Melissa links to an article by Kimberley Strassel of the WSJ called “What Women Want”, advice for the GOP to woo female voters. It’s tough for me to be too hard on this article, because, partisan hack that I am routinely accused of being, I really hope that the Republicans follow her advice, which can be summed up as, “Keep doing what you’re doing”, i.e. courting the vote of women who’ve married affluent men. The only problem is that Strassel seems to think that “marrying affluent men” is a generational tic, and that my generation figured that one out and the two older ones than us didn’t.
The Democrats’ own views of what counts for “women’s issues” are stuck back in the disco days, about the time Ms. Clinton came of political age. Under the title “A Champion for Women,” the New York senator’s Web site promises the usual tired litany of “equal pay” and a “woman’s right to choose.” Mr. Richardson pitches a new government handout for women on “family leave” and waxes nostalgic for the Equal Rights Amendment. Give these Boomers some bell bottoms and “The Female Eunuch,” and they’d feel right at home. Polls show Ms. Clinton today gets her best female support from women her age and up.
The rest of the female population has migrated into 2007. Undoubtedly quite a few do care about abortion rights and the Violence Against Women Act. But for the 60% of women who today both scramble after a child and hold a job, these culture-war touchpoints aren’t their top voting priority. Their biggest concerns, not surprisingly, hew closely to those of their male counterparts: the war in Iraq, health care, the economy. But following close behind are issues that are more unique to working women and mothers. Therein rests the GOP opportunity.
I really like the idea that the only women who have a real care for or need for reproductive rights protection are post-menopausal. I don’t doubt that a lot of older women show huge amounts of support for reproductive rights, but at this point, it’s out of the goodness of their hearts and the memory of how liberating it was to have the symbolic victory for the idea that women own our own bodies that Roe was. Feminists will actually be the first to agree with Strassel that women who grew up post-Roe don’t rate reproductive rights as high as perhaps they should, for the same reason that voters rarely rate, “access to garbage pick-up and fire departments” as high on their issues list, though these are surely priorities for most voters. The reason is that we take these things for granted—the problem is that with reproductive rights, we shouldn’t, since the powerful conservative movement has chipped them away right under our noses.
As for the idea that women aren’t human and therefore are immune to the desire to see their paychecks go up 25% on average, well the less said about that myth the better. If women don’t rate the issue of pay equity very high, it’s probably because they rightly perceive that the discrimination against women is often hard to prove and goes on behind closed doors, or more to the point, resides in the head of bosses who think but never say, “I don’t want to promote her over him; she’ll probably just leave me because her husband moves or she gets pregnant, anyway.”
Strassel then throws out the most pathetic bundle of ideas to get the female vote I’ve ever read. First, the old Republican canard about the “marriage penalty”, which only affects a fraction of married women, most of whom already vote Republican, and has no influence on the majority of adult women who are single. She even pushes, swear to god, the idea that women on the whole would be warm to the idea of health savings account in lieu of universal health care, since women—who on average make significantly less than men but on average are more likely to have dependents to cover—have a lot of extra money laying around to put into HSAs.
One thing Strassel gets right is that women are human beings and thus make voting decisions like human beings, which is to say we look at the big picture and don’t have significantly different takes on genderless issues than men do. But since Republicanism is at its heart about class warfare of the rich trying to take the working class for every penny, and since women on average tend to live hand-to-mouth more than men, then there’s no real way for Republicans to get around that problem. Privatizing Social Security, health savings account, tax cuts for the rich—every program to move money from the hands of the workers into the hands of the wealthy will disproportionately affect women’s pocketbook.
With that in mind, I do think the Democrats are in a good position to angle for more of the women’s vote by using the general principle that women are people. Economic policies that ease the burdens of the 90% of us who have to work to eat will help women, especially the coveted single woman voters,* and as such will be a good way to get the “woman vote”. Universal health care in particular will be attractive to women, who not only make less money, but tend to go to the doctor more and have more immediate need for continual insurance. Plus, women tend to be in charge of child care and of elder care, which means they not only have their own health care issues to think about, but those of their dependents.
