The bipartisan Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has been reintroduced in both houses of Congress this week, having been introduced in some form in almost every Congress since 1994. The bill, in its 2011 form, would make sexual orientation and gender identity protected classes in employment, such that LGBT Americans could not be discriminated against by employers (except religious organizations). Currently, individuals can legally be fired for being gay in 29 states and for being transgender in 38 states.
Because of the Republican majority in the House, there are no expectations for the bill to pass this session. House sponsor Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) called the reintroduction “an organizing tool.” Lawmakers and advocates should use opportunity to educate the public (and incumbents) about the importance of this legislation.
Tico Almeida, who previously served as ENDA’s lead counsel in the House, today echoed the importance of holding hearings and making sure transgender voices are included:
I vividly remember sitting in the counsel’s chair on the committee dais as Vandy Beth Glenn testified about being fired on the same day she told her employer that she planned to transition from male to female. I watched several members of Congress tear up and sadly shake their heads while listening to her speak.
By contrast, the lone Senate hearing during the same time period intentionally and controversially excluded the testimony of even a single transgender American. But that mistake by Senate staffers is in the past.
Individuals who identify as transgender are particularly vulnerable to employment discrimination. According to a recent study on transgender Americans, they are twice as likely to be unemployed and four times as likely to be living in poverty compared to the general public. Almost half the respondents (47 percent) reported being fired, not hired, or not promoted because they were trans, and 90 percent reported harassment or mistreatment on the job. With only 12 states offering protections (Hawaii will make 13), ENDA is crucial for improving the lives of transgender Americans.
The impact of personal stories cannot be underestimated. A 2007 survey found that 41 percent of Americans know a friend or family member who is gay, even though only about 3.5 percent of the population openly identify as LGB. Such individuals who know someone gay are more than twice as likely to support same-sex marriage as those who do not. A 2008 study confirms the same impact is true for employment discrimination and other matters of LGBT equality.
If the reintroduction of ENDA is used to effectively communicate and relate the challenges and struggle of LGBT Americans, it could ensure the bill finally sees the passage it deserves.
Last week’s government funding deal approving spending limits for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 passed the House today and is expected to pass the Senate, setting the stage for the next big budgetary task in Congress: raising the nation’s debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said the U.S. will reach its legal borrowing limit around May 16th.
Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) said on Sunday, “I will not support an increase in the debt ceiling without real and meaningful changes in spending in the short-term and in the long-term.” However, back in 2002 Pence felt very differently about the debt ceiling. During a speech on the House floor, Pence said that the debt ceiling needs to be increased because failure to do so could threaten Social Security benefits. “I truly believe if you owe debts, pay debts,” Pence said:
PENCE: I rise today as a conservative Member of this institution, Mr. Speaker. I did not come here to increase the government’s debt. I came here believing, as so many people I represent believe, that if you owe debts, pay debts.
I spoke to an elderly woman on a radio program in Richmond, Indiana, today, in the heart of the heartland district that I represent. And Mr. Speaker, she said with fear in her voice that she was worried that a conservative like me would not support raising the debt ceiling and would put at risk her Social Security check. She assumed that my loathing of red ink would cause me to vote in such a way or fail to act in such a way that it would jeopardize her benefits and the benefits of people that she loves.
Well, I assured her then and I rise today to assure all those that are listening, Mr. Speaker, that I will not do that. I truly believe if you owe debts, pay debts.
Watch it:
Pence is far fromthe only Republican who once found raising the debt ceiling to be a noncontroversial task worthy of wide support, but now wants to extract concessions in return for doing it. It’s also worth noting that Senate Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling immediately after passing the budget-busting 2003 Bush tax cut.
Armed with fantasy and lies, Tennessee legislators are attempting to dismantle science education in their state’s public schools. Last week, the Tennessee House voted by an overwhelming 70 to 23 margin in favor of a radical bill to teach the “controversy” about scientific subjects “including, but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.” During the debate on HB 368, introduced by Rep. Bill Dunn (R-Knoxville), anti-science conservative Rep. Sheila Butt (R-Columbia) explained that Aqua Net hairspray could have saved us from global warming, if it weren’t for those pesky scientists:
At the risk of drawing this out, which I hate to do, but I do know, as Rep. Dunn has mentioned, that I was taught things in science class in high school which have turned out not to be true. I remember so many of us when we were seniors in high school, we gave up Aqua Net hairspray. You remember why we did that? Because it was causing global warming! That aerosol in those cans was causing global warming. Since then, scientists have said maybe we shouldn’t have given up that aerosol can because that aerosol was actually absorbing the earth’s rays and keeping us from global warming. So, so many things we learned in science class have turned out not to be true.
