Category: Latest News

The GOP Needs a Lesson on Women’s Equality Day

classroomOn Aug. 26, the Democratic Party celebrated Women’s Equality Day. Ninety five years ago, women won the right to vote, guaranteeing them one of the most basic rights available to an American citizen. 

While Democrats are fighting to protect women’s rights every day, it occurs to us that the GOP presidential candidates are in serious need of a lesson on women’s equality. When it comes to paid leave, equal pay, women’s health, and the importance of raising the minimum wage, the GOP candidates don’t have a clue! 

So as a favor to anyone who has the chance to school these candidates on equal rights, we hope you find the following lesson plan helpful. 

TITLE: Women’s Equality 101 

OBJECTIVES: To teach the GOP presidential candidates the importance of women’s equality; to correct policy positions that will take women backwards 

STUDENTS: Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, George Pataki, Rand Paul, Rick Perry 

BASE KNOWLEDGE OF SUBJECT: Minimal  

MISCONCEPTIONS OF SUBJECT: Candidates lack understanding of the following:

View the rest of this post here.

Rep. Daudt’s Flip Flop on Remodeling Money

Flipo FlopsPatrick Condon with the StarTribune published an article in the August 25, 2015 issue of that paper titled “Speaker says additional Capitol restoration money he sought should be spent where it’s most needed”.  In it, Mr. Condon details Rep. Daudt’s comments at the State Capitol Preservation Commission meeting.  Even with a written e-mail chain showing the money request for the House Majority Caucus space upgrades came from his office.

Sounds like a pretty visual and loud flip flop to us.

You can read the original article here.

Speaker Daudt Cannot be Trusted

08.21.15.daudtleftThis week Minnesotans learned that Speaker of the House Kurt Daudt lobbied for $2 million in furniture for the Minnesota Capitol, including $10,000 for a door for his new “Speaker’s suite.”

“Daudt couldn’t find $30,000 to help Minnesota’s deaf children, but he wants to turn our Capitol restoration into his personal version of HGTV’s ‘Property Brothers’ using taxpayer dollars,” said DFL Chairman Ken Martin.

Once again Daudt has shown he cannot be trusted, Martin said. Daudt promised to rein in government spending, but in addition to his $10,000 door voted for the largest budget in state history. Daudt promised to make rural communities a priority, and then zeroed out funding to expand broadband. Daudt promised to fix our roads and bridges but did nothing to make this a reality.

“Minnesotans deserve a leader who will be responsible with state resources and take the steps to grow Minnesota’s economy and open the doors of success to everyone.”

House GOP Upped Budget for Capitol Furniture $2 Million

Ornate DoorThe Democrats are the party of spending taxpayers money according to the Republicans, right?  Not really.  Especially if you think you’re keeping the spending on the down low, it seems.

In this year’s legislative session, the House Republicans “quietly pushed to bump up the furnishings allocation by $2 million, or 45 percent.” the Associated Press reports.  In addition to more “historically compatible furniture in spaces, higher-end upholstery, refinished hardwood flooring rather than carpet in leadership offices” there’s that $10,000 for a door on House Speaker Daudt’s office suite. (That must be some door.)

Speaker Daudt’s position is this is “to take it back as close to 1905 as we could.” If that’s the case, why did they bury the increase in a borrowing plan that “emerged just days before it was voted on in a June special session”?

As WCCO reported:

“Emails and other agency documents obtained under a government records request the AP made in late June reflect how top aides for Daudt approached state officials about going beyond the original scope. In response, the officials prepared estimates: $1 million to go from mid-range to high-end seating in committee rooms and other parts of the Capitol; $20,312 to refinish oak floors in four leadership offices rather than laying down carpet; and $10,033 for the door and custom hardware.

While the estimates were discussed internally, agency officials spoke in broader terms about $1.3 million in extra costs for upgraded features. Daudt said the GOP opted to set aside $2 million in case bids come in higher. “If we don’t need it, we don’t need it,” he said.

By comparison, the construction budget for the new Senate Office Building — a major priority of Bakk’s — projects about $4.6 million will be spent on desks, tables, chairs and other furniture and fixtures. Senators will move in early next year.”