And it’s not like women are going to stop needing reproductive rights any more than we’ll stop needing the fire department. A solid commitment to that from the Democrats might not seem like an immediate vote-getter, but if the Republican SCOTUS overturns Roe vs. Wade, that could very well change.
Strassel’s problem is “everyone else is just like me” syndrome—her definition of “woman” seems to exclude single women, single mothers, non-white women, and women who didn’t luck out and marry someone above their tax bracket. The vast majority of American women don’t seem to fall into her definition of “women”.
*Who are stereotyped as “Sex and the City” types, but are a demographic that includes single mothers, never-married, divorced, and widowed women of all ages.
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the New York senator’s Web site promises the usual tired litany of “equal pay” and a “woman’s right to choose.”
Huh. So are women really tired, then, of equal pay and the right to choose?
I mean, just checking.
So now the Right Wing is against “tired litanies”?
Well, that’ll sure keep their Presidential candidates quiet for a while.
Kimberley’s article makes Jonah Goldberg look like a fucking genius.
What bullshit.
And out of that comes a thousand individual problems.
So now the Right Wing is against “tired litanies”?
Right. So instead, they want us to focus on “the progressive income tax is bad”.
It’s still very much a problem, and to my mind it’s still coupled with the idea of respect. I have personally seen women of superb intelligence, skill and education being treated as menial second-tier lackeys at the hospital where I’m employed, almost invariably so treated by male physicians.
And it’s not just nurses who routinely have to grimace, roll their eyes and tolerate arrogance from others who assume they’re fit to do little more than check IVs and change bedpans. A colleague recently traded up her job from PR writer to physician recruiting, and before she did that she and I compared notes pretty regularly on how the doctors treated us. And for every complaint she had about a given doctor treating her with condescension, I could only note that the very same physician behaved in a much more friendly, professional and respectful manner toward me.
Qualitatively there was no difference in our work; the only quantitative variance was that I am a phallus-bearer.
But it’s not just the men who do it — it happens with various female department directors as well. My colleague regularly reported having trouble getting a “select few” supervisors to respond to her requests for information — particularly galling, as she was trying to write grant proposals, and their replies would have only helped her efforts on their behalf — the same supervisors who, again, always seemed willing to respond quickly to any of my attempts at contact (usually for no purpose other than to get supplementary photographs supporting an article on their departments’ services).
The cliché holds that in order for a woman to be seen as equal to a man, she has to work twice as hard, and anecdotally at least that still seems to be the case far too often.
Fair pay and equality in the workplace are bread-and-butter issues, and I agree that it’s premature to suggest that they are not as relevant today as they were thirty years ago.
One irony in this piece is that the Iraq war, the economy, and healthcare are issues that favor Democrats, as much as they favor either of the two major parties.
On a separate note, I remember when Dukakis’ poll numbers went up when he started getting more vocal about his support of abortion rights. Abortion rights is a winner issue for the Democrats, but they let themselves get intimidated by militant fundamentalists who are a minority of voters that will vote GOP regardless of what Democrats due.
I know perfectly well that I am biassed — in my day job I’m a labor & employment lawyer — but it seems to me the Dems (or the GOP for that matter) could score big points with women voters if they’d start talking about expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act. The Act has had a hugely profound impact on everyone I work for and around.
I love when the poll people call me and I was even able to help Claire McCaskill’s campaign when I wrote down every question the “we’re not working for Jim Talent” people who were working for Jim Talent asked when they called me and was able to get them to her people.
Anyway, my point.
They poll all these people and ask, are you concerned about the Iraq war? So people say yes. Are you concerned about the economy? So people say yes. And so on.
None of these issues automatically translate to support of the policies of one party or the other.
They box you in. Are you concerned about health care? Well, yes, I am. But you are not able to follow up and vocalize your support for universal healthcare.
I have two daughters, both in their twenties and I can say with confidence that Strassel does not speak for them or their peers.
The Republican ploy of framing the debate is what is getting old and tiring for most people.
