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The Public Policy
The Real “War on Women”
The politics of division continue to haunt Obama’s White House.
Among the people who are disappointed with President Obama, none has more reason to be disappointed than those who thought he was going to be “a uniter, rather than a divider” and that he would “bring us all together.”
It was a noble hope, but one with no factual foundation. Barack Obama had been a divider all his adult life, especially as a community organizer, and he had repeatedly sought out and allied himself with other dividers, the most blatant of whom was the man whose church he attend for 20 years, Jeremiah Wright.
Now, with his presidency on the line and the polls looking dicey, President Obama’s re-election campaign has become more openly divisive than ever.
He has embraced the strident “Occupy Wall Street” movement, with its ridiculous claim of representing the 99 percent against the 1 percent. Obama’s Department of Justice has been spreading the hysteria that states requiring photo identification for voting are trying to keep minorities from voting, and using the prevention of voter fraud as a pretext.
But anyone who doubts the existence of voter fraud should read John Fund’s book “Stealing Elections” or J. Christian Adams’s book, “Injustice,” which deals specifically with the Obama Justice Department’s overlooking voter fraud when those involved are black Democrats.
Not content with dividing classes and races, the Obama campaign is now seeking to divide the sexes by declaring that women are being paid less than men, as part of a “war on women” conducted by villains, from whom Obama and company will protect the women — and, not incidentally, expect to receive their votes this November.
The old — and repeatedly discredited — game of citing women’s incomes as some percentage of men’s incomes is being played once again, as part of the “war on women” theme.
Since women average fewer hours of work per year, and fewer years of consecutive full-time employment than men, among other differences, comparisons of male and female annual earnings are comparisons of apples and oranges, as various female economists have pointed out. Read Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Hudson Institute or Professor Claudia Goldin of Harvard, for example.
When you compare women and men in the same occupations with the same skills, education, hours of work, and many other factors that go into determining pay, the differences in incomes shrink to the vanishing point — and, in some cases, the women earn more than comparable men.
But why let mere facts spoil the emotional rhetoric or the political ploys to drum up hysteria and collect votes?
The farcical nature of these ploys came out after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi declared that Congress needed to pass the Fair Pay Act, because women average 23 percent lower incomes than men.
A reporter from the Daily Caller then pointed out that the women on Nancy Pelosi’s own staff average 27 percent lower incomes than the men on her staff. Does that show that Pelosi herself is guilty of discrimination against women? Or does it show that such simple-minded statistics are grossly misleading?
The so-called Fair Pay Act has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with election-year politics. No one in his right mind expects that bill to become law. It will be lucky to pass the Senate, and has no chance whatever of getting passed in the House of Representatives.
The whole point of this political exercise is to get Republicans on record voting against “fairness” for women, as part of the Democrats’ campaign strategy to claim that there is a “war on women.”
If you are looking for a real war on women, you might look at the practice of aborting girl babies after an ultrasound picture shows that they are girls. These abortions are the most basic kind of discrimination, and their consequences have already been demonstrated in countries like China and India, where sexually discriminatory abortions and female infanticide have produced an imbalance in the number of adult males and females.
A bill to outlaw sexually and racially discriminatory abortions has been opposed and defeated by House Democrats.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
About the Author
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 6.7.12 @ 6:29AM
Another great article.
Von Mises Jr| 6.7.12 @ 7:28AM
This is the same con job that they are using to get the poll results they want to create. Anyone who has taken a statistics class knows that the results are only as valid as the sample.
So with a country of 42% self-identified conservatives and 20% self-identified liberals, the MSM and Academia simply construct a sample with about 20% conservative and 40% liberals. Even with these statistical illusions, Obama still only comes up even to up 5%. With an accurate sample, he would be down 10-15%.
TLP| 6.7.12 @ 7:41AM
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I disagree with Dr. Sowell. I think that Barack Hussein Obama has Unifed us. I believe that he has brought us Together.
He has brought us Together, into two Warring Camps. One, that loves this Country, the Flag, our Founding Fathers, Documents, and Principles, and the other one that Hates this Country, as it was Founded, Despises the Framers as a Buncha Rich White Slave Owners, who set out, from the beginning, to Rape the Land, and keep everything for themselves, and their fellow 1%ers.
One Group believes that Capitalism is what gave us the before to unheard of MIDDLE CLASS, and what turns Poor People, in to Rich People.
The other Group wants to take us to a Collectivist, Communal System, where everybody gets the same thing, regardless of their "Contribution" to the Collective. Think: Bee Hive, or Ant Hill, or THE BORG. "You will be assimilated. resistance is futile."
