other resources" -- while still fetching $400 in revenues for each abortion.

Such changes are expected to enhance the financial viability of the consolidated affiliate: Planned Parenthood of Illinois posted annual revenues of $24 million and a net loss of $2.5 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2009, Trombley said...

In the meantime, Planned Parenthood's financial difficulties are driving both its affiliate consolidation and its transformation into a tightly integrated chemical- and medical-abortion provider. With the expected financial backing of the U.S. government, they will continue to be a formidable foe to pro-life advocates.

Even though it's been going on for years, I still find the drive for abortion surreal, the intentional killing of innocent human life to simply make more money. This story points out why including abortion and contraceptives in the health care bill is so important. It would be a potentially huge cash cow. With abortion and contraceptive services part of the mandated benefits in medical plans, Planned Parenthood would have a steady stream of income for years to come.

Stories and op/eds in Monday issue of Star Tribune show why it's leftward political agenda is out of touch with people.

I was perusing today's Star Tribune and was struck by the leftward agenda and sensibilities of the paper.

This is clear not only on their op/ed page but also in their general news coverage.

Among Monday's op/ed pieces we find:

• The editorial page editors push for passage of the health care takeover bill in Congress. "Status quo is risky health care strategy." The attitude is we have to pass the health care bill in Congress because of cost concerns. They of course don't consider whether the proposed changes are worse than the status quo. (I believe the status quo is unsustainable but what they're proposing is only more of the same.)
• They run a gun control related op/ed piece from the Los Angeles Times.
• Then there are two stories on animal rights. "Saving our pets must be a team effort".
• Then a mislabeled piece "One of the species endangered is man" which has nothing to do with man being an endangered species. It's only about animal species.
• And then a opinion piece by liberal columnist EJ Dionne we heard again a call for passage of the health care bill in Congress.
• Then there's a cartoon attacking Obama for his surge efforts in Afghanistan.
  

In the "news" part of the paper there's a big spread on the climate conference. "'Time is up 'for climate treaty" a big pro-climate treaty piece. And then a story "Dirty little eco-secrets tarnish Denmark" which attacks Denmark for not being green enough, because it produces more garbage than other European countries. Of course there's no discussion of the growing controversy over whether global warming is actually a problem.

No wonder the Star Tribune is in such bad shape financially. People can and are getting their news from other sources; sources without such a leftward perspective.

Higher cancer death rates in US if Obamacare gets passed in Congress?

There's an article pointing out that the cancer death rate in the UK is 38% higher than the the cancer death rate in the US. If health care reform is passed by Congress, the cancer death rate will no doubt increase because of increased state regulation of health care services.

As the Congress prepared to vote to let us enter the world of waits for doctors, waits for specialists, waits for testing and waits for surgery, radiation and chemo, we should pause to consider the relative records of the private medical care system in the United States with the socialized system in the U.K.

In 2008, Britain had a cancer death rate 0.25% while the United States had a rate of only 0.18%. The UK cancer death rate was 38% higher than in the United States.

The Guardian, the UK’s left wing daily, estimated that “up to 10,000 people” are dying each year of cancer “because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government’s director of cancer services.” While many people die because of late detection due to their own negligence, there is no reason to believe this self-neglect is more common in the UK than in the US.

In Canada, the cancer death rate is 16% higher than in the United States.

I recollect reading an article where heart and cancer treatments are areas already targeted for regulation under the health care reform bill.

Minnesota state government faces growing budget deficit -- opportunity to change the way it does business or kick the can down the street.

The Minnesota state government is facing a growing budget deficit even in the current biennium which is only a quarter over. It ends June 30, 2011.

State officials are now projecting another $1.2 billion deficit which have to be dealt with in the next year and half. However, there's an even bigger storm cloud on the horiz0n. A $5.2 billion deficit is being forecast for 2012-13, the following biennium.

The answer? Pawlenty will no doubt resolve it through spending cuts while House Speaker Anderson-Kelliher, who's now running for governor, wants cuts and tax increases. According to the Star Tribune,

Speaker of the House Margaret Anderson Kelliher said the state must take a more holistic approach to restoring the state's financial health. She favors blending spending cuts and with revenue increases, but also wants to ensure the state is doing all it can to spur job growth.