Most women, especially working class women know full well that they earn less and are offered less opportunities than their male counterparts. Unfortunately, the state of the economy and the right-wing agenda has successfully silenced and shamed these women into keeping quiet and bearing the burden alone.
But that silence will boil over and is beginning to, it is up to the democrats to tap into that flood under the bedrock and I believe they will get to it.
Strassel seems like many on the right these, to be working hard to convince herself and her adherents rather than voicing any real, verifiable opinions on what younger women truly think.
Huh. So are women really tired, then, of equal pay and the right to choose?
God, I’ve been waiting for someone to come and tell me what I wanted ever since I became old enough to vote. Unfortunately, I’m too loud and squishy to be trophy wife material - is there any room left in Strassel’s tent for people like me?
Strassel needs to read Gloria Steinem’s essay on why women become mroe liberal as they get older, as opposed to the “normal” (i.e. male) trend of going the other way (short version: women don’t have the whole replacing-the-patriarch thing to rebel for; plus they tend to think they are seen as equal when they are young and often it takes several years to learn the hard way that, no, a certain amount of revoultion is still necessary to get theree; and shut up, men who keep asking Gloria Steinem “but isn’t that weird?” because you are only making her sad-but-true point that male=normal).
That said, I can sort of see her point that reproductive rights & equal pay are not at the absolute top of women’s priority lists; I had to make a survey for a class and one of the questions was to list priorities for the upcoming election, and I was surprised to realize neither made it into my top three (which were, I think, the war because duh, war going on; the environment because you can’t spend your equal paycheck underwater, which may have been the result of taking a bio class the previous semester the last third of which boiled down to “by the way, humans have destroyed the planet and we’re all gonna die”; and I can’t remember if I went with the economy or education for the third, though if I went with the economy that means another “pet” issue failed to make it into the top three).
You know, you could have answered my proposition in private, not loudly in a public forum like this.
A more or less useful rule of thumb is that when people consider what matters to them they will have two waves of thought. The first focused on what matters immediately to their survival. The second wave is broader and explores the world and how they see it, but a person can only spend time developing this second wave if and only if the needs of survival are being met. The slightest insecurity pushes other things. The first wave encompasses employment and health care in this case. Reproductive rights and equal rights are in the second.
This was one “no shit, Sherlock” moment after the other. Sure, Republicans are misogynists, but there really isn’t any group, inside or outside the country, that they can’t be expected to fuck over if they can make an extra buck or squeeze an extra vote out of it
I’m about a fifth-generation Democrat, and I can’t hear the dogwhistle that tells me terror! terror! terror! (I probably can’t hear anything above about 10 KHz). I can read though, and it’s clear that they care about as much about women as they do about workers or soldiers, which is to say Maggie’s drawers. Zip, zilch, nichevo, nada, and they don’t much attempt to conceal it.
I think we ought to get in their face. Stir it up. Call them out. I’m, ahem, a nice guy, patiently polite, but I think getting rude might start working for us. Or, if not rude, at least a bit less patient.
Strassel sez:
Well call me crazy, but wouldn’t women who are attempting to support a child or two or three, with or without the help of a spouse or SO of some kind or other, be even more interested in at least getting equal pay for equal work? And going out on a limb here, wouldn’t women who arguably get the worst of both worlds–going out into the labor force with all its potential for sexual harassment and sexual predation in general, then instead of partying all night going home to an apartment or the ‘burbs to be with the kids (and possibly a battering SO/husband) be even more interested in combating violence against women?
Well, what do I know? After I took a tax preparer course back in ‘91 and learned that the very best way to file income tax was married filing jointly (followed by “head of household,” then single, with the worst being “married filing separately”), I’ve never been able to figure out this “marriage penalty” the wingers love to howl about. Is it something to do with a perverse blip in the tax brackets or what? Because for just about any combination of incomes, filing jointly always worked out better in all the exercises I ever did.
