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Sep
18
Because Barack Obama supports pay equity legislation.Now – let’s dispense with the LegiStorm stuff first. Read this comment and this one (in addition to the entire blog post written by Michelle Obama and all the subsequent comments; that LegiStorm link includes a link to the original number crunching, not by LegiStorm, that led some people to claim that Obama doesn’t adhere to pay equity principles).
Not only did Lilly Ledbetter speak at the Democratic convention in Denver, but she’s out campaigning with Jill Biden and Michelle Obama.
And this past Monday, Hillary Clinton spoke at Barnard College specifically about pay equity. Can you imagine being a woman studying and working to give yourself an edge only to be told that women’s median annual earnings are only 77 cents on the dollar compared to men?
FYI, Alaska is one of 11 states that has no pay equity law (see here also). (Illinois requires equal wages for similar work.)
On November 4, vote for Obama/Biden.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:21 pm September 18th, 2008 in 57ReasonsObamaBiden, Barack Obama, Gender, Joe Biden, Politics, WH2008
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19 Responses to “Reason #48 to VOTE FOR Obama/Biden”
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Regarding the H.R. 2831, a vote on Cloture to a Motion to Proceed was taken on April 23, 2008. Cloture at this junction tests whether members of Congress are ready to end debate and proceed to a vote. Failure to achieve cloture usually indicate a bill’s future is dim. A vote in favor of cloture is in favor of voting on the legislation itself. A vote against is a vote to stall the bill.
The cloture motion was rejected.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2008-110
Hi Jill,
It was a pleasure to meet you today. I’m glad we were able to chat face-to-face..the online thing doesn’t always have that luster, or personal feel.
Again, my most sincere apologies. Yes, I know that doesn’t patch anything up and is more/less a bandaid on a critical wound. I never said I was the smartest of them all and did by best to prove that, no thanks to myself.
Take care, I wish you all the best of continued success.
Sincerely,
Craig Simpson
Obama pays his own female Senate staffers, on average, only 78 percent of what he pays male staffers.
Women on McCain’s staff, meanwhile, earn 24 percent more on average than women on Obama’s Senate staff. McCain also pays his female Senate staff members a higher average salary than his male Senate staff members. [...]
The numbers come from the most recent Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which includes the salaries of every member of each U.S. senator’s staff during the period of Oct. 1, 2007 through March 31, 2008.
(link)
Yup I got the same from Liz Mair of the McCain campaign – it’s a meme. And it doesn’t have the breakdown I linked to.
Sorry. It’s simply not accurate. We can wait for factcheck.org come out or look ourselves.
Yup I got the same from Liz Mair of the McCain campaign – it’s a meme. And it doesn’t have the breakdown I linked to.
Sorry. It’s simply not accurate. We can wait for factcheck.org come out or look ourselves.
Your claim of “not accurate” is based on pay for comparable job titles. However, you also quoted NOW’s “women’s median annual earnings are only 77 cents on the dollar compared to men.” Did NOW consider whether men and women had comparable job titles?
Here (comment 14) I showed how the 77-cent number was very probably computed. It is unlikely that the 77-cent number considers education, experience or job category/title. If the Senate staff pay comparison is “not accurate” based on job title, why isn’t the NOW number equally inaccurate (and misleading)?
(In my haste, I forgot to properly credit the source of the quote in comment 3: Fred Lucas, CNSNews.com.)
CNSNews.com isn’t exactly an unbiased resource- much like you might say about NOW.
We’re not going to agree on this.
Jill it appears the only source you’ll believe credible is from the Obama camp itself. Which if this is true they would never admit.
I read the linked article, it appeared pretty harmless and not overly one sided.
Can I assume anything that’s presented contrary to what you currently know to be true you won’t even entertain?
CNSNews.com isn’t exactly an unbiased resource- much like you might say about NOW.
We’re not going to agree on this.
Four points:
1) You’re making an ad hominem argument re CNSNews.com. CNSNews presented its methodology, which one may argue is correct or incorrect. I assume that you would argue it’s incorrect.
2) I didn’t say NOW was biased. I suggested NOW’s methodology was inaccurate/misleading.
3) I think you’re being inconsistent in rejecting the LegiStorm and CNSNews computations, but accepting the NOW computation. The computations seem to use the same basic methodology.
4) I agree that we’re not going to agree on this.