The Phony, Unprincipled War On Planned Parenthood

The following appears on the NationalMemo.com website and is by Mary Sanchez. You can find a link to the original article below.

Planned Parenthood LogoWith one careless comment, Jeb Bush revealed a fundamentally indifferent attitude toward half the U.S. electorate.

“I’m not sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues,” he said in a speech at the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Tennessee.

It was a throwaway aside in a longer blather about defunding Planned Parenthood, and one imagines that no sooner were the words out of his mouth than his cringing consultants were drafting a clarification.

The inevitable statement soon followed, admitting he “misspoke” and adding that “there are countless community health centers, rural clinics and other women’s health organizations that need to be fully funded.”

Too late. The game was on. Hillary Clinton blasted back, “When you attack women’s health, you attack America’s health.”

I don’t believe Bush misspoke. There’s something about abortion he wishes to ignore: Abortion is a women’s health issue. You cannot separate abortion from this context.

Oppose it or not — and I do — abortion is a medical procedure that ends an unwanted or health-threatening pregnancy. If we want to encourage the trend toward decreasing numbers of abortions in this country — and no one in their right mind wants to see more of them — we need to bolster women’s reproductive health services. That means Continue reading “The Phony, Unprincipled War On Planned Parenthood”

Health care law hasn’t dented hiring or hours, as critics predicted.

Well, looks light the fear mongering on the right was (yet again) unfounded. The following by Max Ehrenfreund of the Washington Post appeared in the August 13, 2015, StarTribune:

by Kevin LaMarque
by Kevin LaMarque

President Obama’s health care overhaul hasn’t meant less time on the job for workers, according to three newly published studies that challenge one of the main arguments raised by critics of the Affordable Care Act.

One provision requires businesses with more than 50 employees to offer health insurance to those working at least 30 hours a week.

Republicans, and some Democrats, worried that employers would look for ways to get around the mandate, either by giving their employees fewer than 30 hours, or by hiring fewer people.

So far, though, researchers say employers have not changed how they hire and schedule their workers.

“There really hasn’t been nearly the change that some people were expecting,” said Chris Ryan of the payroll-management firm ADP.

ADP analysts studied the payrolls of clients, about 75,000 firms and organizations. They found no overall change in employees’ weekly schedules between 2013 and 2014.

According to ADP’s analysis, scheduling shifts were trivial in every economic sector, even in industries that rely heavily on part-time work.

ADP’s findings were confirmed in another study by Aparna Mathur and Sita Nataraj Slavov of George Mason University and Michael Strain of the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Their paper, published this month in the journal Applied Economics Letters, used data from the federal Current Population Survey and finds no statistically significant change in the proportion of part-time workers in the sectors most likely to be affected by the law.

An analysis by Bowen Garrett and Robert Kaestner of the Urban Institute reached largely the same conclusions.

Your can read the original post here.

What capitalism has to fear from inequality

100 BillsThe following commentary written by Peter Georgescu appeared in the August 12, 2015, issue of the StarTribune. A link to the online posting follows.

Businesses need to realize that investment in their employees is investment in their own futures. Here’s the plan.

While so many people are struggling, even those on the higher end of the middle class have relatively little after paying the bills: on average, some $1,300 a month. One leaky roof and they’re in trouble.

If inequality is not addressed, the income gap will most likely be resolved in one of two ways: by major social unrest or through oppressive taxes, such as the 80 percent tax rate on income over $500,000 suggested by Thomas Piketty, the French economist and author of the bestselling book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.”

We are creating a caste system from which it’s almost impossible to escape, except for the few with exceptional brains, athletic skills or luck. That’s why I’m scared. We risk losing the capitalist engine that brought us great economic success and our way of life.

Continue reading “What capitalism has to fear from inequality”

How Planned Parenthood actually uses its federal funding

Planned Parenthood LogoThere’s been a lot of coverage of Planned Parenthood recently.  (And, once again, operatives on the Right have been caught editing video to skew what someone says.  So much for any kind of values.)  Below is an article by Janell Ross from the Washington Post published August 4, 2015, that talks about how federal funds are used by this organization:

The long-running calls for the federal government to cease all funding directed toward Planned Parenthood have once again come to the fore. This time, a congressional vote and debate took shape after an anti-abortion group secretly recorded a series of videos with the organization’s medical officers and staff speaking dispassionately — some would say dismissively — about the work of extracting fetal tissue from aborted fetuses and and transferring it to research facilities.

