The Political Voices of Women

Here is a guest post from community member Marcia G. Yerman, who also blogs at The Huffington Post.

[If you would like to be a guest blogger on The Political Voices of Women, just join our community, and start posting.]

“The Time Warner Summit: Politics 2008,” held at the Time Warner headquarters in New York City and co-sponsored with CNN, was a corporate branded event with big name heavy-hitters taking on questions about media, news, and the election. After attending both days of the conference, it reinforced my belief that digital media was the future for pushing out women’s stories, concerns, and dialogues.

There were many prominent women featured. Campbell Brown, CNN Anchor, moderated the opening keynote roundtable comprised of four men. Candy Crowley, senior political correspondent at CNN, spoke during the Media Power vs. Political Power session. One of the most dynamic speakers over the two days was Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent for CNN. Her persona and delivery style popped during the discussion with colleagues that included Wolf Blitzer and Fareed Zakaria and former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke.

Whether you consider women and minorities successfully enmeshed in the total media picture
or their specificity overlooked, depends upon your point of view. But the conference was a definitive contrast to presentation I recently attended at St. John’s University, which totally focused on the intersectionality of race and gender with the election story. There, a majority of the speakers were law professors presenting academic work.

The Time Warner symposium included one panel entitled Women and the 2008 Election: Playing Politics with Gender–Media, Candidates and the Majority Vote. Led by Lisa Witter, Fenton Communications COO and co-founder of SheSource — a “brain trust” of female experts — six women explored women as swing voters and the cultural phenomenon of Sarah Palin’s candidacy. In reference to Michelle Obama, they also discussed whether you could be an outspoken black woman without being described as “angry” by media pundits.

As Witter pointed out while speaking to a full room of women — “Wish there were more you!” she joked to the sprinkling of men — 59 percent of primary voters were women. At the end of the discussion, Carol Jenkins, Women’s Media Center president, posed questions going forward for the media. She called for continued examination of “who is calling the shots, who is making the decisions, and who is missing from the picture.”

With the understanding that women do not getting their narratives adequately told — if told at all — the need for a fresh playing field is palpable. In the new media, women have an opportunity to create their own communities and their own brands. Whether on the left or right of the political spectrum, a mommy blogger or a political blogger, women are flooding the Internet. This was borne out by a BlogHer/Compass Partners survey found 36.2 million women were actively participating in blogs. Of women online, 53 percent were reading blogs, 37 percent were posting comments, and 28 percent were writing or updating blogs.

Read more »

I am happy to announce that this weekend, our Political Voices of Women Community has surpassed 100 members.  Our growing community is a mix of political opinions and affiliations, from liberal to conservative, and everything in between.  [see community here]

The Political Voices of Women (main site), began as a list of 100 women political bloggers.  In less than a year, that list has grown to well over 500 (see list here).  We now have a growing community, and have recently added twelve contributing editors…

• Kay B. Day
• Sarah Granger
• Tami Winfrey Harris
• Pamela Lyn
• Patricia Murphy
• PunditMom
• SJ Reidhead
• Suzanne Reisman
• Janet Shan
• Dana Tuszke
• Tracy Viselli
• Jill Miller Zimon

In addition to our regular contributors, we also have many guest bloggers each week.  The Political Voices of Women is becoming a powerhouse of women political bloggers.

Our community members can contribute posts to our blog, and often these posts are used as guest posts on the primary site.  Here are some of our most active community members…

• Penny Ronning – The NonSilent Majority
• Deb Della Piana – Turn Left Hypocrisy.com
• Emily D – Political Artwork
• Marcia G. Yerman – The Huffington Post
• Anita S. Lane -Unconventional Politics
• Card-carrying Buddhist – No Blood For Hubris
• Just Wondering – Vim and Vinegar
• Nancy Hill – Build Peace
• Carol Gee – South by Southwest
• Zaftig Redhead -The Zaftig Redhead
• Doris Anne Bearlieu – Life’s Ultimate Test
• Emily Kronenberger -  New Wave Grrrl

Members can comment on posts, start and participate in forum discussions, promote their personal blogs, upload videos and images, make new friends, and more.  Our main site is open to both men and women, but our community is strictly women…I think the all women aspect of our community promotes “real” and “honest” discussion, without the need for visoral and personal attacks.  Even though we often disagree within the community, we also want to promote a safe place for these disagreements, so respectful disagreement is what you will find here.

