The GOP’s War Against Women

You’d think that they would just do the numbers and realize that by singling out women for punishment, the Republicans in congress would discover that women vote, too. Since Women’s Suffrage passed, anyway.

Statistically, you know, women account for 51% of the electorate.

But no, according to the Congressional Record, Republicans appear to be in all out war with “the fairer sex.”

Witness H.R. 3, a Republican-sponsored bill (with a whopping 211 co-sponsors) that promises to raise taxes on millions of women and families that pay for health insurance which includes, as part of the health benefits, an abortion.

I swear, it’s true. Here is the text:

“(1) no credit shall be allowed under the internal revenue laws with respect to amounts paid or incurred for an abortion or with respect to amounts paid or incurred for a health benefits plan (including premium assistance) that includes coverage of abortion.”

See? It’s pretty clear that this legislation punishes women even for purchasing health insurance if it covers an abortion, even if the insured women never take advantage of that health benefit. The punishment then would preclude a woman from buying insurance that covers abortion, and, I might add, preclude a health insurance company from offering coverage.

It is, in short, a tax on women based on other people’s religious beliefs over when human life begins.

But wait, there’s more.

Women’s health is under attack on the budget front as well.

H.R. 1, the so-called budget bill, as it is developing, is steadily evolving to a second front on the Republican War Against Women.

Budget cuts that affect women, and women only, include the following:

Defunding Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is a national program to promote women’s health and well-being as well as providing contraception, family planning advice, and, yes, abortions. Millions of women benefit from Planned Parenthood’s services. Many would not be alive right now if it weren’t for them.

And yes, they also provide abortion services.

But not only that, Republican budget cuts in have completely defunded Title X health care benefits for low-income women. Gone will be their access to cancer screening, HIV tests and access to family planning.

Republicans are at War With Women, and it’s clear to me that this is yet another issue that didn’t come up during the mid-term election, which they tell me was a “referendum on Obamacare.” But it is clear to me now that misogyny is on their hidden agenda.

Now, I know that Republicans hate poor people, and some poor people vote for Republicans whenever they can for some unfathomable reason. Too, it now seems that Republicans hate women, and some women also vote for Republicans whenever they can, again for reasons that seem baseless to me.

And you definitely get what you vote for. They say it isn’t personal, it’s just budget cutting, but I’d say that losing your health care doesn’t get any more personal.

If you want to lodge your complaint, or maybe cast a ballot that you missed casting in November, you can do that at California Senator Barbara Boxer's petition which can be found right here.

I did.

Bowling for Justice in Fort Bend County

What passes for justice here in still Republican-dominated Fort Bend County surely would make the justice system in any given banana republic look like a shining example of jurisprudence. Witness a case being heard here by a visiting judge. A case that just concluded yesterday.

Taxpayers are paying for the trial of one Joey Sula who, it is alleged, conned a weak and vulnerable woman out of 500 large. That’s half a million bucks to those of you who don’t watch gangster movies. The poor, weak and vulnerable Fort Bend woman who he bilked? That would be Karen Pearson, owner of “Winning Edge Consultants” a political consulting firm that oversees the campaigns of several Republican Fort Bend County office holders.

The poor, weak, vulnerable woman who has, as a partner in her firm, former Fort Bend County Republican Party chairman Gary Gillen.

According to testimony given last week, and reported at the Fort Bend Herald, Pearson was approached by Joey Sula while she was sitting at a high roller table in a Louisiana casino, and established a relationship with her while she was “vulnerable because she had divorced, both her grandmothers had died and her father died all in that time period. Sula, she said, made her laugh and had the right words.”

Pearson claims that there was no monkey business between the two, just money business.

Money business where Pearson gave Sula, in several transactions, $500,000.

That happens all the time you know. Complete strangers approach me in supermarkets, at the gas pump, and in casinos while I am gambling away the deed to my house, and ask me for hundreds of thousands of dollars. If they make me laugh, I pony up.

When Pearson finally smelled a rodent she did what everyone would do. She got her personal friend and client’s husband, Fort Bend County Assistant DA Mike Elliott, to arrest him.

And what are friends for, anyway? She knew that Elliott was up to helping out, having seen the fruits of his past labors in prosecuting a bunch of roofers who had the umbrage to go into business and compete with their former boss, personal friend, and contributor to the campaign of Annie Elliott, the wife of Mike Elliott, the client of Karen Pearson.

Now what I didn’t know until today, again courtesy of the Fort Bend Herald, is that last year, Sula, through his attorney, had tried to negotiate a formal agreement to pay back all of the money that Pearson had loaned to him. His attorney, Richard Raymond, negotiated with Pearson’s attorney, Mike Elliott. Yes, the same Mike Elliott who had Sula arrested.

The trial is being held in the 400th District Court of Cliff Vacek. Vacek, however, is not hearing the case. The case is being heard by a visiting judge, Judge W.G. “Dub” Woods. Vacek, another client of Karen Pearson, recused himself from the case.

Now here is a frightening thought. What we learn here is what we gather from hearings in open court, where transparency is the rule and not the exception. Think of what must be lurking there behind closed doors in the opacity that is Fort Bend County government.

Lurking there, below the waves as it were. The frightening thought is that what we can see out there in the public record is just the tip of the iceberg.