A Year Later, No One Really Gets What PUMAs Were Talking About

November 8, 2009 — Anna Belle

Well, I was happy to see this post by Dr. Socks, though the breakdown in comments blows chunks. In this post, Vi uses the last minute abortion amendment to show how some Democratic pro-choicers are finally “getting” what PUMA was all about, and I suppose in some ways that’s true. I started this blog because I wanted to be part of the conversation that was taking place because of PUMA, and I had something important I wanted to contribute first: a discussion about what Democrats have really done to protect a woman’s right to choose. If you’ll recall, it was a four part series called The Specter of Roe v. Wade (all four parts can be accessed from that post). In it, I found that Democrats had become increasingly willing to throw this issue under the bus even as they continued to use it as a weapon to club women over the head in an attempt to demand their loyalty.

That loyalty was short-sighted, and the abortion amendment proves it. Abortion, beginning in 2013, will become even more difficult to obtain.  Abortion clinics have been the target of pro-life activism; meanwhile, 87% of insurance policies cover abortion services. That will change dramatically as a result of this amendment. In one fell swoop, and without even having to work for it, pro-life politicians have managed to do to the insurance industry what Operation Rescue spent 20 years doing to abortion service providers and their clinics. Non-PUMA liberal women can blame themselves for this new development. I certainly do.

dark pumaBecause PUMAs saw it, and they talked about it. They knew this was a possibility. They could well see that the Democratic party had been succumbing to the authoritarianism that already permeated the Republican party, and their voices were shouted down, I contend because they were the voices of women and because they were the voices of reason coming from women. In the rising misogyny of the ‘08 election, women who would not toe the party line were attacked and vilified by the party that said it was the party of women. Still some women could not see it. I hope they see it today, and I hope this vote leads to an even bigger backlash against Democrats. They have shown they will not be held accountable by their constituencies. They do not work for us, and they haven’t for some time.

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Posted in PUMA, Political, feminism. 8 Comments »

Mandates, Taxes, & Fines, Oh My!

September 11, 2009 — Anna Belle

Like many Americans, I watched the President’s speech on health insurance reform. It really is amazing how Obama is able to tell people the truth–that he will fuck them over–and they love him for it. For all the pretty words and formulaic yet effective rhetoric, what stood out most to me in the speech was the hard reality of what is coming in the form of mandates, taxes, and fines.

I was most surprised by his automobile insurance analogy. Apparently people have forgotten. Auto insurance was a movement that swept the nation too, an effort led by insurance lobbying industry. For some states, it was particularly problematic. In Kentucky, where I used to live, premiums for car insurance shot up over 200% in the years directly following the law that was passed that required people to have auto insurance or pay a hefty fine. They have continued to rise thanks to a compliant state legislature, and today Kentucky has some of the highest auto insurance premiums in the nation. This effected poor people, and it continues to affect poor people. It basically penalizes poverty. What else would you call it when you can’t put food on your table because you can’t get to work because you don’t have auto insurance and want to avoid the $500 fine for not having it, which, if you had it to pay, you would have bought car insurance with in the first place.

The mandate was the one thing I vehemently disagreed with Hillary Clinton on. It was what stopped me from volunteering for her campaign earlier in the process. I knew what had happened with auto insurance, and I was aware of the so-called “Massachusetts model.” I was acutely aware of how this model would affect poor people, and that it wasn’t a bargain at all. I have been a working poor person for most of my life. Though I make more money now than I ever have, I still live paycheck to paycheck and my net paycheck remains unchanged from when I was making far less money, in part because health insurance costs have risen so high so fast (the other part is that my tax bracket changed). Make sure you absorb that: Though I make $15,000 a year more than I did just three years ago, my net paycheck is the same.

I want to talk a little bit about the Massachusetts model in order to introduce an idea that I have been mulling over for some time. The Massachusetts model, like the plans before Congress now, is also based on a mandate that, unmet by the individual, results in fines. I hate to use Wiki as a source, but they have assembled an impressive volume of research on the model. In addition to mandates and fines, the state of Massachusetts brokers deals between people who have no access to insurance (because they work for companies that can’t or don’t provide it; or because they work for themselves) and the insurance industry. The Massachusetts model does not pay any health care costs directly outside of SCHIP and MassHealth, which were the partially federally-funded programs in place before reforms took place.

