Those of you holding out hope that 6th District Congressman Bob Goodlatte--your favorite congressman here in Amherst County--is going to finally come to his senses and begin to represent the people, may want to reconsider that notion after his recent bone-headed statement. You might want to begin by dropping the hope and holding your noses instead. Or maby continue turning a blind eye to Bob's incompetence. What will your choice be?
Goodlatte is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee--a perk arising from length of service, which he used to oppose (term limits), and Republicans controlling the House, the result of severe gerrymandering (cheating)--which is considering removal of government funding for abortion. Goodlatte says that forcing all those women to carry their pregnancies to term "very much promotes job creation," according to Think Progress. HR7 would restrict access to abortion by slamming the door on insurance coverage and tax credits. In Bob's mind this would create jobs. Do you share that thought?
Goodlate is quoted as saying that his support of the bill "... is the morally right thing to do and it is also very very true that having a growing population and having new children brought into the world is not harmful to job creation. It very much promotes job creation for all the care and services and so on that need to be provided by a lot of people to raise children.”
At this point I feel obligated to reveal that Goodlatte is a couple of bricks shy of a full load. Coming up short is nothing new for Bob Goodlatte and goes unnoticed to the republican audience he serves. Everybody wakes up at some point and the good citizens of Amherst County seem to be coming to grips with reality.
So, he wants to create more poor people who can take care of rich people's kids, right? Are we hearing this from a sitting U.S. Congressman?
Trouble is, says Think Progress, "denying women autonomy over their reproductive lives is not a wise economic policy. Without access to affordable family planning services, women are less likely to be able to finish their education, advance their career, or achieve financial independence. The low-income women who end up carrying unwanted pregnancies to term end up slipping deeper into poverty and struggling with long-term mental health issues. That ends up impacting the social safety net, putting a greater strain on the Medicaid program. In fact, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that every $1 invested into family planning programs yields more than $5 in savings for the U.S. government."
Democrats on the committee, of course, are beside themselves: "As we urge Congress in 2014 to consider legislative action that would meaningfully address the economic insecurity currently facing millions of women and families, the Judiciary Committee’s first action to mark up legislation that would harm women’s access to reproductive health care is truly dispiriting.”
Kill abortion, kill the American Healthcare Act, kill taxes. Republican mantra. Absolutely no thought of how things can or will work, only the "no" vote counts. It is tiresome, anti American, anti-woman and pro-nothing. How any woman would ever consider voting for these knuckle-dragging Cro-Magnons is far, far beyond my comprehension.
Ultimately, the fact that we have a Democratically-controlled Senate and a president of the saner party will nullify whatever the House does with this bill. But it is at its very best a cautionary tale for those with any interest at all in our country retaining even a touch of freedom.
House Republican: More babies equals more jobs, so let's ban abortion
Some staggering idiocy coming from Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chair of the House Judiciary Committee. As his committee was marking up an anti-abortion bill, the Virginia Republican said:
“I would suggest that it is very much the case that those of us in the majority support this legislation because it is the morally right thing to do but it is also very very true that having a growing population and having new children brought into the world is not harmful to job creation,” he said. “It very much promotes job creation for all the care and services and so on that need to be provided by a lot of people to raise children.”
Goodlatte came out with this gem in the same meeting in which Republicans voted down the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would prohibit discrimination against pregnant women. So: If you're pregnant, you shouldn't have basic protections against your employer demanding that you lift heavy objects or preventing you from carrying a water bottle. But women should have no choice but to have more children because it would create jobs—jobs like childcare and teaching that Republicans think should pay low wages and get little respect. The job creation argument is wrong in any case:
Without access to affordable family planning services, women are less likely to be able to finish their education, advance their career, or achieve financial independence. The low-income women who end up carrying unwanted pregnancies to term end up slipping deeper into poverty and struggling with long-term mental health issues. That ends up impacting the social safety net, putting a greater strain on the Medicaid program. Lets say this again because it is important, the Guttmacher Institute estimates that every $1 invested into family planning programs yields more than $5 in savings for the U.S. government.
Now, if Goodlatte really thinks having a growing population would be good for job creation, he could always back immigration reform and get the growing population without the forced childbearing that would leave many women in poverty. But making it harder for women to control their reproductive lives is the point of the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion" Act Goodlatte was pushing. And job creation? This comment is about as serious about job creation as House Republicans have gotten in the past few years, which is to say it's not a priority, and when they claim it is they're always trying to justify something awful and unrelated. Republicans in the House are a joke and in relation to that Goodlatte is a leader.
When it comes to the big speeches, President Obama doesn’t disappoint. His nearly 80-minute State of the Union address didn’t so much talk about income inequality as it did economic insecurity.
The president talked about the middle-class writ large: those who aspire to it, those who are nestled in it, those who are struggling to hang on to it and those who are trying to get back in it.
Obama was long on warmth and mercifully short on wonkery. And he did this by weaving his call for a “year of action” on behalf of the American people with the stories of the American people.
Amanda Shelley exemplified the fulfilled promise of the Affordable Care Act.
A pre-existing condition used to mean that someone like Amanda Shelley, a physician assistant and single mom from Arizona, couldn’t get health insurance. But on January 1st, she got covered. On January 3rd, she felt a sharp pain. On January 6th, she had emergency surgery. Just one week earlier, Amanda said, that surgery would’ve meant bankruptcy.