If you are a woman who blogs (or would like to blog) about politics, I hope you will consider joining our community.

[cross-posted at BlogHer Health and Wellness]

A new report is out about insurance and health care, and it’s not good. If you think the cost of health care is high now, just wait…It’s going to get even higher. Who would have thought that you could have insurance, and still not be able to afford healthcare? How is that possible? Only in America.

A few weeks ago I posted about the rising cost of prescription drugs, now it’s copays and premiums that will be increasing. Even people who have insurance and prescription drug plans, still can’t afford their medications. I thought insurance was suppose to “insure” we have quality and affordable health care? Not so much.

The United States spends more of its income on health care than any nation on earth, nearly $6,000 per person per year, more than 15 percent of our total income. In contrast, the countries of the European Monetary Union spend about $2,500 per person per year, less than 10 percent of their income.

The United States is very rich and we spend the most in the world on health care. We have a right to expect more for our money than a life expectancy outcome that places us thirtieth in the world, behind Singapore, Chile, and Costa Rica as well as Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and every Western European nation.

Our health care system certainly delivers innovations in pharmaceutical and other technologies. It leads the world in Nobel Prizes for medicine and physiology. But it does not deliver medical care equitably to all Americans. Those who can pay have access to the best health care in the world. Those with good insurance plans—a decreasing fraction of the population—get good, life-extending health care. The rest must make do. And the result is that enough people fall through the cracks to place us at the bottom of the rich country life expectancy tables.

Here is some of what other women bloggers are saying about the rising cost of health care.

From Green LA Girl…

Our health care system’s so fucked up that people are getting married — and considering divorce! — simply due to health insurance issues. In the NY Times: “For today’s couples, “in sickness and in health” may seem less a lover’s troth than an actuarial contract. They marry for better or worse, for richer or poorer, for co-pays and deductibles.”

From MOMocrats…

• Under McCain’s Plan, Health Insurance Benefits Would be Taxed For The First Time, Resulting In A $3.6 Trillion Tax Increase On Working Families. McCain’s health care plan would eliminate the payroll deduction on health care benefits, which would have the effect of raising taxes on working families by $3.6 trillion. [New York Times, 5/1/08]
• The Health Care Tax Credit McCain Offers Would Cover Less Than Half The Cost Of An Average Health Care Plan. The McCain health plan would give families a $5,000 tax credit to purchase health insurance. However, in 2007, the average family health insurance plan cost $12,000 – more than double the value of McCain’s health care tax credit. [“Employer Health Benefits 2007 Annual Survey,” Kaiser Family Foundation, 9/11/07; “‘Call To Action’ On Health Care Reform,” John McCain 2008 press release, 4/29/08; Wall Street Journal, 10/11/07]

From Just Random‘s presidential wish list…

Universal Health Care (or at least affordable health care) – Why is the United States the only modernized country with out some form of universal health care? I know an argument could be made for the U.S. having the best health care, but why can’t we have both, come on some one smarter than me make it happen. Every child in this country should have access to health care.

From Christian Liberal’s Weblog…

Whatever the case, it’s surprising that so many self-professed Christians, and especially the evangelical type, are so eager to maul, mangle and manipulate those words, those lessons, so that it comes out as “every man for himself”, which of course is the exact opposite of the meaning and spirit of those teachings.

They’ll use phrases like “self-determination” or “market forces”, but it’s really just code words for “you’re on your own” and “don’t expect any help from me.” Likewise, they will use negative words to describe the concept. It’s been found that a majority of Americans favors universal healthcare, but if you change the language to “socialized medicine” the approval rating drops below 50%. And the greed-oriented apologists are quite expert at word-smithing.

The point is, any good-hearted Christian would not begrudge the care given to a needy neighbor.

Are you having trouble affording health care? Are you hoping if Obama is elected, things might get a little better? Are you worried, that if McCain is elected, things will get worse? Let me know what you think in comments.

BlogHer’s Mary Katharine Ham spoke with McCain advisor Nancy Pfotenhauler…

—

Here are a few excerpts from a post at BlogHer by Professor Kim Pearson…

A new report card on the state of the US workforce finds that more of us are struggling to find full-time work, pay for health care and manage our debts. Meanwhile union and business advocates are drawing battle lines over a proposed new law that would change the way workers decide whether to unionize. The new law is so important that one expert says it could “decide the future of organized labor in the United States.”

. . .