Watch it:
Butt’s Aqua Net theory of global warming — an example of the “objective” examination of “scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories” that HB 368 encourages — is an impressive concoction of confused science and malapropism. Aerosols are particles that are small enough to be suspended in air, and can refer to very different things like hair spray or soot. The world’s governments banned the chlorofluorocarbons that were used as propellants in aerosol spray cans like Aqua Net after scientists presented unequivocal evidence that CFCs were destroying the earth’s ozone layer. Again, the CFCs were the propellants, not the aerosolized hair product. This international response successfully cut ozone-destroying gases worldwide, forestalling one kind of global atmospheric catastrophe.
Meanwhile, unrelated efforts to reduce a completely different kind of “aerosol” pollution — pollutants from cars and power plants that causes acid rain and smog — have also been successful, saving millions of lives and restoring forests and streams to health. But that soot also can block the sun’s radiation (not the “earth’s rays”) from reaching the surface. In the 1970s, levels of that kind of aerosol pollution were bad enough that some scientists were concerned it could cause global cooling. Since then, that pollution has gone down as greenhouse pollution has skyrocketed, leading to the rapid global warming we are now experiencing.
It’s unfortunate that Butt’s high-school science teachers did not do a good enough job teaching her that the same word can have different meaning in different contexts, that stratospheric ozone depletion is not the same as anthropogenic global warming, and uncertainty and confusion are two different things.
In addition to Butt’s fantasy, Rep. Frank Nicely (R-Strawberry Plains) argued that the “critical thinker” Albert Einstein would have wanted public schools to teach creationism alongside the science of biological evolution:
I think that if there’s one thing that everyone in this room could agree on, that would be that Albert Einstein was a critical thinker. He was a scientist. I think that we probably could agree that Albert Einstein was smarter than any of our science teachers in our high schools or colleges. And Albert Einstein said that a little knowledge would turn your head toward atheism, while a broader knowledge would turn your head toward Christianity.
Watch it:
In fact, Nicely falsely attributed this quotation to Einstein, a Jewish humanist and professed agnostic, who never argued that scientific knowledge leads one to Jesus Christ. The statement is actually a mangled paraphrase of the 16th century philosopher Francis Bacon, who argued that “a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”
These legislators are trying to reconcile their evangelical Christianity with science and democracy by perverting all three — trying to wrap the lessons of faith in pseudoscientific garb, reinterpreting lessons of the observed world to fit a preconceived fantasy, and then breaking down the walls between religion and the state that protect them both.
There is another pathway to reconcile religious faith and scientific knowledge. Religious leaders like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams explore the moral implications of the polluted world scientific tools describe in stark terms. Climate scientists like MIT’s Kerry Emanuel and Barry Bickmore are guided by their faith to explain with clarity what choices man is making with the world we have inherited. As Albert Einstein actually said, “To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms — this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.”
By the way, Butt might be pleased to know that scientists and engineers have figured out how to return Aqua Net to store shelves, without CFC propellants.
Yesterday, Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D) said much of the legislation his state’s Republican lawmakers are pushing is “in direct contradiction to the expressed will of the people of Montana.” So, as promised, Schweitzer took his red-hot “VETO” branding iron to a stack of GOP bills that range from legislation to weaken Montana’s “clean and green” energy standards — a highly beneficial tax incentive that encourages clean energy projects — to a bill that would eliminate same day voter registration. Watch it:
Notably, among the 21 bills vetoed, Schweitzer rejected GOP legislation that sought to open up cyanide gold mining operations — a process that places citizens in grave risk of cyanide poisoning from contaminated drinking water. Similar proposals have already been rejected by voters in two separate initiatives. Schweitzer also rejected GOP legislation to cap damage awards for motor vehicle accidents, a bill that would forbid schools from allowing abortion-related course materials in sex education, and legislation to repeal Montana’s medical marijuana law.
As negotiations over Montana’s budget are starting to heat up, it’s likely that Schweitzer will need to do the same with his branding iron again.
The continuing resolution approving spending limits for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 passed the House today and is expected to pass the Senate, setting the stage for the next big budgetary task in Congress: raising the nation’s debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that U.S. will reach its legal borrowing limit around May 16th.
Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) said on Sunday that, “I will not support an increase in the debt ceiling without real and meaningful changes in spending in the short-term and in the long-term.” However, back in 2002 Pence felt very differently about the debt ceiling. During a speech on the House floor, Pence said that the debt ceiling needs to be increased because failure to do so could threaten Social Security benefits. “I truly believe if you owe debts, pay debts,” Pence said:
I rise today as a conservative Member of this institution, Mr. Speaker. I did not come here to increase the government’s debt. I came here believing, as so many people I represent believe, that if you owe debts, pay debts.
I spoke to an elderly woman on a radio program in Richmond, Indiana, today, in the heart of the heartland district that I represent. And Mr. Speaker, she said with fear in her voice that she was worried that a conservative like me would not support raising the debt ceiling and would put at risk her Social Security check. She assumed that my loathing of red ink would cause me to vote in such a way or fail to act in such a way that it would jeopardize her benefits and the benefits of people that she loves.
