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Kathleen Kennedy Townsend vs. the Catholic Church on Health Reform
Tweet Share on Facebook December 23, 2009 Comment (42)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is a modern-day Crusader of sorts. As defined by the Catholic Encyclopedia, crusade means, "all wars undertaken in pursuance of a vow, and directed against infidels." I use the term Crusader figuratively, not literally, as she's speaking out publicly, she's not leading a war. She's trying to change the minds of her own church leaders—she's not directing her rhetoric toward infidels. Nonetheless she's leading a crusade for her church that many clergymen see as blasphemous. Townsend may one day be rewarded for her efforts by church leaders, but not today and not anytime soon.
It's extremely important for credible members of any and all major faiths to take on church leadership when they believe it is leading the flock in the wrong direction. Townsend is pressing her political party not to cede the religious vote to the GOP and at the same time trying to prevent the church from using its considerable clout to write its morality into federal law.
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Middle-Class Mothers Most Likely To Be Bankrupt
Tweet Share on Facebook December 21, 2009 Comment (4)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I've known for a long time that women make up the majority of low-wage and minimum wage workers. Women comprise two-thirds of the minimum wage labor pool. But I didn't know, until I read this piece by Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren that educated, middle-class women are most vulnerable to bankruptcy:
Bankruptcy exposes the economic vulnerability and insecurity of middle class women. The women in bankruptcy, like the men who file for bankruptcy, are a fairly representative cross-section of the American middle class. Their education levels are slightly higher than the population generally, with women in bankruptcy more likely to have attended college than their counterparts. Most are employed when they file.
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Labor Strikes Are Proof Europe Doesn't Always Have It Right
Tweet Share on Facebook December 18, 2009 Comment (4)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
American supporters of federally subsidized healthcare never cease to compare America's lack of same to European countries, most of which have nationalized healthcare systems. Well, here's one non-healthcare-related example where Europe has it wrong: The continent is riven by strikes driven by union workers angry at their leaders for not doing more to prevent a deep recession. The United States has not had a crippling strike since air traffic controllers walked out in the early 1980s and then-President Reagan fired them. I'm not a Reagan fan, but seems to me the United States and its economy are much better off without the devastating strikes that used to pull economic activity to a standstill.
Right now, according to an AFP article:
Europe's busiest commuter train line remained strike bound for an eighth day, tens of thousands of Greek workers staged a protest against government spending cuts while British Airways took court action against a damaging Christmas walkout.
Thousands of Spanish taxi drivers blocked main roads across central Madrid and other major cities to protest moves to deregulate their industry. The protest brought land traffic to Madrid's main Barajas airport to a virtual standstill…Hundreds of thousand of Paris commuters struggled to work in heavy snow as a strike on the main regional commuter lines crossing the French capital spread.
So, anyone, want to debate whether life for the average worker is better in Europe or in America? I'll stay here, thank you, except for occasional visits to gorge on European history and culture. In that way, I agree, Europe has it over us.
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The Welcome End of Abstinence-Only Sex Education
Tweet Share on Facebook December 16, 2009 Comment (18)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
For those of us who feel we've been trapped in a time warp on the issue of sex education, normalcy is about to return. The 2010 Omnibus Appropriations bill just approved by Congress eliminates funding for abstinence-only education. Can we imagine that public school students can be taught real, true, biologically-accurate sex education? That, instead of religious propaganda, even if they attend schools that receive federal funds? Wow!
Back to the future we go. There was a time in America when there was no such thing as abstinence-only education. Funding for "abstinence only sex education" (which really means, skewed so-called sex education teaching kids not to have sex until marriage and little or nothing about biology or birth control) was actually appropriated for the first time under former President Clinton. But it flourished under the Bush administration and Republican Congress, even while studies revealed it was largely ineffective.
Biologically-accurate sex education has always taught teens that the only completely reliable way to remain STD-free is to abstain from sex. Same for girls who don't want to become pregnant. But can you imagine what would happen if liberals tried to press a version of sex education that only encouraged teens to have sex, without teaching them how to avoid STDs and pregnancy? That would be the polar opposite of "abstinence-only" education. And yet the public would be in an uproar.
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Reduction of Family-Friendly Job Benefits Hurts Working Women Most
Tweet Share on Facebook December 14, 2009 Comment (2)Family-friendly workplace benefits (flex time, job sharing, telecommuting, and so on) were on the rise before the recession of 2008 took hold. I've been wondering recently how bad a whacking this category of benefits has taken. Of course, most surveys find companies cutting family-friendly benefits, just like all other benefits, in economic down times. If you were a manager, would you rather lose a person or cut that person's benefits? It's a rather easy decision.
