Letters to the Editor
marktgarten
Published Letters: 185 Editor's Choice: 24
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Kansas
[Read the article: More cruelty from right-wing crackpots]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Question: If you are looking for objective reporting, why are you reading the editorial section? Consider Walsh's blog as you would the "opinion" section of an old-fashioned newspaper. Disagreeing with what Walsh writes is fine; getting upset because you are reading the wrong section of the newspaper is silly.
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Going Before Judges
[Read the article: Federal abortion ban roundup]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Pedestrian, you are joking about teenagers going before a judge, right? I'm a lawyer and I have fuck all idea about how I would petition a judge in such a situation. Of course, I am well-educated, (somewhat) mature and have access to information from which I could figure out how file such a petition. Just like every scared, 14-year old who, for whatever reason, doesn't want her parents to find out she's had sex.
And, by-the-fucking-by, I have seen judges ignore stacks cases containing binding precedent for no reason other than they didn't feel like following such precedent. So I'm going to guess that a judge who doesn't like abortion and believes that girls and women who don't want to get pregnant should keep their knees together will give a lot of thought to the matter.
Don't even get me started on appellate procedure and standards of review.
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Hey, Symbol X6!
[Read the article: Tough titties]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Um, you seriously need to work on your reading comprehension skills. That 5% disparity was found in graduates who studied education in college:
"Even so, one year after graduation, a pay gap turned up between women and men who studied the same fields.
In education, women earn 95 percent as much as their male colleagues earn, while in math, women earn 76 percent as much as men earn, the study showed."
As you can plainly see, the 5% gap was limited strictly to education.
Cordially,
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And how much after ten years?
[Read the article: Tough titties]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Twelve percent.
Moreover, that small gap doesn't take into consideration the income lost for making the decision to take time off to raise children, a decision made much less frequently by men, or the fact that jobs historically held by women tend to pull in less money than jobs historically held by men. The study's point was that even looking at things from an allegedly value-neutral viewpoint (comparing men and women who have made the same choices), women still make less than men.
The reason that the gender-based deficit is closer to 5% (the difference for education) rather than 14% (the difference for math) is that more women go into education than math (although this gap is and has been closing). Needless to say, education, at least below the college level, historically was a career for women, while math was for men. Careers that women entered received less pay partly because women took those jobs. Those jobs became less valued and employers could, for lack of a better phrase, get away with paying women less. These factors worked together to suppress women's wages.
When women entered into fields dominated by men it was ideologically acceptable to pay them less because to do otherwise would threaten the man's ability to support his family. Irrational, but that went the thinking. Of course, this also happened when the "other" entering into the field was Asian or Irish or black or what-have-you.
While the gap has shrunk, the historical legacy of paying "woman's work" less than "men's work", as well as simply paying women less than men, still exists. While it seems inconceivable that somehow what you gleaned from the article is that women have very little to complain about, from reading your other letters you clearly have some kind of ax to grind regarding women or feminism or both.
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Name Calling and Spanking Isn't the Worst Punishment
[Read the article: This little piggy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My old man would patiently give me 1/2 hr lectures on critical topics such as the importance of turning lights off when you leave the room and how . No physical violence or name calling. Much, much worse! Seemingly unending, soul-crushing lectures on minor acts of forgetfulness and/or being a kid. But it did give me a bad attitude and an aptitude for long-winded argumentation, which I have put to good use in my career as a litigator.
(And, by the way, SymbolX6, I find it funny that you blame feminism and psychology for removing hurtful language from our daily existence after whining elsewhere about how I insulted you for stating that you have an ax to grind about feminism.)
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Don't Forget About Our Own Cultural Problems
[Read the article: The few. The culturally aware. The Language Corps]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One of the more pernicious effects of the military's stance on homosexuality is that many gay and lesbian members of the armed forces who have been purged entered into language programs. Could there be anything more irrational than forcing out someone who has *volunteered* to serve in the military *who speaks Arabic* because of that person's sexual orientation?
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What Am I To Do?
[Read the article: The president's veto]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was against the invasion. Bush lied; people died.
I hoped for a peaceful Iraq. How could things be worse than under Saddam Hussein, a two-bit Stalin? Well, Bush proved how things could be worse. Hubris and incompetence ruined what could have been a new beginning for Iraq.
Now, however, my two options politically seem to be withdrawal, which I believe would likely allow Iraq to disintegrate into something even worse (Somalia; Haiti; Sudan) or essentially stay-the-course with the same blinkered, horrendous leadership that created the mess in the first place.
If Bush was serious about fixing Iraq we would be sending in 100,000 soldiers to clamp down on the violence (which, realistically, we can't) AND entering into serious talks with Turkey, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Should I support the Democratic leadership because I feel that continued Bush leadership will merely lead to additional loss of American life and treasure?
Or should I support Bush because I believe that it is irresponsible to leave Iraq now when the American military may be the only thing preventing Iraq from tearing itself apart?