Ginsburg and Sotomayor: Two women justices would have both similarities and differences

With the Democrats holding 60 votes in the US Senate, Sonia Sotomayor is likely to gain confirmation as the third woman and first Latina appointed to the US Supreme Court. Sharon Johnson at Women's eNews has written an interesting analysis of the similarities and differences in legal outlook between Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the other woman current sitting on the Court. Both women are strong supporters of employment nondiscrimination, but Sotomayor is much weaker than Ginsburg in her support of reproductive choice.

Appeals court requires pharmacists to dispense "morning after" pill

A three-judge panel of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that pharmacists may not use their personal religious beliefs to dodge their legal obligation to dispense morning-after contraceptives. Ann Bartow at Feminist Law Professors has the details.

Pondering the history of revolution

Happy Bastille Day. The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1889 was a major symbolic turning point in the French Revolution. While it held only seven prisoners at the time of the attack, the Bastille had once held numerous political prisoners condemned by royal decree, and symbolized the absolute power of King Louis XVI.

The French Revolution is notorious for devolving into the Reign of Terror. This is used to support the reactionary argument that absolute democracy always leads to horrible abuses. I think it's more accurate to say that, just as there are sincere people who are bigots, there are evildoers who seem quite willing and capable of manipulating good causes to their own purposes. It is also true that empire-builders are quite able to use the trappings of democracy to justify their actions. Like the United States, France has its own history of imperialism and colonialism.

Today, Bastille Day is the French national holiday. But the French don't call it that, they call it le 14 juillet. This holiday is celebrated not only in France, but also in the United States. Is this a sign that US citizens are eager once again to work toward social justice and the ideals of liberty, equality, and sisterhood? Or is it just an indication that Americans are always eager for an excuse to go on a bender?

I remain hopeful of the possibility of an egalitarian future, but it's going to take a lot of hard work to get there.

Paul Krugman on The Stimulus Trap

CommonDreams.org cross-posted Paul Krugman's excellent commentary on what President Obama should do now that the first round of stimulus has proved insufficient to revive the economy.What Mr. Obama needs to do is level with the American people.

He needs to admit that he may not have done enough on the first try. He needs to remind the country that he’s trying to steer the country through a severe economic storm, and that some course adjustments — including, quite possibly, another round of stimulus — may be necessary.

What he needs, in short, is to do for economic policy what he’s already done for race relations and foreign policy — talk to Americans like adults.

Can progressives join forces to fight the health care industry?

Should progressives insist on fighting for a single-payer health care system, or is it more realistic to fight for a public health care plan that competes alongside private insurers. Karen Dolan at the Institute for Policy Studies has an interesting analysis.

A public option may indeed be crafted in such a way to become the wedge that ultimately wins the prize, as public plans under-price costly private plans. The public option could offer public plans designed to adhere strictly to the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ laudable principles of universality, affordability, equality. They could be carefully constructed as to be so cost effective that the Republicans fear that they will crowd out private insurance due to their affordability becomes a reality.

But a public option could also be crafted in such a way to expressly prohibit that outcome by allowing private insurers to cherry-pick the healthiest patients, eventually bankrupting a public plan stuck with the nation's sickest people. If private insurers are allowed to continue the current practice of cultivating and covering the healthiest Americans, the sickest will be dumped into a public plan, thus creating a financially unsustainable situation for the public plans.

These scenarios need to be aired, debated, and dealt with. The way that Obama and progressives on and off Capitol Hill have set the debate thus far, a "robust Public Option" is, effectively, the "left flank," and thereby the very most we can hope for. It becomes the goal rather than the compromise. Had single-payer not been off the table, it might have served as the "left flank," thus making a public option, crafted to lead to single payer, a more politically feasible option, more appealing as the compromise that it is.

Dolan's ultimare message is that members of both camps should cooperate rather than attacking each other.

Why is Wal-Mart supporting Obama’s 'Public Option’ ?

Many of us have been supporting the option for people to buy into a public health-care plan as the best option we're likely to get in the current debate over health care reform.

Dave Lindorff suggests this isn't a realistic compromise:

(T)he plan being promoted by President Obama and by the Democrats in Congress is not real or progressive. It is a plan that will further enrich the health care industry, that will not stop the continuing rise in health care costs, that will still leave millions of people without access to quality medical care, and that will end up costing taxpayers more than they are already paying.

