A Rhetorical Question?

Joe Doakes from Como Oark emails:

The Complete Makeover of Society to Pamper Liberal Women Act is proceeding through the DFL dominated legislature. How many boondoggles can you find in this law?

I lost count at “a doodoo load”.

I may have boondoggle fatigue.

UPDATE:  Welcome, MPP readers.  Stop by.  Ask a question or two.  Find out all the ways the MPP “writers” have lied to you. 

If you approach things with an open mind, you’ll find that my old friend DG probably means well, but for all of her talking a about “fact-checking” really does little but filter things through her prejudices, and gets everything generally wrong.

But hope springs eternal!

Anyway, welcome.

39 thoughts on “A Rhetorical Question?

  1. (1) its compensation policies or practices are based on the principle of equal pay
    9.9for equal work, and are in compliance with title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the
    9.10Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Minnesota Human Rights Act, and the Minnesota Equal
    9.11Pay for Equal Work Law;

    ……So the DFL run government says that if you want a gov’t contract, you cannot pay your employees based on merit, education, work history, skills, reliability, etc. Instead you have to pay them based on their gender.

  2. And from skimming through the bill, it looks like it adds another large gov’t bureaucracy. More gov’t employees. More spending. Much more regulation. Is Minnesota turning into a mini-Soviet style all-controlling gov’t? Is the Sioux Falls Economic Development Corp smiling today?

  3. Is the Sioux Falls Economic Development Corp smiling today?

    I’m Dan Hindbjorgen, and I approve this message.

  4. “Pamper liberal women”: a case in point: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/the-legend-of-vera-nabokov-why-writers-pine-for-a-do-it-all-spouse/359747/
    According to the author, Nabakov’s success as a writer was due to his wife, who received nothing in return for her work. The author seems to believe that Vera Nabakov should have received the royalty checks. When a man has a successful career, it is because of his wife. When a woman has successful career, it is because of her talent and hard work.

  5. First of all, this is not strictly a man/woman problem. The same problems that affect 90% of women affect 50% of the men. The pool of people willing to jump through the hoops, suck up to the boss, and put in the travel and face time to get promoted is small, and frequently lacking in talent other than in the political realm.

    The problem is a corporate culture focused on promotion to senior positions. The majority of workers are single contributors, not managers. Those single contributors are the ones who ensure goods and services are produced, they are the ones who are the primary contacts to the customers, they are the ones who resolve problems. One would think that companies would strive to keep their best talent exactly where they are by paying them well, granting them authority, and giving them the freedom to work as they choose. But no. Rewards only come to those who rise in the hierarchy. People who do their jobs well, put in the face time and travel, and play the political game are transferred to a managerial position where they get to sit in meetings and do paperwork for HR. So why do people still want to be managers? Because movement up the hierarchy must mean big pay increases, or else there will be no way to justify the huge difference between between the CEO and individual contributor pay scales. And to further justify those pay scales, managers jealously guard decision-making authority even when the individual contributor is the one who is best informed to make decisions.

    Women will never rise to the top of organizations that hire overpaid, ego-driven control freaks as CEOs and allow them to create a hierarchy that looks like them. An organization that pushed authority to the bottom, and paid managers modestly to be coaches and supervisors, rather than ‘Leaders’, wouldn’t need or want jet-setting macho workaholics who work 90 hours a week. They would need experienced sober managers, managers who viewed someone who works more than 50 hours a week as either a time-waster or in need of some mentoring in how to delegate. Lots of those managers would be women.

  6. I have worked for some big Twin Cities based corporations. Two observations:
    -Most are rather liberal. Think about General Mills sponsoring homosexual weddings.

    -There are a lot of females in professional office jobs and in mid-level management. And paid well.

    What the Democrats are trying to do (assuming they are sincere and not just pandering for votes) is say the railroad engineer who is rarely home and risks his life at every grade crossing, should be paid no more than a female social worker, who works 40 hours a week and is home at 5:30 each night.

    That a logger out in the woods should be paid no more than the administrative person who sits at a desk.

    Or that the accountant who works 60 hour weeks during the quarterly accounting cycle should be paid no more than the HR rep who is willing work for less so she can mostly work from home and take care of her family.

  7. Keep up the right wing war on women, guys; it works so VERY well for the Dems.

    Why is it that conservatives persist in ignoring facts and in believing in things that are so clearly not true?

    For example, when Chuck wrote:
    “……So the DFL run government says that if you want a gov’t contract, you cannot pay your employees based on merit, education, work history, skills, reliability, etc. Instead you have to pay them based on their gender.”