Well, I assured her then and I rise today to assure all those that are listening, Mr. Speaker, that I will not do that. I truly believe if you owe debts, pay debts.
Watch it:
Pence is far fromthe only Republican who once found raising the debt ceiling to be a noncontroversial task worthy of wide support, but now wants to extract concessions in return for doing it. Senate Republicans also raised the debt ceiling immediately after passing the 2003 Bush tax cut.
Congress may have to consider a smaller highway-funding bill than initially planned because of a steep drop in revenue from the federal gasoline tax, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said Thursday. [...] Lawmakers haven’t reached a consensus on how to plug the gap. President Barack Obama and leading lawmakers have rejected increasing the 18.4-cent federal tax on a gallon of gas.
I wouldn’t even necessarily mind this personally (even though it’s dumb regardless) if not for the fact that these “highway bills” aren’t really highway bills, they provide the meager funding streams the congress deigns to offer for most alternative transportation as well.
You don’t win the future by cutting back on your physical infrastructure out of fear of taxing pollution. Just saying.
This afternoon, the House of Representatives is debating a measure that would defund Planned Parenthood, which provides valuable medical services and treatment to millions of women — especially those who are low-income — across the nation.
At one point during the floor debate over the measure, Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-MS) made a series of preposterous and hysterical claims about the work of Planned Parenthood and the GOP’s measure. First, Nunnelee falsely claimed the measure wouldn’t deny funding for womens’ health. He then said that Planned Parenthood has protected child predators and people who have “raped our granddaughters”:
NUNNELEE: In this resolution not one dime or womens’ health or family planning health funding is reduced. It simply says those dollars cannot go to Planned Parenthood. This is an organization that has protected those who prey on our children and has protected those who have raped our granddaughters.
Watch it:
Despite Nunnelee’s claims, cutting off funding to Planned Parenthood would indeed cut funding for womens’ health care. The organization has conducted hundreds of thousands of breast exams, pap tests, and other services important to women. These services account for well over 90 percent of the organization’s operations, while abortions accounts for just 3 percent.
Moreover, it’s ironic for Nunnelee of all people to be making the hyperbolic and inaccurate claim that Planned Parenthood is defending rapists. After all, back in January, he was an original co-sponsor of H.R. 3, which while supposedly based around denying taxpayer funding for abortion, actually was originally written to do something much more sinister. As the Daily Beast’s Michelle Goldberg explained, the bill would redefine rape with regards to abortion:
Under H.R. 3, the only victims of “forcible rape” would qualify for federally funded abortions. Victims of statutory rape—say, a 13-year-old girl impregnated by a 30-year-old man—would be on their own. So would victims of incest if they’re over 18. And while “forcible rape” isn’t defined in the criminal code, the addition of the adjective seems certain to exclude acts of rape that don’t involve overt violence—say, cases where a woman is drugged or has a limited mental capacity. “It’s basically putting more restrictions on what was defined historically as rape,” says Keenan.
Unfortunately, the clients of Planned Parenthood aren’t the only people Nunnelee is putting in his sights. He also put out a statement today praising Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget, which would effectively privatize Medicare and shred the social safety net — forcing future seniors to pay the majority of their income for health care.
Update
This afternoon in the Senate, Democrats and five Republicans voted 58-42 to reject a bill to defund Planned Parenthood. In a statement, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards called the vote a “major victory for women’s health,” noting that even some anti-choice senators voted against the bill because it “would have denied women family planning.”
Alexander Russo has a pretty negative take on my friend Dana Goldstein’s new article “The Test Generation”, a fairly negative take on the educational agenda being enacted by Harrison County, Colorado superintendent of schools Mike Miles.
I think I agree with Russo on the policy merits, but that’s exactly why I disagree with him on the journalism merits. The exposition is very clear and informative, and though it’s obvious Goldstein is skeptical (for basically Campbell’s Law reasons) that this is going to work out, those of us who are less worried about the Campbell’s Law phenomenon see here a very strong portrait of a school district going all-in on measuring and rewarding quality. Michael Petrilli tweeted today his prediction that the piece will turn Miles “into a reform hero” and I agree. To me that’s great narrative policy journalism—you learn a lot, and people still disagree. What’s more the issue she raises here of the tension between what reformers deem evidence-based approaches for teaching poor kids and the sensibilities of middle class parents really is an important one. Ultimately education policy is going to need more flexibility than the search for The Best Way To Run A School District can allow for.
The one real bone I’d pick with her characterization of what’s happening in Colorado is that I’m not sure how much sense it makes to complain that “high-stakes testing” is being administered too often. If you have someone sit for a test 25 separate times per year then the stakes for any one test can’t be all that high. That would seem to me to be part of the point of testing frequently.
