Not so well, or fair

Here's one for all those fet-o-philes  who love those ''preborn children'' for 9 months and then, on the 10th month, discover they have to contribute to their care and feeding, schooling and housing.

Growing up poor isn't merely hard on kids. It might also be bad for their brains. A long-term study of cognitive development in lower- and middle-class students found strong links between childhood poverty, physiological stress and adult memory.

The findings support a neurobiological hypothesis for why impoverished children consistently fare worse than their middle-class counterparts in school, and eventually in life.

"Chronically elevated physiological stress is a plausible model for how poverty could get into the brain and eventually interfere with achievement," wrote Cornell University child-development researchers Gary Evans and Michelle Schamberg in a paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Now obviously, not all unwanted pregnancies happen to the poor but you can bet many of them do. And, because these women have limited access to contraception because of the cost -- in some areas of urban America, druggists lock up condoms -- or because they are in locations where there's no easy availability to abortion, such as PEI or New Brunswick, well, it's hardly surprising that more kids are born in impoverished homes.

Of course, the fet-o-philes will be wagging their fingers and saying these people shouldn't be having sex then.

Well, maybe they shouldn't but they do and so, as a society, we need to care for all our children.

Otherwise, they could grow up into far more expensive people we need to care for.

Green meanies

Further to Chris Hedges' warnings about how we're breeding like bunnies all the way to extinction, population expert Betsy Hartmann argues that, instead of punishing women in poor countries, what's needed is ''effective and equitable environmental and climate policy.''

Raising alarms about overpopulation distracts us from the real environmental tasks at hand. It also undermines the provision of good quality, voluntary family planning services, instead legitimizing top-down punitive policies that hurt women.

Today's population alarmists are stuck back in the 1960s when high rates of population growth made it look as if the world was experiencing a population explosion. But much has changed since then. While world population is projected to increase from 6.7 billion today to about 9 billion in 2050, the rate of growth has slowed considerably. The average number of children born to a woman in the Global South is now 2.75, and the UN predicts this figure will drop to 2.05 by 2050.

Moreover, the few countries that still have relatively high birth rates, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, have the least impact on environmental factors such as global warming. From 1950-2000, the entire continent of Africa was responsible for only 2.5% of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Though it is impossible to predict exactly what world population will look like further in the future, most demographers agree we are on the path toward population stabilization with families all across the globe having two children or less. In fact, demographers tend to be more concerned these days about declining population growth and population aging than they are about too many people.

In addition to ignoring the numbers, the focus on overpopulation obscures the ways different economic and political systems perpetuate poverty, inequality and environmental degradation. It places the blame on the people with the least amount of resources and power rather than on corrupt governments and rich elites. The biggest security threat facing the world right now is the economic crisis, caused by a small coterie of greedy financiers and lax governments, ours in particular.

And here comes the punchline:

The population controllers also have blinders on their eyes when they attribute the cutting down of forests, the polluting of water supplies, and the extinction of species to too many poor people, rather than the unchecked power of large corporations to monopolize resources and ravage the land. Missing from the picture is the question of technological choice: for example, reducing the population of automobiles and investing in public transport worldwide would do much more to curtail climate change than imposing limits on family size.

So it's completely up to us here in the land of minivans and fresh blueberries in February, large houses and air conditioning, to change radically .

I wonder if we can.

A friend and I were talking this past weekend about how we have no choice yet we still don't see it. 

But ot's a perfect storm now, a convergence of many factors: the economy, especially the fiscal mess to the south of us, the environmental crisis, the inevitable drying up of the world's oil and fresh water, major shifts in the mediascape plus the presence, if not the participation, of generations raised with communication and organizing tools unlike any that have come before.

If Gutenberg helped launch the Industrial Revolution by allowing people to exchange information and share ideas, imagine what might happen at relative hyper  velocity superspeed online, and with who-knows-what doohickey gets invented tomorrow.

I'm not sure whether to be excited ... or afraid.

Ontari-scary-o

Okay, here's the Brian Hughes graphic that was on the front page of The Star today, attached to this story by Robert Benzie. The boldface is mine.

Read it carefully because there's a trick question coming:

Premier Dalton McGuinty's move toward harmonizing the 8 per cent provincial sales tax with the 5 per cent GST is meeting with sharp resistance within his Liberal caucus, the Star has learned.

Behind closed doors in Tuesday's caucus meeting, skittish MPPs aired grievances over the scheme – which would raise consumption taxes on books, feminine hygiene products, heating fuel, children's clothing, diapers and fast-food value meals by 8 per cent while reducing the overall tax burden for business.

The premier has been receptive to arguments from business people who say they are at a disadvantage because they pay more in taxes to purchase equipment or machinery than competitors in Quebec or the Atlantic provinces, where the two taxes have already been harmonized.

