GOP Guide: How to Talk to Women-- Go Out There And Get Those Dame Votes

Looks to me like Paul Ryan comes off even worse in this video than even Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock-- and he has no problem with rape exceptions either. On top of that, he says Lilly Ledbetter was not an equal pay law." He was talking about the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 which states that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination resets with each new paycheck affected by that discriminatory action. The law directly addressed the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., that the statute of limitations for presenting an equal-pay lawsuit begins on the date that the employer makes the initial discriminatory wage decision, not at the date of the most recent paycheck. On January 7, 2009 the bill passed 250-177. Only 3 Republicans voted for it-- Ryan not among them. It's worth noting that the 5 right-wing Democrats who voted with the GOP against equal pay-- Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Parker Griffith (Blue Dog-AL)-- were all subsequently defeated for reelection or forced into retirement by the threat of defeat.

Romney And The Priebus Monkey Are In Love With Paul Ryan's Mystery Meat

Will the Kochs give Scott Walker a job running one of their toilet paper factories after the recall?

Some clown named George just responded to one of my posts on the Republican War Against Women by claiming that not every Republican wants to beat up women. Glad to hear it, George. On Thursday, conservative Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) took on boneheaded Republican men who are trying to claim that there is no Republican Party war against women. Addressing not just strangely misogynistic RNC Chair Reince Priebus and his war against caterpillars, but right-wing males in general, she told a local Chamber of Commerce lunch:

“If you don’t feel this is an attack, you need to go home and talk to your wife and your daughters.”

Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) have also called on conservative men to come to their senses and stop attacking women (i.e., 53% of the voters).

But leave it to deranged Republican radicals in Wisconsin to make it worse. They opened a new front in this crackpot war against women. It's like they have a suicide impulse. Whenever President Obama talks about his accomplishments, he always talks about the Lilly Ledbetter law he signed that mandates equal pay for equal work regardless of gender. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, with the backing of Wisconsin's whole crazy ALEC-infected GOP, signed a law yesterday, in effect, reversing Ledbetter.

The Dem charge of a “GOP war on women” is getting a boost this morning, with the news that Scott Walker has quietly overturned Wisconsin’s equal pay law. As HuffPo reports, Walker has signed a measure repealing the 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which is designed to deter employers from discriminating against workers by giving them an easier way to challenge discrimination in the courts.

...Romney has fully embraced Walker and his agenda in recent days, proclaiming him a “hero” and vowing to campaign for him in his recall election. That alone ensures that Walker’s agenda will figure in the presidential race, since Romney’s support for it could be a factor in the battle over Wisconsin, a state that Republicans may need to take back from Obama to get to 270.

Today’s news add another twist-- one involving women’s issues. The Romney campaign has rolled out Ann Romney to argue in multiple forums that the battle over contraception and cultural issues won’t hurt Mitt, because women mostly care about jobs and kitchen table concerns. But here is a gender issue that’s an economic issue, and if Romney takes the wrong side of it, Ann Romney’s argument won’t work in this case.

And Paul Ryan, the likely Republican vice presidential nominee, is finding himself in hot water of this as well. He's voted for every single anti-woman agenda item the Republicans have brought up and now his Democratic opponent, Rob Zerban, is calling him to task for backing Walker. "Scott Walker and Paul Ryan are waging war on women by defunding programs and stripping away legal rights," he told us yesterday. "They want to take women back to the 1950s, and back out of  the court room and the board room."
And this kind of Republican attempt to roll back the calendar on progress is something Zerban takes personally. And it pisses him off. 

"My wife Cornelia is a teacher at the technical schools here in Wisconsin. She got socked with a huge pay cut and more classes added to her work load. We learned that to the GOP, we are suckers living the high life who need to be taught a lesson with their big cuts. Of course, they deserve all the tax breaks. The GOP attack has been especially focused on women.
 
Just last week, Paul Ryan voted against the Violence Against Women Act. This Act received broad bipartisan support and provides funding and services, such as transitional housing and legal assistance to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. This bill has been reauthorized twice since its introduction in 1994, and expired on September 30, 2011.
 
Ryan's vote is just part of a pattern of attacking women's rights. Ryan and the House GOP grandstanded to the public about their uninformed cuts to Planned Parenthood and threatened women's access to safe and affordable health care. They even joked about using aspirin instead. 
 
I think Scott Walker and Paul Ryan will pay a heavy price at the polls for alienating women.

May I take a moment out here to suggest you consider helping Zerban defeat Ryan in November? You can do that right here at the Blue America StopPaulRyan page. And Zerban, of course, isn't the only Wisconsin progressive horrified by Walker's and Ryan's jihad against women. Our friend state Sen. Chris Larson, who shares constituents with Ryan in the southern Milwaukee suburbs, told men and women in the area that this is a dangerous step in the wrong direction.

“All signs point to us living in a 21st Century world. Our school children can watch space expeditions to Mars from their classrooms, we can control our cars with simple voice commands, and worldwide communication is instant. Yet if you look at the most recent legislative session you might be tricked into believing that we are still living in the 1800s.
 
“Today, by signing Senate Bill 202 into law, Governor Walker again confirmed his opposition to creating high-paying jobs and a fair work environment for all Wisconsinites. With a stroke of his pen, the governor rolled back equal protection laws for Wisconsin’s women and limited their ability to seek justice for discrimination.
 
“According to the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health, women earn 77 cents for every dollar men make nationally. In Wisconsin, however, women earn even less as they take home only 75 cents for every dollar their male counterparts receive.
 
“This is not the only time Republicans put extreme ideology ahead of job creation and economic prosperity. Governor Walker and his rubber-stamp legislators also rammed through other attacks on women’s rights this session including ending comprehensive sex education, interfering with doctor-patient relationships, obstructing access to contraception, and eliminating funding for comprehensive women’s health centers that provide life-saving services, such as pap smears and mammograms.
 
“The governor’s misplaced priorities threaten the rights of our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. We owe it to them to stand up for what is right and halt these Dark Age practices so that we can get our state moving forward again.”

All that said, Romney is still veering towards a worse pick than even John McCain made! Hard to imagine but Ryan could lose Romney more votes than Palin did McCain. Noam Scheiber has pointed out that Romney is viewed as too squishy and too wishy-washy and too mainstream and moderate by the radicalized Republican masses who have been turned into absolute freaks by Hate Talk Radio and Fox TV. To Republican zombies Romney smells a lot like Bob Dole and John McCain-- and to them that odor is putrid.

Romney, if anything, suffers even more acutely from this problem. McCain and Dole were war heroes, at least, which counts for something in conservative circles. They also hailed from conservative states. In the eyes of right-wingers, Romney’s résumé offers nothing remotely as redeeming. No surprise, then, that having effectively bagged the nomination, a time when you’d expect him to lunge for the middle, Romney is moving rightward. 

How else to explain his strange embrace of Paul Ryan and Ryan’s Medicare-gutting, upper-income-tax-refunding budget in recent days? Given that the country is pretty down on Republicans, Romney's only hope of winning the presidency is to distance himself from the party. And yet, over the last week, he’s done nothing but tie himself to the GOP's most polarizing elements. He spent five days as Ryan’s wingman in Wisconsin and then explicitly defended the Ryan plan in Washington on Wednesday. 

