Yeah THAT’S the ticket. Let’s bash people for what happened in 1981 and then don’t bring up WHAT it meant, what has happened SINCE then…no let’s attack each other with complete BS…IT’S SURVIVOR BABY AND FK THE PARTY. I find it telling the only thing about Trump is she wants to ‘bleach’ the Oval Office…oh and he’s a sexist. Wow.
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Absolutely. There is nothing quite so infuriating as this “they lied to us” excuse. The truth was easy to discern, it was all over the foreign papers (especially in Britain), and there was a reason why the US invaded afghanistan with nearly universal support, but invaded Iraq with an anemic “coalition of the willing”.
And don’t tell me that Biden (or any of the 'they lied to us" types) didn’t have people on their staffs saying “they are lying to you. Here is the proof! PLEASE look at it”, let alone hearing from thousands of their constitutents. No, people like Joe Biden wanted to be lied to, because he wanted to look like a tough guy.
And again, Biden’s refusal to acknowledge his failures tells us he really doesn’t change. Blaming a mistake on someone else’s lie when the truth was readily available isn’t taking responsibility, its evading it.
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1981, by that time many women were working. The glass ceiling was beginning to crack. I was in college studying to be a scientist. Women were in engineering programs, math programs, and becoming CEOs.
I adore Biden and it kind of hurt to read that article. He is an older man so I can forgive him but really, that article cannot be just washed away. Women are too important to our future and to this election. A lot of us work and a lot of us could use subsidies for day care.
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Stop defending misogyny.
Gillibrand was pointing out Biden’s rationale for opposing the subsidy. Biden didn’t just say “lets not subsidize parents who can pay for child care because tax payers should not subsidize the rich”. He said that such subsidies “led to the deterioration of the family”.
biden thought “a woman’s place is in the home”, and when there was a husband making good money, the wife should be home watching the kids, cooking, cleaning and doing the laundry.
And he seemed a lot more concerned with the welfare of wealthy (overwhelmingly white) families than with poor families. If he cared so much about the deterioration of working class and poor families, why didn’t he support providing a living wage to women who stayed home to raise a family?
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Anybody think the same about everything that they did decades ago. Hell look at the changes to socially accepted norms as a whole.
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Absolutely I’m a different person than I was 40 years ago. The difference is that Joe can’t seem to say that out loud.
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Would you fund a federal or state program aimed at paying “stay-at-home” parents if they choose to stay at home with their kids?
(My question arises from the assumption that, when you say “a lot of us work,” this includes moms or dads who stay at home to take care of their kids.)
Well he just thinks admitting he used to think a certain way will be taken as he still thinks that way. And sure Republicans will push that, but if they do they will really be saying that Joe still thinks like they still think now! And sadly I think that is why Joe would pull in right learners better than any other candidate and be the most likely to win against Donald. With the good news being that I don’t believe he still thinks that way and will promote a lot if not all of the left leaning stuff the younger folks are pushing.
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The gop is going to pick on him no matter what. They will lie their asses off. If people believe their lies then we’re done anyway.
Too often he thinks he can just put his head in the sand and pretend the past hasn’t occurred (unless it has to do with Obama). He has to own his past…all of it… and not cherry pick rosy colored moments. His “apology” about Anita Hill is an example of him not being able to address a problem head on and instead nibbles at the edges and looks terrible doing it. I left that apology thinking he really didn’t think he did anything wrong but that he had to say he was kinda sorry. Same feeling I have with his old op-ed.
I’m not a big Joe fan, whenever I’ve heard him talk he doesn’t seem sharp enough and I hate the folksy stuff. I understand the “he’ll bring the right leaners in” idea and really wanted Sherrod Brown to run for that reason (though I don’t think we would keep the Senate in that case – we need Sherrod there) but I just don’t think he’s the right stuff for all the crap that needs fixed after the abomination slinks out of the White House (hopefully in handcuffs).
I will support him lock, stock and barrel if he’s the nominee but I’m afraid he’s just going to be “a noun, a verb and Barrack Obama” candidate which is pretty bland.
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This is the moment digging up something from someone’s distant past and bashing them for it jumped the shark for me. If this is the stuff Democrats are going to attack each other over, then we are doomed to 4 more years of Donald.
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Can’t stop what I never started.
The op-ed was primarily aimed against wealthy families who want federal help to take care of their children. You are projecting an assumption that the one earner would be the male, not an unreasonable assumption to be fair to you, but one that is not explicit in the op-ed. You also make the assumption that all women would prefer to work outside the home rather than raise a family; it was a difficult decision for my wife and I. I did see in the op-ed a lament that instead of opting for a little more material stuff, families should take care of their young and old. Instead of looking for federal help, they should tighten their belts.