But Ontario consumers would feel the impact immediately because many products that are now taxed federally but not provincially would be subject to the equivalent of both taxes under a harmonized system.

Do the Ontario Liberals hate women? Do they hate the working poor? Because what's up with making cheap shoes more expensive? What kids' clothes? Diapers?

And let's not get started on tampons which women, who make less than men, are already heavily taxed on. Some $60 million a year pads the federal coffers by women who are cursed with the GST every month on menstrual products.

And yeah, I know that was five questions.

And the trick is being played on us by these bozos.

Hey, didn't the NDP elect a woman as leader this past weekend?

For pet or worse

Regular readers know I am a sucker for animals.

This story in the Star today just hit me hard:

With each factory that closed, each round of layoffs at the General Motors plant, more animals came in.

Many were simply abandoned, left in empty apartments after the tenants had been evicted. But in other cases – one or two a month – it was clear they had been surrendered for financial reasons, their owners unable to pay for food or veterinary bills, says Ruby Richards, manager of the Humane Society of Durham Region in Oshawa, a region hard hit by the manufacturing sector's steady decline.

With the added squeeze of the recession, more Durham residents are giving up pets to cut costs, Richards said. "We get calls from people who have lost their job, who are moving in with relatives and can't take their pets with them."

In the new year alone, economic troubles have led people to surrender 10 animals to Oshawa's temporary shelter on Taunton Rd., which was set up after a fire ravaged the original shelter mid-December. The building houses rescued cats, but most dogs go to foster homes.

"There's been quite an increase in the past two months," said Richards, who suspects it is only the beginning. "When times are tough, animals are the first thing to go."

The thing is, pets keep us sane. (At least most of them do.) Just stroking a pet is therapy. Having something to live for is therapy.

They also keep people safe. By that I mean, if I hadn't had dogs since I bought my house, I wouldn't know my neighbours and they would never notice if I was up and around, alive or dead. Neighbours call if they don't see me out walking the dog. 

This is an unspeakable tragedy, one we have been seeing in the US where people whose homes have been foreclosed are abandoning animals to starve. I'll spare you the gruesome stories.

If you can afford it, please send a cheque to the Toronto Humane Society or the OSPCA, or any one of many reputable rescue organizations. 

Better yet, give a critter a forever home.

Thanks.

P.S. The photos are of my Jericho, before and after I adopted him last January.

Pearcing words

Just a note to say how much I appreciate your dropping by and, especially your comments. Whether we agree or not, it heartens me to have a debate, openly and freely.

My only regret is that I don't have final authority over what comments get published. That's up to the Star's overworked goderators who must abide by our policy. (No flaming, no cussing, no hate, no endless quoting from other sources, no slander ...) Me, I would publish everything, except hate and anything that could pose a legal problem.

It's not often that I pull out a comment and publish it in a separate post but I just could not resist doing that today with these words from ''Barb Pearce'' -- if that's her real name, I don't know -- deep down in the Spermicide for the Mind thread below. It's response to other comments, and it's a doozy. I added some links.

Dianne: First the feeling of pain argument has not been scientifically proven. .... Before thalamic connections exist to the cortex, (22 weeks) responses to noxious stimuli are reflexes..

Why pro-life people think this argument will “sway” women is beyond me.........I'm pasting a statement by a anti-choicer who actually sees stupidity in the argument.

Douglas R. Scott, president of Life Decisions International, worried that arguing "pain to the fetus" will only mean requests for anesthesia...which might make women more likely to go through with an abortion. "The mother can believe she is making a benevolent choice, even as she simultaneously participates in a heinous act," he wrote on Christian Newswire. "I can hear it now. 'At least the fetus didn't feel pain...'"

Jean and Steve:

You are denegrating women! It's offensive that you imply abortion is something us poor dimwitted women are coerced into. Women are fully capable of making correct choices for themselves
Anti-Baby? From what I see, Pro-lifers spread misleading information and use fear mongering and physcological warfare. Comparing women to Nazis, calling it the "easy way out" (yet at the same time explaining the easyway out leads to a lifetime of guilt and mourning - yah, really easy),telling women that abortion causes breast cancer, is just sick.

When you wake up today, you should get off your self righteous high horse. While you drink your coffee think of all the child slaves that lost their lives so you can have your perk. Look at your pyjamas and pray to god that the child who sewed them didn't lose another finger. How many kid's did you kill today so you could purchase useless crap at low prices?

You all seem to forget about that. How convenient. I suppose loudly opposing abortion is kind of like off setting that guilt. No wonder the most stringent anti-choicers vote conservative regardless of their promotion of selfishness (oops I mean individual freedom) and their total lack of empathy and regard for their fellow man. All they have to do is hold up the anti-abortion card and you line up like sheep, selfishly hoping it will give you a get in free pass at the pearly gates.

