War on Women is No Mystery

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary in her March 11 speech to this year's Women in the World Summit said, "Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me."

It shouldn't be.

Women have always represented the ultimate threat to men. That historically has been because females are the procreators and accounts for the age-old attempt of men to control and repress women. In modern times, however, women are at the threshhold of becoming the majority of this country's policy makers and influence brokers.

Here's how that potential plays out:

Right now, females, who comprise more than half of the U.S. population, number only 15.7% of corporate CEOs, 17% of U.S. Senators, 20.6% of members of the House of Representatives and 33.6% of full-time university and college professors.

Given the changing higher-education demographics, that will change--unless drastic measures are taken.

According to 2010 statistics, 60% of college/university graduates in the U.S. are female, as are 60% of masters degree students and 48% of doctoral students. Last fall, females made up 49.4% of first-year law school students. That's up from just 10% in 1970.

It has been projected that by 2016--that's just four years from now--women will receive:

• 64% of Associates degrees,
• 61% of Bachelor’s degrees,
• 63% of Master’s degrees,
• 58% of Doctoral degrees,
• 58% of Professional degrees

Enter the drastic measures to stop and even reverse that possibility.

A crusade of legislation is showing up in Congress and marching from state to state that restricts women's access to services and products, many of which are unique to females, such as abortion--which IS legal and constitutionally guaranteed, contraception, domestic-violence protection, economic equality, personal privacy, medical-procedure consent, healthcare equality, preventative and public healthcare, family planning and more.

That is nothing short of a war on women that is being waged by insecure paternalistic men to get females out of university classrooms and presidents' offices, out of corporate boardrooms, out of Congress--all of which these men believe should be male bastions--and back into their homes, where these Dark Ages men think women belong.

I'm way to conservative to think that government has any business sticking it's nose in those or any other personal aspects of women's lives.

Women who agree need to arm--and gird--themselves and fight back.

A REAL Fiscally Conservative Budget Proposal

Perhaps its supporters haven't noticed, but since the 112th Congress took office last month, it has engaged in a bait-(promise to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs)and-switch tactic that has included misreading the U.S. Constitution, two members being AWOL at the House's swearing in ceremony, all things abortion, reality-evading redifinition of rape and, especially, spending). Maybe that's to hide the fact that it has done zip on the jobs, jobs, jobs front.

So Congress's lazer been the focus has shifted almost entirely to spending. Cut this, eliminate that, screw everyone except themselves.

Needless to say, this body has less credibility than Lucy holding a football. So, here's a very brief primer on how they can gain at least a little credibilty:

Start with yourself. Yes, members of Congress. You set an example.

Now that you have been elected/re-elected, you are now part of the government that Ronald Reagan said is the problem.

So you can take a truly conservative approach to start setting things right.

1.   Introduce and vote for a bill to cut your and all members of Congress pay back to 1990 levels.

2.   Introduce and vote for a bill to cut the size of your staff at least by half.

3.   Introduce and vote for a bill to end all government-funded Congressional travel except for one weekly round trip between a member of Congress's district and Washington, D.C.

4.   Introduce and vote for a bill to eliminate your government-funded healthcare.  (Yes, you will have to buy your own private coverage, but that will have two positive benefits: One, put you in the same fix as the people you work for and, two, greatly please one of your biggest campaign funders -- the insurance industry.)

5.   Introduce and vote for emergency legislation to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, including you, that will become effective immediately.

Granted all but ending number 5 don't even qualify as small potatoes when it comes to reducing the deficit. So here are a few other measures that will really make a huge difference and, in fact, might actually move the budget from the red territory it's been in since GWBush got a hold of it back to being in the black, like WJClinton left it.

1.   Introduce and vote for legislation to end U.S. funding of other countries' defense by closing U.S. bases in other countries, except South Korea, which we are obligated by treaty to defend from North Korean aggression.

It is time to be truly conservative and take care of ourselves and end the very liberal government spending on defending countries, like Germany, Japan, Italy, and others, that are capable of taking care of themselves.

Where IS the outrage?

Bob Herbert’s column “Winning the Class War” in Saturday’s New York Times about the race to the top—of money, not academic excellence—hit on a popular theme these days; the relentless consolidation of our nation’s wealth at the top 1 percent of the richest Americans.

This is another area in which I’m truly conservative. I truly don't think that is an American or democratic value.

U.S. laws , unfortunately for a good 90-plus percent of the rest of us, are increasingly liberal and generous in enabling the rich to pile it up to the detriment to those not in their rarified bracket.

Herbert focuses on how that negatively impacts the nation, including even the wealthy elitists themselves.

A telling paragraph in Herbert’s column says, “Recessions are for the little people, not for the corporate chiefs and the titans of Wall Street who are at the heart of the American aristocracy. They have waged economic warfare against everybody else and are winning big time.”

But, he points out, history—including our own—is replete with the rich in such aristocratic societies ending up being the losers. (Although we haven't had a U.S. version, yet, the French Revolution comes to mind.)

More telling than anything in Herbert’s column, though, is this comment posted by Times reader JLT of Palo Alto, California, (which, for anyone who might not know, is an exclusive enclave where the wealthy can live untouched, unaffected and uncontaminated by the hoi polloi):

“What we need is even more inequality,” wrote JLT, “so that people are motivated to study hard, work hard, and be successful. Bob Herbert wants a society in nobody is rich and everyone is equally poor.”

Perhaps I didn’t read into that comment what JLT might have intended—like hidden meaning, sarcasm or irony—but I detected no tongue in cheek in it.

So, 90-plus percenters, our problem is that we just haven’t studied or worked hard enough to keep from getting laid off, losing our pensions and savings or facing foreclosure on our houses.

I can’t help but wonder, though, what JLT’s story is. Who paid for his/her college education (assuming he has one)? Mom and dad? Athletic or government-funded scholarships? State taxpayers via a state university? Legacy admission? And who gave him/her a hand up in her/his career/life?

I truly believe former First Lady, now Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was right in her book, “It Takes a Village.” No one ever does it alone.

Herbert’s column and JLT’s comment reminds me of an acquaintance who is about my (advanced) age and decries having to pay taxes, “big” government, the U.S. as “nanny” state, and so much more that echoes libertarianism, yet he, himself, has been cared for in total and benefitted from government in so many ways his entire life. (I’ll go into detail about him in a future post.)

A friend, referring to the increasingly wild gush of lucre into coffers of the already obscenely wealthy, recently asked where the outrage in this country is.

The answer is long and complex, but it wasn’t the TPers, despite all of their vitriol and recent political clout. No, if the real 90-plus percenters haven’t been completely overdosed into celebrity, shopping and other such vapid trivialities apathy, my guess is, the real outrage is yet to come.

I'm on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jerrianneh