What's at stake tomorrow

Forget about Trump. Forget about Hillary. Forget about Bernie...At least until Wednesday. It's all about tomorrow's election in Pennsylvania. 

What's at stake? Via the Pittsburgh City Paper:

And speaking of the legislature, if Democrats ever have a shot of gaining control in Harrisburg, the first step is Nov. 3. This state has some of the most ridiculously gerrymandered districts in the nation. The boundaries are drawn in such a way to give Republicans the edge. Do you really think Jim Ferlo would have retired if his senate district had remained untouched? Instead, his urban district, with a large number of African-American voters, was butchered and joined with a predominantly white district in the North Hills. The same holds true for Pittsburgh’s Congressional district. Need proof? Check out the 12th District that stretches from the Ohio border to Johnstown. 

As other media have pointed out, the state Supreme Court appoints the tie-breaking member to the state’s redistricting committee. Anyone want to guess which party got that power under the Republican-controlled Supreme Court? 

We can’t afford to sit on the sidelines for this judicial election. If you still can’t grasp what’s at stake on Nov. 3, think of a vote for the Supreme Court as a vote on gun control, a vote in favor of gender equality, a vote on women’s health issues, or even an early vote for your state and congressional representatives in 2021 and beyond. Because voting in this race now may be the last vote you control for an awfully long time.

Here's a sample of the kind of gerrymandering that having Democrats controlling the courts can put a stop to:

So tomorrow, you need to get your ass out and vote for these people:

You also need to vote for Heather Arnet and keep her Tea Party opponent out of the PA Senate! 

For other races, the Gertrude Stein Political Club generally makes excellent endorsements (they aren't bought). You can find them here. They include:

Allegheny County Controller
Chelsa Wagner 

Allegheny County Council, District 10
DeWitt Walton 

Pittsburgh City Controller
Michael Lamb 

Pittsburgh City Council, District 3
Bruce Kraus 

Pittsburgh City Council, District 7
Deb Gross 

Pittsburgh Public Schools School Board Director, District 4
Lynda Wrenn 

Pittsburgh Public Schools School Board Director, District 6
Moira Kaleida 

Magisterial Court, District 05-03-12
Lucille Prater Holliday

Notice to All Candidates for Public Office

Notice to All Candidates for Public Office: 

In order to receive an endorsement from the Post-Gazette, it is absolutely mandatory that you be for the abolishment of the State Store system as some person/persons on the Editorial Board desire to open a lovely, little wine & cheese shop after they retire.

Thank you

Why you need to vote for Heather Arnet for PA State Senate (37th District)

The Reasons to Vote for Heather Arnet
On the Issues:
First of all, Heather has an actual issues page--Guy doesn't! You can see her positions on issues related to the workplace, education, taxes, healthcare & services, the environment, rights & representation, and more. She's particularly committed to fighting to:

- Attract high quality jobs to our district;
- Strengthen retirement security for seniors;
- Ensure we provide property tax relief for the middle class and seniors;
- Fully fund our school system and make high-quality pre-k available to all;
- Provide safe, affordable healthcare for our families that includes women making their own healthcare decisions.

Bio:
Professionally, she's worked to increase rights and opportunities for working families as the CEO of the Women and Girls Foundation, as well as serving on the Pittsburgh Public Schools Board of Education. She's also won numerous awards and has frequently appeared in both the local and national media.

Bonus Points:
A piddly 18 percent of the 253-member PA General Assembly are women. That earns PA the ignoble distinction of ranking 39th in the nation for the percentage of women in our state Legislature. We are grossly under-represented! (Also where the clever "We don't need another guy in Harrisburg" line comes from in her above ad.)

Additionally, knowing Heather personally, I can certainly vouch for her as a passionate and genuine person and fighter for rights for all.

The Reasons Not to Vote for Guy Reschenthaler
On the Issues:
As mentioned above, Guy has no issues page or, hell, even a paragraph on his website. You are meant to vote for Guy because he's a great American! He touts being "a son of western Pennsylvania" and "born here and raised in the values and traditions that make our region great"!

But you can get to where he stands on some issues by looking at his endorsements which include an anti-choice group and, not one, but two separate pro gun groups (just in case you didn't already know he was a Republican).

Bio:
Reschenthaler is running primarily on his bio. The headline of which is "Iraq War Veteran | Former District Magistrate | Former Navy Prosecutor" and then the repeat about the whole "son of western Pennsylvania" thing, tradition, values, etc.

Penalty Points:
Oh, my, where to start? While Guy and the Republican Party have labeled Heather as an "extreme liberal," Guy's actual extremist values would make the Tea Party stand up and cheer, while going so far as to possibly embarrass the more enlightened members.

It seems that Guy used to host a conservative podcast in 2013 called "The Sound of Freedom with Hig and Resch," along with his co-host, Carl Higbie. They discussed topics like taxes, immigration and gun control and had on Tea Party members and Oath Keepers as guests.

It's worse than you may imagine. While his co-host made the most disgusting comments (“You cross my border, I will shoot you in the face” and “The black race is lazier than the white race” and "I don't like Muslim people"), he made them with Guy's name on the show and in some cases with little push-back. Guy himself said that people on government assistance are "abusing the trust the government." Guy calls Social Security and Medicare “scary,” because “we can’t cut them if we wanted to.” He says that they “turn our government into an entitlement generating machine."