It doesn’t matter how horrific pro-lifers present abortion. It is a deeper issue. It is an issue, regardless of a women's stance ( for/against), that sounds off alarm bells. The inequality of women is very obvious.....especially to women.

Women are not valued as equals, the pro-life philosophy is an attack against our reproductive rights...or an attack simply for being a women.

That's why polls show Canadians believe in choice. Most Canadians get what's at stake. A National Post poll from November 2002 (there are many, many polls like this) found 78% of respondents answered "yes" to the question: "Should women have complete freedom on their decision to have an abortion?".

In a June 2008 Angus Reid Strategies poll found only 5% of Canadians would outlaw abortion altogether.

So....the majority of people, including those who personally disagree with abortion, agree it is still a women’s choice.

You need to wake up and look around at the inequality women face at home and worldwide. When you have governments that force abortions of female fetuses (because the women have NO choice - No is also a choice), governments that view women as nothing more than incubators, and the fact that the majority of anti-choice leaders are men (an estimated 70%) who happen to be the same ones who promote the insane “True Women Manifesto” (god ordained female submission to the man) the majority of women will stand together stronger. Women have no other option than to protect ourselves.

Pro-Choice is really a matter of survival for women.

Instead of sticking your nose where it doesn't belong, I suggest you look in the mirror and then start picking your own cotton, sewing your own clothes, growing your own coffee beans, and stop shopping at Wal-Mart.

All I would add is, shop fair trade.

Through the wringer

Back to the con job Federal Budget 2009.

If you missed yesterday's post, please have a look: It's about how the Cons really don't care about the increasing number of unemployed in Canada. They would even deny them EI because the maximum $447 a week anybody can get -- and that's a relatively small percentage of those who need EI -- is tantamount to living high off the hog. Whoopeeee!

The good news is, not all Liberal MPs are falling into line behind their fearless probation officer. That despite the media rah-rah approval of Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's nakedly political stand. Well, the media have been on the wrong side of the voters before. I remember the Charlottetown Accord.

So kudos to the two MPs who have spoken up so far.

A second Liberal MP said Friday he is prepared to vote against the Conservative budget if it is not amended to resolve what is seen as punitive measures against Newfoundland and Labrador.

Avalon MP Scott Andrews told CBC News he will "absolutely not" vote for the federal budget unless it is changed to prevent Newfoundland and Labrador from losing $1.6 billion in the next three years.

Andrews follows Judy Foote, who represents the southern Newfoundland riding of Random-Burin-St. George's, in deciding to risk a possible reprimand from their caucus, if Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff decides to endorse the budget as it is.

Andrews said, however, that Liberals from Newfoundland and Labrador are trying to persuade Ignatieff to support their cause.

Foote told constituents in an email that enough people have contacted her office about the budget that she has sufficient "hard evidence" about the feelings of constituents.

Newfoundland and Labrador's six Liberal MPs are being pressured to vote against the budget, should it not be amended to delete language that could see the provincial government lose about $1.6 billion in offset payments over the next three years.

Meanwhile, there's a movement afoot in the fem-o-sphere to alert Liberal MPs that they're screwing the majority of the population by approving this budget. This is just the thin edge:

If women are a constituency, then it makes sense that Canadian women contact the Liberal critic responsible for the status of women, Anita Neville, because the budget fails women in a huge way:

- continues the attack on pay equity in the civil service

- provides no support to the working poor or those living in poverty

- does nothing to provide desperately-needed childcare supports

- provides stimulus to male-dominated areas of the economy, further ghettoizing the “pink ghetto''

Head over to the Regina Mom for info on who and how to write.

Today's treeware column also took on the budget, but from an environmental perspective. It shows how everybody is getting burned.

My dishwasher is 16 years old.

I bought my fridge 18 years ago.

My solid steel washer and dryer just turned 31.

As for my stove, well, it was in the house when I moved in – and the Quebec manufacturer went out of business in the 1980s.

All work great, thanks to the superior construction of yesteryear, my local Greek repairman, and the fact that I have been on my own since 1991.

A couple of loads a week for the washer and drer, maybe one weekly load of dishes if I haven't had guests, and no kids to scrounge for snacks and open, close, open, close the fridge.

None of these appliances is energy-efficient by today's standards. The fridge probably consumes twice as much electricity as it needs to.

I am pretty sure the washer, which I usually run on cold, which means I need tougher and more polluting detergents, could be replaced by a newer one that requires less water.

I could spend some $3,000 to $4,000 on made-in-Canada appliances and, if not stimulate the economy, certainly tickle it, while greening my home. Everybody would win: Canadian workers, the environment and my delicates which will no longer get agitated in that old washer.

I'd do it in a heartbeat if only that joke of a Conservative budget had included appliances in its maximum $1,350 Home Renovation Tax Credit which will apply to projects like repaving the driveway or laying sod, neither of which contributes much to the environment.