The proof is the support for this plan being offered by the likes of Wal-Mart and the big medical industry players.

You can read the entire post at CommonDreams.org.

This bugs me

I think it's because the weather has been so hot. At night on the front porch I've been seeing a few cockroaches. I've been thinking about going out to the hardware store and finding some roach bait. The only problem is that I've checked out some archy and mehitabel books from the library, and now I feel bad about the idea of killing cockroaches.

But entomology is not my strong suit. The insects I've been seeing might be junebugs. The more I think about it, the more I think they must be junebugs, because they don't scurry away from light the way that cockroaches do. One of these things crawled into my well-lighted living room last night and provided a great deal of entertainment for Spot. I doubt the experience was entertaining for the insect involved, which did not survive the occasion. But Spot needed the exercise.

I am also tempted to be sentimental about ants, whose form of social organization could be described as socialist matriarchy. Unfortunately, my kitchen counter was invaded this morning by what looked like pavement ants, and I had to get out the Terro again.

Can Keynesian economics still work to revive a faltering economy?

I always enjoy Warren Bello's economic essays at Foreign Policy in Focus. In his latest post, Bellow asks whether the great liberal economist John Maynard Keynes is A Man for this Season?

Keynesian economics provides the rationale for President Obama's economic stimulus policies--the idea is that during times of recession, the government should do what it can to stimulate consumption. Bello thinks this strategy may not work in our day and age. For instance, Bello thinks that we need radical restructuring of the relationship between "the central capitalist economies and the global periphery." Furthermore, he argues that increasing consumption in the good old Keynesian way might have unintended consequences as we try to deal with a global climate crisis:

The challenge to economics at this point is raising the consumption levels of the global poor with minimal disruption of the environment, while radically cutting back on environmentally damaging consumption or overconsumption in the North. All the talk of replacing the bankrupt American consumer with a Chinese peasant engaged in American-style consumption as the engine of global demand is both foolish and irresponsible.

Public plan rally at Inhofe's office

As the debate over health care reform heats up, local residents attended a rally outside of Senator James Inhofe's office to urge the senator to support a public plan as part of the package.


The rally was sponsored by moveon.org. The Peace House also had a significant presence.

If you support genuine health care reform, now is the time to contact your elected representatives. The for-profit health-care industry is putting lots of money into keeping a system that is profitable for them, even if it works very badly for ordinary people.

I was on my way home from this rally when I suffered a small personal catastrophe.

Is this bad luck or good luck?

 

So, after the healthcare rally, I stopped at the Red Cup for lunch, and I was waiting at the counter for my sandwich, when someone came in and asked, "Is there anyone here who is driving a white Corolla?"

Witnesses told me that the driver of the car that hit me hit a telephone pole first, and then backed into my car. By the time I got out there, someone had already called the police. Soon a police officer came by and got my information and interviewed the driver of the other car. A little bit later, the police officer told me the other driver had failed--I think he called it an "STSI." Probably a sobriety test. The officer said the other driver was going into jail for driving under the influence. I'm sitting here in the Red Cup right now waiting for another officer to come in to talk to me.

So, this kind of sucks, having my car hit. I don't know at this point if it's drivable or not. It will especially suck if the other driver doesn't have insurance. On the other hand, I wasn't in the car when it was hit. And the people who hang out at the Red Cup are the very best. They were all over the situation like white on rice, so if the guy was thinking about hightailing it out of there, he wouldn't have had a chance.

Those of you who know me may remember that something similar happened to me three years ago, when I was sound asleep in my old apartment and a drunken driver totalled my pickup truck. That time they never caught the person.

I think there might be some greater social or political importance in this situation, but I'm not sure what it is.

Pop was the king of him

Here's another interesting piece on Michael Jackson, at dream not of today.

I found this rather by accident while I was writing the previous post about lightning bugs.

As disconnected from popular culture as I am, the truth is that I'm not terribly familiar with Michael Jackson's music. I don't know much about him as a person. I don't know if sexual abuse allegations made against him several years ago were true--he was acquitted in criminal court, but made a large cash payment to settle a civil case. But looking at him, it seems likely to me that he was himself a victim of severe abuse, as Patricia Williams also pointed out.

Are lightning bugs headed for extinction?

