War on women? Most miss the point. It is about the ability to choose

Hilary Rosen created a tsunami of a political brouhaha when she criticized Ann Romney for being the advocate that women cared about jobs more than other issues (referring to her husband’s hard line position supporting the Blunt amendment that would give employers the option of  not covering contraceptives with health insurance, and embracing the right wing stance on many of the social conservative issues).  Most pundits have missed the point: It is about the ability to choose.

Romney himself was on record for saying women do not care about the social issues and care about jobs. Perhaps he had better look at his poll numbers as many  women switched sides to the Democratic column.  

What Hilary Rosen, a former aide to Hillary Clinton  and not a member of the Obama administration or a paid consultant to the Democratic National Committee, did was to infer condemnation of  Ann Romney for never having to work a day in her life, had the choice to stay home, and raise her large family, and therefore did not understand the problems other less privileged women had.   

One  point they all missed is  that there is a connection between women’s choice to  control their reproductive lives and an ability to be able to work . Family planning is critical to the ability of women to go to work in these days of expensive child care .   There was a time when your job position was not held open if a person took leave to care for a newborn.  In most European countries, women get compensation for staying home that first year, but not in ours.  Nursing a baby  was not an option on the job. Those possibilities have been mitigated, but are still dependent upon employer policies and  a patchwork of laws allowing family leave and the ability to come back to work after a brief time at home recovering from child birth.

Wage discrimination meant that those who did go to work earn 70% on every dollar as compared to men and Romney’s campaign was totally ignorant of the fact that Pres. Obama had signed into law rather recently the Lilly Ledbetter act, which made discrimination against women…equal pay for equal work…a law.  This obviously was not in Romney’s  staff’s radar or interest area.

Another point not expressed is that there are many women who would like to stay home, raise their kids, and be a homemaker but they are either single or their husbands cannot bring home enough bacon to cover the costs of raising their family. 

There was a time in my career where I was fired for being pregnant.  It was in the early 1960’s.  I had set out to be a “career woman”,  working in public relations  in media and Wall Street, but I found that at that point, it was no option. I had no choice.  When I graduated from college in 1960, I was the oddball, a woman who wanted to work for the joy of feeling that I was a whole human being, educated and able. In those days of  lower living costs,  and married to a physician, I became a professional volunteer. Even then,  we could afford “help”.   I did not work full time until all three children were in school.

I had watched my mother married to my telephone company executive father who was a stay at home mom, who also had “help”.  My brother was handicapped and even if she had wanted to work, she could not, in any case.  It was not until his medical bills (pre Medicaid) overwhelmed salary and savings that she went to work, and she was in her ‘50’s .   She had no choice.

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On the other hand, I do have cousins in the military who raised their family on military officer’s pay and she homeschooled her brood of six children,  a choice for which I have nothing but respect.  I would not have had the patience, and I fault myself for that.

Where all are missing the point is that women should have the choice and be respected for it if they want to work or must work or if they want to stay home. Reality is that it also means women must be able to control their reproductive lives and when they enter the workforce, get paid fairly.  From that standpoint, Obama gets it. Romney does not.

Freedom v Fairness in 2012

My column in the Sky Hi News today
In his Illinois and Wisconsin primary victory speeches , Mitt Romney reset his campaign to his original theme: Experience in business gives him special insight into how to restore the economy. His formula: “freedom” for business interests.

President Obama has emphasized: “fairness.” Those words chosen by both men reflect their backgrounds, with whom they connect, and in whose interest they would govern. Now each is branding the other as the most out of touch.

“Fairness” seems to be touching more of the voters. Romney's favorability ratings plunged to 34 percent in a March 23 ABC poll. Obama's ascended to 53 percent. Why?

The rough GOP primary, getting bin Laden, and the slowly improving economy weakened Romney's case that Obama was a failure. Rick Santorum raised the public's consciousness that there was a difference between a person raised in privilege and a coal miner's descendent. Romney helped make that point by committing one gaffe after another, from Cadillacs owned to hefty bets on trivia.

