“The Voting Caterpillars”: Reproductive Health Laws Prove GOP ‘War On Women’ Is No Fiction
No matter what Reince Preibus says, the Republican “War on Women” is no fiction. Last week, Preibus likened the war on women to a fictional war on caterpillars. Nice try, but the Republican National Committee chairman might want to quickly review the legislative assault on women’s reproductive freedom on both the state and federal levels since the Republican wave of 2010.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2011, states enacted 135 new reproductive healthcare laws. Personhood amendments, transvaginal ultrasounds, and attacks on contraception make 2012 sound more like 1912. Once you translate the terms for these bills into what they actually mean for lives of real women, the war on American women becomes much clearer.
Whatever your personal opinion of abortion, it is still the law of the land. Personhood amendments, which define life as beginning at the moment of conception, would criminalize all abortions, essentially forcing a woman to give birth against her will. Ultrasound bills, whether they are transvaginal or otherwise, are procedures that force women to endure state-mandated medical procedures simply for choosing a legal abortion. Attacks on contraception, namely the birth control pill, are the most egregious considering the significant number of women who rely on contraception throughout their reproductive years. This attack will certainly not be forgotten in the fall, since fights over a women’s right to control her reproduction in order to freely plan out her life is a fight that was won a generation ago.
Women are not an interest group. President Obama is right about that. The freedom to make choices about your reproductive health is essential to the economic and political freedom of women. Women have fought for generations for these rights and have suddenly seen attempts to strip them away. To add insult to injury, members of the Republican Party who ran in 2010 nationwide on job creation, improving the ailing economy, and cutting spending have focused like a laser on cutting funding to Planned Parenthood, which provides essential healthcare for low-income and uninsured women, voting against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, voting against equal pay for women, and even an ill-fated attempt to redefine rape. Republicans have attacked women’s rights on all fronts in 2012. Women, who have already begun moving to support President Obama in droves, will be able to fight back at the ballot box.
By: Zerlina Maxwell, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, April 10, 2012
“The Paul Ryan Cult” And The Gullible Center
So, can we talk about the Paul Ryan phenomenon?
And yes, I mean the phenomenon, not the man. Mr. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and the principal author of the last two Congressional Republican budget proposals, isn’t especially interesting. He’s a garden-variety modern G.O.P. extremist, an Ayn Rand devotee who believes that the answer to all problems is to cut taxes on the rich and slash benefits for the poor and middle class.
No, what’s interesting is the cult that has grown up around Mr. Ryan — and in particular the way self-proclaimed centrists elevated him into an icon of fiscal responsibility, and even now can’t seem to let go of their fantasy.
The Ryan cult was very much on display last week, after President Obama said the obvious: the latest Republican budget proposal, a proposal that Mitt Romney has avidly embraced, is a “Trojan horse” — that is, it is essentially a fraud. “Disguised as deficit reduction plans, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country.”
The reaction from many commentators was a howl of outrage. The president was being rude; he was being partisan; he was being a big meanie. Yet what he said about the Ryan proposal was completely accurate.
Actually, there are many problems with that proposal. But you can get the gist if you understand two numbers: $4.6 trillion and 14 million.
Of these, $4.6 trillion is the revenue cost over the next decade of the tax cuts embodied in the plan, as estimated by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. These cuts — which are, by the way, cuts over and above those involved in making the Bush tax cuts permanent — would disproportionately benefit the wealthy, with the average member of the top 1 percent receiving a tax break of $238,000 a year.
Mr. Ryan insists that despite these tax cuts his proposal is “revenue neutral,” that he would make up for the lost revenue by closing loopholes. But he has refused to specify a single loophole he would close. And if we assess the proposal without his secret (and probably nonexistent) plan to raise revenue, it turns out to involve running bigger deficits than we would run under the Obama administration’s proposals.
Meanwhile, 14 million is a minimum estimate of the number of Americans who would lose health insurance under Mr. Ryan’s proposed cuts in Medicaid; estimates by the Urban Institute actually put the number at between 14 million and 27 million.
So the proposal is exactly as President Obama described it: a proposal to deny health care (and many other essentials) to millions of Americans, while lavishing tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy — all while failing to reduce the budget deficit, unless you believe in Mr. Ryan’s secret revenue sauce. So why are centrists rising to Mr. Ryan’s defense?
Well, ask yourself the following: What does it mean to be a centrist, anyway?