Were Romney remotely confident of his right-wing résumé, he wouldn’t be auditioning Ryan for vice president, as he appears to be, but dismissing him as a cold-hearted pipsqueak. One can imagine a more secure conservative complaining about Ryan’s “right wing social engineering” and slagging his budget for “imposing radical change from the right.” In fact, a more secure conservative has said that. He’s just not on the ballot. He’s at home muttering to himself-- accurately, it turns out-- about how moderates make terrible nominees.

Yesterday Paul Krugman. who keeps flying in the face of Conservative Consensus conventional wisdom by reminding everyone that Ryan's budget is nothing but "a piece of mean-spirited junk." He asked his readers to understand two numbers: $4.6 trillion and 14 million.

$4.6 trillion is the size of the mystery meat in the budget. Ryan proposes tax cuts that would cost $4.6 trillion over the next decade relative to current policy-- that is, relative even to making the Bush tax cuts permanent-- but claims that his plan is revenue neutral, because he would make up the revenue loss by closing loopholes. For example, he would … well, actually, he refuses to name a single example of a loophole he wants to close.

So the budget is a fraud. No, it’s not “imperfect,” it’s not a bit shaky on the numbers; it’s completely based on almost $5 trillion dollars of alleged revenue that are pure fabrication.

On the other side, 14 million is the minimum number of people who would lose health insurance due to Medicaid cuts-- the Urban Institute, working off the very similar plan Ryan unveiled last year, puts it at between 14 and 27 million people losing Medicaid.

That’s a lot of people-- and a lot of suffering. And again, bear in mind that none of this would be done to reduce the deficit-- it would be done to make room for those $4.6 trillion in tax cuts, and in particular a tax cut of $240,000 a year to the average member of the one percent.

While the Jesus-hating tag-team of Romney and Ryan split up tasks-- Romney professing his undying devotion to women (which sounds creepy from someone whose grandfather had 4 wives) and Ryan whining that the president is being mean to him by exposing his budget as a fraud-- White House press secretary Jay Carney blogged away-- in great detail-- about why Ryan is such a fraud-- and how his budget would essentially end not just Medicare and Medicaid but the middle class itself, a theme that Robert Reich also took up this week. "Imagine a country in which the very richest people get all the economic gains. They eventually accumulate so much of the nation’s total income and wealth that the middle class no longer has the purchasing power to keep the economy going full speed. Most of the middle class’s wages keep falling and their major asset-- their home-- keeps shrinking in value. Imagine that the richest people in this country use some of their vast wealth to routinely bribe politicians. They get the politicians to cut their taxes so low there’s no money to finance important public investments that the middle class depends on – such as schools and roads, or safety nets such as health care for the elderly and poor." You get the picture, I'm sure.

Republican Assaults On Working Families Turned Back In The House & Senate

Before we get to yesterday's final passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act-- something the Republicans in the House, Senate and White House have been able to bottle up for years-- I want to recommend a not unrelated OpEd in Monday's L.A. Times by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich. In answering the question about why the current recession is smelling more and more like a depression, he points to a time before many of us were born when "good pay meant more purchases, and more purchases meant more jobs... a virtuous circle," at the center of which was the American labor movement: unions.

In 1955, more than a third of working Americans belonged to one. Unions gave them the bargaining leverage they needed to get the paychecks that kept the economy going. So many Americans were unionized that wage agreements spilled over to nonunionized workplaces as well. Employers knew they had to match union wages to compete for workers and to recruit the best ones.

Fast forward to a new century. Now, fewer than 8% of private-sector workers are unionized. Corporate opponents argue that Americans no longer want unions. But public opinion surveys, such as a comprehensive poll that Peter D. Hart Research Associates conducted in 2006, suggest that a majority of workers would like to have a union to bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions. So there must be some other reason for this dramatic decline.

But put that question aside for a moment. One point is clear: Smaller numbers of unionized workers mean less bargaining power, and less bargaining power results in lower wages.

It's no wonder middle-class incomes were dropping even before the recession. As our economy grew between 2001 and the start of 2007, most Americans didn't share in the prosperity. By the time the recession began last year, according to an Economic Policy Institute study, the median income of households headed by those under age 65 was below what it was in 2000.

Typical families kept buying only by going into debt. This was possible as long as the housing bubble expanded. Home-equity loans and refinancing made up for declining paychecks. But that's over. American families no longer have the purchasing power to keep the economy going. Lower paychecks, or no paychecks at all, mean fewer purchases, and fewer purchases mean fewer jobs.

The way to get the economy back on track is to boost the purchasing power of the middle class. One major way to do this is to expand the percentage of working Americans in unions.

Reich goes on to extol the virtues of the Employee Free Choice Act, apparently a line in the sand Big Business has demanded from their kept legislators. As Thomas Frank puts it so eloquently in his superb new book, The Wrecking Crew-- How Conservatives Rule, in Republicanville the interests of the ownership class "are central and defining, while every other aspect or strategy of the movement is mutable and disposable. Indeed, even the cult of the free market, which appears to be such a solid, fixed element of the business mind, is malleable as well, with conservatism whining for bailouts and high tariff walls when those seem like the way to maximize profits." They will do anything to sabotage unions and right now that means preventing the Free Choice Act from passing. As Sam Stein pointed out at Huffington Post yesterday, "Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community's top legislative priority. Participants on the October 17 call-- including at least one representative from another bailout recipient, AIG-- were urged to persuade their clients to send 'large contributions' to groups working against the Employee Free Choice Act, as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans, who could help block passage of the bill."

Currently the same class of people, and the shameless propaganda whores they rent, who were at one time also hiring armed criminals to shoot down union organizers, are now whining, quite falsely, of course (but with a huge, loud bankroll behind them) how unions are trying to steal the "secret ballot" from our beloved working men and women (the ones they used to have shot for demanding safe working conditions and a minimum wage).

One of their tools in the war against working Americans is the old imperal theory of divide and conquer. And I'm sure there are still some males-- apparently predominantly in the old slave-holding states-- who feel better about themselves if they make more money than women doing the same work they do. But most Americans-- by far-- have long since moved beyond this Bronze Age social more. Most Americans feel people who do the same work should get the same pay regardless of extraneous factors like race, religion or plumbing. Today the House reconciled their own version of the bill with the one passed last week by the Senate so that President Obama can sign it. It will be, fittingly, the first piece of legislation he does sign.

In the fruitless effort to derail the legislation today, 174 Republicans (i.e., every single one of them except freshman Bill Cassidy of Baton Rouge, the man who replaced reactionary Democrat Don Cazayoux), plus two so-called Democrats, rightist loons Parker Griffith of Alabama and Travis Childers of Mississippi, voted in support of a parliamentary tactic to kill the bill. Ten minutes after that failed, the bill passed by a landslide, 250-177. Cassidy had scurried back across the aisle to loony-land and was voting with the Republicans by then, only 3 Republicans voting for equality for working women: Chris Smith and Leonard Lance of New Jersey plus Ed Whitfield of Kentucky (who wants to run for the U.S. Senate if Bunning dies, is committed to an asylum or voluntarily decides against seeking re-election). And the Democrats who crossed the aisle in the other direction to register their votes against equality?

Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK)
Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL)
Bobby Bright (AL)
Travis Childers (MS)
Parker Griffith (AL)

I wonder how Kirsten Gillibrand, Melissa Bean, Loretta Sanchez, Jane Harman, Gabby Giffords, and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, the female Blue Dogs, feel about their colleagues' contempt for working women.

The Bush White House and Senate Republicans blocked the legislation in the last session of Congress, but Obama strongly supports it and the Democratic-controlled Congress moved it to the top of the agenda for the new session that opened this month.

