Just a quickie to give respect to some of the women in our California caucus.
Barbara Boxer, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is hammering home a simple message on offshore drilling:
Boxer said she had zero confidence in recent Senate Republican assurances that increased drilling will not lead to environmental damage from spills.
She pointed to recent comments from Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), which were recently echoed by Sen. John McCain, the GOP presumptive presidential nominee, who said that “not a drop of oil was spilled” due to the Hurricane Katrina. In fact, the U.S. Minerals Management Service reported that the storm was blamed for no less than 146 oil spills from drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.
“These are lies, just bald-faced lies,” Boxer said. “You want to know about my conclusion about $4 a gallon gas? Just divide eight years by two oilmen in the White House and you have your $4 a gallon.”
And here’s Rep. Hilda Solis, who has been leading the fight from the Congress against Arnold’s wage cuts, explaining the Paycheck Fairness Act on the blog Latina Lista (I give here extreme credit for using the brownosphere as a tool):
The House of Representatives made significant progress in closing the wage gap for all women last Thursday, especially women of color, by passing H.R. 1338, the Paycheck Fairness Act. Even though the Equal Pay Act was first signed into law in 45 years ago, women today earn just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. For women of color, the pay disparities are even worse.
Latinas earn on average 57 cents to every dollar that a man earns. African-American women earn just 68 cents to every dollar that a man earns.
These unacceptably low wage disparities for women are finally being address by Congress. The Paycheck Fairness Act will help empower women workers with the skills and knowledge they need to achieve pay equity with their male colleagues.
Even Speaker Pelosi is doing yeoman work for taking the heat on resisting a drilling vote while letting things roll over into the next Congress when the landscape will be more favorable.
Good for our strong women leaders. We need more of them.