Please Pass on This Tribute to Teddy–Pass Healthcare Now
In Memoriam: “The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.” Pass real healthcare reform now in Ted Kennedy’s honor!
(Please pass this on and let’s start a campaign.)
With thanks to Peaco Todd for this cartoon which she has generously created and donated to this campaign.
Read MoreWebsite of the Week: Women for Parity (psst–good news!)
“We want all, but we’ll take half,” is one of the inimitable Bella Abzug’s mantras. It’s also on the masthead of a website I commend to you, called Women for Parity, my first Website of the Week. There are so many great websites for and about powered women and the issues important to us. I…
Read MoreIs Social Media Your Best Leadership Toolkit?
While I was in Arizona recently, I spent some time with the Arizona State University School of Social Transformation folks brainstorming an online leadership certificate course for women that we intend to launch in the fall of 2010. We plan to use a social media platform to create an ever-growing network of contacts for the women who participate in the course.
I’d love to get your feedback on the idea and how you would use social media as a leadership toolkit to further your work. What are you wanting to know or learn to use? What social media do you think have the greatest promise for organizational or leadership effectiveness?
This video is jam-packed with data about the power of social media. Take a look. Do you agree with it?
Read MoreRovian Reality Bites Make My Blood Boil
When I read the New York Times front page story today, showing the extent of Karl Rove’s involvement in the iregular firings in 2006 of a number of U.S. attorneys who weren’t toeing the Rove-Bush line, my blood boiled. Not that this was big news–it was merely a reminder of the many Bush administration abuses of power. I asked my friend, BILL ISRAEL, a former University if Massachusetts Amherst faculty member now at St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, Texas, and the author of the forthcoming book Stealing Reality: the Rise of the Right, the Fracture of News, the Lessons of Karl Rove, to share his thoughts on the matter with me and Heartfeldt readers.
The extent of Karl’s involvement in the purge of U.S. attorneys in the Justice Department is no surprise to anyone who’s known him well. During Watergate, he worked as understudy to Donald Segretti, convicted for performing campaign dirty tricks for Richard Nixon. So I learned a great deal from Karl in the course of teaching “Politics and the Press” with him at the University of Texas at Austin, while he revved up the campaign of George W. Bush to become president.
Unlike Segretti, Karl, to date, has never been convicted. Yet he remains a specialist in wreaking havoc with his opponents, putting deniable distance between himself and responsibility, then arguing that, like Valerie Plame, all opponents are “fair game.” The “hit parade” of his experience in hitting political and other opponents is Chapter 7 of my forthcoming book.
What’s different about the era of Karl, as opposed to the era of Segretti, is that while Karl remains a central coordinator for the political Right, he is also one of its chief beneficiaries. He is among a legion of young conservatives who since the 1960s have been schooled in literally hundreds of right-wing institutions founded since 1935 in a calculated and carefully-coordinated plan to change the ideology of the United States — to push it to the right. The success of that effort accounts for the incredible success of the Right in dominating American politics since the 1970s — and in its efforts to stop health care and health insurance reform now.
Read MoreSotomayor’s Confirmation—What Her Victory May Cost the Republicans
Conservatives tried to convince the Senate, and the nation, that an impressive judge with an impeccable record was simply a product of affirmative action. It didn’t work.
By Peggy Simpson for the Women’s Media Center, reprinted with permission.
The confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor as the third woman and first Latina to sit on the Supreme Court never was a done-deal.
It might look like it from the 68 to 31 vote of approval in the Senate Thursday.
But there were bumps along the way, potential derailments that were dealt with and some bizarre resurrections by conservatives of Reagan-era complaints that white males were victims of affirmative action policies that benefit women and minorities.
Here’s what helped Sotomayor clinch the job:
- impressive coalitions by liberal advocacy groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, with feminist and reproductive rights groups stifling initial qualms about their uncertainties about her views on abortion;
- unwavering support from Team Obama, especially in the midst of early accusations by conservative activists that she was a racist or worse, when even some supporters were nervous about remarks she made in 2001 about the virtues of being a “wise Latina.” She never apologized or took back those thoughts but did acknowledge a “poor choice” of words;
- most of all, her own steady performance before the cameras in hearings that had been expected to feature fireworks but instead bordered on boring. Boring was good, in this context. Behind the scenes, Sotomayor visited with an unprecedented number of senators and by all accounts was a charmer. She carried that civility and personal touch into the Senate hearings with gestures, smiles and mini-conversations with GOP senators she knew would oppose her.
Before Oprah, There Was Molly
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Before Lucy Ricardo, before Oprah Winfrey there was Molly Goldberg, powered woman and media mogul. In this Women’s Media Center exclusive, Emily Wilson interviews prize-winning filmmaker Aviva Kempner, whose documentary brings to life the star, writer and producer of the first TV sitcom, “The Goldbergs.” Yoo hoo, readers–Trust me, darlings, when I say you should go to the nearest theater where “Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” is playing. You’ll find a fascinating story that weaves together global events with feminism, anti-semitism, and the American Dream through the prism of one groundbreaking woman’s life. Enjoy!
