The consequences of unions

The biggest problem with unions is that members rarely get properly rewarded for their behavior. Great teachers get paid about the same as mediocre teachers. Creating high quality parts doesn't create any more job security than creating defect-riddled parts. And conversely, it is just as hard to get rid of an inept firefighter is just as it is to get rid of a good one. 

And among the worst offenders are the police unions. They are notorious for looking the other way when one of their own breaks the law. But it goes even further. In Denver, the union is fighting to reinstate an officer who was dismissed after being convicted and sentenced for DUI and speeding. And by speeding I mean exceeding the speed limit by over 80 mph. 

This country needs to get rid of public employee unions. 

Hat tip: Instapundit 

Another nonsensical political act

The national news cycle was somehow dominated by Congress' negotiations over the payroll tax. This was a meaningless action, implemented for a meaningless period of time. And yet, politicians spent hours in front of the cameras discussing and defending their positions and plans. Could it be worse? Certainly. But isn't there enough noise already? Do we have to add even more political clutter to an already incomprehensible cacophony of posturing?

He misplaced the money ... check the sofa cushions

$1.2 Billion
$1,200,000,000

Let that number sink in for a moment. And then consider this statement from the former governor of New Jersey:

I simply do not know where the money is.

That is what Jon Corzine told Congress on Thursday, Dec 8, 2011. Can you imagine?

We are not talking about investments that failed. We are not talking about risk-capital put into play with the potential for reward. This is money that was simply ... lost.

And this not just a couple hundred thousand dollars. This man lost more money than the total output of 15 countries! Countries like Saint Lucia (GDP of $985MM in 2010), Grenada (GDP of $674MM in 2010), and Gambia (GDP of $1.08B in 2010).

The clients of MF Global may never get the restitution they are due. But Mr. Corzine deserves, at a minimum, to live some portion of his future days in abject poverty. He should have no fiduciary responsibility for any firm or government agency. And he should be convicted of criminal negligence.

A drop in the bucket

A few facts:

• The current Congress cannot adopt a budget that binds a future Congress.
• The targeted spending changes of the so-called "Super Committee" amounted to less than 5% of the projected spending over the planning period (10 years).
• There were no spending cuts in the charter of the "Super Committee." Government spending increases in every plan given serious consideration.
• It has now been over 940 days since the U.S. Senate has passed a budget of any kind.

My opinions:

• The President and Senate have both abdicated their authority and have shown themselves to be fiscally irresponsible.
• The Democratic party, and its primary constituents (unionized government labor), are demonstrating a blatant disregard for the fiscal health of our country, in favor of their own personal well-being.
• Unionized government labor is becoming a ruling class and is attempting to make that status permanent.

A Boundless Faith in Government

Someone recently said to me that "government just screws up everything they touch." So I asked him why he was so in favor of Obamacare. He said because healthcare costs too much.

I've given up trying to change his mind.

Karl Rove said it well in an Op-Ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal:

This liberal lack of faith in the people is combined with a nearly boundless confidence in government

I'm taking his quote out of context, but I'm not misrepresenting his point. Today's liberals do not see the inherent contradiction in their policy positions. It's seemingly willful. And I don't see how their minds can be changed by rational, logic-based arguments.

Karl Rove: Obama and the Politics of Condescension (link requires subscription)

The 21% Limit

I was recently engaged in an intense conversation with a dear friend. She, an ardent Obama supporter, insisted that the Bush tax cuts are to blame for our exploding national debt. Our conversation was interrupted by more important things, but it got me thinking about how best to illustrate the basic problem with her argument.

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) - a part of the President's team - publishes the percentage of GDP that the federal government takes in each fiscal year. It's helpful to understand what actually happened, rather than an estimate of might happen in the future, or a prediction of how this policy or that policy will affect things. The chart below is based on the OMB's publicly published numbers showing tax receipts since 1945.

What does history tell us? It tells us that, regardless of tax rates, the federal government takes never takes in more than 21% of GDP. This is nearly 70 years of consistent behavior. It is a modern era that includes years of war and of peace. It includes recessions, recoveries, housing booms, oil crises and even the collapse of the gold standard. It is a period of dramatic technological and economic change. In these years, marginal tax rates were as high as 90%. In some of these years, taxes on high incomes and successful investments were exceptionally high; in others they were exceptionally low.