In the face of these challenges, labor advoates are pushing for the Employee Free Choice Act which allows workers to choose a union if a majority of workers sign a petition that is validated by the National Labor Relations board. It strengthens penalties for employers who penalize pro-union workers, and provides for mediatiion and arbitration if a collective bargaining agreement can’t be reached within a specified time period.

. . .

Advocates launched a new TV ad during the Democratic National Convention:

*You can read Kim’s full post at BlogHer*

[Cross-posted at BlogHer Health & Wellness]

This is the thing…Blogging about politics is very stressful.   And, we all know what stress can do to our health.

Do you blog about politics?  Is politics making you stressed?  Is your blood pressure running a bit high?  Are you getting more headaches than usual?  Are you losing sleep because you’re blogging to all hours of the night?  Does the release of poll numbers give you heart palpitations?  Do you ever get the urge to lock yourself in a dark room and not come out until after the election?  If you have answered yes to any of these questions, you may be suffering from Political Blogger Stress Syndrome (or PBSS).

There is no medicine or treatment for PBSS [Although, give the pharmaceutical companies some time, I'm sure they will come up with something...expensive], and many sufferers don’t even realize they have it.  So.  What can we do to combat the symptoms of PBSS?

Read more »

Here is a clip of Erin Kotecki Vest being interviewed live on CNN. GREAT JOB ERIN!

—

Erin Kotecki Vest from BlogHer, did this interview earlier today, with Valerie Jarrett of the Obama campaign…

—

Here is a guest post by Cynthia Samuels at Don’t Gel Too Soon.

[If you would like to be a guest blogger on The Political Voices of Women, just join our community, and start posting.]

This is breaking my heart. Why is it that we Democrats are incapable of NOT shooting ourselves in the foot (feet even)? In my view (and I’m hardly alone in this) this may be the most critical election of my lifetime. I’ve written (are you sick of it yet?) about the parallels to 1968 when the refusal of many anti-war voters to show up at the polls and vote for Hubert Humphrey brought us Richard Nixon and a cascade of disaster. That could and most likely will happen again if we don’t all pull ourselves together.

I heard a commentator quote — I thought Jefferson but can’t find the source — “True democracy means acceptance of defeat by one vote.” Sounds right, doesn’t it? But there is what we wish were true and there is political reality, and the reality this year is that every moment of hesitation by Senator Clinton’s supporters puts another barrier between Senator Obama and the White House. My most-respected friend PunditMom has a very smart analysis of where all this antipathy is coming from. And there’s a survey of much of the conversation in Lisa Stone’s summary at BlogHer.

Read more »

What would you do if your method of birth control (ie: pills, IUD’s), were deemed to be an abortion and no longer available to you?

This is a reproductive rights story that has been covered by bloggers for several weeks now. And, as shocking and crazy as it sounds, it just may become a reality before the end of the Bush administration. If this policy is implemented, it will not be a simple thing to correct, even with a new administration.

On his blog today, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, has attempted to defend his position of redefining contraception as abortion. In his dishonest attempt to clarify this position, he blatantly ignores the main aspect concerning contraception, while also blurring the lines between medical ethics and ideology. Below is an example.

Michael Leavitt…

I want to reiterate. If the Department of Health and Human Services issues a regulation on this matter, it will aim at one thing, protecting the right of conscience of those who practice medicine. From what I’ve read the last few days, there’s a serious need for it.
[read full post by Michael Leavitt here]

Here is video of Hillary Clinton speaking at a Planned Parenthood conference on this serious issue…

From The Huston Chronicle – Redefining Abortion…

The Bush administration has consistently opposed providing funding for international birth control programs, but until now has not tried to limit the use of contraceptives inside the United States. That could change in the president’s final months in office. Health and Human Services officials are considering a draft regulation that would classify most birth control pills, the Plan B emergency contraceptive and intrauterine devices as forms of abortion because they prevent the development of fertilized eggs into fetuses.

The rule, which does not require congressional approval, would allow health care workers who object to abortion on moral or religious grounds to refuse to counsel women on their birth control options or supply contraceptives. It would forbid more than half a million health agencies nationwide that receive federal funds from requiring employees to provide such services. Pharmacists could use the rule as a justification for refusing to fill birth control prescriptions, and insurance companies could cite it as a basis for declining to cover the costs.An existing regulation allows health care providers with objections to abortion to abstain from providing it to patients. By extending the definition of abortion to cover contraceptives, federal officials are attempting to create by administrative fiat what would fail by a wide margin in Congress.

Read more »