08 11 / 2012
"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
07 11 / 2012
On Tammy Baldwin And ENDA
There’s a ton of misinformation going around Tumblr on this, so I’m going to post some actual facts on the situation before I go to bed.
Tammy Baldwin was one of 184 cosponsors of H.R. 2015, the trans-inclusive version of ENDA which was put before Congress in 2007. Unfortunately, Barney Frank — the bill’s originating sponsor — unilaterally withdrew H.R. 2015 from consideration and replaced it with H.R. 3685, a “gays only” version of ENDA. Frank argued that cutting trans rights out of ENDA was politically necessary because trans rights were an extremist position which would endanger moderate Democrats in swing states, whereas gay rights were “politically realistic”.
Tammy Baldwin not only refused to cosponsor H.R. 3685, but threw Frank’s betrayal of trans people in his face by introducing an amendment which would have reintroduced trans rights to ENDA while it was on the House floor, effectively reversing Frank’s replacement of H.R. 2015 with H.R. 3685. Barney Frank killed Baldwin’s amendment by cashing in favors with Democratic Party leaders, who told Baldwin that they would only let her introduce the floor amendment if she agreed to withdraw it before an actual vote was called. This way she would get ten minutes of floor debate time to make a public case for trans rights, but they would not under any circumstances permit a vote on the amendment.
It is neither accurate nor fair to call Tammy Baldwin a transphobe for not being powerful enough to single-handedly secure trans inclusion in ENDA against the entire fucking establishment of the Democratic Party. She stuck her neck way, way out to go to bat for trans people over ENDA, and that was an extremely courageous thing to do considering that she was a relative nobody in Congress explicitly going toe-to-toe with one of the most powerful men in Washington.
i knew barney frank was disgusting about trans folks, but here’s some more info on tammy baldwin.
(via downlo)
30 7 / 2012
America’s failed foreign policy summarized in 2 pictures.
04 2 / 2012
Abortion Tactics and Conflicted Moral Ambivalence
If the Republicans had wanted to prevent abortions, they would have…
- Funded a thorough and mandatory sex education initiative from the earliest grades in all schools and combined it with the distribution of free contraceptives in all high schools, public and private (religious schools included)
- Legislated generous family leave for both mothers and fathers
- Provided federally funded day care as a national priority
- Expanded adoption services, including encouraging gay parents to adopt children, and they would have encouraged gay couples to marry and adopt
- Provided a generous tax incentive to have children and direct financial assistance and educational opportunities for all families, including single parents
- Raised taxes to pay for these programs
- Never have equated stem cell research with abortion, much less with murder, thereby making the anti-abortion position patently ridiculous
- Above all, they would have addressed the injustice of the growing gap between the superrich and everyone else and fought to raise the living standards of poor people. (Forty percent of all women seeking abortion live on $10,000 a year or less.)