Through it all, tax receipts never went above 21% of GDP. That tells me that our federal government must not spend more than 21% of GDP. We must prioritize that spending so that we fund that which is most important. And we will likely disagree amongst ourselves on those priorities. But the fundamental fact is that we will never tax ourselves back to a balanced budget. The only way is to recognize that federal spending has an indisputable limit.

Source of tax receipt data: The Office of Management and Budget

Solyndra - Worse than it appears

Andrew McCarthy, writing at The National Review -

... If the Solyndra case came walking into a competent prosecutor’s office, the theory of the investigation would be fraud. We have the loss of over half a billion dollars in public money (in the form of government credits), which was pledged to back a company that had a hopelessly flawed business model and that was gushing losses with no realistic prospect of a turn-around. We have grossly misleading rosy-scenario pronouncements by key players (including President Obama and Vice President Biden) at a time when Solyndra backers were gearing up an initial public offering of stock — and when Solyndra’s independent auditors had issued a dire warning that it was doubtful the company could continue as a going concern. In addition, we have executive-branch officials renegotiating the loan arrangement so that corporate insiders, including Obama administration cronies, would be given priority over taxpayers in the liquidation of assets when the company inevitably went belly-up — a novation that appears to be as illegal as it is inexplicable.

On the surface, it appeared to be just a well-connected investor making good use of his network to secure a nice contract. But in fact, we have a well-connected investor making good use of his network to secure a federally subsidized loan that the firm could not have qualified for on its merits.

I don't understand how even conscientious liberals can accept this state of affairs. If they truly despise "crony capitalism," then surely they despise this! Don't they?

Mr. McCarthy's commentary is worth reading. You'll find it here: The Solyndra Non-Investigation

Growing corruption

The stink surrounding the so-called Fast and Furious gun-running scandal is growing by the week. On Friday, FoxNews.com reported that a "third gun linked to 'Operation Fast and Furious' was found at the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry." This contradicts earlier reports that only ... ONLY! ... two guns linked to the program were found at the site. The report goes further to say that "Unlike the two AK-style assault weapons found at the scene, the third weapon could more easily be linked to the informant. To prevent that from happening, sources say, the third gun 'disappeared.'"

So not only did a major, legally suspect and morally indefensible operation result in the death of a law-enforcement officer. But now we learn that there is even more of a coverup going on than first suspected.

Why isn't the mainstream media covering this?

Why isn't the New York Times calling for the resignation of Eric Holder, and for a special investigator?

Why indeed!

Credit where credit is due: Read more more at FoxNews.com

Temporary tax policies never work

I'd like to focus on one small part of the President's big address from Thursday... this notion of a Payroll Tax Holiday. On Friday, Sen. Paul Ryan had this to say on CNBC :

"The payroll tax cut that, to me, is not a bad idea. It's always good to let people keep more of their own money," Ryan said. "But it's no substitute for fundamental tax reform--for certainty. It's temporary stuff.

"See, what we've learned already from the Keynesian playbook is demand side spending stimulus, temporary tax rebates, which were tried in the Bush administration and didn't work, and this administration--all this stimulus hasn't worked."

This has nothing to do with which party has the majority in Congress, or whether it's a conservative or a liberal in the White House. The bottom line is that temporary fiscal measures never work. The Bush administration tried them. And the Obama administration has tried them. They don't work. Stop doing it!

They might have worked when information moved slowly. But not any more. Decision makers in business look at all of the available information before making a choice. And if that choice involves hiring another employee, their planning horizon is at least three years. An ethical business owner ... and most are highly ethical ... will not make the implied promise of a livelihood to a new employee unless he is confident that he will still be part of the company three years from now. Otherwise, it's better to simply hire a contractor.

There is no hiding from a record

Obama was elected on the promise of changing the direction of government. He would reverse the rightward leanings of the executive branch that have been in place since 1980 with an aggressive, leftward, progressive agenda. No longer would federal bureaucracies react to the economy ... the federal bureaucracies would drive the economy. And how has he kept that promise?