..."What a difference a new Congress and a president make," said  Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., sponsor of the bill and chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.

Obama invited Ledbetter, for whom the bill is named, to accompany him on his train trip to the inauguration ceremony in Washington. After the Senate vote last week, the 70-year-old retiree said Obama "has assured me that he would see me in the White House when they sign the bill."...[T]he measure, which amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964, also applies to discrimination based on factors such as race, religion, national origin, disability or age.

Meanwhile, the Senate came one step closer to finally passing another bill that the enemies of working families have been bottling up for years-- S-CHIP, basically health insurance for needy children. And if there's any time that is desperately needed it's when unemployment is soaring and the economy is reeling. Reactionary Republicans were out in full force to block the bill, of course. Arch-obstructionist Jim DeMint (R-SC) proposed a harebrained amendment to force states to impose cost-sharing for some individuals enrolled in the program. Even Republicans Kit Bond, Susan Collins, Arlen Specter and Kay Bailey Hutchison joined all the Democrats (except Claire McCaskill, who had apparently lost her mind) in voting that down 60-37. When it comes to the final bill, conservative Republicans Chuck Grassley (IA) and Orrin Hatch (UT) switched their former support of the bill to declaring themselves opposed to it, bitching about a provision lifting the five-year waiting period for SCHIP coverage for legal immigrant children and pregnant women as well as a provision easing paperwork requirements they claim could make Lou Dobbs have a heart attack by possibly making it easier for illegal immigrants to obtain coverage. The real problem, though, is that one of the consequences of the war against working families-- which Warren Buffet reports, quite sadly, is being won by those who are waging it, the rich-- is that millions of needy American children have no health care and no insurance. The Republicans have an answer to this pressing social need: "Tough luck; bite me. Next time around try getting born into a rich family."

Their Senate Leader, Mitch McConnell-- who has never been cooperative when it comes to lending a helping hand to working families-- claims he's not being cooperative now because the SCHIP bill sets "a troubling precedent for future discussions on health care reform." This comes in the midst of the GOP adopting the Limbaugh Approach to governing America. Like their drug-addled hero, the Senate Republican leadership seems to have decided they too want President Obama to fail. Right now all they care about is coddling the hate-obsessed Republican base, not about America's problems.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the new chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is staking out a sharply partisan approach to the task of rescuing his party from the steep losses it suffered in the last two election cycles.

Cornyn, who once shared former President George W. Bush ’s hard-edged political consultant Karl Rove, has already gone after some of President Obama’s Cabinet nominees. Now he intends to target Democratic senators who vote for the economic stimulus package (S 1) that Senate appropriators and tax writers are slated to mark up Tuesday, a version of which (HR 1) will be on the House floor Wednesday.

“If you talked to any pollster after the election, they would say this was an election based on personalities. This is still a center-right country ideologically,” Cornyn said.

Ahhhh... so that's why Ted Stevens R-AK), Gordon Smith (R-OR), John Sununu (R-NH), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), Jim Gilmore (R-VA), Steve Pearce (R-NM), and Bob Schaffer (R-CO) all lost their Senate races a couple months ago? They have lousy personalities? And Susan Collins (R-ME), Miss McConnell (R-KY), Lindsay Graham (R-SC), James Inhofe (R-OK) and Cornyn himself (R-TX) all won because... they're the life of the party? Don't think so. How about this: all the losers were consistent voters against working families and all the winners campaigned as champions of working families? And, by the way, not all Republicans-- especially not the ones who are up for re-election in 2010-- feel comfortable about the Cornyn-Limbaugh approach.

“A lot of people want some time out from the rhetoric,” said Tom Rath, a longtime GOP activist from New Hampshire, where Republicans have lost both House seats and one Senate seat in the past two cycles. Rath noted that Sen. Judd Gregg , R-N.H., who is up for re-election in 2010, has emphasized his willingness to work with Obama.

But Rath also said there is a place for Cornyn’s strategy of drawing lines in the sand. “There is a role for someone who calls us to our principles and says you don’t abandon them because you lost an election,” he said.

One Republican who disapproved of holding up Clinton’s confirmation [one of the tactics advocated by the Cornyn-Limbaugh school] was Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the party’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential nominee. McCain issued a stinging rebuff to Cornyn when, in supporting Clinton’s nomination, he told colleagues, “We had an election. I think the message the American people are sending us now is they want us to work together and get to work.”

...Terry Madonna, a pollster at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., said Cornyn could be detrimental to candidates in a swing state such as Pennsylvania, where Obama won by a large margin and GOP Sen. Arlen Specter is up for re-election.

“The Republicans have to be careful about the face of their party, because that hard-edged face has not done well in ’08 and ’06,” Madonna said. On the other hand, he said, if Cornyn placates the base with red-meat rhetoric, it takes some of the pressure off Specter to be a loyal partisan.

The Senate Republican's most vicious and determined Limbaughist, South Carolina's cartoonish Jm DeMint, on the other hand, is cheering Cornyn on, applauding his gun-slinging approach. “We call him ‘Big John’ for a reason,” sneered DeMint.


UPDATE: ANOTHER LAME GOP TACTIC TO KILL SCHIP FAILS-- TAKE A BOW, MEL MARTINEZ

Retiring Florida wingnut Mel Martinez introduced a killer amendment to SCHIP today that would restore the prohibition on funding of NGOs that offer counselling about abortion (the "Mexico City Policy" which was thrown in the rubbish by Obama, where it belongs). Joining Martinez were 36 other reactionariy Republicans plus one reactionary Democrat, Nebraska loon Ben Nelson. Of the Republican women in the Senate only Kay Bailey Hutchison voted with the anti-choice fanatics.

The Republican War On Working Families Hits A Roadblock-- And Lilly Ledbetter Act Passes The Senate... By A Landslide

As soon as the new House got back to work, it repassed, quite overwhelmingly, the Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act, both meant to ensure equal pay for equal work. Ledbetter passed in the House 247-171 with only 3 Republicans joining every Democrat except 5 reactionary dogs from the old slave-holding states who, basically, agree with the GOP that women belong behind a stove, not in the workplace: Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), Bobby Bright (freshman wingnut-AL), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Parker Griffith (freshman wingnut-AL), Travis Childers (wingnut-MS). The Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 12) passed with an even wider margin, 256-163 and only three reactionary women-haters among the Democrats crossing the aisle to join the GOP on that one: Bobby Bright (AL), Parker Griffith (AL) and Walt Minnick (ID).

President Obama has already said he is eager to sign both bills. And yesterday Ledbetter moved to the Senate. Beverly Neufeld at TortDeform-- The Civil Justice Defense Blog set the stage nicely in the morning and warned against likely amendments by reactionaries that were introduced to weaken the intent of the bill. Needless to say, the GOP had no problem finding a lady-shill as their anti-woman stooge. Texas clown Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is eyeing a run for governor, offered an amendment, or actually a substitute bill, that would require women to prove "a reasonable suspicion of discrimination" before they would be allowed to proceed with claims that date beyond six months. Most senators saw right through her tactic and her efforts came to naught, with every single Democrat plus Republican Olympia Snowe voting it down, while all the other Republicans (40) voted for it. (The Senate had already killed a GOP attempt to filibuster the bill last Thursday, passing a cloture motion 72-23, all the Democrats plus 17 Republicans including even Mitch McConnell, who had sabotaged the same bill last year! Only the most radical right Neanderthals, led by DeMint and Kyl voted to filibuster equal rights in the workplace for women this time around.