But family-friendly benefits, unlike health insurance or vacation pay or pensions, don't necessarily cost companies money. In fact, in many cases they may save them money. So the question as we emerge from this recession is, once rehiring starts taking place, whether in 2010 or beyond, will flex time be more or less available? The answer is, it will be more available, but not, perhaps, in the way it is desired. Some studies are showing part-time and temporary contract work may be the norm rather than the exception as companies start rehiring in a big way. According to Scripps News:
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Poll: More Religious Means More Republican
Tweet Share on Facebook December 11, 2009 Comment (77)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
This falls into the "duh" category. Of course I'm being a mite more than slightly facetious, but do we really need a Gallup Poll to tell us that religiosity drives people's partisan choices?
The percentage of Americans who identify with or lean toward the Republican Party drops from 49% among the highly religious to 26% among those who are not religious. The percentage who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party rises from 37% among the highly religious to 56% among those who are not religious. For comparison, the party figures for November among all adults in these data are 40% Republicans/Republican leaners and 45% Democrats/Democratic leaners.
I remember an ancient formation of the Republican Party that included people who didn't try to write their religious beliefs into federal law. They were known as moderate Republicans. They were a powerful force in American politics long ago and far away. They may have been pro-choice or pro-life but they didn't try to force other Americans to join their jihad by mixing church and state.
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Percentage of Women on Corporate Boards Remains Stagnant
Tweet Share on Facebook December 10, 2009 Comment (90)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Women's stagnation in the corporate penthouse continues, according to Catalyst, a New York-based organization that aggregates data about and presses for women's advancement in the corporate hierarchy. Catalyst's just-released census shows that the percent of female board members of Fortune 500 company board positions has stagnated during the past five years:
Women held 15.2 percent of board seats, a number that reflects little growth over the past five years, and women of color held 3.1 percent of all board director positions, compared to 3.2 percent last year, the 2009 Catalyst Census found. The nonprofit's Census also showed:
* Almost 90 percent of companies had at least one female director, but less than 20 percent had three or more, the same as in 2008.
* Women's share of board chair positions remained flat at 2 percent.
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Global Warming E-Mails Scandal Doesn't Disprove Climate Change Facts
Tweet Share on Facebook December 7, 2009 Comment (23)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I must take issue with last week's posting by my conservative colleague Peter Roff on the E-mail scandal that's rocking the scientific community.
In that scandal, according to the New York Times, one of whose reporters broke the story and was the first to release the E-mails:
John Tierney, a Times science columnist, explained in Science Times last week the most controversial revelation so far in the e-mail—Jones's effort to "hide the decline" (in temperatures) when preparing a graph for the cover of a report to be read by policy makers. The graph, showing sharply higher temperatures in the last several decades, relied in part on tree ring data, until the rings began to diverge from thermometer readings and show a decline in temperatures. Jones and his colleagues did not believe that data and removed it from the graph, substituting direct thermometer readings without explicitly acknowledging the switch.
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Unemployment Drop is Good News for Obama, Democrats
Tweet Share on Facebook December 4, 2009 Comment (13)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Today's jobless numbers—the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 10 percent—are not only good news for the Americans who didn't lose jobs last month, but also for the President and Democrats in Congress.
The much lower than expected job numbers come a few days after the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released a report showing that, as the Examiner reported:
The economic stimulus package created or saved between 600,000 and 1.6 million jobs, the Congressional Budget Office announced Monday. The CBO also said the stimulus package, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, has lowered the nation's unemployment rate between 0.3% and 0.9% and raised gross domestic product by about 1.2 to 3.2 percent higher than they would have been without the stimulus.
Clearly, there are many economic reports to come between now and next November when Republicans hope to make major Congressional gains in the mid-term elections. But armed with CBO data now showing their plan worked and worked well, Congressional Democrats must be feeling much, much better about their chances for reelection.
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Rise in Food Stamp Reliance Calls Government Benefits into Question
Tweet Share on Facebook December 2, 2009 Comment (18)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Everyone expects people to rely more heavily on subsidies in a downturn and this recession is no different. But what is different, according to the New York Times, is that so many people are now relying on food stamps; the zing of stigma is evaporating.
That's a bad thing, especially for some categories of Americans.
It's one thing for people never-before out of work to lose a job in tough times and rely on food stamps to feed themselves, a spouse and a child or two. It's quite another for people who have large numbers of children on low incomes to rely on other Americans, almost equally pressed in a downturn, to pay to feed those children. That's what's happening to some families in this economy. It calls for a renewed look at how we view responsibility, taxes and benefits.