This is a little personal for me - my grandmother moved in with my folks and my 2 sisters (we were aged 3 to 9) when my grandfather died in 1969. My sisters had just got separate rooms and had to share a room again. My grandmother qualified for subsidized housing and initially could have lived alone as she was 66 at the time, but my mom and dad didn’t think twice. She lived with my folks for over 15 years - long after many families would have been looking for a government subsidized nursing home.
Some people (not I) might say that my folks were saps for saving the federal government tens of thousands of dollars by caring for my grandmother (who did provide valuable childcare to us). The attitude that Biden railed against is present today in the wealthy families who transfer custody of their children game the financial aid system. Were my wife and I saps for saving for college and retaining custody of our children and paying for their college educations? (Sorry for the humblebrag, but it is part of the story - we understand how fortunate we were to be in that position)
From USA Today
Dozens of college students from well-to-do families may be getting money reserved for poorer families thanks to a legal loophole: They’re giving up custody of their children.
The tactic is legal, but ethically questionable, said Andrew Borst, the director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Chief among his concerns: Financial aid money is limited.
“Money we give to one student is money not going to another student,” Borst said.
Here’s how the scheme worked. ProPublica Illinois and The Wall Street Journalindependently reported Monday that families near Chicago would give up legal guardianship of their children to relatives or friends. Students would then file for financial independence, which effectively opened the door to financial aid they wouldn’t have been able to access while under the legal care of their parents.
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Total cheapshot. What he was saying in that article isn’t crazy. $50K was a pretty damn good salary in 1981.
Wage Indices:
1981 $13,773.10
2017 $50,321.89
What we have here is Gillibrand banking on people not really comprehending that $50K a year 38 years ago went about 4 times as far as a $50K salary today…not to mention the fact that daycare wasn’t $2K+ per month back then either. Agree with it or not, saying that people of higher means shouldn’t be getting a childcare credit isn’t batshit crazy or insensitive nonsense…nor would it be to say that it should be capped at a certain point, unless you want to be paying for people like Trump to have live-in au pairs.
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the op-ed was primarily about telling women that their place is in the home – and used the “subsidizing rich women” as an excuse.
There is ZERO reason to bring up the “deterioration of the family” and other, equally questionable assertions (about “personal responsibility”) on the question of subsidizing the rich. “Lets not subsidize the wealthy” is an argument in itself. It need no justifications other than the self-evident ones – either we can’t afford it, or if we can, we should concentrate our efforts on the people who need it.
Joe went full “dog whistle sexism” in his early career the same way he exploited “dog whistle racism” with his segregationist buddies.
And unless and until he fully acknowledges his past positions, its difficult to believe that he has genuinely changed.
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I’d say let’s take a look at Gillibrand’s record, but it would be a waste of time. I doubt she will even be in the next debate.
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If he doesn’t repudiate this, he’s wrecking any claim to be center-left. This is the kind of shit I expect from Newt Gingrich about “personal responsibility.” (Actually, it sounds more like Daniel Patrick Moynihan.) It’s not about his objection to non-means tested child care per se. (If that’s the compromise it takes, do it and try to improve it later.) It’s about all the crap about people being unwilling to give anything to raise their children. If this were such a great concern, why not require employers to offer two or three years of paternity leave? When he supports “women who choose not to work” (if a man chooses the same thing, even if his significant other earns 10 times as much, he’s a deadbeat dad and she’s a failure as a mother).
Now, he could get out of that by simply pointing out that in 1981, the religious fascists were on the march and controlled the Senate, and now he knows better. Then he introduces a plan for long term paternity leave, and stringent anti-discrimination rules (e.g., eliminate all caps on damage awards in discrimination lawsuits and permit the use of electronic surveillance of companies suspected of doing that, which implies significant criminal penalties for deliberate violation of the law.)
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Not even remotely and the level of misrepresentation involved here is pretty epic. It’s kindof hilarious that within a few tweets in the responses to Gillibrand’s communication director posting PART of this article, I saw women telling her that her spin on it is a misrepresentation or dishonest and that they’d never vote for GIllibrand. But hey, anything’s justified to smear the old white guy, right? You do you.
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Taking things (facts) out of context is always a cheap way to ‘win’ a point. Gillabrand has done that often.
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And the cheapness is only exacerbated by the fact that it was being done to deliver a deliberate misinterpretation that attempts to brand his identity as misogynist.
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I’ll mind my place as the TPM community might take offense to my description of Sen Gillabrand.
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I’m still mad about Franken lol
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