Stupak has threatened to block the House health care bill unless he can add an amendment that according to a Media Matters report would restrict, perhaps dramatically, the availability of abortion services in the US - which according to the Guttmacher Institute are currently unavailable in 87% of US counties. As one Daily Kos member put it, "If this [Stupak's amendment] goes through, then ANY clinic who takes funds from the public option will be prohibited from performing abortions even if they are privately paid for..."
So, Bart Stupak is holding health care hostage to his agenda of further restricting access to abortion services. Mafia imagery is very appropriate here :
Stupak is a member of "The Family" whose members sometimes refer jokingly to their shadowy, cultic influence peddling group as a "mafia". Representative Stupak lives in the rent-subsidized "C Street House" that's registered as a church, which became notorious over the summer when three Republicans associated with the C Street House became embroiled in sex scandals.
They pretty much are a mafia, and if not certainly spooky quasi-fascist cult. According to a story in Harper's, which the above diary linked ("Jesus plus nothing: Undercover Among America's Secret Theocrats"):
The brothers of Ivanwald are the Family's next generation, its high priests in training. I had been recommended for membership by a banker acquaintance, a recent Ivanwald alumnus, who had mistaken my interest in Jesus for belief. Sometimes the brothers would ask me why I was there. They knew that I was “half Jewish,” that I was a writer, and that I was from New York City, which most of them considered to be only slightly less wicked than Baghdad or Amsterdam. I told my brothers that I was there to meet Jesus, and I was: the new ruling Jesus, whose ways are secret.
A good "thick description" maybe. His book, The Family is available. Scary stuff.
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