Snarlin' Arlen Specter (R-PA) then tried 2 more maneuvers yesterday, amendments the Chamber of Commerce wrote for him that would, in effect, nullify any benefits of the bill. Specter was able to attract the two most reactionary Democrats-- Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson, each a devoted shill of Big Business-- on his first try but the attempt was handily thwarted by the rest of the Democrats plus Snowe. His second shot not only lost Landrieu and Nelson, but also sent Susan Collins over to the Democratic side. It failed 55-39.

Next up was Wyoming winger Mike Enzi but his boneheaded amendment was beaten back as well, Snowe sticking with the Democrats (although Webb defected). Johnny Isakson also tried weakening the bill with an amendment which was defeated 59-38, attracting no Democrats and losing Collins, Snowe and Specter. Yesterday was a bad day for the enemies of working families in the U.S. Senate. A little bit of change has indeed come to Washington.

After all this posturing and game-playing by the Republicans over equality for women in the workplace, the GOP's arch-obstructionist and the Senate's worst enemy of working families, Jim DeMint suddenly chimed in with an amendment he and David Diapers Vitter cooked up to weaken the ability of working people to organize and bargain with business collectively. Basically it was a tactic to throw sand in the faces of supporters of the Employee Free Choice Act. It was defeated, 67-30, all the Democrats voting yes, along with 11 Republicans, especially ones who are up for re-election in 2010 like Judd Gregg, Lisa Murkowski and Arlen Specter, as well as the Republicans who have already announced they are retiring and would rather stop beating up on working families in their last days in the Senate-- Kit Bond, Mel Martinez ad George Voinovich. Vitter then offered his own anti-worker bill, which was also defeated 59-38, every Democrat standing firm against the onslaught, along with Specter, Murkowski and Voinovich, a good indication that the Employee Free Choice Act will pass when it finally comes up for a vote.

Oh, and when the actual Ledbetter Act came to a final vote last yesterday afternoon, it passed 61-36, a nice healthy margin. Every single Democrat voted yes, of course, and they were joined by the 4 Republican women Senators plus Specter. It's 2010 but 36 reactionary Republicans voted against equality for women, including John McCain and, needless to say, the Senate's biggest whoremonger, David Diapers Vitter. Overall, Republican senators say they were just happy to be able to offer their poison pill amendments and debate them and promise they won't abuse the process to hold up Obama's agenda. I like it too because it shows Americans exactly what the GOP stands for.


UPDATE: LEDBETTER NOW HEADED FOR A CONFERENCE COMMITTEE RECONCILIATION

The House version, as usual, is more progressive and encompassing than what the Senate passed yesterday, and the two bodies will appoint a conference committee to iron out the differences. This won't be problematic and it is expected that Ledbetter will be the first new law signed by President Obama.

John McCain: Tap Dancer

The only one in the McCain family allowed to dance in public

When I'm looking for accurate news or unbiased reporting Rick Santorum's column in the Philadelphia Inquirer isn't exactly the first place I turn. However, when I want to gage the rumblings on the far right fringes of the Republican Party, Santorum is perfect. Never a fan of John McCain, Santorum was on the rampage against his party's latest presidential candidate today. He starts with a warning: Obama's popularity with ordinary Americans combined with the "Democrats' beefy congressional majorities, which can pass whatever the new president proposes, and a nation looking to Washington to ease its economic woes, and Obama seems poised to take Washington as the Allies took Paris."

But a close look at Capitol Hill makes plain that Team Obama has put the Staples "Easy" button in the drawer. In this climate, it would be easy to leave Republicans out of the debate and still pass a whopping stimulus package. But, as the media have repeatedly noted, Obama the statesman has offered the olive branch to his impotent potential adversaries.

How noble of the president-elect? No, how politically smart.

Obama was a candidate of scant accomplishment but grand promise. Promise won, but promising to be a unifying, transformational force creates high expectations. Rolling Republicans right away would shatter that Hollywood story line.

Obama also faces the reality of needing at least one Republican senator to join him to break filibusters. Many speculate that three moderate Republicans will provide the necessary Senate votes and the imprimatur of bipartisanship.

Still, Obama and the GOP moderates will not produce the kind of post-partisan harmony that Obama promised and the public now expects.

But I believe Obama has an ace in the hole among Senate Republicans. This unlikely ace can deliver not only the GOP moderates needed to break a filibuster, but also the stamp of bipartisanship: the 2008 GOP standard bearer, John McCain.

McCain was once the mainstream media darling, back when he joined Democrats on a host of issues. He prized his maverick moniker and used it to propel himself onto the national scene in the 2000 Republican presidential primary. Early in the Bush years, he shored up his status as the media's favorite Republican by opposing Bush on taxes and the environment.

The rest of the column is devoted to Santorum's sleazy screed against McCain; if you want to bother, you can read it at the link above. Instead I want to point out a few things about McCain that Santorum didn't mention. First of all, McCain is up for re-election in 2010 and Arizona Governor/Secretary of Homeland Security designee Janet Napolitano is more popular in the state than he is. We have to ask ourselves who he fears more among the voters, the moderates and independents or the hard right GOP base?

So far the Senate has had four post-election roll calls. The first two were clotures to shut down extremist Republican obstructionism on Tom Coburn's assbackwards attempt to bottle up popular environmental legislation. The majorities against Coburn were overwhelming. Coburn and his fanatic buddy DeMint were only able to garner 12 Republicans on the first vote, all the hard core radicals like Inhofe, Isakson and Sessions, including McCain. Yesterday a similar vote was held and the Republicans managed to find 24 No votes, again, all the radical right nuts plus McCain. Today the bill itself (S. 22) passed 73-21 and again McCain stuck with the lunatic fringe of his party, voting against every single Democrat and all the mainstream conservatives.

A few minutes ago cloture was brought up to stop the filibuster against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The GOP was successful in killing this bill in 2008 but today even McCain couldn't vote to continue the filibuster. Cloture passed 72-23, all the Democrats plus 17 Republicans including even Mitch McConnell, who had sabotaged the same bill last year! Only the most radical right Neanderthals, led by DeMint and Kyl voted to filibuster equal rights in the workplace for women this time around.


UPDATE: AND ONE MORE THING ABOUT THE "SECRET WEAPON"

McCain voted with most of the wing nuts today against allowing Obama to use the $350 billion that the Bush Regime hasn't spent yet in the financial rescue package. The resolution to kill the second half lost 42-52. with several principled liberals like Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Russ Feingold (D-WI), joining with the reactionary Democrats like Ben Nelson (D-NE), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) and the bulk of the Senate Republicans. The only Republicans voting to let Obama use the money were Lamar Alexander (TN), Judd Gregg (NH), Jon Kyl (AZ), Dick Lugar (IN), Olympia Snowe (ME), and George Voinovich (OH). It came down to a matter of "trust me." Those who voted to kill the package don't trust Obama to do it right and those who voted against the resolution are giving him the benefit of the doubt (and our money). Hard to imagine, though, that anyone-- like say John McCain, fer example-- could trust George Bush but not Barack Obama. I guess that's what makes him the partisan hack he's always been, the one enough people saw right through to give him a lopsided electoral vote loss to the tune of 365-173.