So it looks as if I'll paint instead. I'll deduct the cost of the paint while paying some students to do the work – and you can bet that they won't pay taxes on the cash they get.

But hey, at least I still have my home.

As for the 60 per cent of unemployed Canadians who don't get EI, the majority of them women who have worked at minimum wage, well, I guess they can clean houses or help contractors finish basements for money under the table.

I sure hope they can find decent child care because, no matter how much retraining money the budget has allocated, it's useless to people who can't access it.

As the Progressive Economics Forum points out, the budget has "nothing to strengthen public pensions, no funding for a national anti-poverty plan, and no significant increased investments in social needs such as early learning and childcare, social services or health care.''

Way to go Stephen Harper, and your probation officer, Michael Ignatieff.

Not only did you abandon most Canadians with your tax-credits-for-the-rich-and-corporations budget – and we saw how well those worked out for Americans – but you also sold out Mother Earth as well as our children, who will inherit the deficit and pay for your political ambitions.

Sorry but I can't be had for 317 pieces of silver, or whatever my tax cut works out to be.

What's more, you did this at a time when we are looking south with leadership genius-envy. We can see U.S. President Barack Obama's economic plan, one that puts the environment and a sustainable economy at the forefront.

Especially infuriating in all of this is the Liberal response.

Watching Ignatieff bluster about holding the government to account with regular report cards yada-yada all-hat-no-cattle bluster, I couldn't help but yell at my old not-eligible-for-a-tax-credit-but-that's-okay TV, "Hello? You're the leader of the opposition! You're supposed to hold the government to account!''

Not a single concession, not one, did Ignatieff extract.

When you go to the government's budget website, the little icon up by the URL is that traditional finance ministerial shoe.

Would it be unladylike of me to suggest that I'd love to use it to kick these guys in their stimulus package?

A couple of readers, including one from the United Steelworkers of Canada, wrote to me to say that my sentiments are all very nice but there is no more appliance industry in Canada. I quote from one of the emails:

I read your column this afternoon and you hit the nail on the head but FYI there are no more White Goods Industries left in Canada they are all made in the US now. The last one to make those products was in Hamilton called CAMCO or GE but they closed a number of years ago. Most of the White Goods Industries were affected by the Free Trade agreement in the late 80s or earlier 90s and I'm not surprised that your machines are still working. We took great pride in Canadian made when Inglis was producing Washers and Dryers for the Canadian market. Too bad those great jobs disappeared.

Indeed.

But, if you look on GE Canada's website, and go through their product lines, you'll see a a little maple leaf symbol which denotes that model is ''Made in Canada.'' It's not all good though. Here are the dryers...which appear to be for coin laundries only. The dishwashers are made for Canadian homes. But none of the fridges are made in Canada. And it appears to be the same sad story with the ranges.

Okay, my bad -- although a couple of companies still seem to be at it, albeit with branch plants in the US and Mexico.

And now my mad. This was the picture 10 years ago. And now?

No wonder we're in such crummy shape!

Bring back manufacturing jobs.

One more thing: Ontario used to have tax rebates for energy-efficient appliance purchases. No longer. But still, if the feds allow us to deduct for made-in-China carpets, why can't we deduct for Energy Star appliances?

Why do the Conservatives hate the environment?

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Beijing York weighs in. Here's some of her letter to Anita Neville, Liberal party critic for Status of Women.

The budget presented by Harper's Conservative government is a failed attempt at addressing the severe recession we are entering. Mr. Ignatieff seems to recognize this but still insists on supporting it with the proviso of periodic report cards. This is a meaningless gesture that does nothing to protect the most vulnerable, which includes many women across Canada. This budget provides little of no relief for low income, single income, unemployed and working women.

Those who are fortunate enough to still have jobs need meaningful childcare supports, something former PM Martin recognized but didn't act upon fast enough. Those without jobs or earning low incomes need refundable tax credit mechanisms to supplement household income and not increases in income exemptions and bracketing that fail to provide women with non-taxable incomes little relief. Many of the women who will lose their jobs will not qualify for EI benefits based on the current system. And lose their jobs they will since most women are employed in the retail and services sectors (including health care) and the taxation and economic stimulus measures will not create very many opportunities or protect jobs in these sectors.

But what really galls me is that the Liberals have failed to demand a reversal of the government's attack on pay equity.

If you're interested in doing something, and i hope you are, here are the deets:

Hon. Anita Neville (Winnipeg South Centre):

Parliament Hill Office

House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6
Telephone: (613) 992-9475
Fax: (613) 992-9586
EMail: Neville.A@parl.gc.ca
Web Site: www.anitaneville.ca/
Preferred Language: English

Constituency Offices

Unit D - 729 Corydon Avenue,
Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3M 0W4
Telephone: (204) 983-1355
Fax: (204) 984-3979

Send Anita an Email: Neville.A@parl.gc.ca

If you're feeling lazy, just send a link to this blog post!

