This is so spot on.
We eventually pay for care, or lack of. In this case, the lack of preventative care ends up costing Americans so much more. But also the care for those uninsured costs insured Americans too. That’s why I support the ACA (Obamacare), which makes general preventative care free, and has allowed so many uninsured to get insurance. There was a need for that in this country.
We shouldn’t be dying, nor allowing others to die.
Right now, there are movements worldwide to remove tax on hygiene products. So called the “tampon tax”.
In Australia, feminine hygiene products are taxed at 10%. This tax contributed to the equivalent of $19 million USD to their government. However, we are talking about a country that does not tax “essential health items”. These items include condoms, lubricants, nicotine patches, and sunscreen. I don’t get how feminine hygiene products are not included as an essential health item.
Canada’s bill to tax-exempt feminine hygiene passed and will begin on July 1st. This will include tampons, pads, and menstrual cups. I’m not sure of the nuances of this law. Like, if I paid $40 for a menstrual cup last year that will last me the next 10 years; I don’t get a tax credit on that, do I? I’m sure the law just applies to new purchases moving forward.
Now, I’m not saying that we need to remove this tax in the US. I get the US does things differently, and by state. Some states don’t tax food at fast food restaurants when you get it ‘to go’; they only charge the tax if you are using their facility to eat. Some states don’t charge tax on clothes, because they say that clothes are essential.
However, I got to thinking about this, and thought – we could use some tax credit just for being female. You feel me? First of all, it’s well-known (& accepted) fact that women make less money than men. How about a tax credit to off-set that? Also, women just have to deal with more *ish than men. Just ask any woman what she goes through in a normal day, and ask a man. It’s dramatically different.
I think you’d have to include the men who transitioned to female. Because I’m sure they go through a lot of *ish too. But I don’t think they should get the equal amount of credit, depending on the age they transitioned. Like, for example, Bruce Jenner led a very fortuned life as a man, and likely benefited more as a man than he would have as a woman. Whereas, maybe someone who transitioned as a teen would have to go through the struggle of the transition WHILST going through the struggle of being a teen. And god knows, the struggle of being a teen is not something anyone would wish on anyone.
Now I’m not belittling what Bruce Jenner went through. I get that he lived his whole life with an inner conflict that weighed on him everyday. I don’t mean to diminish that in any way. I’m just saying, to be a woman in this country, world actually, is not easy.
I get that people should be free to exercise their religion. But I *still* don’t get how corporations are people. Am I missing something? People are people. Corporations are legal entities. I don’t get (still) how a corporation is a person. Yes, I know I’ve been told this for years, that corporations are people. I must be missing something, because I just STILL don’t get it.
Let’s go back to my first sentence. I get that people should be free to exercise their religion. Honestly. Not like in some states (like FL, TN, NC) where they’ve tried to make Sharia law illegal. What is Sharia law? Simply religious belief. So, this religious freedom is extended for a corporation, but not for people. As I believe it was originally intended.
Now, let’s take a look at Hobby Lobby specifically. In their specific case, I get that they are against these “abortion drugs”. We’ll interchange the terms “abortion drugs” and “emergency contraception”, as we will use them to refer to the same thing. Now, you’re against emergency contraception. You are anti-abortion, and emergency contraception is the equivalent of abortion to you.
But here’s the thing…. you INVEST IN THESE SAME DRUGS. Your 401k plans invest in the companies that MAKE these drugs. So… um… where’s the morality then? Oh. Because you’re MAKING MONEY from it. I see.
And what about the 90% of your goods that come from a country that has FORCED ABORTIONS. That’s ok too, right? Because you can get your products for cheap, and sell for a greater profit.
Ok. So, to recap. Money is good. Abortion is bad. However, it’s ok to make money off of abortion, but not to provide emergency contraception in case a zygote has formed. Just in case. Not even an embryo yet. Maybe not even a zygote. But the lady does not want to find out later, and have to perform an ACTUAL abortion, which likely will happen if she was planning on getting one of these emergency contraception drugs.
I was in TX last month visiting my new favorite person in the world! My sister just had a baby, y’all!!
Anyway, in TX, I saw something on the news about a 16-yr old boy who was driving drunk & killed 4 people. So, when I came back home, I looked it up to see what came of it. Apparently, it was a little while ago, and this is what I found:
I didn’t really know much about these “Stand your ground” laws. And I heard about it while this recent Trayvon Martin case was going on, but I didn’t really research it. Until now.
Turns out, I live in a state with “stand your ground” (also nicknamed “shoot first”, obviously by a biased group against it). Not that I’m really for it; just calling a spade a spade. You know?
Michigan’s stand-your-ground law, MCL 780.972, provides that
“[a]n individual who has not or is not engaged in the commission of a crime at the time he or she uses deadly force may use deadly force against another individual anywhere he or she has the legal right to be with no duty to retreat if . . . [t]he individual honestly and reasonably believes that the use of deadly force is necessary to prevent” the imminent death, great bodily harm, or sexual assault of himself or another individual.
So, someone is allowed to use deadly force if they honestly & reasonable believe that deadly force is necessary. DEADLY FORCE.
I get that everyone’s all excited about SCOTUS repealing these laws as unconstitutional, but c’mon. Really?
These laws were unconstitutional. Of COURSE they were going to get stuck down. I’m surprised Americans didn’t have more faith in our Supreme Court.
I mean, if I can tell something is unconstitutional, then how could ppl who’ve studied the Constitution should be able to tell.
So, of course it was going to be struck down.
NBD.
Howevers – gentle reminder [ahem, to prod your reps] that it is still legal to fire someone simply because they are lgbt.
Ppl complain about how much money our federal govt spends. But so much of it really MUST be spent.