What the reform means is that the state steps in as the broker for those who do not have health insurance and, via fines, forces them to buy insurance from private providers. Insurance companies were only too happy to have the deal, and as with the auto insurance fiasco, premiums rose dramatically. Still, people have to have health insurance now, so how to make them do it? How do you force someone to spend $3-5,000 a year on a service that will cost them probably another $3-5,000 in deductibles, when they are currently only paying about $500 a year directly for services, and then only when they need them*? How do you accomplish that neat trick? Well, you can take money they count on, like their tax return.

*Obviously I am referring to reasonably healthy uninsured people here

Initially, the Massachusetts tax penalty might have seemed paltry. It was the loss of the personal exemption, apparently valued at just over $200 a year. In 2008, however, the tax fine jumped to half the cost of the lowest premium available, roughly $912, according to the Wiki article. The article doesn’t say, but I would bet that the fine is scheduled to rise, as it has every year since they passed reform in 2006. And this brings me to my conspiratorial musings on what might happen if the United States adopts the Massachusetts model.

Some people who read this blog may be unfamiliar with how working poverty works. The working poor do not generally make enough money to meet all the demands placed on them by the government and society in general. As a working poor person I can tell you that I felt terrible that I often had to drive without insurance, but I did have to do it because I had to work to pay rent, buy food, clothes, and school supplies for my daughter. I had to pay to “rent” her textbooks. I had to keep the piece of crap vehicle I could afford in working order which, because of the age, was costly and frequent. I had to pay increasingly outrageous utility bills. I had to have a phone in case we had an emergency. It should go without saying that our access to health care was spotty and expensive. This all adds up and can quickly overwhelm a person making $10 or less an hour. Add to that the $150 monthly premium for liability-only auto insurance and you can see how this life is constantly impossible, but somehow we make it. We working poor people juggle and balance, we strategize, and we take risks we don’t want to take, like going without car insurance, because we have to.
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Intellectual Consistency and the Left: School Speech Edition

September 6, 2009 — Anna Belle

I know some of my readers will already believe that people protesting Obama’s school speech are a) all conservative radio listeners, and b) stark raving mad. They will believe this partly because Obama and the media that supports him have succeeded in what the blogger at Acid Test warned us about last year:

Obama, on the other hand, does one thing, says another, and enough people are so desperate to believe in him that they lie to themselves so that they can keep doing it. Look at the reaction on the left when he started promoting faith-based government. Suddenly the left, the left, was trying to find reasons why it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. The ability to make people believe night was day was Reagan’s talent. He succeeded in making selfishness respectable, and then even admirable. He could make people forget which way was up. It’s very hard to climb out of a morass if you can’t even see that.

Obama, judging by the evidence so far, has the same talent. … What scares me is the large majority who, a year ago, finally understood that they don’t want that crap. But he can make them think they do.

The other part of this is that even liberal people in opposition to Obama have comfortably re-joined the ranks of their former group and have slowly been re-acclimated to the rhetorical tricks of the left. Now, even once-PUMA bloggers are calling people “teabaggers” and getting agitated with them, even though they share opposition to the government’s mess of a Health Care overhaul.

Liberals also agree with the school speech protesters, of whom I am one, though you’d have to turn to history to know it. Such liberalized citizens refuse to see what is happening, because they have now happily returned to their couches. It doesn’t help that their leaders are just as disingenuous as the other side. Now, people who should know better have slipped right back into rhetorical habits they had serious issues with just last year. They have not even investigated this particular issue for themselves or their children.
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Vindication!

September 2, 2009 — Anna Belle

Two for one, too. You’ve read what I think about Ted Kennedy, his history, and the exploitation of his life and death. I’m not a fan of Krugman either, and it drives me crazy when I see otherwise clear-headed liberals just fawn all over whatever he says. No I won’t name names, just like I didn’t with Kennedy, because these folks know who they are and the fact that they’ve been duped has nothing to do with whether or not they are bad people. It has to do with whether or not they are thinking people, and by and large, the left is as easily duped as the right. I do have some sympathy for why this is–constant questioning is exhausting, depressing work. But it must be done.

And Krugman is a case in point of intellectual laziness/inconsistency on the left: He is a multi-millionaire economist living in New York City–the financial capital of America–writing to influence economics. What more do you need to know to believe he is intrinsically untrustworthy, because what he does first is protect his status and wealth? Does that mean everything he says needs to be discounted? No. But it should be questioned every day.

Anyway, about my vindication. Somerby is, as usual, one of the few bloggers shaming the left for its poor moral choices and for its muddled thinking. Here’s what he had to say about Kennedy:

First statement: Ted Kennedy “will be remembered as one of the most effective legislators in the history of the Senate.” That statement appeared in the opening paragraph of John Broder’s top-of-page story.