From gags to riches

Not much to add to today's treeware column about US President Barack Obama's repeal of the ''global gag rule'' except for some linky goodness and a repost (below) of a video from a blog entry last year:

Barely a week in the Oval Office, U.S. President Barack Obama announced some long-awaited measures that will make for a better country, if not planet.

The shutdown of the Guantanamo prison camp, new energy and environmental policies, initial passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act ... the list goes on.

But nothing he did was as world-changing as the repeal of the so-called "global gag rule,'' which made non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, certify that they "will not perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning" if they wanted funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

This Obama did last Friday, even as pro-forced-pregnancy types were in Washington protesting the 36th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave women the right to control their bodies and destinies.

First enacted under Ronald Regan, who dropped it on the world in 1984 at a United Nations conference in Mexico City, and then briefly rescinded by Bill Clinton, the gag rule was re-enacted by George W. Bush on his very first day in office in 2001.

Since then, the UN, NGOs and international health experts estimate that this religion-fuelled act of censorship has, each and every year, contributed to the deaths of 70,000 women who have sought out back-alley abortions. What's more, it has resulted in the births of maybe millions of babies into disease, starvation and war.

They never had much of a chance at life anyway.

Many were the product of rape by marauding militants whose attacks on women left them incapable of caring for themselves, let alone their children.

Others were born to child brides, married or sold off to older men, and impregnated before their bodies were fully developed. As a result of this physical brutalization, these girls end up with horrible genital fistulas, which leave them completely – and I mean completely – incontinent. And so their husbands abandon them to their misery, and move on to other young wives.

According to World Vision, as many as one in four infants doesn't make it anyway. And, as other organizations, including the UN, report, every minute of every day, a woman dies in childbirth.

That's more than 500,000 a year.

What made the global gag rule especially cruel, not to mention unethical, was that it used American tax dollars – including those paid by proponents of reproductive rights – to dictate how foreign NGOs spent their own money.

If they wanted USAID funding, they could not even counsel a woman to get an abortion to save her own life. They could not refer a woman to a place where she might get such counselling – even if abortion was legal in her country.

Needless to say, this put health practitioners in ethical quandaries, restricting their medical options and rendering them unable to give patients the best treatment.

But who in the God-fearing, let's-bomb-children-in-Iraq Republican sphere cared about the lives of two-legged baby incubators?

Imagine the difference Obama's move will make to Mother Earth.

Because women around the world will now have access to better family planning, they will have fewer and healthier babies. This could lead, eventually, to less conflict over resources and land.

The planet will be less strained by overpopulation.

As for the women themselves, they may now have a chance for independence and education.

Half the world's brains and talent will not be sacrificed on the altar of anti-choice dogma. If women are not incapacitated by painful pregnancies, deadly deliveries and the unimaginable suffering in trying to protect and feed the children that do make it, they might move on to build businesses, schools, hospitals, orphanages – and a better world.

So when Obama promised hope and change, he made good in far more ways than most of us can ever imagine.

Oh wait, what am I talking about? Of course there's much to add, like reaction from the pro-forced pregnancy promoters who think life is all about having girls die. 

Anti-abortion groups were up in arms and vowed to fight the move.

"We were prepared for this and we will work very hard in Congress to see what we can do to get this overturned," Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, told AFP.

"I think it's a horrible tactic to take toward third world countries if the best we can do for them is provide organizations with the money needed to perform abortions on their children," she said.

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, said lifting the gag rule was tantamount to "exporting a culture of death," and House Republican Whip Eric Cantor said he was "saddened by this decision and the lives that will be lost because of it."

Oh and let's not forget what the woman-loving Vatican had to say:

“This deals a harsh blow not only to us Catholics but to all the people across the world who fight against the slaughter of innocents that is carried out with the abortion," Msgr. Sgreccia, told the ANSA news agency, according to the Associated Press. "Among the many good things that he could have done, Barack Obama instead chose the worst.”

Yeah. Gagging. The word is appropriate.

Coin Toss

Well, the Conservatives' long-awaited budget has been tabled and, as my Star colleague Chantal Hebert pointed out on CBC Newsworld just now, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's minority players have thrown darts all over the board wit their $35 billion plan to give even more tax cuts to the rich.

Sure the middle class got a bone but there's no guarantee it will use the extra couple of hun or so anything that would benefit the Canadian economy. After all, how much is there for Canadians when you go to a U.S.-owned big box store to buy a made-in-China TV?

This budget has a jobs! jobs! jobs! patina too it but what good is it to get a 15 per cent tax credit for home renovations when you don't have the cash to do them in the first place or, worse, you're losing your home?