Perhaps it arises from the fact that filing separately is often the only prudent thing to do if one has the slightest doubt of one’s spouse’s reliability or honesty? But in that case, the marriage is on shaky grounds anyway. I can see two go-getters each involved in their own financial schemes preferring not to get entangled in each other’s games, but generally speaking, either both parties ought to keep each other honest and meticulous, or one partner can simply trust the other, and in a good relationship that ought to work out fine, and then one can file jointly.
But I don’t think the alleged “marriage penalty” is a phenomenon of filing separately; I think they are squaking about filing jointly.
Well I can’t figure it out. Is this “penalty” thing as mythical as “partial birth abortion” or is it real, and can someone explain to me very simply what it is if so?
‘Cause it always seemed to me like everyone else is always suffering a “non-marriage penalty.”
I find it amazing that after all of this time, women still make significantly less than men on average (what is it, 71% of what men make or something like that?). It’s hard to believe that the right to abortions was gained in the ’70s but that equal pay for equal work, which I assume is acceptable to more people than Roe v. Wade, is still unattained. Pretty sad.
“…since Republicanism is at its heart about class warfare of the rich trying to take the working class for every penny…”
I really hope this is only true of the present day Republican Party, because as I understand it Republicanism used to be primarily about the government staying out of people’s private lives. In this age of warrantless wiretapping and the government telling us who we can and cannot marry, that sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it?
Ron Paul seems like a good example of a good kind of Republican, if you don’t factor in his pro-life position. His philosophy seems more “live and let live” than “bring freedom and democracy to the rest of the world through force and persecute everybody who practices Islam and seems suspicious”, and I’m all about “live and let live.” In a perfect world, there’d be more Republicans like him in Congress and the 2008 race would be Obama vs. Paul.
Re marriage penalty:
I think there is a bit of a “marriage penalty” in that your tax brackets change in single vs. married, i.e. you move a tax bracket up when you’re married faster than when you’re single. It’s not 2xsingle income to move up the bracket. It also taxes one spouse at the couples’ dual-income tax rate, which hurts the spouse who earns significantly less money (if single they would have had a lower tax bracket). I’m not sure if this so-called “marriage penalty” makes up for the “single penalty” with regards to health insurance and other benefits. Single people don’t pay 1/2 the price of health insurance of a married couple or 1/4 the insurance of a family of 4.
Re the article:
I’m always amazed that the only thing that Republicans can think of is tax breaks. Most people find those a little hard to understand. Everyone I know just rolls their eyes at HSAs, knowing that will do nothing to bring down the cost of healthcare. It’s hard enough to get people to sign up for the 401k plans even though you will get that money eventually.
[God, I’ve been waiting for someone to come and tell me what I wanted ever since I became old enough to vote. Unfortunately, I’m too loud and squishy to be trophy wife material - is there any room left in Strassel’s tent for people like me?]
Here, hon; I’ll squish over and make you some room in my corner of the tent- we’ve got a good view from here and can hit them with spitballs.
BTW, you’re allowed to vote? Don’t you find it a terrible burden? My husband decided years ago that it was his duty to fill in my absentee ballot and submit it for me, as I’m far too busy mending his socks to worry my pretty little head about such things. Oh, life has been so easy since I let go of that concern…
KIDDING!
BTW, you’re allowed to vote? Don’t you find it a terrible burden?
Yes, yes, oh, god yes I do, but I have yet to find the man willing to relieve me of this awful chore. It’s not that the Republicans haven’t helped a little in this regard - making a straight Dem ticket the only choice at or above the state level means I can get through the voting process without tears of frustration. But it doesn’t alleviate the stress and confusion of actually getting in the car and getting to my polling place, which is an elaborate journey that involves both a right AND a left turn, and parking in a gravel lot with no lines. No lines! It’s not like the grocery store at all! I nearly cried.
BTW, you’re allowed to vote? Don’t you find it a terrible burden?
I think this calls for one of those “comics from the web” I keep hearing so very much about:
http://www.marriedtothesea.com/061006/i-hate-voting.gif
Well, thanks, UI. Ask and ye shall receive.