Second statement: Ted Kennedy had long defined health reform as “the cause of my life.” This statement appeared above the fold in this profile by Mark Leibovich.

Only we liberals could fail to see the oddness in the conjunction of those two statements. Only we liberals could fail to see the way we get talked down to when we get handed such stories.

Our guy was the most effective ever! And health care reform was his lifetime passion! Only we liberals would fail to see the oddness of these conjoined statements, in a month when we’re getting our clocks cleaned again in the matter of health care reform! This isn’t a criticism of Senator Kennedy, of course, This is a criticism of us.

But then, that’s the shape of modern politics. The other side gets the big wins. Our side gets the pleasing stories, in which we’re allowed to define ourselves as being both moral and smart. That’s one of the ways the world’s ruling classes buy off numb-nuts like us.

Bolding mine. Now, here’s what Somerby has to say about a Krugman article wherein Krugman pulls out the old liberal standby that people on the right are crazy. To wit: Read the rest of this entry »

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Little Wheel

September 1, 2009 — Anna Belle

I guess we all have to start somewhere. We can’t all be big-time like Ted Kennedy and Michael Jackson. Anyway, as mentioned in my last post, here is a link to the article on me and 6 other women. I am the sixth one down. If you’ve ever wondered what I look like, here’s your chance. From the article:

Every person owns her own destiny and determines her own future. It sounds cliché, but if you need real-world proof, Anna Bell Pfau, 38, is happy to share her story. Born “dirt poor” in Texas, she ran away from home and hitchhiked across the country five times before landing herself a spot at Maryhurst in Louisville, where she spent the next two and a half years being rehabilitated, supported, and inspired. Fast forward to today. Anna Belle is an English professor at Brown Mackie College working on her master’s degree at UofL. She runs a popular political blog (peacocksandlilies.com), publishes a bi-weekly column about women’s history in The New Agenda, dedicates herself to her students, most of whom were not on the college track in high school, and is a wife and mother of daughter Clancy, 15.

You’ll have to visit the site to read the rest.

Also, the last What Every Woman Should Know article (on presidential candidates) was picked up by Feminists for Choice. It was also picked up by feminist.org, but I can’t find the direct content. Overall, it’s been a good day. :)

Posted in feminism, personal. Tags: . 6 Comments »

Big Wheels and Big Bangs

August 30, 2009 — Anna Belle

ferris wheelI’m sorry I have been an inconsistent blogger this summer. I hate that; I truly do. I have given considerable thought to closing up shop entirely since I am so very busy these days, but I’m not ready to do that. Though I am too busy to blog, I am constantly thinking of suitable topics for blog posts. Part of it is that what I do is so different than what most bloggers do. It’s not enough for me to comment on a news story; I have to dredge up every inch of personal experience and years of observations and try to weave them all together in an essay format that actually makes a point about the bigger picture.

It’s August and in the heat it isn’t always easy. What I do also takes a lot of that observation and contemplation. I need to be able to see events unfold over time, and I need time to work out my own preconceived notions (we should all do this; very few do) before deciding what the big picture angle is going to be. I’m out of time and energy lately, and while I have been observing and weaving those threads in my head, I haven’t had a lot of time to articulate them in text and post them here. The good news for you, dear readers, is that Ms. Peacock has enrolled herself in a creative writing class this fall, so you might actually get treated to some of my creative writing this fall.

Patriarchy, Privilege, and Ted Kennedy
Speaking of the oppressing class, and in the words of my texting teenager–WTF is up with the Kennedy worship from some corners? It’s not just Chappaquiddick and Kopechne that prevents me from supporting the “Ted Kennedy legacy”, though that alone is, goodness knows, reason enough. I cannot believe some of the feminist blogs and blogs with feminist leanings who are fawning all over this perfect waste of a carbon-based life form. He is the very symbol of patriarchal privilege–his whole family is. But I’m always on the wrong side of this issue. I’m one of the few liberals I know who think John F. Kennedy was a disaster as a president, despite his pretty words. That’s because his deeds almost sunk us as a nation and some of them led to Vietnam, wherein an extraordinary amount of baby boomer males lost life and limb. Not any Kennedy baby boomers, mind you.