And even though the defund Planned Parenthood fight on the Senate floor didn’t move the needle — in terms of actual impacts on funding — it did bring to the fore some important facts about how much federal money goes to the group, and what it’s used for.

Those federal dollars were the single largest source of money coming into the organization and its local affiliates, by far. Another $305.3 million came from nongovernment sources, about $257.4 million reached the organization after private donors and foundations made contributions and bequests. The organization also raised another $54.7 million in fees charged for its services. So, government funding — with federal dollars comprising the biggest portion of this part of the organization’s budget — are absolutely critical to Planned Parenthood’s total operation.

Planned Parenthood Graph 1

But, it’s important to note that federal dollars are not used to provide the service at the center of the political debate around Planned Parenthood: abortions. That’s been banned by law in almost all cases since 1976. (The details of the ban have shifted over time.) Instead, the organization uses money from other sources — private donors and foundations as well as fees — to fund its abortion services. Continue reading “How Planned Parenthood actually uses its federal funding”

35 Soul-Crushing Facts About American Income Inequality

MansionLarry Schwartz with Alternet published the following on July 15, 2015, which Salon.com reposted:

While Hillary Clinton occasionally gives some lip service to the problem of extreme inequality, Bernie Sanders is the only candidate really hammering away at it. He has even blasted the orthodoxy of economic growth for its own sake, saying according to Monday’s Washington Post that unless economic spoils can be redistributed to make more Americans’ lives better, all the growth will go to the top 1% anyway, so who needs it? Sanders might know his history, but the rest of the candidates could use a little primer.

The United States was not always the most powerful nation on Earth. It was only with the end of World War II, with the rest of the developed world in smoldering ruins, that America emerged as the free world’s leader. This coincided with the expansion of the U.S. middle class. With the other war combatants trying to recover from the destruction of the war, America became the supermarket, hardware store and auto dealership to the world. Markets for American products abounded and opportunity was everywhere for American workers of all economic means to get ahead. America had a virtual monopoly on rebuilding the world. Combined with the G.I. Bill of 1944, which provided money for returning veterans to go to college, and government loans to buy houses and start businesses, the middle class in America boomed, as did American power, wealth and prestige. Between 1946 and 1973, productivity in America grew by 104 percent. Unions led the way in assuring wages for workers grew by an equal amount.

The 1970s, however, brought a screeching halt to the expansion of the American middle class. The Arab oil embargo in 1973 marked the end of cheap oil and the beginning of the middle-class decline. The Iranian Revolution in 1979, with more resultant oil instability, combined with the rise of Ronald Reagan’s conservative revolution at home, accelerated the long and painful contraction of the middle class. Cuts in corporate taxes, stagnant worker wage growth, the right-wing war on unions, and corporate outsourcing of work overseas greased the wheels of the middle-class decline and the upper-class elevation. Cuts in taxes on the wealthy, under the guise of trickle-down economics, have resulted in lower government revenue and cuts to all kinds of services. All of which has led to today, an era of national and international inequality unparalleled since the days of the Roaring ’20s.

Here are 35 astounding facts about inequality that will fry your brain.

1. In 81 percent of American counties, the median income, about $52,000, is less than it was 15 years ago. This is despite the fact that the economy has grown 83 percent in the past quarter-century and corporate profits have doubled. American workers produce twice the amount of goods and services as 25 years ago, but get less of the pie.

2. The amount of money that was given out in bonuses on Wall Street last year is twice the amount all minimum-wage workers earned in the country combined.

3. The wealthiest 85 people on the planet have more money that the poorest 3.5 billion people combined.

4. The average wealth of an American adult is in the range of $250,000-$300,000. But that average number includes incomprehensibly wealthy people like Bill Gates. Imagine 10 Continue reading “35 Soul-Crushing Facts About American Income Inequality”