Still, for years I’ve kept meaning to do a few dry run tax declarations to see for myself; never got around to it, since as someone who always owed tax I always put off doing the return until the last minute. I think I just threw away all the scads of tax forms I had accumulated, now that I’ve brought my returns current with a little help from my friends. In order to judge whether the bracket creep amounts to a “penalty” one would have to weigh that against the higher exemptions and deductions for marrieds.
Also, “bracket” means higher tax rates on higher income, and applies only to the part of the income that is over the break point. And what with the past couple decades’ series of tax reductions for the high brackets, the differential increase would be that much lower.
On working-class incomes, one does not come into sight of the first hike beyond the base rate, certainly not on a single income. For us proles (objectively, the vast majority of Americans) the only thing that makes income tax progressive is the exemptions and deductions; the taxable income is taxed at the lowest rate. So…
Again, what I mean to do is come up with some sample cases based on what I, with my worms-eye view, see as “real-world.” Here in Sonoma County, which has a high cost of living, I estimated when Natasha died that in order to live in the house I kept renting, and pay all my bills, and continue eating and buying gasoline and electricity, I’d need an income of $20/hr to get by. I actually earn $11.50/hr and in 2005 did so for only a quarter, the first quarter using up my unemployment (60 percent of my former income) and doing some tutoring work in the interim, which netted me just $2500 (and it turned out that since that was 1099 “contractor” work, I could claim expenses, including mileage, that zapped half of it from my taxable income–and by golly, it really did cost me all those expenses to drive to Sonoma five days a week and print up study materials). This is why I’m filing for bankruptcy. To be sure, I figured $20/hr assuming I’d never get a roommate and now I’ve got one, so I could go lower, but my current income is still way too low to cover all expenses I’m liable for.
So, I ought to figure the bare-bones income I really need, and figure taxes on that, and then compare the percentage I would have to pay versus a married couple with two such incomes.
I will be very surprised if the latter pay more than twice the taxes of the former.
Now, such a couple is likely to realize some serious economies, even assuming both work full-time and so neither has more time for economizing housework such as cooking. They are likely to have some children–but this is where the tax code at least really is solicitous, to legally married heterosexuals anyway. There are all the dependent deductions, plus earned income credit, which I think I was able to claim once upon a time briefly before the Rs took over the Congress, but now is reserved solely for families with children. If they have bought a house instead of renting (this would be very hard today, with housing values inflated to 6 times what they were a decade ago in many markets, such as ours here in Sonoma County) they have mortgages, but these would be comparable to rents, and apply to extra tax deductions too, offsetting property tax.
So, with all these considerations, it’s hard for me to see how a marriage penalty exists for typical working-class Americans. If it’s something richer people have to worry about–well, de facto it’s their government, not ours, so why the vaunted “middle classes” let Congress saddle them with a tax code that bears down most heavily on them, let them answer for. Of course I have come to believe that “middle class government” and “voting one’s pocketbook” is an ideological myth nowadays and that in reality we are ruled by the very rich, who take care of themselves not only by lowering the top rates but with a legion of special deduction loopholes they’ve had written into the codes and hire professionals to figure for them.
Male colleagues in my office are never asked the questions I get repeatedly, from both men and women, “Are you an attorney?” Uh, no, but I’ve seen one on TV. Doctors, researchers, nurses…they all do it. They ask to speak to an attorney, are transferred to me, but ask that damn question anyway.
No, equality of pay or status isn’t something this relatively high tax bracket, married, heterosexual woman is interested in.
Most married women are second-earners. That means their income is added to that of their husband’s, and thus taxed at his highest marginal rate. So the married woman working as a secretary keeps less of her paycheck than the single woman who does the exact same job. This is the ultimate in “inequality,” yet Democrats constantly promote the very tax code that punishes married working women.
What an idiot. Using the word “inequality” without resorting to scare quotes — I know, a difficult proposition: bad words need buffer zones — would’ve at least made her blinkered drivel seem earnest and well-intended, but this is your top-hat-and-monocle paper, with Murdoch slithering in the wings, so Strassel can’t help turning her argument into just another bout of privileged snickering at poor/unprivileged people. The entire article looks like one of the usual conservative rhetorical wankeries, wherein everything is too implausible to even begin contemplating, and maybe they don’t even believe it themselves, but noblesse oblige keeps them going. “How we really care about the rabble…”
This part captures the mood:
and why Bill Richardson recently told a cheering mob that “women are better workers than men” (you go, Bill!).