Steven Hayward writes in PowerLine:

Obama has collapsed on the Bush tax cuts, the debt ceiling, expanded the war in Afghanistan, said “never mind” to his promise to close Gitmo, went to war against Libya without congressional authorization or UN resolution, and retracted several key environmental regulations while signaling that he will approve the Keystone pipeline. Progressives are starting to notice.

This is a short list of his failures. But what about his accomplishments?

ObamaCare was passed along a strictly party line vote. The voters' response? A Rasmussen Poll of likely voters indicates that 57% of likely voters favor repeal of this unprecedented expansion of the federal government's impact on our very personal lives.

The financial reform has created more uncertainty in the banking sector, keeping investment cash on the sidelines. It's too complicated for the evening newscast, but the stifling effect that this has had on our economy is stunning in its breadth and depth. It's often said that generals fight the last war ... the Dodd-Frank bill is no exception: It blatantly ignores the huge role that the federal government played in causing the ongoing housing crisis.

And then there is, of course, nearly $1 Trillion in so-called "stimulus" ... again passed along party lines. All that has gotten us is zero net job growth for the first time in over 55 years; an explosion in sovereign debt; and some really snazzy signs to litter our roadways.

Obama's record of failure has exposed leftist policies for the sham that they are. The policy initiatives that he has endorsed have resulted in consistently poor results for the country. The conservative policies that he has grudgingly accepted are the only ones that he can claim have enjoyed any kind of success. The progressives will vote for him because they have no one else. But he cannot run on his record, even with the media pulling for him.

Accurate Deception

Here is a fascinating graphic. It is technically accurate, but it is highly misleading. It describes the public debt as a static sum. Its sole purpose is to assign blame for the rapid growth in the national debt to George W. Bush.

How is this misleading?

The nominal amount of debt racked up by Bush 43 is $6.1 Trillion.
The nominal amount of debt racked up by Obama is $2.4 Trillion ... or just shy of 40% of the total Bush 43 presidency.

But remember, Obama is only 30 months into his presidency, meaning that his policies are increasing the debt at a rate $80,000,000,000 per month!. If this were to continue for two terms (perish the thought), the total additional debt created in the same period as Bush 43's presidency would equal nearly $8 trillion, or about 33% more. And this does not even account for Obamacare, which hasn't even begun adding to our debt.

Yes, Bush 43 added $6.1 trillion to the public debt. Yes, this was not a success. Obama's supporters have no explanation for why doing more of a bad idea is somehow a good thing.

Real Christians don't murder

Anders Behring Breivik claims to be a Christian. He does so both in his manifesto and on his Facebook page. He is clearly mistaken. On page 1307 of Breivik’s manifesto (8MB pdf file): he makes the following assertion:

If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian.

No it doesn't. It makes you an ideologue. The fourth commandment:

Exodus 20:7
You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

This madman has attempted to cover his atrocity with the name of Jesus. He admits no personal relationship with the Savior, but calls himself a Christian.

He is not a Christian.
He is a murderer.

Hat tip: Verum Serum

Can we defend our prosperity?

It is because we are a prosperous nation that we can devote precious resources to things like clean energy initiatives, healthcare for the poor, and welfare for the unemployed. Moreover, every prosperous nation - including our own - has been attacked for that prosperity. Our ability to be generous and compassionate depends on having enough wealth to literally give much of it away. Poor people are not generous because they have nothing to give.

With these facts in mind, look at the chart published by the House Armed Services Committee (please click to enlarge):

Remember that food travels by ships that need protection from piracy. The seas are still just as large as they were 20 years ago, and we have only half the ships we did when Bill Clinton was president. We cannot support ground troops without fighter squadrons and strategic bombers.

And the world is not safer than it was in 1990 ... it is far more dangerous.

A weakened America means an ever more dangerous world.

The consequence of the minimum wage

One of the most common arguments when it comes to the minimum wage is that it hasn't keep pace with inflation, and therefore should be raised. However, only one part of that argument is factual. The other is purely opinion.

In 1978, the minimum wage was $2.65 per hour, which when it is adjusted for inflation would equate to $9.18/hr in 2011. Therefore, it is true that increases in the minimum wage have lagged behind increases in the general price level.

But an increase in the minimum wage is a government action ... and all actions have consequences. Even if that action is supposedly in response to other events, the consequences are real.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only one in four teens, age 16-19, have found a job. Notice the steady downward trend since the peak in the late 70's.