Lilly Ledbetter Equal Pay Act Passes Overwhelmingly In The House-- On To The Senate

We've covered the Lilly Ledbetter fight extensively here at DWT and I'm happy to report that what amounts to a law guaranteeing Equal Pay For Equal Work has passed once again in the House (just a couple hours ago), 247- 171. Five of the worst reactionary fake Democrats-- Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), Bobby Bright (freshman wingnut-AL), Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Parker Griffith (freshman wingnut-AL), Travis Childers (wingnut-MS)-- joined all but 3 Republicans in voting against equal rights for America's working women. The 3 Republicans: Chris Smith (NJ), Ed Whitfield (KY) and Don Young (AK).

Here's the statement by the bill's sponsor, Rep Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) on passage:

“In this economy, families are struggling to make ends meet. Not one of them deserves to be shortchanged, but because women still earn 78 cents for every dollar men earn, many unfortunately are. But this does not need to be.  Today, by passing the Paycheck Fairness Act, we send a strong message that gender discrimination is unacceptable and women will have the tools they need to combat it. We are standing up for working women and their families. It is our moment to fight for economic freedom and eliminate the systemic discrimination faced by women workers. With this legislation, we begin the change, make history, and change lives.”

The bill will once again go to the Senate, where McConnell and his reactionary allies, at the urging of their lobbyist paymasters, have filibustered it to death in the past-- and hope to do the same thing again. Can they? I doubt it. Forty-two Republicans voted against equal pay last time around and that includes two Republicans who were defeated in November, Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) and Ted Stevens (R-AK), each of whom was replaced by a strong proponent of equal rights for women, Kay Hagan and Mark Begich. And then there's McCain. He ducked the vote last year and this one will be a test of where he's going to be on mainstream issues, with the vast majority of Americans or with the extremist fringe. Perhaps someone should remind him-- as well as some of the Republicans who will face the voters in 2010 (like anti-equality fanatics Arlen Specter, Jim Bunning, Lisa Murkowski, Chuck Grassley, George Voinovich, Judd Gregg, David Diapers Vitter, John Thune, Johnny Isakson and, of course, the malevolent Jim DeMint)-- that in 2007, women earned only 80 cents for every dollar a man earned and that the pay gap was even greater for minorities, with African-American women making only 70 cents and Hispanic women making only 62 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts! Is that McCain's idea of putting America first?

I want to remind readers that the Republicans aren't the only enemies of working families in our country. Remember Congressmen Boyd, who has gubernatorial aspirations in Florida, right-wing Blue Dog kook Dan Boren, and reactionary neo-Confederates who the DCCC wasted millions of dollars on electing, Bobby Bright, Parker Griffith, and Travis Childers. Fortunately, every single Democrat in the Senate, from every region of the country, supports equal pay. I hope women voters in Oklahoma, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi remember who stood with them and who stood against them in 2010. (We'll remind you.)


UPDATE: PAYCHECK FAIRNESS ACT ALSO PASSED

Earlier today, the House passed the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 12) with an even wider margin, 256-163. Ten Republicans joined the Democrats to pass this law, which will amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to provide more effective remedies to victims of discrimination in the payment of wages on the basis of sex, and for other purposes. Big Business lobbyists and the Chamber of Commerce nazis rallied Republicans against it, of course. The only Republicans brave enough to stand up to them were Anh Cao (R-LA), Howard Castle (R-DE), Charlie Dent (R-PA), the Diaz-Balart Brothers (R-FL), Jim Gerlach (R-PA), Tim Johnson (R-IL), Dave Reichert (R-WA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chris Smith (R-NJ). Six of the ten, Dent, the Diaz-Balarts, Gerlach, Reichert and Ros-Lehtinen had tough challenges from Democrats in November and they will probably tread more carefully this year and next than they have in the past, at least when it comes to victimizing working families.

On the other hand, 3 reactionary freshman "Democrats" went the other way and joined the Republicans in voting against this: Bobby Bright (AL), Parker Griffith (AL) and Walt Minnick (ID). Thanks, DCCC for getting these three right-wingers into Congress as Democrats; they could never have done it without you!

Before the vote, the Republicans tried to use a parliamentary maneuver to kill the bill. It was soundly defeated 240-178. Interestingly 9 reactionary fake Democrats strolled across the aisle to vote with the GOP on this, knowing full well that these kinds of procedural votes don't get held against you when you go begging to labor unions for money at election time:

Bobby Bright (AL)
Chris Carney (Blue Dog-PA)
Travis Childers (MS)
Jim Marshall (Blue Dog-GA)
Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)
Walt Minnick (ID)
Harry Mitchell (AZ)
Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC)
Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS)

Two High Profile Endorsements For Swing Voters To Consider

Obama proud to have the support of Lilly Ledbetter; McCain hides from Lady de Rothschild endorsement

McCain's opposition to regulating the excesses of capitalism goes back to the beginning of his career. And he's never wavered-- until yesterday. Now he and Sarah Palin are all about regulating the evil Wall Street. Let's look at the facts, the facts about a man who boasted to the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal last year that they would never meet a bigger deregulator than himself. That was the ole Straight Talkin' McCain. Now he's shifting like a chameleon who just saw four boomslang and vine snakes approaching from each direction and a Cuckoo Hawk circling overhead.

Today's Washington Post goes easy on his flip flop on regulation but even they can't deny his very clear and consistent record.

A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.

Now, as the Bush administration scrambles to prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG), the nation's largest insurance company, and stabilize a tumultuous Wall Street, the Republican presidential nominee is scrambling to recast himself as a champion of regulation to end "reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed" on Wall Street.

It's as absurd as the idea of McCain, whose campaign is the most lobbyist-driven political campaign in American history, will get into power and somehow banish lobbyists-- unless he means take them all off K Street and install them in the Executive Branch. Among the several hundred lobbyists doing all they can to elect McCain are 84 who worked for the financial services industries he's been running all around denouncing for two days! He's taken over $24 million from the finance, insurance, and banking industies, over $14 million of which has flooded into his campaign coffers since he clinched the Republican nomination in March.

But if you think this is the only Double Talk Express hypocrisy on parade today you must have not gotten any of the e-mails about the McCain campaign's newest celebrity backer, Lady de Rothschild, who has claimed Obama is "an elitist" and that she's backing McCain. This is the height of absurity. Here we have one of the most detested and snobbish women in the entire word, someone known as an icon of Greed, Selfishness and decadent self indulgence, calling a working class hero an "elitist" on the day he was endorsed by Lilly Ledbetter, the Alabama woman whose fight for equal pay led her to the United States Supreme Court and inspired the 2007 fair pay legislation that bears her name. Lilly Ledbetter is an all-American heroine, Baroness de Rothschild is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with conservatism and right-wing politics. Ledbetter:

"There is only one candidate who has stood up for women like me.  Who has consistently fought to help women who are working hard every day for our families and aren't being paid fairly. That's why I'm proud to endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States.  The priorities of the Obama-Biden ticket are clear.  Senator Obama and Senator Biden will stand up for families like mine."

Lilly Ledbetter, unlike Lady Rothschild, isn't looking to be appointed ambassador to the Court of St James. And she wasn't part of throwing a London fundraiser for McCain that the FEC is investigating for illegal in-kind contributions from foreign nationals seeking to influence an American election. As my friend Marcy said "Does Lady Rothschild think Obama is elitist because he will make rich people like her pay her fair share of taxes?"