Chappaquiddick has already come up in a number of corners, mostly conservative, and you know the details so I won’t rehash it. But if you’re inclined to give Kennedy a pass, ask yourself a few questions: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Political, economy, feminism. Tags: , , . 3 Comments »

What Every Woman Should Know About Women Who Ran For President

August 30, 2009 — Anna Belle

When people keep telling you that you can’t do a thing, you kind of like to try it. ~Margaret Chase Smith

Last week we celebrated 89 years of electoral franchise for women. What that means is that women have been allowed to vote for only 89 years in our country’s 233 year history. It was the first right that women won for themselves, and many victories would follow. Life for women today is admittedly nothing like it used to be, and a certain amount of equality is enjoyed between the sexes. Of course there are still issues of equal rights for women to be resolved, thus the very existence of The New Agenda. Two of those issues include the holding of highest and second-highest offices in the land, which so far have only been held by men. To date, only 34 women have actually headed up the national ticket for President for their parties, and 87 have run for vice president on the ticket.

1848 Lucretia Mott
The first women to run for a national executive office in the Unites States of America was Lucretia Mott. Readers may recall her from the Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention of 1848, which she staged with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, officially kicking off American women’s long struggle for equal rights. That same year Mott ran for the vice presidential ticket in the Liberty Party, which was a break-away abolitionist party that was short-lived during the 1840s. She garnered 4 of the 84 votes at the party’s national convention that year.

1872 Virginia Woodhull
The first woman to run for president did not wait for a man to ask her if she wanted to, or for a Party of men to elect her. Victoria Woodhull, in typical fashion, took permission for herself, formally declaring her candidacy in 1871. In 1972, the Equal Rights Party elected her as their candidate. There were some issues with her campaign, however, including a Vice Presidential candidate (Frederick Douglass) who refused to recognize his nomination, and the fact that Ms. Woodhull was not yet 35 years of age as required by the constitution. The government declined to even recognize her, and she and her party were left off the ballot that year.

1884 & 1888 Belva Ann Lockwood
Belva Lockwood was a force to be reckoned with in her life. She constantly and consistently fought the forces of oppression and won some remarkable concessions from the system. She was one of America’s first female lawyers, and the first female lawyer to speak before the Supreme Court. Before that she sought to equalize pay in education, which even then was subject to inequality along gender lines. She ran on the National Equality Party’s platform for two consecutive elections, and though she lost, she was the first woman whose name appeared on the ballot for the office of president. Her running mate in the campaign was Marietta Stowe.

1940 Gracie Allen
Americans would wait another 52 years for the next woman to run for president, and by then it would be a joke—literally. Gracie Allen, notable comedienne, and her husband George Burns, toured the country to raise awareness for the joke campaign, organized under the “Surprise Party.” Allen and George made jokes about politics, unfortunately often at women’s expense, on their “Whistlestop Tour.” Though this campaign can technically be considered a publicity tour for a comic act, Gracie Allen actually registered and ran and she garnered 42,000 votes, proving that people approved, no matter how funny and ridiculous she and Burns thought it was.

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The Story of Nana

August 18, 2009 — lilypeacock

Editor’s Note: My daughter brought home an assignment from English class today to write a fairy tale. After a brief discussion of what fairy tales are and the components necessary to a story, Lily came up with this gem, which is surely a feminist “fairy tale.” For now, anyway… I’m sure you can see my parentage writ large across her ethos. Yes, I am incredibly proud. :D   Without further ado…the Story of Nana.

Patriaticus was the King of Patriapolis. Behind his back, the people called him King Speedy Announcement because when he gave his monthly address to his humble servants, he would rush through it so fast the people barely caught a word. This meant that the announcement of harvest time, for example, was so hastily announced that no one knew when to bring crops in. So in consequence, the Snapps brought their harvest far too early, while the Fows brought there’s in much too late. This was beginning to be a problem and the kingdom was losing its luscious green appearance.

Nana was a young girl born to Mr. and Ms. Fow and proudly raised in a house resembling democracy as much as a house could in Patriapolis; her mother went to work disguised as a man and her father stayed home tending to the children and making the food. Now, this wasn’t really a role switch seeing as mother came in and helped with the work as well. It was a partnership, instead of a ruling. Nana was raised to believe that people were all equal. She went to school and shared her views with the other girls. She would have loved to share it with the boys, but they were too interested in saying things like, “A woman deserves the kitchen and that is it.”

This angered Nana. She just couldn’t understand why people couldn’t be equal. “Why can’t we stand together as equals?” she asked her teacher one day.

The woman looked at her with a sad smile. “Because, my dear, this is Patriapolis. Be glad that we can even go to school, and that I can even be a teacher.”

Nana frowned she didn’t like to be told to be happy for what they had when it just wasn’t the same as what the boys got. “But we don’t even have a soccer team while the boys have soccer, football, and baseball!”