Notice how teen employment dropped until the early 80's, then climbed again until 1989, when it began another steep drop.

What happened?

Year	Min. Wage
1981	$3.35
1990	$3.80
1991	$4.25

Each drop in teen employment was preceded by a federally mandated increase in the minimum wage. This is a small sample which illustrates this larger pattern. It is an entirely predictable pattern. And it should call into question the very existence of a minimum wage.

The entire history of minimum wage rates is available at the US Dept of Labor.

Giving money away is not spending

It is no mystery why the stimulus has failed to reverse the course of unemployment. Much of those 'expenditures' were actually transfer payments ... money taken from one group of citizens and given to other groups of citizens. In so doing, our government has intentionally taken resources away from those are productive and transferred them to those who are unproductive.

It has been over a full year since the stimulus became law, and it is, in fact, highly logical that our economy is worse than before the stimulus. Unemployment is higher - as is the unemployment rate - because business owners have less money to hire new workers, expand their business or to purchase additional goods and services. They would have more money, except that it's been taken from them and given to folks that are not in a position to ... hire new workers, expand a business or purchase additional goods and services.

Vanishing credibility

Our economy is sputtering. The signs of recovery are being overwhelmed by persistently high unemployment and real inflationary pressures. The two are linked. And this administration seems determined to steer clear of any action that would actually help. Instead, they seek to distract the voters by blaming someone.

It is not credible for the administration to endorse Ben Bernanke's decision to flood the world with dollars — and then denounce China for manipulating its currency.
Bret Stephens, WSJ (link requires subscription)

This is exactly what the thugs in the middle East have been doing for 50 years. They demonize Israel so as to distract their populations from their economic failure and absolute oppression.

We must not allow this to continue. We must elect new leadership.

No ability and no right

One of the tenets of the modern American liberal belief system is that the broad sociological and economic improvements can be achieved through scientific means. Therefore, a highly advanced thinker can, by the power of their superior intellectual capabilities, devise a strategy that will change society for the better. You can see this in action when tax credits are implemented for certain types of activity, like using solar energy. You can also see it when government agencies decide the content of school curricula.

Government agencies are made up (for now at least) of a minority of our population. Yet they make decisions that affect people of every walk of life. Modern American liberalism is content with this, since those agencies are made up of specialists, who presumably know more about their field than the rest of us. For a liberal, that superior knowledge gives them the authority to make those decisions.

The reality is, though, that the men and women who make up those agencies cannot possibly possess enough knowledge to surpass the population at large. The citizenry has, collectively, the benefit of its full experience and knowledge. Therefore, citizens make far more productive decisions and make far better choices than government agents.

Government agencies have no right to favor certain industries with subsidies, and penalize others with additional taxes. They do it anyway ... and we can see the entirely predictable results: anemic growth across broad swaths of our economy.

Except for the government agencies.

Energy Indepenence is possible

The fringe environmentalists want us to believe that so-called green energy is vital to our national security. We need to be independent of foreign oil in order to stop supporting regimes that are hostile to our interests. But they are lying.

If they were truly serious about energy independence, then they would stop blocking the development of the abundant natural resources in our own backyard. The North Slope pipeline in Alaska can safely transport upwards of 2.2 million barrels of oil each day from the oil fields to the refineries. Currently, there are three untapped oil fields in Alaska: the National Petroleum Reserve, the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, and the 0.0087% of the 23 million acre ANWR that is necessary to begin oil production. Those fields contain an estimated 60 billion barrels of oil. At the peak transport capacity of 2.2 million barrels a day, that is over 70 years of production.

Is that a permanent answer? No. But it is a safe and affordable alternative to foreign oil that would give us time to develop other non-petroleum based fuel sources.

If our government was serious about energy independence, they would open these areas up for oil production.

The right to work

I don't know the history of labor law, so I really don't understand how a person can be required to join a union in order to work at certain companies. But that is the essence of the dispute between Big Labor - and its allies in the administration - and Boeing.

We must wake up to the damage that unions are doing to our economy. They drive up costs. They make it harder for businesses to justify hiring more workers. And public unions are the most insidious of all. They spend their members dues on political activities in order to elect legislators that will divert ever more money from the private sector into the union.