There’s a scary “cheering mob” and a feminized Democrat who is giving in to their man-hating demands! For the WSJ reader, it’s dirty, exciting and funny all at the same time. Like a safari, perhaps. Of course, Strasser misses the point that this “mob” is made up of actual women who she’s supposedly trying to appeal to, and that dismissing their rights (“stale rhetoric of women’s “rights”) isn’t the way to go, thus proving that this isn’t a serious piece, but rather a collection of rationalizations liberally sprinkled with dumb optimism (“Come on guys; the women are waiting”) and unsuppressed disdain.
I really hope this is only true of the present day Republican Party, because as I understand it Republicanism used to be primarily about the government staying out of people’s private lives.
When was the Republican Party ever primarily about this, or even secondarily, for that matter?
And is there even such an animal as (capital-R) “Republicanism”? Neither major American party has traditionally had an “official” ideology. (What word would you use for the other party? “Democracy”? “Democratism”?)
[But it doesn’t alleviate the stress and confusion of actually getting in the car and getting to my polling place, which is an elaborate journey that involves both a right AND a left turn, and parking in a gravel lot with no lines. No lines! It’s not like the grocery store at all!]
Oh you poor kid; here, I always carry lots of tissues in this big ole purse. Maybe it would be easier if you were to call a cab; maybe you’ll find a nice single man, too. I’ll ask my husband if he knows anyone for you.
Oooo, we better hush- we’re getting nasty looks from the younger women up front and the men are standing up near the podium and about to speak. We should listen and pay attention now.
Where does she get the 60% of women who scramble after a child and hold down a job figure? Out of her ass? There’s no way that more than half the women in this country have minor children in the home. Like Amanda, I hope this myopic twit continues to advise the GOP. Let them keep courting the McMansion set, while ignoring single and working class women.
Democrats need to reach out, as they never have before, to the MAJORITY of women in this country. If we just did that one thing successfully, we would be assured of victories for generations to come.
Mark Foxwell,
Yes I agree that the so-called marriage penalty won’t effect most working class people and its impact is quite overestimated. There are many more benefits for people that are married than people who are single. This so-called marriage penalty probably hits more upper middle class people than others.
Maybe the female half of the population is sick and tired of a) having all the behind-the-scenes work taken for granted, and b) dealing with the wretchedly high percentage of the male population that is stuck in the following dichotomy: “I want a really great, interesting partner who’s out in the world but I want a soft, sweet, supportive mousewife who’ll stay hom and take care of me. Oh, but she’s got to be fascinating as well.”
In other words: take care of your own damn parents, and decide whether you want a bimbo or an intelligent women. And stop MOANING about it, for gossakes.
Alternative Minimum Tax. A couple I know got hit with it because of their income-to-deductions ratio. More upper middle class families are getting socked with it because it has never been indexed from it’s late 1960s level. What’s really ironic here is that my friends support trickle-down economics. The wife will go on at length about how unfair the estate tax is, though she is not personally subject to it and probably never will be. She refuses to see the (probably) causal relationship between prioritizing things that benefit the very rich, like repealing the estate tax, with the lack of action on reforming the AMT, which would benefit her.
So it’s more than just the rich designing the tax structure to benefit them, it’s also convincing the people just below them to go along with it.
Many people who have a working brain knows that the GOP is the Party of the Sexists. Some say that the GOP’s anti-female policies started in 1980, when they removed the Equal Rights Amendment from their platform. Many others say that the Grand Ole Party’s misogynist agenda began in 1973 after the Roe v. Wade decision. And all of us who brand the GOP as the Misogynist Party are correct. It doesn’t matter if the misogynist Christofascist movement began in 1980, 1973, or 1776 — the fact and the matter is the Republican Party are anti-woman at every turn.
