MOMocrats™

Need Some Inspiration? MOMocrats Will Help You Get to the WIE Symposium in New York City!

The deadline for the giveaway has passed and comments are now closed on this post. Congratulations to readers Sarah and Abigail, who will be attending the WIE Conference in New York this weekend.

You probably know we don't do a whole lot of giveaways here at MOMocrats, but some offers are too good to turn down.

MOMocrats have a chance to give two of our readers a full pass (a $600 value) to the Women: Inspiration & Enterprise Symposium in New York City September 18-19.  Sadly we can't get you to the Big Apple, but if you can get yourself there, leave us a comment below and we will draw two lucky winners at random who can spend a couple of days being inspired by the likes of Queen Rania of Jordan, Melinda Gates, Christy Turlington, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and many other amazing and accomplished women.

Tempted?  I'll further tempt you by telling you that some of the topics include,The Power of Social Media, Women in Media, Getting Women Off the Sidelines, and Advocacy and Making a Difference.

Thanks so much to the WIE conference for making this giveaway possible.  If I lived a little closer to New York City, you KNOW I'd be there! Think you could use a little inspiration (and maybe get a little shopping in while you're in Soho?), leave a comment below (make sure to include your E-mail address so we can contact you if you win!) by 5 p.m. E.S.T. on Thursday, September 15, 2011 and we'll see who gets to hang out with some inspiring women for a couple of days!

 

President Obama on Jobs (TODAY)

This is a long-overdue speech, one we've been waiting to hear.

We'll be watching online at the White House's enhanced "charts & stats" site.

Join us at 7pm ET, 4 pm PT.

A Whole Passel of Republicans "Debate" Each Other at the Reagan Library; We Throw Things at the TV

I think the title says it all.

I'm not sure what's up for debate, since they all seem to believe varying shades of crazy.

"No, Michelle, that's tangerine-colored crazy!"

"Is not, Rick, that's burnt sienna crazy!"

"You're both wrong, it's more of a yellowy-apricot crazy!"

"Baby-poop creamsicle orange crazy!" Etc. Etc. Etc.

Join us tonight, 5 pm PT / 8 pm ET, on our Cover-It-Live chat.

So, what's more annoying, the fact that these candidates are suggesting plans that will plunge the country into an economic tailspin, make pregnancy compulsory, coddle the wealthy, and make children and seniors suffer -- or that the corporate media will treat these plans like reasonable plans?

This Week on MOMochat: NARAL's Nancy Keenan Weighs in on the GOP "War on Women"

We'll be holding our weekly MOMochat podcast at a special time this week, so we can talk with NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan: about the Tea Party wave that purported to be about fiscal responsibility but turned out to be a mob focused on eliminating reproductive freedom for women.

Keenan is a former Montana state legislator and superintendent of public instruction. In 2000, she was her district's Democratic candidate for the House of Representatives. As President of NARAL, she helped elect a new slate of pro-choice legislators in 2008. The last round of mid-term elections was a setback, but as the NARAL site points out, "In 2010, 31 NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC-endorsed congressional candidates won their races. Choice played a key role in the re-election of Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Barbara Boxer of California, Patty Murray of Washington, and others." 

Listen to MOMocrats MOMochat live tomorrow morning at 10:30 a.m. Eastern/7:30 Pacific and pick up the podcast here. Brought to you by BubbleGenius.

Join NARAL Pro-Choice America and 150 students, activists and community leaders at the Power of Choice Summit on Thursday, September 15, 2011 in Los Angeles. Featuring engaging speakers and interactive presentations, summit attendees will walk away with up-to-date information about reproductive rights and the tools they need to make a difference in their community. Find out more here.

Too Little Too Late (about Too Much Too Soon)

While the entire eastern seaboard was obsessed with Irene, Gretchen Morgenson wrote in the New York Times this weekend about the Federal Reserve efforts to save the financial sector during the Great Recession, at enormous cost to the taxpayers and little benefit to Main Street.  Talk about burying the lede!

Based on information generated by Freedom of Information Act requests and its longstanding lawsuit against the Federal Reserve board, Bloomberg reported that the Fed had provided a stunning $1.2 trillion to large global financial institutions at the peak of its crisis lending in December 2008.

The money has been repaid and the Fed has said its lending programs generated no losses. But with the United States economy weakening, European banks in trouble and some large American financial institutions once again on shaky ground, the Fed may feel compelled to open up its money spigots again. (emphasis added)

This is NOT the TARP money bailout that was publicly debated and ultimately Congressionally approved, but additional amounts of money that were lent by the Federal Reserve to large banks (including foreign banks) largely in secret and at minimal interest rates in order to make sure that these banks could meet their minimum liquidity requirements so as to avoid bankruptcy. 

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: 91 Years Later, We All Have To Carry The Torch

It was 91 years ago today that women finally won the right to vote with the enactment of the 19th amendment, which states, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

In an era when women occupy corner offices, serve as Supreme Court justices and travel the world representing America as our Secretary of State, it is easy to forget that it’s been less than a century since we won this right.