New Hampshire's legislature passed a right-to-work bill, but the democratic governor vetoed the bill. Would it be a surprise to learn that unions supported Gov. Lynch in his campaign? You get what you pay for, I guess. Here's hoping the state senate can override that veto, and that right-to-work spreads across the Northeast as other states recognize their competitive disadvantage.

Distracting us from the real crisis

The noise about the debt ceiling is growing rapidly, and it's probably going to get louder and louder. It's usually a good idea to keep in mind that whenever the pols get excited about something, it is almost always a distraction.

This is no different.

The pols will jump up and down about defaulting on our payments if the debt ceiling isn't raised. And although we will, technically, be in default, what that really means is that we will make our debt payment a few days or weeks late. It is far more important that we get our finances in order, by reducing ongoing entitlement payments, so that we can make those debt payments over the long run.

This is the exact same thing as making your mortgage payment on the 12th of the month because you had to reorganize your budget. Were you late? Yes. But the mortgage company isn't too concerned because you are taking steps to ensure that they will eventually get all of the money due them.

Unfortunately, polls and pols usually react to the noise. And that means that we'll probably get no real reform in exchange for a raise in the debt ceiling. We'll make the current payments on time and jeopardize our ability to finance our activities in the future. Unionized government workers will protest and strike in order to keep their slice of the pie, impoverishing the nation as a whole. It won't happen overnight, but the math dictates that it will.

Assumptions of Fantasy

On Friday, the Social Security and Medicare trustees reported that Medicare will be insolvent by 2024. Like all projections, the writers must make certain assumptions in order to build their forecast. One thing we know about all forecasts is that they are probably wrong. Even so, our confidence in any forecast comes from examining the assumptions made in building it. The more reasonable the assumptions the more confidence we have in the forecast.

So let's examine their assumptions:

• The reports must accept the conditions described by the current law. Current law requires that Medicare outlays will be reduced by 30%!! in 2012. Given the historical behavior of both the legislative and executive branches, this is highly unlikely.
• Here's the real whopper: The report assumes an unemployment rate of 5.5% by 2018. Granted, a lot can happen in 6½ years, but cutting the unemployment rate by more than 40% seems far-fetched ... especially when inflationary pressures and the weakening currency have almost always slowed or even stalled recoveries - both in the US and abroad

It is time for us to accept the reality of a failed experiment, and look at genuine structural alternatives. Defined reimbursement for premium payments is a great step in the right direction. We will quickly see almost every product for seniors match the maximum reimbursement level. Perhaps it would be even better to have a defined transfer payment to seniors, allowing them to keep any excess to do with as they please. Premiums would then reflect competitive pricing, and seniors would have the freedom to pick and choose the level of health insurance that is right for them.

Not much has changed

The death of the master terrorist marks an important achievement; as a country we've meted out a measure of justice. And while the administration basks in the glow of this genuine achievement, the rest of us return to daily life, and the realities of gas prices, inflation, persistent un- and under-employment, and a staggering national debt.

Gas prices seemed to have plateaued at around $4.00 per gallon (regular). At least, in my little part of the world, prices haven't changed much in the past 10 days or so. But I believe this is short-lived. The current price of a barrel of oil dropped to below $100 last week, but it's on its way back up:

Surely these prices reflect the news coming from the Trans Alaska Pipeline (link requires subscription) that tells of production issues on the a significant source of our nation's power supply. While all of this goes on, there seems to be no appetite for expanding the supply of oil.

So get ready for even higher gas prices in the coming months.

Source for the oil price graph:
Crude Oil Price By OIL-PRICE.NET

I am glad he's dead

The death of Osama Bin Laden is an important milestone. We can reasonably disagree as to whether we should have put more effort into finding him several years ago. Will his death make him into a larger-than-life symbol? Will the firefight in which he died be recounted as some heroic last stand? Or will he - accurately - be seen, at long last, as a coward who hides behind an unarmed woman to avoid getting shot?

Facts will not deter radicals ... they never have. OBL is no longer a wanted man. However, we have not seen the last of radical Islam. Their grievances are contrived and arbitrary. They cannot be negotiated with, nor can they be reasoned with. They can, however, be defeated. And we have taken one, symbolic, and important objective. There are many others, but it is right to celebrate this achievement.