As for the environment, fuhgeddaboutit because they sure did.

More to the point, the budget doesn't redress the wrongs set out in Finance Minister's James Flaherty's ill-fated statement of last November, the one that triggered all the talk of a coalition government between the Liberals and NDP, with the Bloc's support.

Pay equity and employment insurance problems are still there -- and we all know that those directly impact women. As for childcare, you're dreaming.

Which is why both the NDP and the BQ are already talking about voting the budget down. Here's part of the NDP statement just put out:

OTTAWA – Today’s Conservative budget will not protect Canada’s most vulnerable or adequately save and create jobs, said New Democrat Leader Jack Layton.

“This budget fails to restore confidence in Mr. Harper’s ability to protect the vulnerable in Canada,” said Layton.

“In today’s budget, he prioritized $60 billion in corporate tax cuts and only $1.15 billion for the unemployed,” said Layton. He also noted Harper’s failure to reform Employment Insurance by freezing payments, maintaining the two-week waiting period and not improving eligibility requirements.

The budget also contains no mention of childcare spaces and maintains the attack on women’s ability to pursue pay equity complaints.

Here's some indie analysis from the folks at Progressive Economics Forum:

Unfortunately, the budget doesn’t include any measures to increase access to Employment Insurance (which only 40% of the unemployed now receive) or EI benefit levels, nothing to strengthen public pensions, no funding for a national anti-poverty plan, and no significant increased investments in social needs such as early learning and childcare, social services or health care.

At the same time, ignoring the advice of virtually every economist in the country, the Harper government is charging ahead with broad-based personal income tax cuts that will cost about $2 billion a year and provide the greatest benefit to those with the highest incomes.

Hidden, but still included in this budget are the cuts to transfers, controls on program spending, weakening pay equity for federal employees and the privatization plans announced in Harper’s disastrous November Economic and Fiscal Update. 

So now the question, will Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff buy this?

The only reason that the Liberals can use to dismiss the budget is that it contains permanent tax reductions for the middle and upper classes that will ensure that the nation’s recovery will be a long and rocky road.

Tax reduction is Stephen Harper’s, the Fraser Institute’s, and the Calgary School of Neo-Conservative Economic’s mantra. The neo-cons believe in this so fervently that it is second to only the Rapture in their hearts.

<SNIP>

It is for this reason, because of the covert meanness underlying the inclusion of yet another permanent tax reduction, that the aristocratic Michael Ignatieff should oppose the budget of January 2009, and replace Stephen Harper’s Conservatives with a coalition government that will help all Canadians equally through this difficult time.

The likelihood, though, is that he won’t.

Should be an interesting few days.

UPPITY WOMEN DATE: This just in from the YWCA:

YWCA Canada recognizes the confidence placed in us by the government targeting $15 million in youth internship spending to YWCA and YMCA. 

 “The government has set up some very inclusive spending with this budget for First Nations, seniors and people with disabilities, but we don’t see an awareness that Canadian women are very vulnerable in hard times,” says YWCA Canada CEO Paulette Senior. “Two-thirds of Canadians working for minimum wage are women, many taking any work they can find to hold family and community together.  Government stimulus spending must take this into account.”

<SNIP>

 "The hole in this budget is child care services. For Canadian women and their families, child care is missing, and it is vital,” says Senior. “Everything we know about building strong families says child care services are essential. And that goes double for women needing to leave violent situations. They need affordable, quality care for their children so they can go out and work. Childcare not only creates jobs but it supports women and their families. Now is the time.”   The budget announced $200 million for social housing in the north, a much needed investment.

 Unlike the November economic update there was no mention of pay equity in the budget.  “We are very sorry to hear a resounding silence from the government on this issue,” says Paulette Senior. “Especially as job stimulus spending is concentrated in employment sectors heavily dominated by men. The government needs to rethink its position on this equality issue and take the advice of its own task force.”

“Today’s budget announcement recognizes the urgent need for spending across sectors,” says Senior.  “With this promise now on the horizon, we look forward to working with the government to help implement a gender focus in the rolling out of new programs and services that will truly support Canada’s most vulnerable women and their families”. 

UP YOURS DATE: More from the Progressive Economics Forum:

The more I read Budget 2009, the less stimulus I see.

Starting to look like an EPIC FAIL ...

UP WITH THE PEOPLE DATE: Here's the budget from the point-of-view of the two low-income ladies at Challenging the Commonplace.

The new federal budget has nothing for the working poor of this country. Yet we are precisely the people who would be most likely to spend, rather than save, any money given us to bolster our starved budgets.

Go read their whole post.

I've written to Michael Ignatieff and told him how this budget blows off the environment and working women, 2/3rds of whom make minimum wage. Here's his email address, and if you write, please copy Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe.

