[Peace-discuss] Will I.P. elect McCain?

[C. G. Estabrook]

Our congressional representative, Tim Johnson, who's been praised recently for 
not voting in obviously wrong ways on a few matters, cast a couple of bad votes 
this week that raise aspects of the problem.  First, he voted *against* HR 1338, 
which sought to ban employer retaliation and enable women to sue for recovery of 
back pay and compensatory and punitive damages; then he voted *for* making that 
new legal authority dependent on the Labor Department's showing that the law 
would not hinder the ability of employers to recruit their workforces!

The legislation was designed to correct discriminatory decisions by the vastly 
business-friendly Supreme Court, and I think we'd all agree that Tim voted wrong
on it.  But note that the legislation provides at best an equality of 
exploitation (a stop-gap, one might say).  The business class a generation ago 
discovered that it could use the second wave of feminism against its hated and 
feared rival, the labor movement, which it has now effectively vanquished. Wage 
rates have been essentially flat for three decades, and the stagflation of the 
1970s is not a threat in the current recession because wage demands have been 
defeated -- and one of the reasons was the vast increase of the "reserve army of 
the unemployed" when American families went from one to two wage earners.

Liberation of women in employment under American conditions paradoxically led to 
the growing increase in inequality in the current generation. The Left's giving 
up the attack on those conditions at the same time is its principal crime. --CGE


John W. wrote:
> ... 
> I agree with Carl (I think) that if there is to be any sort of 
> affirmative action, it should be class- or income-based rather than 
> exclusively race- or gender-based.
> 
> John Wason