Romney is now ridiculing the president for being ignorant about economic matters, dismissing Obama as an out of touch professor and a government-loving community organizer. What he slyly didn't acknowledge is Obama's life story, coming from the struggling middle class, which Obama is of, by, and for.

Romney's understanding of the economy is of, by, for, and limited to his own world of finance and the self-serving theory that tax cuts restored to the rich create wealth that trickles down to the rest. Trickle-down taxation policies between 2001 and 2008 failed. The rich got 275 percent richer; the rest, 6 percent poorer, and the private sector lost 650,000 jobs. Somehow he missed those facts.

Romney equated his experience in private equity to his ability to create jobs, but what is good for Wall Street does not necessarily translate to what others think is in their interest. In analyzing the auto industry through the eyes of a banker, he concluded it was good public policy that auto manufacturing should go bankrupt in spite of resulting job losses. This sank his poll numbers in some Rust Belt swing states.

His plan to restore the economy is to govern on behalf of business, to free business from more regulation, and to “make the regulators the allies of business.” In repealing Wall Street reform and installing foxes to guard the hen house doors, he would restore the same practices that caused the 2008 crash, epic losses of jobs, and the fleecing of the home-owning middle class.

We know in whose interest Romney would not govern. Last month Romney criticized women for wanting to receive pills and mammograms free of copays through Obamacare and he pledged to end support of Planned Parenthood. He claims those issues are not as important to women as the economy. Both are important, and his support from women has dropped dramatically.

We know in whose interest President Obama is governing and why. He has said his priority for health care reform was inspired by his dying mother's struggle to pay medical bills. His issuing rules to alleviate the staggering burden of student loans was born of his own difficulties in paying them off. His income tax proposal would have the rich pay proportionately no less than the middle class (the Buffett rule).

Unlike Mitt Romney's life experiences , Obama learned much about the poor as a community organizer. He saw firsthand the pain of factory closings and the need for a hand-up to escape poverty when the free market cannot or did not provide it. Freedom to stay poor is a poor kind of freedom.

Obamacare will be political fodder no matter how the Court rules

My column in the Sky Hi Daily News today
The Supreme Court heard the arguments against Obamacare last week and it will be late June before they rule. The part of the law that received their most scrutiny was the mandate, the requirement that all must carry health insurance. The Court will decide whether they uphold the law, deny the one mandate clause and leave the rest standing, or whether they throw the health care law baby out with the bathwater.

Regardless of the Court ruling, health care reform will continue to be political fodder for the 2012 presidential campaign. If the court upholds the constitutionality of the law, the debate will continue about whether it is good policy. If the popular provisions, making health insurance affordable to all, removing life time limits, or covering pre-existing conditions, are thrown out with a ruling the entire law is constitutional, Democrats will point the blame finger at the GOP and a Supreme Court divided by party affiliation that gave us the legalized corruption of the election process by super PACs and sided with the election of a Republican president over Al Gore, as well.

If the court rules only the mandate is unconstitutional, it could be the Administration as plan B implements the remainder. If the court upholds the entire law or all but the mandate, GOP legislators sworn to kill Obamacare will not be able to repeal it. Because of the uncompromising turn to the right by the GOP, some moderate senators have quit, making the goal of GOP's getting sixty votes in the Senate to agree with the Tea Party dominated House of Representatives and vote for repeal is an impossible dream.

Assuming the GOP candidate is Mitt Romney, he will be no help to the GOP on the issue . He was the advocate and signer of a very similar law when he was governor of Massachusetts. He says with ringing rhetoric he says he will “kill Obamacare” and he calls the law “horrendous.” It is sound and fury that rings hollow, a clanging bell enclosing a puny clapper and a lot of air, crafted to bring applause from conservative audiences.

By calling the law horrendous, does he mean it is horrendous to make it possible for all to afford health insurance? Is it horrendous to forbid health insurers to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions? Is it horrendous to make it illegal for an insurer to drop coverage when you get sick? Is it horrendous to mandate all to carry health insurance? All of these provisions were in his own Massachusetts law.

