Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Some Good News



It makes me feel weird to write about good news from our side, but they do happen and I must pay more attention to them lest I push all of you over that high ledge.

Remember the post about the committee planning to raise the money spent on abstinence-only education, even though the well-done studies show that it doesn't work? The good news about that is that the committee reversed some of that. From an e-mail from ACLU on June 21:

The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded the Senate
Appropriations Committee's decision to cut funding for the Community Based Abstinence
Education (CBAE) program and raise funding for the family planning program Title X. In a
markup Tuesday, subcommittee members voted to decrease CBAE by $28 million and increase
Title X by $16 million, a move the full committee ratified today.

That makes more sense, too.

The other piece of good news has to do with the recent Supreme Court finding that individuals (in this case women) who have suffered from wage discrimination have only a few months to sue:

On June 22, 2007, Representative George Miller (D-Calif.) and 23 other House co-sponsors introduced H.R. 2831, the "Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2007," a bill aimed at fixing a recent Supreme Court decision undermining protections against wage discrimination that have been bedrock principles of civil rights laws for decades.

...

H.R. 2831, which addresses wage disparity based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, and disability clarifies that such discrimination is not a one-time occurrence that starts and ends with the first paycheck, but that each paycheck represents ongoing discrimination by the employer. This bill reaffirms the fundamental principle that our civil rights protections are intended to have a broad remedial purpose – to addres and correct injuries suffered because of unlawful employment discrimination.

It might not work, of course, but it's important that the bill is introduced.


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A correction to the last item. The bill is H.R. 2831: The Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
of 2007 and is now available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:1:./temp/~c110u
3rOy4.