Lada -
Thanks for still reading and commenting.
No if I were you I would not make that assumption, at all.
My links go to comments written by women who commented on the BlogHer website – they are not from the Obama camp – I’m not sure why you think they are. (The links are in the very first para. above)
I rarely use info from one campaign over another – believe me, it makes it harder to come up with reasons to vote for someone I didn’t support in the primary, but it has helped me come in touch very directly with what I value and who I think can, in my assessment do the best toward those values, in conjunction with a federal gov’t.
Anon:
You wrote:
“1) You’re making an ad hominem argument re CNSNews.com. CNSNews presented its methodology, which one may argue is correct or incorrect. I assume that you would argue it’s incorrect.”
I didn’t give you back up due to time I’m sorry but I read CNS regularly and I find it to be a very biased resource- that’s my opinion. I do not assume it’s incorrect – I assume it has a specific slant of point it embraces and those it tends to reject.
You wrote:
“2) I didn’t say NOW was biased. I suggested NOW’s methodology was inaccurate/misleading.”
I know you didn’t – I did – I say that again for similar reasons re: CNS – NOW has an agenda – info that comes from NOW will support that agenda. That’s bias. It doesn’t make it inaccurate. I didn’t get that you were saying the NOW methodology is inaccurate – do you mean it’s flawed??
You wrote:
“3) I think you’re being inconsistent in rejecting the LegiStorm and CNSNews computations, but accepting the NOW computation. The computations seem to use the same basic methodology.”
I didn’t reject LegiStorm computations – they don’t offer computations – I linked to their disclaimer about that. The NOW computation wasn’t something I looked for in LegiStorm and the CNS computations weren’t about the same thing as the NOW computation. I’m not sure why you’re mixing and matching.
Jill I wasn’t talking about comments from fellow supporters, I was talking about the news article.
as far as the “helped me come in touch very directly with what I value and who I think can, in my assessment do the best toward those values, in conjunction with a federal gov’t.” did that come from a campaign brochure because it makes zero sense based on the issue we are discussing.
Obama staffed 69 at $1,439,047 average salary for 6 months $20,855.75
http://www.legistorm.com/member/76/Sen_Barack_Obama/37.html
McCain staffed 71 at $1,251,358 average salary for 6 months $17,624.76
http://www.legistorm.com/member/69/Sen_John_McCain/37.html
Its very unlikely that McCain is paying his female staffers more than Obama’s since McCain is paying his overall staff less on average than Obama.
However the titles across staff of the senators are not similar and salaries include interns as well, you would have to drill down to see it there is gender or even racial inequities.
You cannot trust any references to statistics they are all biased, you would have to have the real data.
From what I see McCain’s office is more efficient or it has more interns? They have a larger staff and less expenses.
You wrote:
“1) You’re making an ad hominem argument re CNSNews.com. CNSNews presented its methodology, which one may argue is correct or incorrect. I assume that you would argue it’s incorrect.”
I didn’t give you back up due to time I’m sorry but I read CNS regularly and I find it to be a very biased resource- that’s my opinion. I do not assume it’s incorrect – I assume it has a specific slant of point it embraces and those it tends to reject.
I’m left scratching my head. In the context of a response to my original post, what was your point in saying “CNS is a biased source?” Wasn’t that statement intended to dismiss the CNS conclusion? If not, what was the intended implication?
“2) I didn’t say NOW was biased. I suggested NOW’s methodology was inaccurate/misleading.”
I know you didn’t – I did – I say that again for similar reasons re: CNS – NOW has an agenda – info that comes from NOW will support that agenda. That’s bias. It doesn’t make it inaccurate. I didn’t get that you were saying the NOW methodology is inaccurate – do you mean it’s flawed??
Scratch “inaccurate”–”misleading” is a better word. NOW distributes its 77-cent figure so that those who see/hear the number will conclude that women are not paid the same as men for the same work. The Census data from which the 77-cent number is derived is insufficient to support that conclusion.
“3) I think you’re being inconsistent in rejecting the LegiStorm and CNSNews computations, but accepting the NOW computation. The computations seem to use the same basic methodology.”
I didn’t reject LegiStorm computations – they don’t offer computations – I linked to their disclaimer about that. The NOW computation wasn’t something I looked for in LegiStorm and the CNS computations weren’t about the same thing as the NOW computation. I’m not sure why you’re mixing and matching.
