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"Classic" Kos: Women Legislate Men's Reproductive Health

Mon Mar 12, 2012 at 08:22 AM PDT 

Women legislators turn the tables and introduce bills regulating men's reproductive health

by Meteor Blades

 

Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner (D) isn't happy with bills that seek to control women's access to contraception and abortion.

 

She has joined a trend across the nation by introducing a bill that would require men seeking a prescription for erectile dysfunction drugs to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and "get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency."

 

Sex therapists would be required to present the option of "celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice.”

"The men in our lives, including members of the General Assembly, generously devote time to fundamental female reproductive issues—the least we can do is return the favor," Senator Turner said.  

"It is crucial that we take the appropriate steps to shelter vulnerable men from the potential side effects of these drugs.  

"When a man makes a crucial decision about his health and his body, he should be fully aware of the alternative options and the lifetime repercussions of that decision," Senator Turner said today.  

Men will be more easily guided through the process of obtaining treatment for impotence so they can better understand and more effectively address their condition.

Sen. Turner isn't the only legislator to introduce a "Viagra bill" or amendments in response to what mostly male legislators have been proposing around the nation.

 

In Illinois, for instance, state Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D) introduced an amendment to a bill requiring ultrasounds before a woman can get an abortion that would require men to watch an explicit video about the side-effects of erectile dysfunction drugs. And, Missouri state Rep. Stacey Newman (D) introduced a bill that would allow a man to obtain a vasectomy only when not doing so could cause him serious injury or death.

 

Some people may take these proposals as jokes. But the problem they spotlight, the war on women's reproductive rights and privacy, isn't funny at all.
 

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Please sign a petition in support of Turner's, Newman's and Cassidy's proposed legislation here.

Daily Kos: Fiorina's Lies Easily Debunked

   Tue Oct 06, 2015 at 08:30 AM PDT

Fiorina swipes at liberal media for unpaid campaign debts story. But it's not hard to prove.

   by Laura Clawson   

   

Carly Fiorina is not happy with the Washington Post article about the 2010 campaign debts she left unpaid for years, including a debt to the widow of a pollster who died while working for Fiorina.

 

Apparently Fiorina thinks all she needs to do is blame the liberal media:

According to MSNBC, Fiorina assailed "the left and their allies in the media" for the story, which was based on more than two dozen interviews with staff members, friends, contractors and operatives who worked on the 2010 Senate campaign. All said there was a huge problem with the operation: It didn't manage money well. Fiorina said Monday that The Post doesn't "have much credibility" anymore.

If not the Post, how about the Federal Election Commission, and Fiorina's own FEC filings?

 

Because of course the Post has Fiorina's termination report from her 2010 Senate campaign, and of course it was filed in January 2015, immediately before she began running for president.

 

It shows payments for finance consulting, political strategy consulting, research consulting, web ads, web service, database management, compliance consulting, printing, and, yes, to the widow of the pollster who died on the campaign.

 

It's documentary evidence, from Fiorina herself, that the original Post story was accurate, and she did not finish paying off hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign debt until five years later when she began running for president.

 

Fiorina is accomplished at the Republican school of lying firmly, confidently, and flagrantly, but for real, when not only are there dozens of witnesses to what you did but you yourself have filed government documents to that effect ... blaming "the left and their allies in the media" is just not going to hack it.

Hightower Lowdown: Who is Carly Fiorina?

In 1992, Ross Perot chose a complete unknown to he his presidential running mate. In his first debate, the VP candidate began by asking a question: "Who am I? Why am I here?"

The same should be asked about Carly Fiorina, the Republican presidential contender who has surged in recent polls of GOP primary voters. Her campaign is positioning her as a no-nonsense, successful corporate chieftain who can run government with business-like efficiency. In a recent debate, Fiorina rattled off a list of her accomplishments as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the high tech conglomerate; "We doubled the size of the company… quadrupled its top-line growth rate… quadrupled its cash flow… tripled its rate of innovations," she declared in power-point style.

Statistics, however, can be a sophisticated way of lying. In fact, the growth she bragged about was mostly the result of her buying another computer giant in a merger that proved to be disastrous – Hewlett-Packard's profits declined 40 percent in her six years, its stock price plummeted, and she fired 30,000 workers even saying publicly that their jobs should be shipped overseas. Finally, she was fired

Before we accept her claim that "running government like a business" would be a positive, note that the narcissistic corporate culture richly rewarded Fiorina for failure. Yes, she was fired, but unlike the thousands of HP employees she dumped, a golden parachute was provided to let her land in luxury – counting severance pay, stock options, and pension, she was given $42 million to go away.

But, here she comes again. Lacking even one iota of humility, this personification of corporate greed and economic inequality is now throwing out a blizzard of lies to hide who she is and to bamboozle Republicans into thinking she belongs in the White House.

"As Profile Rises, Fiorina Aims To Redefine Record as a C.E.O." The New York Times, September 21, 2015.

"From Finances to History, Details Prove Malleable," The New York Times, September 12, 2015.

Hightower Lowdown: the Rich "Check" the Will of the People

Donnie Trump is for it, Barack Obama is too, as are Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton.

"It" is the idea of finally ending a ridiculous tax loophole that was written by and for the richest, most pampered elites on Wall Street. An obscurely-titled "carried-interest" tax break allows billionaire hedge-fund hucksters to have their massive incomes taxed at a much lower rate than the one teachers, main street businesses, carpenters, and other modest-income people must pay.

This privileged treatment of money shufflers over people who do constructive work in our society adds to America's widening chasm of inequality. It's so unfair and unpopular that even Trump and Bush see that it has to go. So, it's bye-bye loophole, right?

Ha – just kidding! Trump can mouth all he wants, but no animal hath such fury as a hedge-funder whose special tax boondoggle is threatened. Trump had barely gotten the word "unfair" out of his puffy lips before the tax-loophole profiteers deployed battalions of lobbyists, PR flacks, and front-group operatives out to defend their precious carried-interest provision. Just one group, with the arcane name of Private Equity Growth Capital Council, rushed a dozen Gucci-clad lobbyists to Capitol Hill to "inform" lawmakers about the virtues of coddling Wall Street elites with tax favors.

Of course, "informing" meant flashing their checkbooks at key members of Congress. After all, even the loudest blast of political talk is cheap – and it's the silent sound of a pen writing out a campaign check that makes WashingtonWorld keep spinning in favor of the rich.

Sure enough, Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Orrin Hatch, the two lawmakers who head Congress' tax-writing committees, quickly announced that – the will of the people aside – there would be no repeal of the hedge-fund loophole anytime soon.

"Defenders of Tax Break for Rich Rally to Defend It," The New York Times, September 19, 2015.