To the men of the JSOC, congratulations and well done!

Our tax system is depraved

Isn't the purpose of taxes to raise revenues?

If that is the purpose of taxation, then why are their special taxes that penalize certain behaviors and reward others? Here are just a few sickening examples:

• Why do we deduct health insurance premiums from taxable income when they are paid via a payroll contribution, but not when they are paid out of personal funds?
• Why is the interest on a primary residence tax-deductible, but not the interest on a car
• Why do we subsidize inefficient forms of refined petroleum, and put higher levies on the efficient forms?
• Why are the people who produce the most wealth for our nation penalized with higher tax rates, while those who produce less wealth subsidized with lower tax rates?

Our federal government spends the vast bulk of its energy and resources transferring wealth from our most productive citizens to our least productive citizens. We have completely perverted our sense of fairness and equity.

Speculators - a persistent mythology

Fact #1: At current production rates, the world's crude oil output is approximately 3.8 billion gallons each day. That's over 91 million barrels each day.

Fact #2: The closing price of crude oil on April 28, 2011, is $112.76 USD.

The current liberal explanation for the rising cost of crude oil is that "speculators" are manipulating the market in an effort to drive up prices and create some sort of windfall for themselves. How would that work? What sort of actions could an individual or group take that would raise the price of oil, without raising the costs of producing that oil? The only way to raising the price of anything without raising the underlying costs is to do one of two things: increase the demand for it, or reduce the supply of it.

If we take for granted that a small group of investors can't cause millions upon millions of people to desire more oil, then their only choice is to reduce the supply of available oil. And how could they do that? By either keeping it from being produced in the first place, or by buying up available oil before it can get to consumers.

Returning to the facts stated above...

Barrels Produced per day: 91,373,613
Price per barrel: $112.76

So in order to buy a day's worth of oil ... or 0.27% of the oil produced in a year ... someone would need to come up with $10,303,288,613 USD.

It's not possible to cause the kinds of price increases we've seen by taking only 0.27% of the supply off the market. You'd need to take at least 1% of that supply, or over $50 billion worth of oil, to move the price. And then you'd need to store it somewhere. And then, in order to make a profit off of this action, you would need to have enough money to buy and sell oil that you weren't storing. That's ridiculous. The only entities with that kind of available cash are sovereign governments.

Bottom line is this.

Speculators are not to blame for a 65% rise in oil prices. The cause is that democrat policies have unnecessarily restricted the production of oil, so that the market cannot respond adequately to the demands of a modern, powered world.

Liberalism attacks the poor: Radical Environmentalism

One of the most amazing contradictions of modern politics is the claim that liberal policies intend to help the poor and underprivileged. I'll return to this theme often. Today, we'll examine the cruelty of the radical environmentalist agenda.

This chart (please click to enlarge> gives us a crystal-clear view of the dramatic rise in gas prices since 2004 ... when the democrat party took over Congress and began pushing a far-left economic agenda ... and again since 2008, when that agenda began to be implemented by the current presidential administration.

Radical environmentalists believe this is a good thing. They believe that this will force the economy into reduced dependence on fossil fuels.

But who is most impacted by the price of gasoline? It is the working class. They have to pay for gasoline ... and this increase means that a far greater proportion of their income is going to be spent on just getting to work. And that means that less of their income is available for food for their family, for clothing for their family, and for charitable contributions to those that could use the help.

The rise in gasoline prices ... which can be tied directly to regulatory changes made in the past two years ... is a cruel tax on the poor.

Source of the chart: Gasoline Price History

The ugly truth

The pro-choice crowd decries common-sense limits on abortion. They say that any limit will harm women. But the fallacy is that very few abortions are performed for the "health of the mother." They are performed for convenience.

Abortion For Convenience

That sounds so harsh. So cold. So selfish and heartless.

That's because it is.

When a woman goes to an abortion clinic that will kill her unborn child so that she can finish school, then it is for her convenience. When she consents to the killing of her unborn child because she realizes that the father is not the man she wants in her life for the next two decades, then it is for her convenience. When she pays someone to kill her unborn child because she "isn't ready to raise a child," then it is for her convenience.

It is not for her health.
It is not because she was impregnated by a rapist or as a result of incest.

It is because she cares more about herself than she does about the life she is ending.