If you can stomach it, you can hear and read more clips at http://guyreschenthalerpa.com as well as this from Keystone Progress:


Guy Reschenthaler: The Dark Side of Technology from Keystone Progress PAC on Vimeo.

So now ask yourself, not just "Do we need another guy in Harrisburg?" but "Do we need this extremist Guy in Harrisburg?"

And then, go vote for Heather Arnet. And, even if you don't live in her district, go sign up to help now through election day. And, throw some $$ her way.

You have just 24 hours left (Madame Presidentá: Why Not U.S.? Vamos Meninas!)

Last week the U.S. celebrated the birth of our country. It took 144 years after that birth for women to gain the right to vote. And 237 years after that first July 4th, we have yet to have a woman president. Meanwhile, right now there are four women presidents in the rest of the Americas (Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Costa Rica).

Pittsburgh's Women and Girls Foundation (WGF) and ELAS Women’s Social Investment Fund in Rio de Janeiro are currently in the production stage of creating a documentary about women presidents. WGF CEO Heather Arnet is the writer and producer. But, they need your help NOW to bring it to completion:

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

This is getting exciting - we are really close to meeting our Madame Presidenta Kickstarter goal. For three years, WGF has been working with partners across the globe to create a film about female presidents that will debut on Pittsburgh's own WQED this fall, tour college campuses, and inspire girls for generations to come! 

Now, we need your help to take this project over the finish line. If we can raise $25K by 5:00pm this Saturday, July 13th - we will receive all the funds and be able to complete the film! But, if we are short by even $1 - we won't recieve ANY of the money! Not even the funds pledged by the 90 people to date. Kickstarter is all or nothing. 

Click here to watch the trailer, be inspired, and MAKE YOUR PLEDGE TODAY. 

P.S. If you need an extra dose of inspiration, click here to watch what two ten year old girls are doing this week to help the campaign too!

If you'd rather make your pledge offline or via check, call (412) 320-6334 today.

Let's make this happen!

A Sad Dispute Between Two Friends

Towards the beginning of a chapter in her book "Who Stole Feminism?", Christina Hoff Sommers wrote:

Battery and rape are crimes that shatter lives; those who suffer must be cared for, and those who cause their suffering must be rendered incapable of doing further harm. But in all we do to help, the most loyal ally is truth. Truth brought to public light recruits the best of us to work for change. On the other hand, even the best-intentioned "noble lie" ultimately discredits the finest of causes.

The chapter then proceeds to debunk the claim that "more women are victims of domestic abuse on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year." While it's true that Professor Sommers is now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, she's still right about truth and the "noble lie".

Writing as someone who routinely works to undermine wingnut advocacy by unearthing the misinformation being used to support its positions, it was sad to see a local dispute erupt between a pair of bloggers both of whom I admire and respect.

For those who don't know, Women and Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania CEO Heather Arnet recently had a letter in the P-G in which she applauded Pitt's decision to fire Michael Haywood, Pitt's newly hired football coach, after his arrest in Indiana on domestic abuse charges. In the letter (it's the beginning of the second paragraph, by the way) she wrote:

Domestic abuse is the number two killer of women in this country.

Setting aside the worthwhile discussion of the wisdom of Haywood's firing - on the one hand Haywood's only been accused, not convicted, of any crime but on the other had Pitt not fired him, the PR nightmares would have continued at least until he was either convicted or fired - it's Arnet's claim above that triggered the local blogger dispute.

First, my friend Chad Hermann responded with a fact-check and found that Arnet's claim was simply wrong.

Turns out that according to the FBI, there are about 1,200 deaths of women per year due to domestic violence and (extrapolating from the CDC's numbers) there's 264,000 or so deaths of women per year from Cancer (their #2 cause). With about 314,000 Heart Disease was the CDC's #1 cause of deaths of women per year. Chad recapped:

Cancer – 264,000
Domestic Violence – 1,200

The numbers are so close, you can see how Ms. Arnet might have gotten them confused. I mean, what’s a little factor of 220 among friends and advocates and peddlers of inveterate poppycock?

In response to one friend's fact-check, another friend, Ms Mon at Ms Mon's Salon, responded. While admitting that Arnet's facts are "soft" and that many of Chad's points are "valid" she, quickly and unfortunately, departs from the argument at hand:

But his determined discrediting of the statistics are so palpable, they seem more like his own desperate attempts to prove that women are full of hokum, instead of, say, offering illumination as to why women are a tad sensitive about the subject. I guess when you have to make up for so many thousands of years of privileged, white, male subjugation, you can't be bothered with those kinds of details.

Looking at his blog post, I am not sure I see the same things Ms. Mon sees (that he's attempting to prove that women are full of hokum) - but that's OK. There's no reason in the world why my reading of his blog post should take precedence over anyone else's.

However, she effectively changed the subject from the one Chad was making, which was that Arnet's assertion that domestic violence was the number two cause of death among women in this country was simply wrong.

And he was right. One can argue with the tone of his blog post but one can't argue with the facts he's presented there. She was simply wrong about the cause of death among women and I'd have to agree with Chad that the error was so wrong that it undermines the credibility of the letter as a whole and, unfortunately, the letter writer.

Domestic violence is very very bad. It is a serious problem that always requires serious attention. Its victims need to be cared for and treated respectfully and its perpetrators need to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. A truly civilized society should demand no less.

However...

No matter how well intentioned, in the end a noble lie only discredits the cause it's being used to support.