I guess I don't get out enough at night and pay attention to what's going on around me. Last night at the poetry reading down at Galileo, someone read a poem about lightning bugs going extinct. I did not know that this was happening. I used to see lots of lightning bugs back when I was growing up in Philadelphia in the 1960s and '70s. Out west, in Oregon and Idaho, I never saw them. I figured it was a regional thing. Since I've moved to Oklahoma City, I've seen them sometimes, but not consistently, and usually not so many as I remember from those hot Philadelphia summer nights long ago.

Anyway, I wondered about this report of lightning bug extinction, so I did a web search. Here's a description of the situation over at dream not of today. Light pollution seems to be a major culprit. Lightning bugs--also called fireflies--require darkness in order to mate.

The best thing I've seen or heard about Michael Jackson...

...is Mirror Man, by Patricia J. Williams, in her Diary of A Mad Law Professor column at The Nation.

Oklahoma tax system is regressive

The OK Policy Blog has the details.

The regressivity of the system is obvious since the percentage paid in taxes drops with each increase in income. Those who are in the lowest 20 percent of income earners–making $12,000 or less each year–pay 12 percent (one-eighth) of their income in taxes. The percentage of income paid in taxes falls slightly for each income group above the middle. Those in the top 1 percent–making $250,000 or more each year–pay 8 percent (one-twelfth) of their income.

As much as we argue about taxes, most of us don’t think poor people should pay more in taxes than rich, but that’s how we’ve set up the system in Oklahoma.

The rest of the post includes proposals for remedying this situation.

Dean Baker on Life, Liberty, and Employer-Provided Health Insurance

Once again, Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research hits the nail right on the head. The topic is health care reform:

As Congress starts to delve into the dirt of a health care reform package, the clearest point of conflict is over the existence and structure of a public health care plan. Some members of Congress have thrown down the gauntlet, insisting that they could never allow the public to have the option of buying into a government-run plan.

These members tell us that a government-run plan will be like having the Post Office manage our health care. While the Post Office actually does a pretty good job where I live, if the point is that a government-run plan is going to be bureaucratic and inefficient, then why are opponents of a public plan so worried about giving people the choice to buy into it? If the public plan is bad, then people will just stay with the options currently available in the private sector. As those of who believe in the free markets like to say: “what’s wrong with giving people a choice?”

In addition to the members who just say “no” when it comes to a public plan, there are also members who are willing to allow a public plan, but only if they can be sure that it will not provide real competition with existing private plans. This route involves crippling the public plan in various ways to make it less competitive.

The entire essay is well worth reading.

One thing leads to another...

Speaking of Elizabeth Cady Stantonand the 100th anniversary of the start of suffragette hunger strikes in Britain, I think I've finally found a reliable link to all six volumes of the old History of Woman Suffrage,  which Stanton co-authored. If you follow the link, you will find a Wikipedia article about this history, and at the end of the article are separate links to all six volumes on Google Books. This is a massive work--I downloaded one volume yesterday afternoon, and that one volume took up 35 megabytes of disk space, but well worth looking at.

Hondurans demand ousted president's return

Medea Benjamin reports the details on CommonDreams.org

British suffragette hunger strikes began 100 years ago

I found this fascinating and inspiring story by June Purvis at CommonDreams.org. It originated on www.guardian.co.uk.

One hundred years ago, on 5 July 1909, the imprisoned suffragette Marion Wallace Dunlop, a sculptor and illustrator, went on hunger strike. A member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), founded by Emmeline Pankhurst in 1903 to campaign for the parliamentary vote for women, she had been sent to Holloway prison for printing an extract from the bill of rights on the wall of St Stephen's Hall in the House of Commons. In her second division cell, Wallace Dunlop refused all food as a protest against the unwillingness of the authorities to recognise her as a political prisoner, and thus entitled to be placed in the first division where inmates enjoyed certain privileges. Her hunger strike, she claimed, was "a matter of principle, not only for my own sake but for the sake of others who may come after me … refusing all food until this matter is settled to my satisfaction". After three and a half days of fasting, she was released.
Other suffragettes that summer of 1909, believing they had found a powerful weapon with which to fight a stubborn Liberal government, also went on hunger strike. However, the government feared that the early release of such rebellious prisoners would make a mockery of the justice system and by the end of September forcible feeding was introduced, an operation justified as "ordinary hospital treatment" to save the women's lives. Over the next five years, this vicious circle of events was to shape the representation of the suffragette movement for years to come.