One side comes together to share with themselves, the things that have made this Country the Greatest, Freest, Strongest Country the world has ever know. They sing Patriotic Songs, say the Pledge of Allegience, and listen to Prayers.
The other Group (the one that doesn't wash it's hair) comes together in Anger, and threatening Violence. They clog up the Streets, Screaming their DEMANDS, and getting up in People's faces, in between taking CRAPS on Police Cars.
So, he has indeed, United us, one against the other.
Are you surprised?
scotchieguy| 6.8.12 @ 8:57AM
IOW, by dividing us, he has really just strengthened the two immovable objects which are not the 1% and 99%, but more like the 20% (hardcore lefty loony libs) and the rest of us sane folk (conservatives, moderates and independents) which make up the rest of the 80 %. The result I truly believe will be an historic landslide in favor of Mitt. Maybe he can actually be pushed to the right. What the hell, Newt and the new republican congress forced Bill to move to the center. It CAN be done.
Frekki| 6.7.12 @ 7:49AM
Reality is that by percentage of the population the majority of aborted babies are Black. What is it, like 60% of all Black pregnancies are aborted? That's self selected genocide, and it's supported by liberal Democrats.
Cobalt| 6.7.12 @ 8:16AM
"Lies, damn lies and statistics"
The Leftists should try dealing with the misogyny and racism in their own camp, for a change.
Kingofthenet| 6.7.12 @ 9:01AM
So let me get this straight 'CONSERVATIVE' Thomas, (I spell it it in capitals, for this 'big brother' Conservative) wants to create a category of 'Thought Crimes' What he is arguing is it's ok(For Now) if you want an Abortion because you can't affor another kid or because you don't want to be a mommy, but IF you think the reason is because you want a son, that's bad...1984 indeed
TW in SC| 6.7.12 @ 9:43AM
You really have only perfunctory reading skills, don't you?
Dai Alanye | 6.7.12 @ 11:20AM
If a persons speaks or writes a thought, then acts upon it, it becomes evidence.
TomJohnson| 6.7.12 @ 11:35AM
Yes that's really not the intent of this article. Dr. Sowell merely used that in conjunction with his thesis of a divider candidate. This doesn't obviate my opinion that abortions are an inherent evil and using abortion as a birth control method is akin to closing the old barn door after the horse got out however.
PolishKnight| 6.7.12 @ 12:09PM
Not only is the wage comparison disingenuous (since nearly everyone knows that women tend to take time off to have children, etc.) but also demonstrates the inevitable man-hating nature of feminism: It requires demonizing men while exploiting them.
I heard a woman say that she had a philosophy: "What's his is mine and what's mine is mine." It's quite obvious to all but the most radical leftists that women earn less because they take more time off. But what few are willing to point out is that women are ABLE to take that time off because most continue to demand that men live up to the breadwinner role in addition to demanding society make the taxpayer fork out money to poor women in the form of welfare.
In other words, the claim that feminism was a historical revolt against male oppression is the opposite of reality: Women earned and continue to earn less, and have been given treatment as victims, due to irrational hyper chivalry and entitlements from men. It's like a girl whose spoiled by a rich dad with cars and money to spend on booze and badboys because he loves her too much, not too little. Or at least he loves her in the wrong way. It also demonstrates that what so-called evil male chauvinists have said for centuries were right all along: Women are not ready for full equality. At least not right now.
In the meantime, even as Obama tries to play a PC gender card, newspaper style sections are full of women griping about the shortage of 1950's breadwinning men.
Kingofthenet| 6.7.12 @ 12:43PM
Do people actually do this? I guess in some cases they do, but I can't imagine NOT paying someone the same for a job.If i owned a bus Company, and you drove my bus, you would get the same whether your Ralph or Alice Kramden.(maybe actually a bit more for Alice in MPG savings)
PolishKnight| 6.7.12 @ 3:32PM
It's also about negotiation, Kingofthenet. When I buy an airline ticket, I commonly pay about 30% less (or more) than most other people who are sitting right next to me often under the same terms. It just turns out that I was better at navigating deals or being flexible about when I booked (I always check before lunch on Tuesday!)
Butch| 6.7.12 @ 3:44PM
I'll take this one on. Yes, King, many years ago people actually did this. It was a philosophy of management (later called "paternalism") that treated employees rather like family. My wife had her first boss (we were newlyweds, 40+ years ago) volunteer to her that she was being paid less than the men in positions comparable to her's because they were the "primary support for their families," whereas she wasn't. Don't you wish employers were still concerned with their employees' families as well as the employees themselves?