It could mean supporting politicians who actually are relatively nonideological, who are willing, for example, to seek Democratic support for health reforms originally devised by Republicans, to support deficit-reduction plans that rely on both spending cuts and revenue increases. And by that standard, centrists should be lavishing praise on the leading politician who best fits that description — a fellow named Barack Obama.
But the “centrists” who weigh in on policy debates are playing a different game. Their self-image, and to a large extent their professional selling point, depends on posing as high-minded types standing between the partisan extremes, bringing together reasonable people from both parties — even if these reasonable people don’t actually exist. And this leaves them unable either to admit how moderate Mr. Obama is or to acknowledge the more or less universal extremism of his opponents on the right.
Enter Mr. Ryan, an ordinary G.O.P. extremist, but a mild-mannered one. The “centrists” needed to pretend that there are reasonable Republicans, so they nominated him for the role, crediting him with virtues he has never shown any sign of possessing. Indeed, back in 2010 Mr. Ryan, who has never once produced a credible deficit-reduction plan, received an award for fiscal responsibility from a committee representing several prominent centrist organizations.
So you can see the problem these commentators face. To admit that the president’s critique is right would be to admit that they were snookered by Mr. Ryan, who is the same as he ever was. More than that, it would call into question their whole centrist shtick — for the moral of my story is that Mr. Ryan isn’t the only emperor who turns out, on closer examination, to be naked.
Hence the howls of outrage, and the attacks on the president for being “partisan.” For that is what people in Washington say when they want to shout down someone who is telling the truth.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, April 8, 2012
“Promiscuous Fabrication”: Mitt Romney’s Lying is the Real Voter Fraud
Forget ACORN. If you really want to know who’s defrauding millions of Americans out of their right to vote it’s Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. And they’ve got lots of ways to do it.
One of the most popular is obvious enough. In those states where Republicans control both the governor’s office and state legislature a systematic effort has been underway in earnest over the past two years to erect barriers to voting by those traditional Democratic Party constituencies such as the elderly, the poor and the young who might stand in the way of the Conservative Movement’s drive for a monopoly of power.
But another form of voter fraud is less obvious. It involves stealing people’s votes by – and let us not flinch from the word – lying to them.
In a glorious eight-minute dissection (what Fox News would surely call a shrill and unhinged screed) Rachel Maddow cites chapter and verse to prove her case that “the degree to which Mr. Romney lies, about all sorts of stuff, and doesn’t care when he gets caught, may be the single most notable thing about his campaign.”
Maddow Blog editor Steve Benen has been filing regular updates to what he calls his “Chronicles of Mitt’s Mendacity.” And Benen is now up to Volume XII.
For example, campaigning in Wisconsin, Romney complained “The President put an ad out yesterday talking about gasoline prices and how high they are. And guess who he blamed? Me!”
Not true, says Benen.
Another Romney campaign ad argues that Obama “has managed to pile on nearly as much debt as all the previous presidents combined.”
Not even close, says Benen.
In the same ad, Romney claimed “President Barack Obama named himself one of the country’s four best presidents.”
That’s blatantly untrue, says Benen. And on and on and on it goes.
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank was equally gob-smacked by the audacity of Romney’s dishonesty.
Writing about Romney’s most recent speech in Washington, Milbank judged as “incorrect, wrong, false and fictitious” Romney’s serial falsehoods that: 1.) President Obama: was responsible for the “weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression;” that 2.) eliminating Obamacare would save “about $100 billion a year;” that 3.) Obama was “taking a series of steps that end Medicare as we know it;” and that 4.) the President had created an “unaccountable panel, with the power to prevent Medicare from providing certain treatments.”
Milbank noted that Romney’s speech earned no fewer than three “Pants on Fire” ratings from PolitiFact for his bald faced lies – just some of the more than 32 times PolitiFact has flagged Romney for similar fibs, falsehoods and fabrications.
Not only does Romney’s lying seem gratuitous it’s also epidemic on the right. In his New York Times column on Saturday, for example, Joe Nocera marvels at conservative efforts to pull the plug on the growing popularity of Chevrolet’s electric hybrid Volt by flat out lying about the vehicle, which was recently named European Car of the Year and is coming off its best month yet with 2,200 cars sold.
Yet for months, the conservative propaganda machine has been mocking the Volt as “roller skates with a plug,” says Nocera.
