For cryin’ out loud, what kind of rock have these people been living under? It wasn’t even illegal until 1978, and it still happens often enough today that pregnancy discrimination lawyers advertise on the Internet trolling for women who’ve been fired for being pregnant. Granted, since it’s illegal now, employers won’t say “I’m firing you for being pregnant”, they’ll make up some other reason, but it’s provable in enough cases to keep those lawyers in business (remember, they don’t get paid unless they win!).
As for why employers fire pregnant women: “They take too much leave time.” “The cost of child birth drives up our health insurance costs.” “I have to hire someone to do their job while they’re out on their post-pregnancy leave, might as well hire someone full-time in their place” “Mothers of young infants perform poorly in the workplace, they’re always tired and having to leave to deal with a sick baby.” Yada yada yada. Back in the days when Elizabeth Warren was fired for being pregnant, they didn’t even bother with those reasons, they just said “a mother’s place is in the home” — i.e., the Mad Men misogynists who ran everything back then were fine with women in the workplace if the women were unmarried and had no children, but the moment the woman had a child, nope.
But apparently all this current and past history just eludes some people, who continue to insist “nobody gets fired for being pregnant because it’s illegal!” Yeah right, just like nobody exceeds the speed limit because it’s illegal….
Badtux the “it ain’t even ancient history!” Penguin
You are exactly right, but the people claiming Elizabeth Warren lied are not arguing in good faith. They know very well that her later statement that her qualifications were not appropriate looks like a diplomatic finesse to make a former employer more likely to rehire here if at some point she wanted it. It’s similar to those (including some Native Americans) who claim she tried to use the DNA test to claim citizenship in the Cherokee Nation. She never did. She (foolishly, I think) tried to use the DNA test to “prove” she had at least one Native American ancestor. If the Senator Professor is the candidate, I’ll vote for her, but I prefer Bernie.
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To back up what Pro is saying here, I am disappointed (but not surprised — nothing that is venal about human behaviour surprises me anymore) by how many people purport to be enraged, ENRAGED, I tells ya! by tiny discrepancies in what Warren has said. Yet at the same time, they don’t bother making a point of the repeated glaring, disgusting acts of overt scoundrels such as Trumpolini.
“Which of the two stories she told about being fired is true?” is a line I’ve seen written several times in comments by “Lambert Strether” on the Naked Capitalism econoblog. Lambert’s a wise, left-wing intellect, whose work I respect. But he, and other lesser opinionators, enjoy hoisting Warren on her minor hypocrisies. Even Down Undahere, a few people I talk Merkin politics with don’t know squat about Warren EXCEPT the “Pocahontas” part. They dislike Trumpenstein, but they just accept that he is a ratbag. He doesn’t attract the emotional animus that they have for someone who purports to be noble, but has small flaws.
It’s like if you are open about being scum, it doesn’t MATTER how scummy you are. Just par for the course. Yet people and organisations (I’m looking at you, corposhill Democratic Party) who are not the forces for good they advertise themselves as, get the hate. Which is why people will vote for an outwardly slimy character, all the while feeling morally superior because they shunned the merely half-bad candidate.
As H.L. Mencken said, America is going to get what it deserves, get it good and hard. Not just Amerika, either — all of humanity is in for just desserts.
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There is no purity pony. Yet Democrats want one. One reason why I don’t run for office. I don’t pass purity tests under my real name, if you know where to dig in my early social media trail before the term “social media” was invented or the notion that it would be searchable in the future (who would ever have enough storage and CPU horsepower to do such a thing?! At least, that was the notion in the days when mainframes had less storage and horsepower than the phone in my hand!). But because of Democratic purity pony bullshit, my local municipality loses out on the hard-earned expertise that I’ve earned over my decades of life.
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[…] Badtux the Snarky Penguin addresses the notion that no one gets fired for being pregnant. […]
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I lost my job the minute I told them I was pregnant. That was in 1992. In Ohio.
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Unsurprised. Sadly.
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I’ve never understood Left Wing Trumpalos. Like Glenn “America must be Destroyed is Job One” Greenwald. Or much of the commentariat at Naked Capitalism, which verges on parroting “I am draining the swamp” nonsense.