To: 'Ignatieff.M@parl.gc.ca'
Cc: 'layton.j@parl.gc.ca'; 'duceppe.g@parl.gc.ca'

Ignatieff is said to be making his decision on this tonight.

Lifestyles of the not-so-rich anymore but still famous

Author and social justice critic Barbara Ehrenreich points out that, as usual, the media are still playing the celebrity card, even when it comes to poverty.

The media have been pelting us with heart-wrenching stories about the neo-suffering of the Nouveau Poor, or at least the Formerly Super-rich among them: Foreclosures in Greenwich CT! A collapsing market for cosmetic surgery! Sales of Gulfstream jets declining! Niemen Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue on the ropes! We read of desperate measures, like having to cut back the personal trainer to two hours a week. Parties have been canceled; dinner guests have been offered, gasp, baked potatoes and chili. The New York Times relates the story of a New Jersey teenager whose parents were forced to cut her $100 a week allowance and private Pilates classes. In one of the most pathetic tales of all, New Yorker Alexandra Penney relates how she lost her life savings to Bernie Madoff and is now faced with having to lay off her three-day- a-week maid, Yolanda. “I wear a classic clean white shirt every day of the week. I have about 40 white shirts. They make me feel fresh and ready to face whatever battles I may be fighting …” she wrote, but without Yolanda, “How am I going to iron those shirts so I can still feel like a poor civilized person?”

Oh gee, honey, how will Yolanda still feel like a civilized poor person?

Listen, I think it's terrible that people -- as well as charities, including those which support women's reproductive freedoms -- lost millions to Madoff. But let's not kid ourselves. They still have roofs over their heads, and other sources of income. None of them are out on the street.

Which reminds me of another reason I loved Slumdog Millionaire. It portrayed the unimaginable -- to us anyway -- poverty in old Mumbai. While I can't say our inner cities or even poor places like some parts of Appalachia are close to that, they ain't pretty. But we rarely ever see the face of poverty in our midst.

That's because it doesn't sell soap, beer and trucks.

Backlash

What was meant to be a column about how much I love men -- from my late father and uncles to my  brother and brothers-in-law to ''my guys'' at the Star (who know who they are) to my neighbours who shovel my snow and change my BBQ propane tank to my lovers past and present and, yes, even to my ex-husbands -- took a turn just as I sat down to write it yesterday.

That's because, over the past couple of weeks, and in particular, ever since this post, Broadsides has been getting a lot of incoming from men's rights groups. I have to say that, ever since my first column on this beat, back in June 2007, which touched on femicide, I have been the target for a lot of hate mail from obviously disturbed men who are upset over losing custody, charges or abuse and other beefs with their former partners.

Now understand that I have also heard from many other men who appear to have legitimate cases against exes who have alienated their children against them, who have taken off with the kids, who have cut off access and/or who, well, you know how it sometimes goes. In fact, I have one girlfriend who is guilty of this kind of thing. She has gone out of her way to paint her ex-husband as a monster to their sons who now refuse to see him. He's heartbroken about it, and doesn't deserve it.

Today I received an email from one distraught grandmother. Read it and weep:

Like most people, I always heard stories about deadbeat dads.  It was always the father that was detached from his children and refusing to support them financially. Now we are on the other side of the story, the one that doesn't get heard.

 

Our son has endured over 9 years of fighting with the mother of his child.  He has every right to be angry for all that she has put him and our grandson through but somehow, he keeps going .  He has always paid not only the court mandated support but half of everything that our grandson needs. 

 

We have a firm rule that nothing is to be said against his mother while he is with us.  That is not to be noble but because we know it can only hurt GS but because we have read that the parent who runs down the other parent will eventually be called to task by the child.  It does not work that way in her home.  One of my most vivid memories of GS is while all four of us were at the cottage.  My husband and I returned from grocery shopping.  Our son was in the livingroom and he looked upset.  GS had fallen off the dock while doing something he wasn't supposed to do.  He had gone ballistic while being corrected and had gone into his room and wouldn't talk.  I asked if I could have a try.  I can still see that dear little boy, maybe 5, he was standing in a puddle of water.  His baseball cap was firmly on his head while water dripped down his face.  I starting talking.  I told him how much his daddy loved him.  I said his daddy loved him more than anything else in the world.  He said that his mommy loved him more.  I changed my words and told him that his daddy loved him more than he loved anybody else.  His next words were," Daddy doesn't love me at all.  He doesn't care about anybody but himself."  Those are not the words of a 5 year old child.  They are the words of a woman who has told this child for all of his life that his father doesn't love him, doesn't want him and will someday leave him and not be there for him.