For example, I read an article today about how Boston is one of the most prepared cities for crisis. I think we can all agree now, in retrospect, that the US Govt funneling BILLIONS of dollars into crisis preparedness of major cities was $ well-spent.
You should read the article, b/c it goes into the drills they did.
The drills, which included hostage situations, HazMat incidents and a movie theater shooting, brought together emergency officials from the city, state and federal government, as well as from the Boston Police, SWAT teams, the Fire Department, EMS, local hospitals, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, the Coast Guard. All in all, there were over 600 participants in the November drill, from over fifty different departments and agencies.
“What the Urban Shield program does is test it all at the same time – bomb squads working, swat teams working, fire, HazMat, search and rescue, command centers activated, all your radio systems, hospitals activated – everyone’s kind of working together,” says Baker, who worked closely with the city to execute the simulation. “That’s where you start to find your gaps – who can’t speak to whom on the radio. You identify the real problems when you get everyone together.”
This is a good use of money. Especially after what we’ve seen happen this past week in Boston. Those ‘boys in blue’ really knew what they were doing, and KUDOS to that whole city!
On a slightly related note, about the whole federal funds thing. Back when Hurricane Sandy happened, so many Senators voted AGAINST giving funds to those affected by the storm. They needed to rebuild, and get back to work, re-open businesses. But Congress didn’t want to give them money. For a natural disaster.
Two of those who voted against giving them money, were the 2 Senators from TX. Well, now those 2 Texas senators are asking for money for what happened when that private business caught on fire & exploded in West, TX. I’m sympathetic for the city. But why, time & time again, are we against something until it hits us personally. Are we that disillusioned that we are no longer able to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes? I’m looking forward to finding out what happened there as well. That is, if that private company did not follow federal regulations. I’ve heard that there was at least 1 safety mark against them. Let’s see what we get out of this investigation as well.
I usually have CNN on over the weekend. Even if it’s just on in the background as I’m doing things. Same with when I have a day off. If I’m on your twitter feed, you sometimes see my angry tweets at #CNN or #msnbc, b/c it’s my only way to yell at the tv.
Well, I wasn’t really paying too much attention yesterday, but then the Steubenville rape trial came on. They aired a segment with the sentencing. And they showed these 2 young men crying, and were talking about how their college football career was being hurt.
And I was like…. whaaaatttt?!?!!!
Did they just empathize with 2 men who committed a violent crime against a 16-year old girl????!!!
No.
I must have heard them wrong.
No…. they’re saying how now these 2 young men will have to register as Sex Offenders for the rest of their lives, under Ohio law.
Um… yeah. Because they ARE sex offenders. What do you think RAPISTS are?
Rape is a violent crime. A CRIME. They ARE sex offenders, and SHOULD register as such.
What sort of HORRIBLE animal rapes a girl, and pose for pictures for social media. They were laughing, hootin & hollerin in pictures w/ an UNCONSCIOUS, STRIPPED girl!
A rapist.
They weren’t crying in court, after given their sentence, b/c they were sorry for what they did.
It was b/c they were sorry they had to pay a price for what they did.
But these rapists are being sympathized with. Even before CNN aired such a stupid viewpoint piece yesterday. They were sympathized with… when all those young kids at the parties were tweeting, twitpic-ing, instagramming a crime being committed. Then, the town trying to cover it up. Unfortunately, they shot themselves in the foot when those town-folk also raised kids that aired their dirty business out into the twittersphere. Incriminating evidence.
And now, today, Fox News aired the same clip I saw on CNN yesterday. However, Fox didn’t silence out the name of the real rape victim like every other broadcast did. Ugh. I’m hearing this gal’s getting death threats now on social media.
Here’s a Onion story that aired on Comedy Central back in 2011:
The Hartford Courant disclosed a new piece of info this wk that we didn’t know before… That Newtown shooting… 152 shots were fired in less than 5 mins. B/c in that Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle, were multiple, extended 30-round magazines. His mother would not have been able to purchase this if, in 2004, Congress had not let the Assault Weapons Ban expire.
He wouldn’t have been able to buy a magazine with more than 10 rounds in it if the 2004 law had been renewed. So, he would have had to re-load 14 times. Lag-time where he could have been stopped. The Assault Weapons Ban also banned 30-round magazines.
He’d need to re-load over a dozen times to do what he did in 3-4 reloads, more chance for error (drop a mag, or have something jam, or stumble). If the law had been renewed, he’d still only have had access to a 10-round magazine. Not the 30-round mags that his mama was able to purchase since the law didn’t renew.
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I’ma put in my 2 cents too.
When you get a student loan, you sign a PROMISSORY NOTE to get that loan. PROMISSORY. You LITERALLY PROMISE to pay that money back.
Teaching impressionable, quick to jump young adults that you can just take money for free is irresponsible. If anything, we need to tackle the issue of rising tuition costs that are out of control. NOT teach our youth that you can sign a promissory note for tens of thousands of dollars & just ask them to be “forgiven”. It’s not like you ate your co-workers piece of cake. It’s TENS of THOUSANDS of dollas! And you signed a paper after “loan counseling” PROMISING to pay it back! Are we teaching STUDENTS, those who are signing up asking to learn, that reneging on your word is the way to start your independent life?!?!?!
For the record, b/c for some reason, my personal experience will be questioned & thought of as relevant — I did take out loans. I was not given a free education. I am the daughter of immigrants. I did work 80-90 hrs a week during my summers from college, & I did take 10 yrs to pay off my loans. But I did pay them off, & I’m glad I did. My student loans taught me to budget, be responsible, & helped me raise my credit score. And if I do say so myself, my credit score is pretty spectacular!
Sweet Sunshower 