McCain can have Lady de Rothschild and her whole repulsive parasitic ilk. Barack Obama should be proud to have a woman of character and substance like Lilly Ledbetter standing with him-- and the Will Galison Orchestra:

McCONNELL AND SENATE REPUBLICAN EXTREMISTS KILL EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK BILL

Perhaps Miss McConnell will take care of your (boy) child if you need to find a second job

We've been writing a bit about the equal pay for equal work bill that should have been voted on today. The House already passed it by a healthy margin. And a nice majority favored it in the Senate today. The Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act had two Republican co-sponsors and managed to win 56 votes in the Senate, including every single Democrat and both independents. McCain ducked the vote, of course-- what a maverick, what a moderate, what a hero-- but only 42 Republican wingnuts voted against equality for women. But because Kentucky closet queen Mitch (Missy) McConnell led the forces of reaction in a filibuster, the bill was killed-- without ever actually getting a chance to be voted on. You need 60 votes to break a filibuster.

Kathryn Kolbert, president of People For the American Way, one of the organization leading the charge on equal pay, seemed angry today after the vote. Remember, Kathryn was the attorney who saved Roe v Wade in front of the Supreme Court. She takes this kind of injustice very seriously.

“Republican Senators made it painfully clear tonight that they take their marching orders from business lobbyists, not the American people. Congress had a rare opportunity in the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to reverse the destructive Supreme Court ruling in Ledbetter vs. Goodyear. The House of Representatives delivered for workers, but Senate Republicans stopped it in its tracks.”

“The Ledbetter decision, written by President Bush’s nominee Samuel Alito, made it easier for businesses to practice pay discrimination with impunity. Workers who face pay discrimination but fail to file a complaint within 180 days of the initial discriminatory act are left with severely limited legal recourse, even if they do not learn of the discrimination until much later. This is unfair and unpractical but all too consistent with the larger effort by right-wing judges to undermine the ability of Americans to seek redress when wronged by powerful interests.

“We’re deeply disappointed, but not surprised, by the decision of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to aggressively fight fair pay for American workers. We encourage Senate Democrats to continue pushing for passage of the legislation. The difficulties facing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 drive home for us the importance of having fair-minded judges on the Supreme Court who will protect and uphold equal rights for all.”

McCain didn't bother even showing up to vote but, campaigning in rural eastern Kentucky, where poverty is higher than in most of America-- and even worse for women-- he said he would have voted no. Several treacherous Republican senators who generally rubber stamp all of Bush's most contemptible agenda items are so frightened of losing in November that they broke ranks with their extremist leaders today and slinked over to the Democratic side, including Susan Collins (R-ME), Gordon Smith (R-OR), Norm Coleman (R-MN) and John Sununu (R-NH), all of whom voted to confirm the judge who wrote this hideous opinion, Sam Alito. Kathryn Kolbert from PFAW again: "Senator Norm Coleman was against fair pay when it counted. He lined up with his Republican colleagues and voted to put President Bush’s nominee, Justice Samuel Alito, on the Supreme Court for life. Alito had a track record of right-wing judicial activism. He surprised no one when he authored a 5-4 opinion in Ledbetter v. Goodyear that made it easier for companies to pay discriminatory wages with impunity.”

“Now Senator Coleman is saying he is ‘very open’ to reversing the decision. The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would effectively reverse the decision, is coming up for a crucial vote in the Senate today. Coleman, rather than supporting the bill outright, has said he will seek a “compromise”
on the bill. Meanwhile his Senate Republican colleagues have already lined up to quash it.

“Senator Coleman’s half-hearted lip service to fair pay is no consolation for Americans like Lilly Ledbetter who face pay discrimination and are left without legal recourse. In fact, it’s an insult. Coleman has shown himself to be a fair-weather friend of workers-- not there when you need them, and there when you don’t.

“The Supreme Court’s ruling in Ledbetter was unfair and unreasonable, and Senator Coleman played a key enabling role. People For the American Way will work to ensure that Minnesotans don’t forget this fact.”

The Republicans who will have to face voters in November who decided equal pay for equal work isn't as important to them as massive bribes from corporate lobbyists are:

John Cornyn (R-TX)
James Inhofe (R-OK)
Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)
Michael Enzi (R-WY)
John Barrasso (R-WY)
Miss McConnell (R-KY)
Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Ted Stevens (R-AK)
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
Pat Roberts (R-KS)
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Roger Wicker (R-MS)


UPDATE: BUT WHAT ABOUT "MRS" McCONNELL?

His marriage of convenience mate is, if anything, almost as bad as he is! When it comes to denying equal pay to women Elaine Chao is a Republican extremist first and a woman... well somewhere I suppose. A few years ago she tried claiming credit for helping to shrink the wage gap but the real reason for change was that under the Bush Regime's economic policies men's wages have started dropping precipitously.

In 2007, women earned only 80 cents for every dollar a man earned. This pay gap was substantially greater for minorities, with African-American women making only 70 cents and Hispanic women making only 62 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts.

But Elaine and Mitch don't see a problem: in 2006 Elaine claimed the pay gap had shrunk, when all that really happened was men's wages fell, women didn't gain. Under Elaine's watch, the administration also tried to cut resources for the agency that gives women information about harassment, discrimination, family leave, and childcare.

Chao got a nice pay raise though and makes $180,100 in her day job. She and McConnell have become multimillionaires though, as unofficial lobbyists for Chinese industry in this country.

WHY DO REPUBLICANS HATE WOMAN, PART II

Miss McConnell never liked women but this is going way too far

Beltway newspaper, The Hill has already pronounced the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 dead on arrival. It passed in the House 225-199 but the closet queen from Kentucky who will always be the champion of male domination, Miss McConnell, plans to use every weapon of obstructionism in his arsenal to stop it-- and if he fails, Bush has vowed to veto it.

The Hill reports that there aren't enough Republicans to join the Democrats in overcoming Miss McConnell's anti-women filibuster. The only GOP cosponsors are Olympia Snowe (ME) and Arlen Specter (PA). "Most Republicans oppose it and the White House has threatened a veto, so prospects for passage are dim. Yet it is expected to resurface as an advertising campaign against politically vulnerable GOP senators who are up for reelection, such as Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Susan Collins of Maine."

Collins and Coleman are too scared of voters back home to do their normal rubber stamp routine and each is expected to swallow hard, whimper about how unfair their miserable lives are, and abandon Miss McConnell and the right-wing, voting for cloture. Greed and selfishness advocates inside the Republican coalition are screaming that it's another unfair regulation. Yes, imagine the injustice of having to pay people equal amounts for equal work, regardless of gender. Don't you feel terrible for these rotten bastards? No, well then remember to vote against every Republican in November, because the bribes they take from these businessmen and corporations is what compels them to vote against basic fairness issues like this. Arch-coward John McCain, of course, will avoid voting today.

Another reactionary, self-loathing closet queen in the Senate, South Carolina's light in the loafers McCain Mini-Me, Lindsey Graham tried twisting the popularity of equal pay in a limp attack on the bill's sponsors. “Most Americans get this. Most people understand that the government shouldn’t mandate wages like this. It’s not going to be an issue that we can’t defend against.”

And what is Miss McConnell's (and the Senate Republicans') rationale for blocking the equal pay bill for half the country's population? After all, they can hardly admit they have to do what their corporate paymasters insist on. According to this morning's NY Times Miss McConnell tried obfuscation: "We think that this bill is primarily designed to create a massive amount of new litigation in our country.” Unbelievable!