Want some more paternalism? My dad was a small manufacturer; he employed about 100 men and one woman. My job on Friday (payday) was to take one particularly irresponsible employee's paycheck to the grocery store and deliver the groceries to his wife for his family. We gave him the rest. Had we not, he wouldn't have come home with a dime of it. Was it really so bad?
PolishKnight| 6.7.12 @ 4:16PM
Betty Friedan, considered one of the founders of modern feminism (she claimed to be a rebellious housewife but she was actually a marxist all along) was interviewed and asked her opinion of the situation of modern women.
She whined and moaned that, gasp, "greed" was causing women to HAVE to work long hours and that the employers were footing the bill for their daycare and nannies. In other words, it's "greed" that everyone doesn't pony up money for successful career women's bills and let them take a half day off to go shopping.
So now they get all the "benefits" of a man's world: Working long hours, paying massive taxes for someone else to goof off or even use it against you, and having spouses that don't pay the bills.
Appleby| 6.7.12 @ 7:47PM
I agree. When I began working for a living, it was assumed that men earned a "family wage" and women earned "pin money" -- that women who worked were either living with their parents who supported them, or were married and were supported by a husband. It was World War II that changed this perception, largely, by showing women that when the chips were down, they could too get the same wages for the same work as the menfolk got. I fought on the feminist side for credit in my own name, the ability to have my income count toward a mortgage, to have my evidence accepted in court on the same terms as that of men, and to be hired for a job based on my talent and ability, not on what was inside my underwear. I believe most North American women have achieved these goals and anything more would be inequality...as we childless unmarried women have discovered when Mommy starts whining that she can't work late and a single person WHO HAS NOTHING ELSE TO DO, should take over the deadline task so she can go home and make dinner.
Like any other form of liberation, apparently Women's Lib doesn't know where to draw the line, and bosses are afraid to do it for them.
PolishKnight| 6.8.12 @ 10:32AM
Appleby, when affirmative action is over and the welfare rolls and unwed mothers living off of child support rolls are gone, then women in this country will have proven that what's inside their underwear doesn't matter.
If anything, the expense of this artificial equality for ALL women has dragged women such as yourself down by having to pay taxes to keep "Wise Latinas" in their positions. Regarding women and court hearings: Statistics show that most accusations of rape and DV are made by women either for revenge or social acceptance and so many women lie in family court that lawyers refer to it as "liars' court." When I was on jury duty last time, a woman said in open court that it was acceptable for a woman to punch a man and if he hit her back it would be assault by definition. That's the modern definition of equality.
In the meantime, don't forget to set your car alarm lest the product of a single mother home smash your windshield and steal the radio.
Anthony| 6.7.12 @ 12:52PM
Obozo's one to trash talk Moochelle about "not going all the way down".
Neither did Obozo. It was all about his pleasure, what a suprise.
cicero| 6.7.12 @ 1:04PM
How can anyone still take Nancy Pelosi seriously? The fact that she is elected by the denizens of San Francisco only makes her lack of seriousness more apparent. Unless and until the majority of the citizens of the country (fly over people) wake up and take back their country, they will continue to finance their own financial demise, in order to subsidize the non-serious among us.
Ronsch| 6.7.12 @ 1:13PM
I am glad that Dr. Sowell pointed out what a load of BS this is...
For one thing, when I was an employee of the State Of Alaska, regardless of who you were, if you entered State employment as let's say, and Administrative Clerk I, you received a fixed salary. Now, to be fair, regardless of which gender you were, if you were laterally transferring from one department to another at the same pay grade, you could probably keep the steps you had achieved (if you were a level "B", and had gotten a $0.50 raise for your term of service from level "A" to "B") so that you could end up earning more than someone else who just started working for the State.
Also, in the private sector, so what if someone is a better negotiator, male or female, or I guess now we should lump those "she-males" in there to be PC, and gets a higher beginning salary, does that mean the company discriminated against one gender? Sounds like more LSD (Liberal-Socialist-Democrat) nanny-state divisiveness from NerObama's "administration" (i.e. gangsters or is that "gangstas?)
Purp| 6.7.12 @ 1:52PM
Obviously, you are not a female, having been subjected to this discrimination. For a black man to complain about fairness in non-discrimination is really rich and disingenuous - since he would be pickin' cotton if he weren't helped by the Feds.
Anthony| 6.7.12 @ 2:50PM
So Dr. Sowell would still be pick'n cotton if it weren't for the Feds, eh Purp?
What a sick, vicious, elitist racist you truly are, but you're too blind to see it.
When exactly did you lefty plantation masssas notice that Dr. Sowell had managed to escape?