 

I am sorry that I am rambling but I want you to know that there are at least some of these men like my son who love their children and have to fight on a daily basis for access to them.  These men have to fight the lies of women who for whatever reason don't want their children to love them.  I don't know where I son got the strength to go through this with the grace and courage that he does.  I am so proud of him and how hard he has tried to get psychological help for GS but he can't without the mother's consent.  Please try to understand that there are some of these men who are just not able to keep going and maintain their sanity with the obstacles they face from bitter, angry ex-wives and girlfriends.

 
I feel for men like this. I know they're out there, and that there are many of them. Too many. I hear about false abuse charges and other horrors all the time. What's more, there are virtually no resources for men who are on the wrong end of a rolling pin, to use an old cliche. And, while it's true that far more women are battered and killed by their husbands than the other way around, we can't ignore the reality that the reverse does happen.

But these are not the men I was writing about when I launched into today's treeware piece on groups which plaster their websites with swastikas or are downright anti-Semitic while attacking all the advances women fought for over the past 40-50 years. Instead of directing their considerable energy to changing a system -- created and run by men -- they lash out at their perceived enemy, feminists.

Here's the column, in full, with some links added.

Did you know that the "feminist-dominated media" have created a "global gynarchia" in which "vaginocrats" rule the world?

Me neither.

Not until I started writing this column and hitting on topics such as domestic violence and reproductive choices.

Until then, I always believed that, almost without exception, men run religions, command the armies, make the laws, preside over the courts, run the corporations and control the media.

But to hear so-called men's rights groups wah-wah-wah about how "feminazis" and "feminihilists" are responsible for everything from the breakdown of the family to violent crime to child abuse to Islamofascism makes me wonder whether I've been remiss in my observation that men are still in the driver's seat.

Lately, I have become the target of some of these "masculinists" who accuse me of promoting unequal rights for women, misandry and much worse. Because my blog Broadsides has software that allows me to track incoming hits, I can see that I have an increasing number of visitors from such forums as AmericanWomenSuck.com and StandYourGround.com.

Sites such as these – and believe me, they are legion – are dedicated to "feminist horror stories" around the "divorce industry" which deprives fathers of their children and paycheques. Their other issues include the lack of resources for men who are battered by their wives, false accusations of partner abuse and rape, and last, but far from least, how men have no choice regarding what a woman they've impregnated does. They can't stop her from ending the pregnancy nor can they walk away from 18 years of support payments if she chooses to go to term.

Now understand that all of these are legitimate concerns, with which I fully sympathize.

While it's true, for example, that, according to the most recent Statistics Canada reports, a minority of divorce decisions give sole custody to the mother, thanks to a huge leap in joint custody awards, that doesn't mean that fathers get "shared custody," which means the kids live equally with both parents. In most cases, mothers still control access.

But many men's rights groups take that concern to frightening lengths, blaming no-fault divorce laws for allowing women dump their husbands while thrusting their hands firmly in the men's pockets, if you get my double meaning.

All of which ignores that most single mother-headed families live in poverty. As StatsCan reported in 2007, "Financial difficulties often follow marital dissolution, particularly for women. In fact, 43 per cent of women who went through a break-up had a substantial drop in their household income, compared with 15 per cent of men."

Some bonanza.

These groups also beef that a majority of divorces are initiated by women, and demand that marriage become an "enforceable contract" – whatever that means.

Interesting, considering how a 2002 study out of the University of Western Ontario and Queen's University demonstrated that "abuse is the primary factor in the decision to divorce" What's more, according to the 1993 Canadian Violence Against Women Survey, 50 per cent of divorced women have been victims of abuse.

Indeed, in 1996, the American Psychological Association reported that men who beat their wives are twice as likely to go for sole custody and to harass and intimidate their exes by using the legal system.

So it's easy to conclude that, in many cases, the most vehement of these men's rights types are angry over losing control over their women.

Which might explain why, as much research shows, post-divorce men suffer disproportionately from mental health issues such as depression.

That they need counselling and similar services is evident. That's what they should be lobbying for.

But, judging from my email, instead, they turn to anger and abuse.

Feminists are the enemy.

Even in a man's world.

In 2003, a very controversial report on these groups was funded by Status of Women Canada. Titled ''School Success by Gender: A Catalyst for Masculinist Discourse,'' it was meant to analyze media discourse on how girls were advancing through school and, in many cases, doing better than boys. In the end, it concluded that a lot of these ''masculinist'' groups were tantamount to hate sites and that the government should monitor them. (Unfortunately, the report is no longer online and I have not read it.) Needless to say, conservative types lashed out. One men's rights advocate even sued, unsuccessfully.

While the idea of monitoring Internet sites for content strikes me as both a dangerous and counter-democratic idea, I have to agree that some of the content you'll find on them is sickening.

But reading through it all, I am reassured of one thing. The feminist fight is far from over -- and that I still have a job to do.

I can hardly wait for your comments.

UPPITY DATE: Somebody has pointed me to a pdf version of that controversial 2003 study. It's here.