You are right concerning LegiStorm; my apologies. LegiStorm was referencing a column by Deroy Murdock.
As to Murdock, he simply computed the average salary for males and the average salary for females on Sen. Obama’s staff. Comparing those averages, he found that female staffers earned 83 cents for every dollar that male staffers earned. The CNS author also computed averages and came up with a figure of 78 cents for females for every dollar for males. (I’m guessing the difference arises from differing treatment of people who didn’t work the full half-year on which calculations are based.) NOW derived its 77-cent figure by comparing Census figures for the average salaries of all full-time female and male workers without taking job title into consideration.
The methodologies of Murdock, CNS and NOW for computing the pay ratios appear to be nearly identical. (Murdock and CNS were doing their computations for a population different from that of NOW, but the methodologies were very similar.) I therefore do not believe I’m “mixing and matching.”
If one accepts NOW’s 77-cent figure as valid (and one wishes to be consistent), then one should also accept as valid a sub-dollar figure for Sen. Obama’s staffers. If NOW’s 77-cent figure is evidence of pay discrimination, then one should draw the same conclusion for Sen. Obama.
Ladalang – - If I’d ever read an Obama campaign brochure I might think what you wrote was an insult.
No – I don’t have nor have I ever read such a thing and I can promise you, I wouldn’t remember anything like that – I wouldn’t htink they’d have stuff like that in there.
When you say “Article” you mean the link in the very first sentence? Yeah, that’s from the campaign but I did that for the readers – not for me. If you think that’s confusing, ok – I’ll think about re-framing how I set that up in subsequent posts – good point – I can just say here’s what the campaign says.
Is that what you mean?
As for this, “helped me come in touch very directly with what I value and who I think can, in my assessment do the best toward those values, in conjunction with a federal gov’t.” I’m not sure why an camp lit would use it – eek. I’m talking about how the process of writing all these reasons has helped me. I guess it wasn’t clear for you.
Anon – sigh:
1. you wrote: “In the context of a response to my original post, what was your point in saying “CNS is a biased source?” Wasn’t that statement intended to dismiss the CNS conclusion? If not, what was the intended implication?”
It was to give it context as being from a biased source – NOW I believe is more familiar to readers who would know its agenda than CNS so that’s why I didn’t say anything about NOW before.
Your #2: ok.
Your #3: Anon – the bottom line is – you here trying to keep me in what your opinion would be “honest” or are you looking to argue that there is or is not a problem w/pay equity? Because anyway you slice it, there’s inequality and this is like pretending that there’s no racism or sexism in this country. All of that exists – this slicing and dicing is crazy.
2.
Your #3: Anon – the bottom line is – you here trying to keep me in what your opinion would be “honest” or are you looking to argue that there is or is not a problem w/pay equity? Because anyway you slice it, there’s inequality and this is like pretending that there’s no racism or sexism in this country. All of that exists – this slicing and dicing is crazy.
My last words on this subject …
I think NOW’s promulgation of its 77-cent figure as proof of pay discrimination is misleading. I also think the Obama sub-dollar figure as proof of pay discrimination is misleading. However, if one accepts the 77-cent figure as proof of discrimination, one must also accept the Obama figure as proof of discrimination, assuming one is logically consistent.
You’ve cited NOW’s 77-cent figure in at least two postings. If you wish to be consistent, I would suggest that you would have to accept the Obama sub-dollar figure as proof of discrimination. If you reject the Obama calculation, I would suggest that you would have to reject the NOW calculation.
As to the issue of “pay equity,” if we’re talking about ensuring equal pay for equal work regardless of workers’ races/sexes, problems exist and I’m all for correcting them. If by “pay equity” we’re talking about “comparable worth,” I’m adamantly against it. I believe comparable worth regulations would create serious labor market distortions and cause significant damage to employees, employers and the economy.
I posted a response to comment 15 earlier. It’s not visible and there’s no indication that the post is in moderation. I tried posting the response again and the blogging software told me that the post was a duplicate and would be deleted. If my earlier post doesn’t appear, I’ll try again.
Anon – thanks for heads up on comment.
Ha – comparable worth? I can’t imagine ever enforcing that, let alone calculating it.
Thanks for taking the time to leave these comments and challenge what you see as flaws in how I’ve presented my thoughts. I know that it’s helpful.
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