Category Archives: politics/class inequality
Conservatives Want Less Inequality
Top 1% income versus the rest of us
Conservatives are starting to worry about income inequality. For real.
Well, at least some are:
The conservative IMF (International Monetary Fund) has warned:
Put simply, a severely skewed income distribution harms the pace and sustainability of growth over the longer term. It leads to an economy of exclusion, and a wasteland of discarded potential.
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Must We Subsidize Walmart?
As we do our shopping this holiday season, let’s ask this question:
Is a living wage a good thing?
- Do higher wages cost jobs because businesses fire workers?
- Or, do higher wages create spending? Leading to more sales and profits and a stronger economy?
- And will a living wage usher in a $10 hamburger?
First, stop worrying about $10 dollar burgers. Read the rest of this entry
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Vote to Lower Your Wages
RIP American middle-class
A lot of folks are voting Republican this November in frustration with stalled wage growth.
Yet Democrats voted for — and Republicans voted against:
- Projects to build and repair roads, bridges and schools — which create good-paying jobs
- Raising the minimum wage
- Equal pay for women
- Union-friendly bills — which pressure nonunion companies to raise wages, too
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Feminists Must Fight For Men’s Rights?
MRAs blame feminism for problems caused by patriarchy
Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) frequently say women should fight for men’s rights. Like this guy:
Men face sexism too. Who advocates for us?
Or this:
Why aren’t you mentioning the fact that sexism against men gets ignored?
So I ask this:
Why do MRAs insist that women must fight for them when they feel no obligation to fight for women?
Because they never do. Read the rest of this entry
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Moms Jailed Cause Childcare Unaffordable. GOP Superego Hides Solutions
Kids playing in a park
Poor moms face no-win situations where conservatives are concerned.
Moms shouldn’t work outside the home, because kids need them every second.
But POOR moms SHOULD work outside the home.
Which leads to another double-blind:
Poor moms must work outside the home, even when they can’t afford childcare. Read the rest of this entry
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Strip Searches Strip Our Liberty
Liberty Lost
As the law stands, anyone can be strip-searched when arrested, for any offense, at any time.
Oddly, it was the more libertarian justices of the Supreme Court who declared it so — the ones who usually claim to value liberty over all.
Albert Florence had been stopped for a driving violation. Once taken into custody he was told to “turn around. Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks.” He felt humiliated, “It made me feel like less of a man,” he said.
Naomi Wolf points out the absurdity. Justice Kennedy suggested that a 9/11 bomber could have been stopped for speeding. And strip searching him would have prevented the attack? Plans to blow up the twin towers may have been concealed in a body cavity? Read the rest of this entry
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Will the Rights of Fictional “Persons” Trump Actual People?
Should the rights of a disembodied, fictional “person” trump the rights of someone whose actual body and well-being could be gravely affected by a court ruling?
That’s a question the Supreme Court will be answering later this month.
Through the magic of legal fiction corporations have gained personhood. And now the “person” that is Hobby Lobby Inc. argues (without evidence) that some forms of birth control may cause abortion, making the Affordable Care Act’s free contraceptive directive a threat to (his? her?) religious tenants.
That this judicial question is under consideration is remarkable. Arguments before the court had centered on whether corporations can hold religious views. But what if a woman’s beliefs — or lack thereof — allow for contraception? Why must she follow the dictates of her employer instead her own conscience?
Where there’s a conflict between the rights of fictional bodies and actual bodies, surely the latter should win out. Read the rest of this entry
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No GOP War On Women?
GOP war on women
Republicans deny waging war on women.
Well, how about the list below, which includes cuts to life-saving programs that mostly affect women.
Too many Republican legislators have:
- Voted against equal pay for women
- Sought to make miscarriage subject to criminal investigation
- Sought to make women’s health insurance cost more than men’s
- Cut funds to women’s clinics that screen for STDs and cancer of the breast and cervix
- Insisted corporations should have more rights than women, when it comes to contraception. Even though it is women’s bodily and financial well-being that are at stake
- Insisted that women seeking abortion undergo a vaginal probe — mirroring sexual assault
- Refused to consider rape or incest, or a women’s health or life, when legislating against abortion
- Said stupid stuff about rape, like insisting that it can’t cause pregnancy
Meanwhile, Paul Ryan’s budget: Read the rest of this entry
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Denying Jesus Service at Arizona Cafes
If Jesus walked into a restaurant would good Christians refuse him service? After all, he said,
Even as ye have done unto the least of these ye have done it unto me.
Surely the Arizona Legislature would rank gays and lesbians among “the least,” given the bill they just passed allowing business owners to discriminate against LGBTQ folk.
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Too rich, too thin, too in control of women’s bodies
A rich Wall Streeter looks in the mirror and sees someone at the cusp of poverty.
An anorexic looks in the mirror and sees someone who is fat.
One is addicted to money. The other to starvation. As each grasps for power.
Enter Mike Huckabee.
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In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough.
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