That’s what health insurance reform is all about — the peace of mind that if misfortune strikes, you don’t have to lose everything.
Estiven Rodriguez represented the power of access to education.
Estiven Rodriguez couldn’t speak a word of English when he moved to New York City at age nine. But last month, thanks to the support of great teachers and an innovative tutoring program, he led a march of his classmates – through a crowd of cheering parents and neighbors – from their high school to the post office, where they mailed off their college applications. And this son of a factory worker just found out he’s going to college this fall.
Nick Chute and John Soranno personified the benefit of raising the minimum wage.
In the year since I asked this Congress to raise the minimum wage, five states have passed laws to raise theirs. Many businesses have done it on their own. Nick Chute is here tonight with his boss, John Soranno. John’s an owner of Punch Pizza in Minneapolis, and Nick helps make the dough. Only now he makes more of it: John just gave his employees a raise, to ten bucks an hour – a decision that eased their financial stress and boosted their morale.
Tonight, I ask more of America’s business leaders to follow John’s lead and do what you can to raise your employees’ wages.
It’s good for the economy. It’s good for America.
Obama punctuated this story by calling on Congress to pass a bill that would raise the national minimum wage to $10.10. To great applause, the president urged Congress to “Say yes. Give America a raise.”
And the powerful story of Sergeant First Class Cory Remsburg, reminded us that the freedoms we hold dear are neither free nor come without sacrifice.
On his tenth deployment, Cory was nearly killed by a massive roadside bomb in Afghanistan. His comrades found him in a canal, face down, underwater, shrapnel in his brain. For months, he lay in a coma. And the next time I met him, in the hospital, he couldn’t speak, could barely move. Over the years, he’s endured dozens of surgeries and procedures, hours of grueling rehab every day … And, day by day, he’s learned to speak again and stand again and walk again. And he’s working toward the day when he can serve his country again. “My recovery has not been easy,” he says. “Nothing in life that’s worth anything is easy.”
But in showing the power of access to opportunity, Obama went very personal and bipartisan early on in his speech. It was part of a larger riff on the wish of the American people for Washington to stop the fighting and move the nation forward.
They believe, and I believe, that here in America, our success should depend not on accident of birth, but the strength of our work ethic and the scope of our dreams. That’s what drew our forebears here. It’s how the daughter of a factory worker is CEO of America’s largest automaker. How the son of a barkeep is Speaker of the House. How the son of a single mom can be President of the greatest nation on Earth.
The automaker CEO was Mary Barra of General Motors. The son of a single mom was Obama, of course. And the son of a barkeep was Speaker John Boehner. It was a warm moment that earned a thumbs up from the Ohio Republican to the Illinois Democrat. In that instant you saw a glimmer of hope that the bipartisan spirit that once ruled Capitol Hill would roam those hallowed halls once more. Pity, with four Republican responses to Obama’s address, we all know that that glimmer of hope is fleeting.
Fans of State of the Union rebuttals were treated to an embarrassment of riches Tuesday night when a fractured Republican Party responded to President Obama’s speech in four separate installments.
Only two of those responses were officially sanctioned by the national party. Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers delivered the official response in English, while Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen gave an amended version of the same speech in Spanish.
RELATED: The good, the bad, and the weird at Obama’s State of the Union, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee gave what was described as the Tea Party rebuttal in a live stream hosted on the website of the Tea Party Express, while Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul uploaded a response to the State of the Union on his official YouTube channel.
The fact that both official responses were delivered by women appears to be no coincidence, as the Republican Party has worked to increase its appeal among women voters. To that end, Rodgers’ speech emphasized her personal biography and experiences as a mother, even as it implied that the GOP would not be budging on abortion. Though Rodgers did not explicitly refer to the subject, argued that giving birth to a son with Down’s syndrome had “made me more determined to see the potential in every human life.”
Just hours before Rodgers delivered her speech, the House of Representatives voted to restrict private insurance coverage of abortion through the Affordable Care Act exchanges.
While Rodgers addressed the controversy obliquely – and Lee mentioned protecting “viable, unborn children” explicitly – all four rebuttals dedicated a significant amount of time to the issue of economic inequality. Economic opportunity was a central theme in the president’s State of the Union address, and the four Republicans attempted to re-frame the problem in a manner more aligned with conservative policies.
SOTU came down to one message…
One of the main causes of inequality, Lee claimed, is the result of “immobility among the poor, who are being trapped in poverty by big government programs.” Paul also blamed big government, saying that “prosperity comes when more money is left in the private marketplace.”
While Paul is famous for his idiosyncratic style and advocacy civil liberties issues and criminal justice reform, the libertarian-leaning senator largely stuck to economic policy and doctrinaire Republican principles in his speech. He even went so far as to quote Ronald Reagan twice, once at the very beginning of his remarks.
Lee seemed more comfortable chiding the Republican Party, which he said can be “just as out-of-touch as the Democratic establishment.” The tea-party senator was also the only of the four speakers to emphasize National Security Agency surveillance, saying that he was frustrated with “an ever-growing government that somehow thinks it is okay to lie to, spy on, and even target its own citizens.” Paul, who is a harsh critic of the NSA in Congress, avoided the subject.
There were other republicans who offered rebuttals to the President's State of the Union, so many in fact I don't know who they were. In any event they were speaking to their own select section of the fractured republican party. Be good, stay healthy and Vote Democratic.
Amherst County Virginia Democratic News
ACVDN
No comments:
Post a Comment