Nana’s teacher sighed and patted her head, “I am sorry, Nana, just be happy for what you have.” Nana’s frown darkened; it wasn’t fair. A few years passed and Nana’s anger grew. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in feminism, literature. 4 Comments »

89 Years

August 18, 2009 — Anna Belle

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 marks the 89th Anniversary of ratification of the 19th Amendment. August 26th is considered the official anniversary because that is when the Secretary of State, Bainbridge Colby, signed the Amendment, thus officially completing the act of ratification.

There are still people alive today who remember what it was like to live in the United States before women could vote. We must never forget. Who will you tell?

What Every Woman Should Know About the 19th Amendment

Alternate Universe: Where We’d Be if Suffragettes Had Been Modern Feminists

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Protesting is an American Activity & Other Obvious Truths

August 12, 2009 — Anna Belle

Dear reader,

I use the singular, as after more than a month away, I’m sure the one is all I have left. Thank you for sticking it out whoever you are. Consider this a drunk blog. It’s really more of a light buzz blog, as I’m about to pop my fourth beer in about six hours. I prolly won’t even finish it, or this post, but hey, I’ll give both a shot. Expect typos.

So it turns out that when you get too busy to blog and you’ve been engaged in activity you get paid for while watching miles and miles of fantastic writing ideas pass like so much beautiful scenery on a very long, necessary trip, you can get stuck for how to start. Who knew? Certainly not me. I blogged for a solid year and was really on a roll, and I’ve been writing for years, so I never expected to be overwhelmed with the sheer magnitude of so much news cycle during so much lost time. I might as well just break the ice while my inhibitions are low, eh? Heh.

I really wanted to write about Skip Gates, for example, but that story is deader than Michael Jackson, another sick story I missed. I still have a few questions about that circus (the Gates circus; I couldn’t give a shit less about Jackson’s circus), but whatever. I don’t really care. A working class cop got verbally harassed by another rich person with shitty taste in beer. Yawn.

I also wanted to write about the health care debate, and I probably will now that the ice is broken. For the record, I’d like to state the obvious. I’d actually like to quote the left for the last eight years: “Dissent is a founding principle.” I am sick to death of watching people who spent the last eight years bitching about a certain kind of Bush supporter be that same kind of Obama supporter without even a hint of irony smacking them in the head like it oughta. The similarities between O-Bots and what they used to call “Bushies” is startling. But that’s not about the health care debate.

About that. Guess what? In America, we all have the right to organize and dissent. You can play that bullshit game that it’s un-American, as Pelosi recently did, or you can acknowledge that the ability to do so is protected in the Constitution. Thank fucking goodness. You can compare the dissenters to Hitler, as other politicians and the Blogger Boys have done, now that they’ve had their talking points disseminated by the Obama administration in one of the myriad teleconferences they have with them each week (still unpaid HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Suckahs!). What it all boils down to though, in two words: penis envy.

Yes, the left is seething mad that they can’t put the call out and have that kind of response. They couldn’t get the emotional intensity of these so-called Republican protesters (I don’t believe they are all Republicans) out of their people if they wanted too. Progressive Dude Nation answers one call and one call only: the call of the cool. You make health care sexy and maybe they’ll think about getting involved. Put it on a t-shirt Jayzee can wear and have him attend a town hall in it, and maybe privileged white dudes and their vagbots will attend too. As it is, Democrats have to practically hire union thugs to manufacture dissent to meet the push back they are getting on the road. Hilarious. As if unions needed more bad publicity. But hey, if you’re going to volunteer to get thrown under the bus, you deserve what you get.

I see the media is still into virtually stoning Clinton and Palin. The game just never gets old with them. All I wanna know is why the there wasn’t the uproar about the three male Republicans who recently resigned like there was for Palin when she resigned. That crap ought to have been called out right away, but of course it wasn’t, even by sensible feminist bloggers. As the summer finally heats up in the valley and my impatience increases along with the humidity level, I have to wonder out loud if women aren’t their own worst enemy. Progress is so fucking simple; but hey, why bother? Reading the internet all day and bitching about each other is so much more productive! Whatever.

Finally, from the What We’re Up Against Department: 70% of Americans think a woman should take a man’s last name upon marriage; 50% think it ought to be law. Reasons cited include:

“They told us that women should lose their own identity when they marry and become a part of the man and his family. This was a reason given by many.”

Other respondents said they felt the marital name change was essential for religious reasons or as a practical matter.

“They said the mailman would get confused and that society wouldn’t function as well if women did not change their name,” Hamilton says.

I guess that’s enough to break the ice. Lame, I know, but at least now you know I’m not dead yet.

Posted in Political. Tags: . 6 Comments »
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