Nocera quotes the Volt’s inventor, legendary auto executive Bob Lutz (“who is about as liberal as the Koch Brothers,” says Nocera) as dismissing as “nuts” conservative criticisms of a car that he says makes “a significant achievement in the auto industry.”
In his Forbes blog, Lutz counters what he called the “rabid, sadly misinformed right.” Nocera also says Lutz “has largely given up” on conservatives after even his conservative intellectual hero, Charles Krauthammer, described the electric car as “flammable.”
Although Lutz remains deeply conservative, Nocera said he’s “become disenchanted with the right’s willingness to spread lies to aid the cause.”
With the nation now celebrating the 50th anniversary re-release of the classic movie To Kill a Mockingbird, Mitt Romney reminds me of that loathsome pair, Bob and Mayella Ewell, the father-daughter tandem who Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch described as “victims of cruel poverty and ignorance” who brought false charges of rape against the Negro tenant farmer Tom Robinson in “the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted.”
Like Atticus’s all-white, Southern male jury, Romney seems to assume that American voters will merely “go along” with his assumption – the “evil assumption” – that all Democrats lie, that all Democrats are immoral beings, that all Democrats are not to be trusted.
It should be noted that Atticus Finch lost his case before a jury that was more receptive to its own prejudices than to the truth. And if Mitt Romney also exhibits that “cynical confidence” his falsehoods won’t be doubted, the reception he got from the Newspaper Association of America last week may explain why.
There was Mitt Romney standing before a gathering of journalists, making a series of “incorrect and dishonest accusations,” writes David Corn, and not once was Romney “hooted out of the room” by the nation’s assembled press corps. Indeed, says Corn, “he faced no penalty” at all.
The nation’s press, like Attitus’ backward Alabama jury, has its own rigid and time-honored codes which prevent it from seeing the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And among them, says Atlantic magazine’s James Fallows, is the “false equivalence syndrome” – that “objective-seeming” method of covering the news that unwittingly and inexcusably awards Republicans a license to lie because it compels the media to give equal credence to “both sides” in every dispute even when one of those sides just makes stuff up.
It has never been enough for a people to merely have the formal right to vote. That vote must also count for something when cast by an “informed” voter whose choice is an accurate reflection of the voter’s genuine wants and beliefs.
While it may not be possible to plant democracy at the end of a bayonet it has always been possible to create the appearance of democracy using physical threats or force. We are all familiar, for example, with the cynical charade of right wing dictators and left wing revolutionaries whose legitimacy derives from their having been “elected” in a campaign when they were the only candidates allowed on the ballot, or chosen by voters who were manipulated and coerced.
It is also possible for partisans to manufacture an artificial legitimacy through lies and distortions of the critical information voters need to make an informed judgment on the important issues of the day – the bare minimum that’s required in a democratic political system that claims to be founded on “consent of the governed.”
And a party or a candidate that seeks political power by depriving voters of their rightful connection with reality is engaged in a coup d’etat every bit as real as if the overthrow had been carried out with guns.
But let’s be clear. Lying is not merely a moral failing. In a democratic republic like ours whose legitimacy is rooted in popular sovereignty and consent of the governed the routine, almost promiscuous fabrication of basic facts by Republicans and Republican candidates like Mitt Romney is as much a theft of a citizen’s right to vote as if that citizen was prevented from ever voting at all.
By: Ted Frier, Open Salon, April 9, 2012
“Repealing Equal Pay Laws”: Republicans Just Don’t Get It
Just as Mitt Romney was making the case to Newsmax, that paragon of journalistic integrity, that the so-called Republican war on women is entirely concocted by Democrats, Republican Scott Walker was quietly signing a law that repealed Wisconsin’s Equal Pay Enforcement law, which made it easier for women to seek damages in discrimination cases. Driven by state business lobbies, the repeal passed the GOP-dominated Legislature on a strict party line vote, and Walker signed it, with no comment, Thursday afternoon.
President Obama, meanwhile, was hosting a White House summit on women and the economy Thursday. Predictably, Republicans howled that the president is merely courting another “interest group” and playing politics. There was no doubt some politics at play during the summit; at one point participants chanted, “Four more years!”
But really, when Republicans are repealing equal pay laws and proposing federal budgets that disproportionately hurt women, as well as restricting funding for contraception, who’s playing politics with women’s issues?