    NO. That is NOT what the law says or does.
    Merit and qualifiers like education and work history DO still apply.
    But you have to ask, why is it then that female CEO’s – who presumably have all of the above qualifications of merit, education, work history, skills and reliability make only 74% of what male CEOs make, and why there are so disproportionately few of them.

    It is unreasonable to assume that gender pay inequity is the result, for example, of less educated women being paid less, given that MORE women than men have college degrees, and more women than men have advanced degrees.
    http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/education/cb11-72.html

    And it is both unreasonable and insulting – and without ANY evidence to support it – to claim that the gender pay inequity, which is both large and well documented, is based on women having poor work histories or being unreliable or unskilled.

    A perfect case in point is in the office of the Republican candidate for governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, women make less than white men, despite equal or better educational qualifications, work experience, etc., and men of color make less than white men, also in spite of education, etc.

    I realize you would LIKE to believe that only conservatives take those things into consideration when studying the issues of gender inequity, but that is wrong – and frankly stupid (and clearly willfully ignorant).

    It is like making the case that men of color are less likely to be hired, with appropriate academic credentials, than white men without those credentials, but WITH criminal convictions. If this were a matter of significant qualifications, not bias, that would not be the case – and it follows not only in hiring but in subsequent compensation inequity.

    Sheesh, and conservatives wonder why it is that so many people are NOT Republicans or Tea Baggers. THIS is why – you believe stupid and bigoted things that are not true.

  8. A perfect case in point is in the office of the Republican candidate for governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, women make less than white men, despite equal or better educational qualifications, work experience, etc., and men of color make less than white men, also in spite of education, etc.

    You mean, just like in President Obama’s office?

  9. More of Dog Gone’s accusations w/o citation.
    Her education level can’t be too high.

  10. We need the “THAT’S NOT FAIR” Act to be completed and signed into law. It will take a lot of crayons, but it will get done. If only unionization of the daycare providers hadn’t been halted. Then the DFL could have ordered the “THAT’S NOT FAIR” Act writers to get their work done by eliminating naps and snack time.

  11. Socrates: Male or female, do you know what a person should be paid for their labor?
    Crito: Nope.
    Socrates: Does the male or female who hires laborers know the wages they should receive?
    Crito: Nope.
    Socrates: Who, then, Crito, knows how much a laborer should be paid?
    Crito: Clearly the attorney general, Eric Holder, or the blog commenter Dog Gone knows how much the labor of a man or woman is worth.
    Socrates: Ah!

  12. One of the best jobs a person with a degree in the humanities can get is public school teacher. They have job protection through a union, health insurance, and a retirement plan. The requirements aren’t rigorous. You don’t need a very high SAT score to get into most “colleges of education”.
    Yet white male public school teachers are under represented. Women and minorities are over represented.
    Unlike fortune 500 executive positions, professions requiring an advanced degree, and political staffers, public school teachers represent millions of middle-class jobs.
    Oh, where is the justice?

  13. The 74% lie was put to rest by economist Thomas Sowell in his book “Civil Rights” published THIRTY YEARS AGO. Maybe you haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, Dog Gone, but that’s okay – it’s still available at Amazon. Hey, after you finish reading it, send your copy to President Obama, would you? Because he’s got a genuine pay gap problem with his White House staff.

  14. Slashdot has a story about Google offering bonuses to teachers who get girls to complete online programming coursework. They get nothing at all for getting boys to complete the same course work.
    #WarOnMen

  15. Dog Gone, when I read your posts you generally seem to be desperately searching for an excuse to maximize the sense of victim-hood of women.

    Rather transparently so.

    Or to be more blunt: Woman whose predictable comments seem independent of the article to which they are supposedly commenting has an axe to grind, a chip on her shoulder, and little to say.

  16. Pow, you beat me to it. And I anticapate your next post:

    For every woman killed at work, 11 men are put to death. Soooo how about some gender equity here.

  17. In divorces, only one in six fathers are given custodial care of their children

    And that’s only in cases where the guy has a good enough case to actually attempt to go to trial. Most realize it’s hopeless under the current system, and don’t bother.

    And 1/6 is up from 1/10 twenty years ago.

  18. The point is that the #WarOnMen list can be endless. Focusing on an arbitrary stat like money paid per hour worked is being done by the Dems in a cynical attempt to whip up the only large demographic where they believe that they can make marginal gain in voter turnout this November — single women. Truth and facts don’t matter.
    In the long list of injustices in the world, the female Princeton graduate making a dollar less then her male Harvard grad coworker is at the bottom.

  19. Even if Doggone were correct, equal pay for equal work is, at the federal level, the law of the land. Why the need to duplicate this at the state level?

