Thank you, Mr President, for your concern for girls' educational status, but we've got to start at the beginning. All this talk about 'women's economic opportunity' is no more than pie-in-the-sky, ivory tower drivel unless there is real, and I mean REAL Federal political and legal support of women's health, shoring up and protecting public education programs, pro-choice laws, and equal pay laws.
In a capitalist economic system, it is a fact of life for American women that having control of her reproductive life is the most important way to have control of her economic life.
These laws have not been pressed as an anti-anything measure, because of the delicate sensibilities of the right that perceive pro-choice and women's rights in general as actual physical threats to a way of life, and dangers to the practice of their own religions, much like how gay marriage is perceived by the same crowd. These laws should be pushed to the right wingers more as a support to their... HAHAHA, who am I trying to kid? and what am I thinking?
You can't change their perceptions! These are the same people who refer to women of childbearing age as 'hosts'! These are the same men AND WOMEN who push 'personhood' laws that are meant to deny women access to contraception, let alone abortions, because I said that my god said it's a baby at conception! Not at quickening, like my holy book says in one place, not at the first breath, like it says somewhere else, at CONCEPTION! Because all those little sperms the man puts into you are all little people that you have been entrusted with. And some of them might be little boys! You just don't mess with my god's plan!
That also means you are pregnant until proven otherwise! If you have sex for 'fun', guess what? You are a dirty girl, because you had sex not for procreation, so you have to be punished! Because you're all sluts! So there!
They're passing laws designed to reform behavior, not to legislate.I don't think that's what the Founding Fathers had in mind. The original pilgrims, yeah. The ones who hanged, drowned, and burned men and women because, witches, yeah. The Taliban, yeah.
The state-by-state backpedaling of federal separation of church and state protections; the piecemeal, selective application or the outright ignoring of Federal laws; and the seemingly tacit permission of the more nutball red states trying to pass 'nullification' legislation without any more of a consequence than a snicker and a shrug from the rest of the country (oh, those naughty rascals in Ga, Tx, NC, Mo, Ks, fill in the red state blank, aren't they just being soo silly), or by the Attorney General for sure; all this is having a snowballing and shattering effect on the status of women's rights in this country as a whole, and in each state in particular.
What makes it really egregious is that the loonikins of the far right, financed by ALEC and Americans for Prosperity et al, are very solid in their attacks, attacks that have to be repelled individually state by state, then if necessary, brought to the Supreme Court, thus wasting even more time at the federal level. In the meantime, real women's (remember them?) personal and family lives are irretrievably affected and/or damaged with their options being taken away, one after another.
I guess one of my questions is why welfare, those so-called 'government handouts', are such good things when applied to wealthy corporations, in other words those who have much, and they're called 'capitalism' and are so fiscally sound; but when when welfare, i.e. 'gubmint handouts' change direction and are applied to the poverty-stricken or needy, in other words, those who have little, these same handouts are not such good things, and aren't called by the magic name of 'capitalism', but 'socialism', and both the amounts and the numbers of recipients are squeezed accordingly. Because, that's not Good Economics.
Sadly, when grudgingly doled out to those who need it the most (and usually accept it the most reluctantly, btw, despite the patronizing attitude of those in charge), these 'socialistic' handouts, as opposed to the 'capitalistic' handouts, are considered to be a terrible economic burden, absolutely fiscally crushing, and even the simple act of applying for them opens the recipients to being derided, scorned, and also at most risk of having this shabby, barely adequate and hole-ridden patchwork of a safety net ripped out from under them.
AND FROM THEIR KIDS! The kids who are supposedly such a major concern of the right. What happened with that? It looks to me that they begrudge every penny spent on kids, maybe because some of it necessarily goes to women as their mothers, and apparently many of these right wing men have had what they consider a tough time with the bitches, and now that they're in a position of power, it's PAYBACK TIME!! So not only do they get their way, but they get paid for it. Plus paid extra! By the lobbyists! To do what they would do for free! (In lieu of governing, petty vindictiveness; heh heh. Right, Newtie?)
Win and win!
It seems one of life's lessons is that poverty is politics, and politics is poverty, ethically speaking.