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Add “Moon of Alabama”, whose leftie German author “b” provides excellent in-depth dissections of the Syrian conflict, Ukrainian shenanigans, the strangulation of Venezuela, corporate murder via the Boeing 737 Max that run counter to lamestream media spin. Yet he excoriates Trumpolini less that he does the feeboDems. And Charles Hugh Smith from Tux’s region, who’s great at outlining the decline of sovokAmerika due to the malign ways vested interests such as the health insurance racket keep USanians in thrall. But he blames Twitler less than he does the Dem-aligned industries that keep the grift afloat. And Archdruid John Michael Greer…
I could name others, but I geek out too much about blogs I read. I reckon that I’m odd, in that I spend too much time online looking for clues as to the Big Picture. Every now and then on the psych ward, I’ll run into a patient who works in finance. Usually they’re admitted because of depression, which often leads to substance abuse. If they’re oriented enough in their thinking to have a discussion that goes beyond “Do you want to kill yourself? Are you hearing voices?” then I’ll ask “What websites do you read to get your information?” Partly as a way of assessing whether they can have a general discussion, but also to see if there’s any info source that I might have overlooked. Almost NEVER has anyone been able to cite sites that go beyond Google Finance. And the people I ask are those who have real money invested in markets, sometimes including $$$ they manage on behalf of other folks.
Tux, your blogroll isn’t a be-all end-all of info sources, but if one used that as a guidepost for learning how the world works, they’d be well-served. So many people don’t even go to the depth that’s contained in your sidebar. What a shame. The truth is out there. But most people don’t bother to look.
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Bukko: I have run across some of these interesting writers, who all make interesting points. And I am not much of a nationalist AT ALL. (Heck, one of my religious reads is Marcus Ranum’s stDrr. If you read him and have any tiny shred of patriotism or nationalism left….I am not sure how your mind works (LOL). And, I am not sure it is incorrect not to blame Trump. Trump is merely a symptom of a bipartisan consensus of corruption and grift. He is just more overt and, yes, tacky about it. I will admit I don’t want a tacky president.
And yet, and yet, and yet: (as with PG&E), as horrific as the American Empire can be, the alternatives our lefty critics seem to ignore or even support seem to me in many ways worse. Or at least as bad. China frankly terrifies me. Russia is Trump’s America but even more cynical and nationalist and repressive and corrupt. India is now being absorbed into toxic religious fascism.
So no…I am not eager to see the fall of America at the hands of “enemies”. Or corruption and nepotism and chicanery. There is a very good chance that this will happen ANYWAY…I frankly doubt the American experiment can be saved. But I am not sure a world dominated by China, India, Russia is a better one. Maybe the idea is that a world battled over by conflicting parties will leave more room for alternatives to flourish in the cracks. That does not really seem to be the case with the client states of China, though. And Eastern Europeans (other than remnant colonial Russian ethnics) are not so eager to fall back under the embrace of Mother Russia.
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I’m with ya on not liking the idea of a world dominated by the Chinese communists or Russian fascists; and that India is increasingly under the sway of Hindutva religious fanatics. In all three countries, a large part of the population looooooves what their dictators are doing, because of nationalism. Just like Bush II and Trump were not completely imposed on Amerika — they represent a substantial chunk of the citizenry. Not a majority, I hope, but a sizeable group nonetheless.
I don’t WANT America to fail. It would be great if the country could live up to its advertising campaign. I don’t see that happening, though, because there are too many people and power centres pursuing their own interests, all of which will drive the nation off the cliff. The medical-industrial complex, for instance… Their profits are more important than the lives of Americans.
I think your vision of a world battled over by conflicting parties is the likely outcome, though, not ChiRusIndomination. That’s because of “complexity theory.” One of the blogs I read occasionally (and I should do it more often) is called “Cassandra’s Legacy”, written by an Italian professor named Ugo Bardi. (He writes in English.) His underlying Big Picture thesis is that systems which are too complex are going to collapse because they’re just too difficult to maintain. He’s building on the ideas of Joseph Tainter, who put out a book in 1988 on the collapse of complex societies.
Basically, when you have a system that has too many moving parts, most of which will cause destruction of the system if they fail, eventually it’s going to fall apart. Complexity demands more and more energy to operate as it grows, to the point where maintaining the complexity turns into an unsustainable energy-suck. That dynamic is why I whinge about The Collapse all the time in blog comments, and a little bit IRL. (Not all the time there, though, because I don’t want to turn people off by being a total Dicky Downer.)
Bardi is a Peak Oiler. He writes with a lot of sciencey background, with a view to the broad sweep of history, too. Not just an opinionated doom-sayer. Worth a gander.
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Thanks, Bukko! Bardi looks interesting. Of course, I already spend too much time (including, hangs head in shame, at work) but….
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