    Or, put bluntly, if you want all people to earn less, siphoning off resources with needless state agencies is a great way to “achieve” that.

  20. I set out to discover if there were more men or women without health insurance in the U.S. My God that is tough number to find. I found links to literally thousands of articles pointing out that women paid more than men for health insurance (for various reasons), but it took a long time to find an answer to a simple question: Are there more men or more women without health insurance in the U.S.?
    The answer is men.
    “Without Medicaid, more women than men would be uninsured: In 2002, there were 18.8 uninsured men and 16 million uninsured women, while Medicaid covered 7.8 million women and 4.6 million men (Employee Benefit Research Institute). ”
    http://www.newamerica.net/files/nafmigration/archive/Pub_File_1494_1.pdf

    #WarOnMen

  21. When I first read this post this morning, there were 2 comments. When I refreshed the page at lunch time a bit ago, there were 26. First thought thru my head: “Ah hah, this one prompted a DG drive-by.”

    Yep.

  22. When I first read this post this morning, there were 2 comments. When I refreshed the page at lunch time a bit ago, there were 26. First thought thru my head: “Ah hah, this one prompted a DG drive-by.”

    DG’s drive-bys are useful, because she’s so inept at presenting her case that she becomes a piñata for the other commenters. Mind you, a piñata filled with methane.

  23. Mitch, can you find a nice photo of a dog foaming at the mouth, and keep it handy? Whenever Dog Gone posts one of her hysterical rants, you can post that photo and we’ll all know the thread is ended.

  24. This is a tough one for me.

    Leaving aside the fact that I’ve known DG for quite a while, and I’m nothing if not loyal (even if there’s no real point to it), the fact is that I’m juuuuuuust pollyannaish enough to think that if you engage someone, you at least stand a chance of dragging them back to a productive conversation. It doesn’t always work – Dim Tim Sweeney, Billy Gleason and “Doug” were intellectual offal best dispensed with. But that’s just the way I’m wired.

    But DG seems to be getting worse and worse as she goes. Looking at old threads, – 2008-2009? – she did used to bring a little game to the discussion, and wasn’t totally risible.

    Then she started wrapping herself in that “FACT CHECK” thing, and it all went to hell.

    So I hate to say it, but I’m sliding toward the “dg:DNR” camp.

  25. It is unreasonable to assume that gender pay inequity is the result, for example, of less educated women being paid less, given that MORE women than men have college degrees, and more women than men have advanced degrees.

    http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/education/cb11-72.html

    Why is it unreasonable? The census data tells us nothing about the type of degrees. If, for example, a majority of women had bachelor degrees in Womyn’s Studies or Communications, and the men had bachelor degrees in an engineering discipline, the market value of those skill sets is different.

  26. I try not to be a pessimist, but . . .
    Dog Gone’s growing hostility and irrationality is shared by a large part of the electorate. I’ll avoid the Nazi analogy and say instead that I know how the Democratic Russians felt in 1918, when they saw the forces of Marxism-Leninism, led by wicked people, used force to crush their opposition and construct a terror state. You may have noticed that cultural leaders on the American Left praise the abstract idea of Justice, but have no use for the American idea of Freedom.
    Remember a few years ago when P.B. was obsessed with idea that when W made his “You’re with us or you’re against us” remarks?
    Peeve-boy was convinced, despite all evidence, that Bush was referring to his American opposition. These days P.B.’s president calls out the Supreme Court for what he says are its mistaken judgments. The Democrat head of the senate calls out private American citizens by name. Democrat congressmen sic the IRS on their political opponents.
    Where is P.B.?
    Crickets.

  27. Pingback: The ineluctable and inchoate vastitude of Conservative Misogyny

  28. Mitch said:

    Leaving aside the fact that I’ve known DG for quite a while, and I’m nothing if not loyal (even if there’s no real point to it), the fact is that I’m juuuuuuust pollyannaish enough to think that if you engage someone, you at least stand a chance of dragging them back to a productive conversation. It doesn’t always work – Dim Tim Sweeney, Billy Gleason and “Doug” were intellectual offal best dispensed with. But that’s just the way I’m wired.

    I suspect the pingback should cure you of any pollyannaish tendencies you have concerning Ms. Gone.

  29. Well maybe DG has a point – perhaps we should discuss repealing the 19th amendment – it hasn’t really been that positive an experience for the body politic after all

  30. I suspect the pingback should cure you of any pollyannaish tendencies you have concerning Ms. Gone

    Perhaps. But that’d involve reading Minnesota Progressive Project. And that’s just crazy talk.

  31. Maybe the MPP readership will learn something. They don’t like the world outside of their bubble. Reality is scary!

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.