“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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Katrina vanden Heuvel: ‘There Are Now States Where It’s Not Safe to Be a Woman’
Chalk another one up for the extremists. Three weeks after Arkansas’ legislature overrode a veto and prohibited most second trimester abortions, North Dakota’s Governor signed into law a ban that kicks in just six weeks after conception. As the Associated Press noted, both sides recognize the laws for what they are: “an unprecedented frontal assault” on the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade.
“The thing that’s incredible to me – North Dakota being case in point – is the thought that women’s rights in this country depend on their ZIP code,” the inimitable Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards told the Huffington Post late last month. “There are now states where it’s not safe to be a woman.”
Cecile Richards: States Should Not Curb Health Care for Women
Every woman, no matter what her zip code is, should have access to affordable, quality health care. It seems like a simple enough proposition, but for far too many women, it is far from true – and for some, it is becoming less so every day.
Across the country, bills are moving through state legislatures that limit women’s access to health care. Legislation has been introduced in 42 states that would ban or severely restrict access to abortion, make it harder for women to get birth control, cut women off from cancer screenings, or prohibit sex education programs that help prevent teen pregnancy.
What is most concerning for Planned Parenthood as a health care provider is that these bills are passing in states where there already is very little access to health care for women.
The president must close the loophole left in the Fair Labor Standards Act for home care workers.
Eighty years ago Frances Perkins broke a glass ceiling in government when President Franklin D. Roosevelt named her Secretary of Labor, the first female cabinet member in U.S. history. But her legacy extends far beyond the appointment itself. In her twelve years at the helm of the Department of Labor, Perkins played a key role in helping Roosevelt enact the critical legislation that comprised the New Deal.
One of Perkins’s signature accomplishments, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), turns 75 this year. It established the 40-hour work week, placed restrictions on child labor, set the first-ever federal minimum wage, and required overtime pay for hours worked over 40 in a given work week. By any measure, the FLSA improved working life for most Americans.
But not for all Americans.
Jeff Cohen: The Elephant in the Room: Militarism
I spent years as a political pundit on mainstream TV — at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. I was outnumbered, outshouted, red-baited and finally terminated. Inside mainstream media, I saw that major issues were not only dodged, but sometimes not even acknowledged to exist.
Today there’s an elephant in the room: a huge, yet ignored, issue that largely explains why Social Security is now on the chopping block. And why other industrialized countries have free college education and universal healthcare, but we don’t. It’s arguably our country’s biggest problem — a problem that Martin Luther King Jr. focused on before he was assassinated 45 years ago, and has only worsened since then (which was the height of the Vietnam War).
That problem is U.S. militarism and perpetual war.
William Greider: Will Voters Forgive Obama for Cutting Social Security? (No. And They Shouldn’t.)
President Obama has riled loyal Democrats by tossing Social Security onto the table in his poker game with Republicans. Not to worry. I think I know how this story ends. A year from now, when the 2014 congressional campaigns are hot underway, Republicans will be running against Obama-the-slasher and promising to protect Social Security from the bloodthirsty Democrats.
By then, having lost on his too-cute strategy, the president will be reduced to lamely reassuring old folks. Really, he didn’t actually intend to cut their benefits, really he didn’t. It was just a ploy to get tightwad conservatives to give in a little on tax increases. Republicans can pull out the videotapes in which Obama and team explain their high-minded purpose-sacrificing the Democratic party’s sacred honor in order to get Republicans to play nice.
Dylan Ratigan: Ending Our Incarceration Nation
Friends,
In life there are some clear paths that we can walk down today to reach a better place, while others are less clear, dangerous even, yet no less important for us to travel.
When it comes to creating jobs for veterans, it’s clear we can act now to feed people using the modern technology of hydroponic, organic farming. As you know, an increasingly large group of us are acting to do just that by taking Archi’s Acres to the national level.
Other problems are more intractable, seemingly insurmountable. Beyond jobs, food and our vets, few things keep me up more than the disastrous functionality of our prison system.
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