So, today, as we look back and celebrate this victory, I am inspired by the extraordinary women who waged the battles to end slavery and for women’s suffrage. From Sojourner Truth, to Susan B. Anthony, Jeannette Rankin, Shirley Chisholm, Geraldine Ferraro, Hillary Clinton, Sandra Day O'Connor, and Sonia Sotomayor – women have always blazed a path for the next generation to carry the torch further.

Which is why I created Off The Sidelines, an initiative to urge more women to get involved in the political process and to make their voices heard. Off The Sidelines is about raising awareness for the need for a reinvigorated modern women’s movement so that more women become a part of the debate and are at the table when decisions that impact us every day are made.

I hope you’ll join me.

The fact is, we still have a long way to go until women have full equality. Currently, in the US, women make on average 78 cents for every dollar a man makes; even though women make up 51% of the population, we hold just 17% of seats in Congress and only 6 governorships; and as a result of the 2010 election, for the first time in 30 years, the percentage of women in Congress actually declined. This is unacceptable.

If we’re going to turn this around, more women must engage on the issues they care about. There are extraordinary women’s groups and activists, like EMILY’s List, Women's Campaign Forum, ERLC, Emerge America and many others, that are doing amazing work every day fighting the battles that must be waged. But they can’t do it alone.

The fact remains that too many women are sitting on the sidelines and we must get them involved. It can be as simple as registering to vote, writing a letter to the editor, giving money to a female candidate who shares your values or running for office yourself. There are so many ways we can get more women involved in the political process.

For me, getting off the sidelines means women making a difference by letting their voices be heard on the issues they care about. I hope you’ll sign up at Off The Sidelines and tell me in one sentence what getting off the sidelines means to you.

In nine short years we will mark a full century since women won the right to vote. This next decade will be crucial not only for the future of women but for the future of America. I know we can and will do more because we have to. We are the solution.

Together, we can work toward full equality for women by urging our friends and our family to get off the sidelines and get engaged.

Because only when every woman and girl fulfills her God given potential can America achieve hers.

Women's Equality Day - 2011

Today, August 26, is Women's Equality Day in the United States, enacted 40 years ago in commemoration of the passage of the 19th amendment. 

Full equality for women will remain a dream until we get a new amendment which hard wires it into the Constitution. The ERA was passed in 1972 and ratified by 35 states -- just three short of what was needed to make it the law of the land.

It was derailed by the forerunners of today's Tea Party. 

Earlier this year, new ERA ratification bills were introduced in Congress, and on February 11, Virginia took a step closer to being the 36th state when its Senate passed a resolution ratifying the ERA. However, its companion bill in the House of Delegates never came to a vote.

The right to vote was earned after a long, hard fight, so we should not be surprised that full equality will be just as hard won. Use the rights you have wisely. 

This Week on MOMochat: Not Equal Yet

In 1971, at the behest of New York Rep. Bella Abzug, Congress designated August 26 "Women's Equality Day." The date was chosen to commemorate the passage of the 19th amendment, finally granting women a constitutional right to suffrage.

It's been 91 years since that historic day and 40 years since the creation of our own holiday commemorating it.  We've made some strides -- but as evidenced by the stalling of the Paycheck Fairness Act and the recent Wal-Mart ruling, we are still not equal. We still only make 77 cents to the dollar, make up just 17% of legislators in Congress and just 15.2% of the Fortune 500 corporate boards. And working women who are also mothers have additional hurdles to jump. 

On this week's MOMocrats MOMochat podcast, Cynematic, Julie Pippert and Donna Schwartz Mills welcome Kristen Rowe-Finkbeiner, co-founder of MomsRising.org and author ofThe Motherhood Manifesto and The F-Word: Feminism in Jeopardy. Listen live on Wednesday, August 24 at 12 noon Eastern/9 a.m. Pacific time, or download and stream the podcast here.

 

Portrait of a MOMocrat: Reader Survey Results

Earlier this month, we asked our blog readers, newsletter subscribers and Facebook fans to participate in our first-ever reader survey. This was in anticipation of our first official in-person business meeting since the 2008 election.

We'd never actually queried our readers before, and thought it was about time we found out who  you are, what you think of us, why you read us, and what we could be doing better.

Fifty-one of you responded to our survey. It's a small sample, but not a bad one when you consider that we only posted it a few days before our meeting. Here's a summary of what you told us:

	Of the 51 respondents, 50 of you were female.
	Seven of our readers self-identified themselves as "of color" in some way, whether it was naming the color of their skin but not specifying a "race," or embracing "Native American/Latino" or some other identifier, the rest were "Caucasian/white."

What Happens at BlogHer Rarely Stays at BlogHer: PunditMom Speaks

Several of the MOMocrats enjoyed a rare reunion in San Diego last week, at the sixth annual BlogHer conference. We recapped some of what we heard on yesterday's edition of MOMochat. And our own Joanne Bamberger (Pundit Mom), was interviewed by GenConnect's Randi Zucker:

Joanne Bamberger is the author of "Mothers of Intention: How Women and Social Media Are Revolutionizing Politics in America."