Purvis implies that British suffragettes invented the hunger strike, and says that their use of this tactic influenced such activists as Mahatma Gandhi and the Irish nationalist James Connolly. Wikipedia, however, implies that the tactic dates back thousands of years.

Although Purvis doesn't mention this, one political activist much influenced by the tactics of the British suffragettes was the US suffragist Alice Paul. According to Wikipedia, Paul studied in Britain between 1907 and 1910. After hearing suffragette leader Christabel Pankhurst speak in 1908, Paul joined the Women's Social and Political Union, and she was arrested and imprisoned three times as a result of her suffrage activism in Britain. Upon her return to the US, Paul became active in the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Dissatisfied with the conservatism of NAWSA, Paul and her colleague Lucy Burns founded the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage.

When their lobbying efforts proved fruitless, Paul and her colleagues formed the National Woman's Party (NWP) in 1916 and began introducing some of the methods used by the suffrage movement in Britain. Tactics included demonstrations, parades, mass meetings, picketing, suffrage watch, fires, and hunger strikes. These actions were accompanied by press coverage and the publication of the weekly Suffragist.^[3]

Alice Paul is widely credited with helping to revive a near-dead US suffrage movement and playing a critical role in winning the vote for US women in 1920. And she used the tactics that she'd learned from her British sisters.

Credit where credit is due

Speaking of Sodom and Gomorrah, I need to give proper credit to Elizabeth Cady Stanton for giving me the idea for that poem. You can find her analysis in The Woman's Bible, which is also available through the OKC area Metropolitan Library System.

Which Biblical morality are we talking about?

I kind of hate to take potshots at Sally Kern. It's not exactly rigorous intellectual exercise. I would like to say that my mother told me never to undertake a battle of wits with an unarmed person, but my mother never actually said that. OK State Rep. Kern (R. Oklahoma City) may be sincerely bigoted, or she may be your typical cynical politician who knows how to fire up her base, but her statements are so outrageous, and have been so ably dissected by so many commentators, that it seems unnecessary to chime in.

But the recent controversy surrounding her "Oklahoma Citizens' Proclamation for Morality" reminded me of an old poem of mine that I meant to read during OKC pride, but didn't get around to. Kern was not actually so tactless as to refer to Sodom and Gomorrah in her proclamation, but she did opine that "our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis." She also begged God to "to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment." Given that this old story from the nineteenth chapter of Genesis is often used as an example of God's response to homosexuality, I think it bears retelling from a feminist perspective.

So here's the poem. It's a poem about Lot's wife.

Sodomy

Turned to stone
just like that
left alone for all eternity
for all the gawking tourists
to photograph and talk about.

How did she get mixed up with that Lot, anyway?
He, known as the one righteous man in Sodom,
the kind whom angels come to visit.
He was a pillar of the community
before she was.
He wore his righteousness like a shroud.

His neighbors were not so neighborly.
"Intercourse" is a work that also means "to talk"
but the neighbors didn't want to talk with the angels.
"Take my wife, please,"
a phrase remaining to be invented by some much later wiseass.
But Lot was not about to put his own butt on the line.
"Do not be so wicked," he told the neighbors.
"Take my daughters, they are virgins, you can do as you please to them."
He pulled his righteousness around him like a shroud.

He had offered his dearest possessions.
His neighbors, not deterred, tried to break down the door
only to be driven back by an angelic lightning flash.
Those Sodomites didn't care who they fucked with.
This town could not be saved.
Only the family of the righteous Lot could escape with the angels.
But they must trust in righteousness
and not look back.

What was her name, anyway?
Was she not ready to leave behind
the grief and sorrow of this place
or did she know what tragedy lay ahead?
She could not trust.
The river of salt flowed from her eyes.
She knew what was underneath the shroud.

Flowing powerless like a river of salt,
she could go no further.
She could not conceive
how to protect her daughters from righteousness.
She looked back.
Frozen, now, for all eternity as a bad example.

Lot took his righteousness and her daughters
and made camp in the mountains.
Later, he said the daughters were seductive.
He said they got him drunk.
We've heard that excuse many times since then.
The daughters heard it many times before
and blamed themselves as damaged goods
the neighbors would not accept.
Lot's line went on
to prove a paradigm of righteousness.
The daughters wept many bitter tears.
And their mother, whoever she was
stands alone for all eternity as the first bad example.