This is exactly why the Democrats need to have 60 seats in the next Senate. 60 seats; that means victory for Tom Allen (ME), Al Franken (MN), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Tom Udall (NM), Mark Udall (CO), Andrew Rice (OK), Mark Warner (VA), Rick Noriega (TX), Mark Begich (AK), Jim Neal (NC), and Greg Fischer (KY). (That means 60 without GOP puppet Holy Joe Lieberman.)

Ted Kennedy, the chief sponsor of the bill, and who blogged on it this morning at HuffPo, has a different way of looking at it than McConnell: "I can’t think of anything more in keeping with American ideals of fairness than equal pay for equal work."

Drum Major Institute has a well researched analysis on the impact of the bill on the American middle class. This week the Kentucky Women’s Political Caucus endorsed Greg Fischer in the Democratic Primary for U.S. Senate. Greg told the nonpartisan organization that "Women voters deserve someone they can trust to represent their values in the Senate and I am honored to have their endorsement.” When DWT contacted him today to ask him why the senior senator from Kentucky is thwarting equality for working women in Kentucky he certainly wasn't surprised. "In typical Washington fashion, Senator McConnell is blocking legislation that allows women to fight for their rights to equal pay. His obstructionism lets employers escape responsibility by hiding their decision to discriminate so they can run out the clock."

DO REPUBLICAN MEMBERS OF CONGRESS HATE WOMEN? THE ANSWER MAY SHOCK YOU

This morning People For the American Way put out an action alert, one that urges fair-minded citizens to call our U.S. Senators and urge them to pass H.R. 2831, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. We've been talking about the Ledbetter case since last year. The bill, which has already passed in the House. "remedies a terrible Supreme Court decision regarding protections against pay discrimination in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Because the Court's decision had to do with a piece of legislation and not the Constitution, Congress can amend the current law to make the language clearer and more explicit about the original act's intent -- and thus correct the Court. It looks like the vote will come tomorrow so today is the day to call your senator. The toll free number is 1-866-338-1015. The senators who talk about equal pay for equal work but who are likely to vote against the bill are:

Susan Collins (R-ME)
John Sununu (R-NH)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Norm Coleman (R-MN)
Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)
James Inhofe (R-OK)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
Gordon Smith (R-OR)
Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Ted Stevens (R-AK)
Pat Roberts (R-KS)
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

Many people are unaware that under the Bush Regime women have had a particularly hard time keeping up. Today is Equal Pay Day but the effects of the Bush Recession is falling harder on women than on men.

     •     In the past year, the unemployment rate among adult women workers has gone up more rapidly than for men—rising from 3.8% in March 2007 to 4.6% in March 2008, an increase of 20%, compared with a 17% increase among adult men.


     •     The downturn has caused women's wages to fall and this decline is significantly larger than what men have suffered.  In 2007, the real median wage for adult women workers dropped 3%; wages for adult male workers dropped by.5% over the same period. Women's wages are also more volatile than men's wages, and they face a much higher risk of seeing large drops in income than men do.


     •     Women are also disproportionately at risk in the current foreclosure crisis, since women are 32% more likely than men to have subprime mortgages.


     •     Existing pay disparities for women exacerbate the economic strain on women and on households run by women, since women earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men


     •     Women have significantly fewer savings to fall back on in a time of economic hardship. Non-married women have a net worth 48% lower than non-married men, and women are less likely than men to participate in employer-sponsored retirement savings programs.

On top of that, today's Washington Post reports that life expectancy for women is falling-- for the first time since the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918. Heckuva job, Bush-- let's make sure to vote in another Republican just like him (or worse) in November!

And by the way, just so you get a better understanding of what the pay gap between men and women means in practical terms, the average 25-year-old working woman will lose more than $523,000 to unequal pay during her working life. Even with the inflation Republican economic policies has brought on, that's a LOT of money. Bush's chief obstructionist, Mitch McConnell is expected to lead a filibuster against equal pay and there will be a cloture vote to shut down the debate. One senator likely to support McConnell's filibuster against equal pay is Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. Blue America has endorsed state Senator Andrew Rice in his bid to replace Inhofe and his reactionary policies this coming November. We asked Andrew if he thought there was any hope Inhofe could be persuaded to support equal pay for equal work.

“I hope that when Senator Inhofe considers his vote on the equal pay for equal work legislation in the Senate this week, he will take into account the status of women in our state. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Oklahoma ranks 45th among the 50 states in a cumulative measure of quality of life issues like employment, health, earnings and general well-being.  I believe we can do better, particularly because we Oklahomans place great value on life and equality.”

Does it matter to you? It isn't just Inhofe either. Do one of the senators on the list above represent you? Let him-- or Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham or Elizabeth Dole-- know what you think. That toll free phone number, again: 1-866-338-1015

Yes, Elizabeth Dole and Susan Collins-- two women, each trying to pass herself off as an independent-minded senator and a supporter of equal rights. And yet, each has been a serial rubber stamper of the worst of the GOP program. I contacted Jim Neal, the progressive Democrat running against Dole, and, like Andrew Rice, someone who has been enthusiastically endorsed by Blue America. Jim didn't comment on Dole or her shameful record specifically but what he told us leaves no doubt about the contrast North Carolina voters will be able to choose between: "Bad economics kills. Conservative economic policies have reduced Americans' incomes, and we see now reduced their life spans as well. The GOP has launched a frontal assault on all forms of reproductive health care as a proxy for their war on a woman’s right to choose. The Republicans have spent three decades distorting the record of the Great Society and the War on Poverty, Democratic programs which actually reduced poverty and improved the health of Americans. Now the jury is in on Republican economic policies, and we see they are literally killing us."

If you have a moment, please take a look at the ad that People For the American Way is running in Minnesota. It explains the difference between a senator claiming they support a lofty abstraction, like "equal rights" and supporting or failing to support the reality on the ground.




UPDATE: TOM ALLEN ON THE LEDBETTER FAIR PAY ACT

Blue America-endorsed Tom Allen has been one of Congress' strongest advocates of the whole idea of fair pay for equal work. He was one of the co-sponsors of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007 last summer and this morning he came out swinging on the day when the Senate will try to overcome the Republican filibuster led by Mitch McConnell.

"Last summer I co-sponsored and helped pass the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007.  This bill reverses the Court's unacceptable and unfair reading of Title VII so that a more realistic and appropriate deadline applies to those who face discrimination in the workplace.
 
"This was the law before the Ledbetter decision, which once again demonstrated that President Bush's appointees have moved the High Court decisively away from the interests and aspirations of ordinary, hard-working Americans.
 
"A Court that was previously enlightened by the pragmatic wisdom of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is now controlled by the ideology-driven agenda of her replacement, Justice Alito.  
 
"When George Bush nominated him, Samuel Alito's record was clear.  
 
"I had no doubt that he would side with those who seek to turn the clock back on women's reproductive rights and who value employers' interests over those of workers. I would have voted against his confirmation for these very reasons, and as a member of the Senate, I will vote against the confirmation of any nominees who do not understand fairness and individual rights."

Susan Collins, the rubber stamp Republican senator Allen hopes to replace, voted, lemming-like, for Alito. It is expected that Tom's pressure could force her-- reluctantly-- to break with her party, something she rarely does, to vote to end McConnell's cowardly and disgraceful filibuster today.

WHO IS LILLY LEDBETTER AND WHAT DOES SHE HAVE TO DO WITH OUR LIVES?