Butch| 6.7.12 @ 3:58PM
I am assuming you aren't aware that you just insulted one of the most highly accomplished men in the Republic. The man is in his 80s, Purp. He was raised in Harlem in the 40s, attended public schools, served in the military, even stationed in some segregated southern towns, I believe. He is a direct student of Dr. Milton Friedman. All this was accomplished while the civil rights movement was still in its infancy and affirmative action was nonexistent. He is a highly distinguished academic economist (Chicago School), author of many scholarly books and papers, and he accomplished it all on his own, without the assistance of the federal government--a self-made man accomplished against adverse conditions.
Picking cotton, indeed.
Petronius| 6.7.12 @ 5:24PM
Hey Purp. You gonna call Dr. Sowell an Uncle Tom while you're at it? He made it the "old fashioned way." He EARNED It.
Purp| 6.7.12 @ 1:18PM
" Among the people who are disappointed with President Obama, none has more reason to be disappointed than those who thought he was going to be "a uniter, rather than a divider" and that he would "bring us all together."" - if you don't like the results, "Blame Yo'self" . The individual mandate is a conservative idea, toward individual responsibility. Now it's terrible, why? Preserving the nation's credit rating should have been critical to the conservatives - it was not. Providing jobs programs to help the economy get through this Depression should have been pushed through, since the House R's campaigned on this - but they didn't do it.
The whole idea behind this article is ironic because you're blaming the wrong person. You can't do uniting all by yourself. And the R's had no intention of compromising 1/2 way. In fact from day one of Obama's presidency they have planned to defeat him, and d* the economy and the American people. It's disgusting, unpatriotic and un-American what they have done, just to win the next election.
Drunken Sailor| 6.7.12 @ 2:55PM
I seem to remember the president reminding us "I won". Yea, really sounds like a man willing to meet in the middle. You want to complain about people not meeting others halfway start with your Democrat Congress who believe compromise means they get their way or they lay on the floor kicking and screaming
Albert Constantine Jr.| 6.7.12 @ 4:36PM
The ironic part of that "I won" statement was that the other people in that room won their elections as well, or else they wouldn't have been there. But you are correct that it reflected the POTUS' view that since his party was in the majority, the choice for the Republicans was to join Democrats in the Democrat agenda, or do nothing.
Fortunately, most chose not to join him, and the 2010 election inhibited his ability to further pursue his agenda through legislation.
On the unfortunate side, I see Purp finally made it across the firewall of registration. The uncluttered comments threads were nice while they lasted.
PolishKnight| 6.7.12 @ 4:41PM
There's an old saying that when someone says they'll meet you halfway they usually are standing on the dividing line.
What Purp means by a "jobs program" is spending money for democrat cronies. Heck, the whole democrat agenda is basically about robbing from Peter to pay Paul so perhaps what Purp means by "meeting him halfway" is for Paul to hand over half of his wallet rather than all of it.
It's not uncommon for me to hear a leftist go on and on about different entitlements for Democrat special interest groups and how the "bigots" in the Republican party don't care about anyone but themselves. But isn't making a goodie grab for your special interest groups the very definition of only caring about yourselves too?
The only exception to that would appear to be white male leftists without government employment and crony benefits who buy into leftism to feel smart and better about themselves or to fit in with their friends. That isn't selflessness rather than being a cool aid drinking fool. I have a few friends from childhood like that and most of them are living in their mother's basements and playing Xbox.
So Obama can blame this on Republicans and he can blame that on them too but in the end, it's quite clear that the Swedish utopia is never going to be. So what's the point? Just keep digging...
Jeamar| 6.7.12 @ 3:59PM
If Obama were sincere about a war on women, he would totally repudiate the advance of Islam in Western civilization--and I do mean civilization. Bringing honor killings, genital mutilation, stoning to death (of women) for adulty, etc. to Western Europe and the Americas is the true war on women.
justiceday | 6.7.12 @ 4:13PM
The worst part is Obama and several other Democrats aren't even helping women in the military. The issue of rape in and by the US military is epic has gotten worse under Obama and he has yet to say a word! And when you have a congressman like Mark Critz (D) who serves on the armed forces committee and ignores a military rape that he admitted was mishandled (site www citizensagainstmarkcritz com) and does nothing. Isn't that worse than what Obama is talking about? People need to realize this country has bigger problems, especially women, than what Obama is trying to sell. www theusmarinesrape com
Cobalt| 6.7.12 @ 8:14PM
"Obama's Third-Party History"
By Stanley Kurtz /NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE
http://www.nationalreview.com/.....nley-kurtz
Mistral| 6.9.12 @ 12:53AM
This article should be converted into a youtube presentation - it is strategic. Hussein Obama is more dangerous for USA than any anti-American terrorist. he is indeed a subversive and divisive revisionist Leninist-style.