Filmmaker Aviva Kempner, in town to receive an award at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, has a lot to say. She tells stories about a photographer who complimented her about her earrings, muses on why her hotel room has a little jar of stones (“Are these supposed to center me? Because I’m in San Francisco?”), and when her brother Jonathan pops in she greets him enthusiastically. Most of all, she wants to talk about her latest documentary, Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, the story of television and radio pioneer Gertrude Berg, which she says would make a perfect date movie.
“Don’t go see The Hangover, go see Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg,” she says. “It’s a great uplifting story for young women.”
Read MoreWhat Can We Learn From Health Reform’s Leadership Laboratory?
The health reform debate gives us an interesting Petri dish in which to observe leadership–or not.
Management of controversy always tests leaders. Leaders on the right are typically clearer and more aggressive in delivering their message (whether factual or deliberately untrue, as in the example below) than those on the left. This calm, measured interview with Kentucky Democrat Rep. John Yarmouth talking about what he anticipated discussing with his constituents during the August recess is a case in point on the left side of the political dial.
In contrast, catch demonstrators on the right trying to shout down Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) at his Austin TX town hall in order to shut off any chance of Congress’ reforming the health care system. They know their goal and they go for it.
Read MoreIt’s All About Choices: A Nurse’s View of Health Reform
As Congress prepares to leave for its August recess, the health reform debate is sure to be hotter than ever. C. Stacy Beam has been a nurse for over 15 years with a background in both medical and psychiatric nursing. She holds a law degree from Northeastern University School of Law and is an adjunct professor of clinical psychiatric nursing at Northeastern University’s Boeve College of Health Sciences. She has a longstanding interest in national politics and women’s rights and can be found blogging over at her very fun website, Secretary Clinton. She wrote this post for the Women’s Media Center, where it was originally published.
If health care reform is enacted—and if it works to lower costs and keep Americans healthy—nurses will be a large part of the solution, argues the author. Trust her: she’s a nurse.
When President Barack Obama appeared in the Rose Garden on July 15, 2009, to continue to stress the urgent need for timely passage of health care reform, there was a reason he was flanked by some of the biggest names in nursing today. No other profession is more trusted than the nursing profession, at least according to Gallup’s Most Trusted Profession poll, which nursing has “won ” for seven consecutive years.
At the president’s side were, among others, Dr. Mary Wakefield, the administration’s highest ranking nurse, and Becky Patton, American Nurse’s Association president. The message was clear—for decades nurses have consistently advocated for affordable, quality, equitable distribution of health care services for all Americans. And while much of the health care debate has focused on major stakeholders such as physicians (largely via the AMA), the insurance and hospital industry, labor unions and to a much lesser extent, the health care consumer, it is nurses who can and will be an essential aspect of any health care legislation that seeks to provide cost-saving, quality care, particularly to America’s most vulnerable populations.
Nurses are in a unique position to attest to the consequences of how today’s current health care market has privileged expensive, acute treatments over more cost-saving models that focus on disease prevention, health education and screening. While much has been made of the plight of the country’s almost 50 million uninsured, less has been made of the growing number of under-insured people, who can no longer afford even their employer-based plans or find that their health care needs are not being met despite their current coverage.
Read MoreWhat’s Sarah Up to Now?
I’ll betcha Sarah Palin’s mother had to ask that question often when she was a child: What’s Sarah up to now?
I’ll be talking about that along with Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn Monday early morning on “Canada AM”, which is CTV’s equivalent of the “Today Show”, so I’ve had to think about the answer to the question more than I might have liked.
Palin has officially stepped down from her post as governor of Alaska as of today. And we’re all abuzz asking why and what is she going to do next: Were some of those ethics charges about to bring her down so she struck a deal? Was she unable to deal with the stress, as her daughter’s baby-daddy Levi Johnston speculated? Is she just after the money she can make with her book and speaking engagements? Was she angry about her treatment by the media? Did she calculate that if she wants to run for president in 2012, she’d be better off not racking up more of a record since her political juice with her state legislature seemed to have been heading south?
Any and all of those are possible. And perhaps she simply had the audacity of nope. As in “Nope, I won’t finish my term because who wants to be a lame duck?” By that logic, if my child is going to reach majority at 18, should I stop being a mother when he’s 16 1/2 so that I’m not a lame duck? If the PTA president is elected to a two-year term, should she step down after a year-and-a-half so as not be a lame duck? Or wouldn’t we call all of those examples blatant abnegation of responsibility?
Read MoreThe Gender Gap in Healthcare—Our Stories Behind the Statistics
I was shocked by the experiences Linda Brodsky MD shared when she spoke at an AAUW event about gender discrimination in her medical profession. She’s become a crusader for women in medicine–you’ll see why in this guest post, and we should all cheer her on. Be sure to check out her blog and share your story with her.
Today women comprise more than 50% of medical students, 40% of resident trainees and by the end of 2010, 30% of physicians. Could it be that we’re finally closing the gender gap in medicine? No. And nothing is further from the truth. Until women decision and policy makers are leading the discussion at the table (or on the bench), women will not become impactful leaders soon enough, contrary to what these overly optimistic statistics suggest.
From the halls of medical academia to the editorial boards of medical journals, from the ranks of organized medicine to the NIH committees that judge research worthiness, the number of women are much fewer than they should be. Where are all the women leaders?
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