Back at the very end of May this Supreme Court, specially crafted by an ascendant Republican Party to serve, more than anything else, the exclusive interests of the rich and powerful, sent a very ominous message about what to expect as their session ground to a halt. They sent down a narrowly partisan 5-4 ruling-- the first of many that would follow in the next couple of weeks-- that protects the interests of the haves from the aspirations of ordinary Americans who, basically, have nothing but a now further shaken faith in fairness and Justice.

As Robert Barnes explained the ruling in the following day's Washington Post, Bush's Court voided the right of a worker to collect damages regardless of the guilt of her employers.

The court ruled 5-4 that Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at a tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., did not file her lawsuit against Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in the timely manner specified by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

A jury had originally awarded her more than $3.5 million because it found it "more likely than not" that sex discrimination during her 19-year career led to her being paid substantially less than her male counterparts.

An appeals court reversed, saying the law requires the suit be filed within 180 days "after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred," and Ledbetter couldn't prove discrimination within that time period. She had argued that she was discriminated against throughout her career and each paycheck that was less because of discrimination was a new violation.

The conservative majority of the court disagreed, and upheld the appeals court.

I'd like to ask you to meet Lilly-- via this video-- and tell me if she doesn't feel like family. I don't see how it's possible for any woman, or any man with a wife, sister, daughter, mother, aunt, female friend, to not feel infuriated by how Lilly was treated, first by a huge multinational corporation and then by the 5 Horsemen of the Judicial Apocalypse: Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, and Kennedy.



Next time you hear a rubber stamp Republican senator like Susan Collins, Norm Coleman, John Sununu, Gordon Smith, John Cornyn, Mitch McConnell, Lamar Alexander, Pete Domenici, Ted Stevens or James Inhofe tell you what an independent voice they are, ask them why they voted for every single judicial nominee, no matter how extreme, no matter how narrowly partisan, that the Bush Regime shoved out.

BUSH SUPREME COURT REAFFIRMS UNFETTERED CORPORATE DOMINANCE OVER AMERICAN CITIZENS

President Clinton makes a great move-- and we owe him

I always tell all the DWT writers that we can't advocate violence-- not even against monstrosities who are destroying our nation. I've heard all the arguments and I always say, "no, we cannot advocate violence at DWT." Nor do I even support the 180 days concept which says if you do something violent to a high up fascist and you can avoid the consequences for 180 days you get a prize and can't be prosecuted. On the other hand, the five high up fascists on the U.S. Supreme Court-- Alito, Scalia, Kennedy, Roberts and that one who never says anything but passes a note to the clerk saying "What Scalia says"-- are in favor of the 180 days concept.

Many of us knew it was a big mistake for Democrats not to block the nominations of Roberts and, even worse, Alito. It wasn't just because of Roe v Wade either. Sure, these two creeps are wrong about everything but the Bush inner circle was primarily looking for judges who could always be counted on to support corporate interests over the rights of consumers and workers, judges who will favor the wealthy and powerful over the rest of us. Today's 5-4 decision can be laid right at the feet of Democrats like Reid and Schumer who sabotaged progressive and grassroots efforts to organize against a filibuster. The decision today upholds a right wing appeals court decision voiding a worker's right to collect damages from a corporation discriminating against her illegally, based on the 180 loophole.

The court ruled 5-4 that Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at a tire plant in Gadsden, Ala., did not file her lawsuit against Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. in the timely manner specified by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

A jury had originally awarded her more than $3.5 million because it found it "more likely than not" that sex discrimination during her 19-year career led to her being paid substantially less than her male counterparts.

An appeals court reversed, saying the law requires the suit be filed within 180 days "after the alleged unlawful employment practice occurred," and Ledbetter couldn't prove discrimination within that time period. She had argued that she was discriminated against throughout her career and each paycheck that was less because of discrimination was a new violation.

The conservative majority of the court disagreed, and upheld the appeals court.

Once again it was Ruth Bader Ginsburg who made the most sense even going so far as to urge Congress to amend the law to correct her extremist colleagues' "parsimonious reading" of it (something Hillary Clinton has already said she will do). "In our view," said Ginsburg for the 4 non-fascist members, "this court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination."

Today's NY Times called Ginsburg's decision vigorous. With the Bush Regime entering the case on behalf of Goodyear and against ordinary Americans, Justice Ginsburg's oral dissent was "an unmistakable sign of anger and the tone of her opinion showed how bitterly she differed with the majority. She asserted that the effects of pay discrimination can be relatively small at first, then become far more serious as subsequent raises are based on the original low pay, and that instances of pay inequities ought to be treated differently from other acts of discrimination. For one thing, she said, pay discrimination is often not uncovered until long after the fact." She pointed out that the court's 5 fascist judges' "opinion 'overlooks common characteristics of pay discrimination.' She said that given the secrecy in most workplaces about salaries, many employees would have no idea within 180 days that they had received a lower raise than others."

Ralph Neas of People For the American Way, which led the fight to persuade Schumer, Reid and other tepid Democrats to really try to stop the Alito nomination, summed up today's ruling and put it into perspective.

Today's ruling is just the latest sign of the Court’s rightward lurch following the replacement of moderate conservative Justice Sandra Day O’Connor with ultraconservative Justice Samuel Alito and the confirmation of John Roberts as Chief Justice.
 
The Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Alito, ruled against a female former employee of Goodyear who claimed she had been subjected to gender-based salary discrimination over many years. Justice Anthony Kennedy joined with the right-wing bloc (as he did in Gonzales v. Carhart) to severely limit the relief available to many workers who fall victim to wage discrimination.
 
It is often exceptionally difficult for employees to learn about salary disparities and to sue for wage discrimination while continuing to work for a company. By making it more difficult for Americans to recover wages unfairly denied them, and less costly for companies to engage in discrimination against employees, the Court majority displayed its hostility to individual rights and to the laws passed by Congress to protect them.
 
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg accused the majority of straying far ‘from interpretation of Title VII with fidelity to the Act's core purpose.’ Having successfully argued so many important sex discrimination cases when she was an attorney, Justice Ginsburg must feel as though she is going back in time with each passing day. And she would be right.
 
The fulcrum of the Court has shifted rightward from Justice O’Connor to Justice Kennedy. It has become increasingly clear that whenever he aligns with his four ultraconservative peers, the outcome will be destructive. In decision after decision, Alito and Roberts are demonstrating the hostility to crucial rights and protections that the opponents to their confirmation warned about.

I am still standing by DWT practice of not advocating violence-- even against fascists-- and not supporting this 180 days loophole thing. I would like to urge you to remember what I said a few days ago when we asked if you are ready to elect the next Supreme Court (non-violently).


UPDATE: AND IT ISN'T ONLY HILLARY WHO IS SICKENED BY BUSH REGIME DISREGARD FOR WOMEN'S EQUALITY IN THE WORKPLACE

George Miller, Chair of the Education and Labor Committee responded to Justice Ginsburg's called for Congress to address the Bush Court's idiotic decision.

"The Supreme Court’s ruling makes it more difficult for workers to stand up for their basic civil rights in the workplace. A worker undergoing sex, race, or other discrimination in pay is discriminated against with each and every discriminatory paycheck, not just when the company set the worker’s pay. Yet, according to the Supreme Court, if a worker does not file within 180 days of the employer’s decision to set her pay unlawfully, she has to live with that discrimination paycheck after paycheck. This ruling will force Congress to clarify the law’s intention that the ongoing effects of discriminatory decisions are just as unacceptable as the decisions themselves."