If the Democrats use their heads, they will repeatedly brand the Republicans are women-haters. And BTW, it is the Republicans’ view of women’s issues that are in a time warp. The GOP’s view of women’s issues are stuck in the Stone Age. The Democrats are proving with the reintroduction of the Equal Rights Amendment (now called the Women’s Equality Amendment) that the year may say 2007, but in actuality, we are stuck in 1807.
And contrary to what the sexist Republicans say, Sen. Hillary Clinton gets her greatest female support from my age group: ages 18-30.
// The rest of the female population has migrated into 2007. Undoubtedly quite a few do care about abortion rights and the Violence Against Women Act. But for the 60% of women who today both scramble after a child and hold a job, these culture-war touchpoints aren’t their top voting priority. Their biggest concerns, not surprisingly, hew closely to those of their male counterparts: the war in Iraq, health care, the economy. But following close behind are issues that are more unique to working women and mothers. Therein rests the GOP opportunity. [end quote]
I really like the idea that the only women who have a real care for or need for reproductive rights protection are post-menopausal.//
I really like (in the sense of “really find appalling”) the idea that as a woman of roughly Hilary’s age, I don’t care about health care or reproductive rights.
Where was this writer when I was raising my son as a single mother, and trying not only to “hold down a job” but somehow make a career for myself? Does she really think these are concerns of women her age only? Does she really believe that I can easily forget having to make choices over and over between feeding my child and getting necessary medical care for myself?
I’m not all that glad that Hillary seems to be the front runner-designate, but it’s not for the reasons indicated here.
I am glad but not at all surprised to see the people here understand tax code so much better than almost anyone I know in real life who doesn’t do taxes for a living. My dad was a bookkeeper/tax preparer/accountant. I know how tax brackets work, but trying to convince people of it is annoyingly difficult.
You know, reproductive rights *would* be a stale issue if the theofascist Republicans would leave it the fuck alone.
micheyd:
But they can’t and they won’t leave them alone, because reproductive rights strike right at the roots of the dominator paradigm, which is why patriarchial societies crusaded for millenia to try and erase the crude BC/abortifacent techniques developed even longer ago than that, and create an ethical code that tries to pre-empt them with creationist mysticism that flies in the face of empirical wisdom also developed in days of yore.
I’m aware of their motivation, Mark, but with all her complaining that it’s a “stale” issue, the GOP sure makes a big issue of it themselves. Hasn’t nearly every repub candidate (save Giuliani) said they’d overturn RvW? I guess it’s their strategy - you Dems shouldn’t care about that silly, old-fashioned issue…but our pandering to the far-right on abortion still key to us. Hmm.
I’m just staggered by her calling the Violence Against Women Act a “culture-war touchpoint.”
I’m a woman and I know what I want: Other women to *stop* fucking speaking for me, telling total strangers what I want. I don’t care if it’s Barbara DeAngelis and her bullshit hetero relationship advice, or hypocrite white-privilege rich anorexic hags like Kim what’s-her-face claiming to have the “in” on women’s political needs.
Fuck her and the horse she rode in on.
The standard deduction for a married couple is not twice as much as the standard deduction for a single person, even though there are, obviously, twice as many people in a couple. That is the most obvious example of the marriage penalty, though I’m sure there’s more if you do the math. It was originally designed that way when women were expected to be housewives, but if you make roughly the same amount as your husband (I can’t be the only one who does) then you will get back less than if you could file single, irregardless of what class you are. Removing it will also help married women who don’t make what their husbands make - since their deduction will be higher, too. Feminists should really be against the marriage penalty, because it seems obvious from a feminist point of view that punishing women (and their families) for marrying men they have similar incomes to is a bad thing.
“I’m too loud and squishy to be trophy wife material - is there any room left in Strassel’s tent for people like me?”
Not a trophy wife? there is no room in the tent for sure, hell you’re not even real to these people, acording to them you’re a made up idea that the damn dirty liberals created
just like seperation of church and state. and gay people being actual humans … just a bunch of made up ideas that scare them.
DeadMan