What is left for Romney to oppose is the requirement that all states do it as part of a nationwide law. His position, that states rights in these matters are simply superior to a federal program, appeals to those who want a limited federal government, but has a worthless ring that provides neither a workable plan B or a plan C-Z.

Unless federal money from federal taxpayer's pockets is irresponsibly gifted to states without requiring standards and accountability, what state would be compelled or could afford to provide a similar alternative with the same benefits, including covering the uninsured and pre-existing conditions and removing life time limits? Not ours. Shoving Obama/Romneycare to the states would be dumping it in file 13 and Romney needs to come clean on that clunker.

Weighing in on the Trayvon Martin tragedy

_{Weighing in on the Trayvon Martin case…}

_{I am the grandparent of a 17 year old teen.  He is white, over 6 feet tall,  and he lives in a neighborhood which is, to put it mildly, not diverse.  He occasionally walks around wearing a hoodie.  I doubt sincerely that some self appointed neighborhood watch vigilante would ever have followed him to see what bad he would be contemplating doing.   To deny that racism was an element in the actions of George  Zimmerman is to deny that  many   racially profile a black face wearing a  hoodie, a disguise favored  by many a  bank or convenience store holdup perpetrator.}

_{Thanks to the Florida Stand Your Ground law,  in spite of what  former Governor Jeb Bush believed, that it was to allow homeowners to use weapons to defend their  own homes and lives if they  felt threatened, there has been unleashed untrained, unscreened, unauthorized  neighborhood vigilantes to do what Zimmerman did.  It is a fact, documented in the 911 call,  Zimmerman ignored the orders of the police  and continued following Trayvon Martin with the inevitable confrontation, documented almost to the fatal end by eye witnesses, the 911 recordings,  and Martin’s own cell phone conversation with his girl friend.   Both Zimmerman and Martin felt threatened. Both could have invoked the Stand Your Ground Law  broadly interpreted, but Zimmerman had the gun that killed the teen.}

_{The police themselves gave Zimmerman a pass from arrest because they believed him and that it was his word against a black kid with  no other witnesses, though they made no effort to find witnesses.  Their role in this is certainly worthy of  scrutiny.  They  tested Martin alone  for drugs, again a profiling assumption that a black kid with a hood was up to no good and was the threatening party that the Florida law protected.}

_{I have served as a homeowners association president and I am now the chair of the executive committee condo association. I have spent significant time in a gated community in southwestern Florida within the past year.  I also once  headed a district attorneys’ investigative unit and I can claim familiarity with working with police and enforcement of criminal law.}  

_{The neighborhood of which I was the association president was a large, not very diverse suburban type and it had been plagued by an infamous, illusive  burglar,  dubbed the Southmoor Cat Burglar by the press.  We found homeowners leaving doors unlocked and garage doors left open, only assisting the criminal.  We ourselves were victims when he jimmied open a basement window.  Alert police grabbed him in a nearby shopping center after his long career.}

_{Instead of arming a well meaning   resident or even having a unarmed resident patrol our neighborhood,  we hired a guard service and increased assessments to cover it.  In the Florida gated community, a uniformed guard service patrolled the area, screened the visitors, and made frequent swings through the local streets.  An armed vigilante was not designated.  Neighborhood watch means exactly that: a watch.  It does not mean cruising around with a powerful pistol.  Even supervised and trained law enforcers have their problems with racial profiling, but an amateur with an itchy trigger finger is even more of a potential  problem.}

_{In addition to the investigation by those outside the police department and to reform/retrain the Sanford  police department, what should  be done is to rewrite or overturn such poorly written laws as the Florida one. Revisions should  exclude from its protection   action outside of a person’s own home, just as Jeb Bush thought it originally intended . Uniformed and trained guards should be hired to patrol neighborhoods.  Anyone with any color  walking through a neighborhood that does not reflect his race should not wear a hoodie.  It is a sad commentary on our times, but that is  reality.}