When GOP poster boy Scott Walker is repealing equal-pay protections for women, why shouldn’t Obama remind us that he signed the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act? Since the Ryan budget repeals “Obamacare” and slashes Medicaid and Medicare – both of which disproportionately serve women — is it unfair to talk about how the Affordable Care Act provides cost-free contraception, preventive care like mammograms and Pap smears, and outlaws charging women more for insurance?
Yes, it’s an election year, so everything the president does will be scrutinized for its political agenda. That’s fine. But I continue to find it hilarious that Republicans insist that their troubles with women are the fault of nasty Democrats. Contraception aside, they’re the ones cutting programs for women and repealing equal pay protection. To Newsmax, Mitt Romney again complained that Democrats are distorting the GOP position on contraception. And again I say: Democrats didn’t crusade to defund Planned Parenthood. Democrats didn’t introduce personhood legislation that would outlaw certain types of contraception. They didn’t propose the Blunt amendment that would have allowed employers to deny insurance coverage for contraception as well as any health care treatment they don’t approve of.
I wrote the other day that concern about contraception isn’t the only issue driving the GOP’s widening gender gap.
But a recent USA Today poll found that women in swing states say their number one issue is women’s health care (men say deficits and the economy), and that makes an interesting point: Women see contraception as an integral part of their overall health care – as it is. We know that most women who use the pill, for instance, use it for a health reason other than contraception only. Republicans are the ones fetishizing birth control and putting it outside the boundaries of women’s health care.
Mitt Romney and the GOP just don’t get it. Everything about the way they’re approaching these issues is backfiring.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, April 6, 2012
“Living In A Dream World”: Mitt Romney’s Fooling Himself About Women
Everyone practices a little bit of self-delusion, every once in a while, when it comes to the opposite sex. But Mitt Romney and the folks around him are living in a dream world when it comes to women. Clearly female voters are just not that into Romney – and his troubles get worse by the day.
It’s not that Romney’s backers don’t see the problem. Former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich counsels patience: Women will warm to Romney once they know his “real views” on the issues. This comes just after Ann Romney quipped, “I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out.” Note to Romney team: Having “supporters” continue to suggest that we don’t yet know Romney’s “real views,” with or without Etch A Sketch metaphors (or icky zipper imagery), isn’t helping your guy, with anyone.
Female Romney surrogates like South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte are specifically trying to minimize the role the damaging birth control battle will play among women in November. “Women don’t care about contraception,” Haley insisted, a little bit delusionally, on Tuesday, while Ayotte insisted Romney will be fine in November because “women voters very much care about the state of the economy.”
Let me concede something to Romney’s defenders: His troubles with women aren’t mainly about contraception. They’re mainly about Romney.
The latest Gallup poll shows how bad things have gotten for the former Massachusetts moderate. He now trails President Obama in 12 swing states, largely because of the defection of independent women. Female independents now back Obama 51 to 37 percent – and that’s a 19-point swing just since the end of 2011, when they preferred Romney. But here’s a little data point for Haley: Only two in 10 independent women polled by Gallup even knew Romney’s stance on contraception. Those who did disagreed with Romney 2-1. More independent women – four in 10 – knew Obama’s contraception position, and they were divided about evenly. Still, 60 percent didn’t know either candidate’s stance. That suggests contraception matters, but it’s not the only thing driving independent women away from Romney and the GOP. But that’s not good news for Republicans, either.
Ayotte is right: Women care about the economy. And that’s hurting Romney in two ways. First, the economy is getting better, which always helps the incumbent, with both genders. But also, women have been more reliable Democratic voters since the age of Ronald Reagan largely because they support safety net programs and they dislike candidates who pledge to eviscerate them. Paul Ryan’s budget, which Romney thinks is “marvelous,” shreds the safety net into lint, and it will turn off at least as many women as the GOP’s contraception policies.
Bob Ehrlich may be correct; women might like Romney better if they knew his “real views.” If he has any. The man who once supported abortion rights because a relative died of a botched illegal abortion, whose wife gave money to Planned Parenthood, and who signed Massachusetts’ innovative universal healthcare plan might well have fought Obama among women voters. But that guy is long gone. In his place is a man who will say virtually anything to get elected. Women know that guy, and they don’t like him. I’m not sure what Ann Romney sees when she “unzips” her husband, but the man who’s running for president is a turn-off.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, April 4, 2012
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