"It's important to have balance in the way we solve these deficits," she said before the release of the forecast.

Like other Democrats, she criticized the governor's refusal to raise taxes, instead relying on deep cuts and one-time accounting maneuvers.

"Quick fixes and band aids are not doing it," she said.

Perhaps House Finance Committee Chairman Lyndon Carlson, DFL-Crystal, captured the outlook best: "All expectations are that this will be a very difficult biennium."

Pawlenty will no doubt accept no tax increases especially as he considers a run for president, and I'm sure Democrats realize that although. They'll push for tax increases to send a message to their constituencies that it's not "our fault we're having to cut more than we want".

I think we've simply postponed making the necessary structural reductions in the size of government. Pawlenty's probably done as much as he could to address the size of government, given his narrow veto proof minority in the House. He's kept tax increases at bay but he hasn't been able to force deeper structural changes in the way government does business. The result is deficits keep coming back and the way and what government does hasn't changed. The result is another enormous deficit looming on the horizon, a year and a half away.

Frankly, I see the deficits as an opportunity to change how the government does business. Voucherize government programs and empower local governments to take more responsibility. Unfortunately, nobody who receives government monies wants any of that. As a result, the problem keeps getting kicked down the street.

The 2010 elections will be enormously significant. If Democrats keep control of both the state House and Senate and gain control of the governorship we will start seeing enormous tax increases in 2011. In the multiple billions of dollars. That would no doubt further harm any economic recovery which is critical for the return of jobs. It will be interesting to see whether Minnesotans will have similar concerns and vote accordingly when they go to the polls in 2010.

My old camp director - retired NFL official.

Many moons ago, when in my early teens, I attended month long wilderness camps near Ely, Minnesota. The camp called Camp Easton, was owned by Bernie Kukar. Bernie gained greater notoriety as an NFL official for 22 years until he retired a couple of years ago. It was always fun hearing him call out penalties on TV.

In this Jim Klobachur column on MinnPost.com, Bernie discusses the Vikings Super Bowl prospects and makes the right call on an Adrian Peterson fumble during the recent Bears' game.

Bernie Kukar retired from officiating a few years ago to the less chaotic arbors of life in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina and on the North Shore of Lake Superior. In his last two years as an NFL official he was the Super Bowl referee, meaning he was recognized by the NFL as the best in the business. While we watched the Vikings' 36-10 destruction of the Chicago Bears Sunday. Kukar looked on with the repose of a man no longer threatened by a lynch mob of 60,000 as the price throwing a yellow flag on Sunday afternoons.

Somewhere in the second half when Peterson, battling for extra yards, lost control of the ball to the Bears' Hunter Hillenmeyer, the still-athletic old football warden didn't wait for the Vikings to demand a replay. "The Bear guy was obviously out of bounds when he covered the ball," Kukar said. "The Vikings will challenge and win."

REUTERS/Mark WallheiserBernie Kukar

Kukar also had some interesting things to say about Brett Favre.

Around here (the Vikings played and lost four Super Bowls in the 1970s) older folks say Super Bowl and still roll their eyes. But the peaking saga of Brett Favre, his remarkable blending with the Viking cast and his performance in the 19th season of an unparalleled career, captivates not only the NFL crowds but his peers and the platoons of media analysts who played against him.

To these add the name of Bernie Kukar, who officiated Favre's games for nearly two decades.

"I found that the greatest players, almost without exception," he said, "were the ones who played the game with respect from start to finish. Brett Favre is one of them and I think he's the toughest guy I ever saw in football. The blitzers would pound him and sometimes they came in high, but as the years went by you'd see some of the best of the rushers pull up after he released the ball, rather then follow through in a way that might have been legal but also might have hurt Favre. That's the respect they gave him. He never bellyached about a hit that I can remember."

Then there are his thoughts about Chicago great, Walter Payton.

Kukar remembers only one other player as fondly in his 22 years in pro football, the late Walter Payton, the Bears great running back. "Everybody who played with or against him loved him," Kukar said. "He played every down to the hilt. But he also was mischievous. I was un-piling five or six guys after one play, and there at the bottom was Walter Payton, untying my shoelaces. 'Walter,' I said, 'you've got to stop doing that.' But Walter, bless him, never changed his habits."

Neither, obviously, has Brett Favre.