Gloria Feldt's Heartfeldt Politics Blog

Goldilocks SOTU: Not Too Big, Not Too Small, Just Right

2010-01-28T18:12:26Z

"I am feeling so disempowered,” the woman prefaced her question to me at a “Passion to Action” conference in Grass Vally, CA, sponsored by the See Jane Do organization. But her face telegraphed very powerful emotions: anger, frustration, fear. It was a look we’ve seen on the faces of teabaggers as they shouted wild allegations and disrupted town halls across the nation.

This woman was no teabagger. She was a progressive Democratic woman, a key member of Obama’s base. The impassioned ones who swept him into office on a frothy wave of belief in the change he promised; the ones now feeling somewhere between skeptical and cynical.

“I want real health reform. What happened to that and what can I do about it?” The questioner lobbed this at me after my speech encouraging women to use our power as activists. If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, then it would be very important to listen to what women like her had to say about Obama’s State of the Union address.

So I went to the discussion boards, the White House Facebook page, Twitter, and posted a query on my own Facebook page to see what my friends were saying about his speech. The focus on jobs and the economy was clearly the top priority for most people and rightly so. Capping government spending, being transparent about who’s getting the pork, becoming a global leader in solar energy, and a tax break for small businesses all got shout outs for being ideas that people appreciated. He apologized elegantly without showing weakness. He said bipartisan twice, enough to keep the centrist

Jump on the Bus and Make a Difference for Women's Health Today!

2010-01-13T11:38:53Z

So we are where we are with health reform and coverage of abortion.

The time to be purists and hold politicians' feet to the fire is at the beginning of any battle.

Here is what I wrote about abortion coverage back in September that summarizes how I think the issue should have been framed and fought for, hard, so that we would been able to mount a stronger campaign for fair health reform and then on to rescind the Hyde Amendment going forward

Accepting (and even defending!) the Capps amendment in the first place was a huge mistake. The opening salvos of the health reform debate should have been the time to challenge the entire notion of separating out one aspect of basic women's health care from any other. No, let me back up a bit and say I would have slammed Obama when he allowed family planning to be labeled controversial in the first stimulus package.

After acquiescing on those first two moments of decision, we were pretty well sunk. But the silver lining is that women began to realize--and got angry--that we'd been thrown under the bus by Congress, the president, and even some of our own advocacy organizations who had been complicit.

But it good that anger breeds activism. We can do something about this, you know. It is always up to advocates to make politicians do the right thing. Today is the best day to start driving our own bus, and turning things around. The Women's Media Center has declared today Not Under the Bus Day. Go to their website and find lots of direct action you can take that wil make a difference. Whether or not it changes the outcome of this particular health reform vote, it will without question set a new and better path down the road to women's heath care that's fair, safe, and fully covered.

I'm personally on this bus. Won't you jump on and make a difference for women's health going forward?

Hillary Reiterates: Women's Rights Are Human Rights--Yes!

2010-01-09T18:52:38Z

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending Hillary Clinton's speech recommitting the United States to the International Conference on Population and Development's consensus goals ratified by the world 15 years ago. The chandeliered Benjamin Frankin room was kinetic, as men and women from public and private international women's rights and health endeavors greeted one another in a virtual old home week.

I served on the U.S. government delegation to the 5-year evaluation of progress toward achieving the Cairo goals in 1999. But during the Bush administration, not only did the U.S. fail to pull its pledged share of the global load to empower women through health and development programs, the right wing led a vigorous charge to dismantle those efforts. Believe me, people like me weren't invited to take tea in the Ben Franklin Room!

Fortunately, women leaders from other countries refused to go backward. They held back the Bush onslaught. There was a global sigh of relief when President Obama rescinded the Global Gag Rule as one of his first acts after being inaugurated last year. With Clinton at the helm at State, there's no question women and girls globally have a champion who will work to make sure progress begins again. For as she herself first said in her groundbreaking 1995 speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing: women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights. Watch the video of her speech here:

What were your thoughts, feelings, worries when the Senate passed the health reform bill?

2009-12-24T21:25:21Z

What were your thoughts, feelings, worries this morning when the Senate passed the health reform bill?

This is the question I asked on Facebook this morning and there were so many thoughtful and interesting responses

that I just had to share them here. Please add yours too!

Jack Cluth

I was thinking that we deserved better than a gift-wrapped Christmas present for the health care industry. This is

neither health, nor care, nor even reform.

Patricia M Sears

It felt good to have 60 votes for progress towards health care reform... and we Must point out that the opposition

votes are against any health care reform as they did not even offer an alternate plan.

We Must Remind Americans that we're FOR reform (albeit it's not a pretty sausage at the moment) and the

Who Do You Nominate for the Bum Steer Award?

2009-12-23T17:12:58Z

They say you can always tell a Texan, but you can't tell them very much. Or at least some have said that about me.

Though I've been away from the state of my birth for almost as many years as I lived there, I have continued to subscribe to the Texas Monthly wherever life has taken me. It's a great magazine in general, but I especially look forward to their annual "Bum Steer" awards, in which they skewer the high, the low, and the absurd. The intro to the just published 2010 awards reads, in TM's typically diffident (and alphabetical) fashion:

It was a year of accomplice apes, bedraggled Bugattis, Christlike Cheetos, dim-witted deli-owning Democrats, egregious errata, fatal foreplay, gun-toting golfers, heartless high school hoopsters, ignoble implants, jackass judges, killer Kims, laughingstock legislators...shameless Stanford, territorial T-Boone, useful urine, vituperative vixens...and zero tolerance zealots.

Since my son lives in the former Sugar Land congressional district--arguably the most conservative in the nation--of the #1 Bum Steer, I cannot resist sharing the cover with you. Get your barfbags out, Ladies and Laddies. It doesn't get any "bummer" than this, but who else would you place on your bum steer list if you were doing the choosing?

Time for Women to Drive Our Own Health Care Bus

2009-12-21T14:08:42Z

Check out this new video from new Women's Media Center website notunderthebus.com. You can also follow @notunderthebus (or check out hashmark #underthebus) on Twitter, and please become a fan on Facebook. It's going to be a long drive, but together we can turn this bus around starting today.

The Senate passed its version of what they are now calling "health insurance reform" in the snowy dark of the winter solstice night, moving Majority Harry Reid's (D-NV) bill (stuffed into its sausage casing) toward likely final Senate passage later this week. The so-called compromise to Sen. Nelson's (D-NE) Stupak-like language in there, banning abortion coverage unless a woman turns herself into a pretzel, and over in the House, Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) is still yammering that's not stringent enough. The fight will continue this week and then go to conference committee. Ample time remains for more mischief to be done, or for improvements to be made. Get the latest information and take action daily at notunderthebus.com.

As Senate Continues Health Care Reform Debate, Delaying Tactics Reign

2009-12-17T14:28:57Z

Yesterday's wrap up report of Senate action from NFPRHA-worth a read to see how the meat grinder of legislation works, and how detrimental the 60-vote rule is to getting anything done. And bless Frank Lautenberg! He just never stops.

December 16, 2009, 5:00 p.m. (EST)

Today, the Senate continued debate on its health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590). Last night an amendment offered by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) to provide for the importation of prescription drugs did not garner the necessary 60 votes for passage, so while the vote in favor was 56 -- 43, the amendment failed. The Lautenberg amendment was intended to improve upon a similar amendment offered by Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) which also failed. Like the Lautenberg amendment, the Dorgan amendment did not get the necessary 60 votes, with the vote in favor only being 51 -- 48. A motion by Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) to recommit the bill (effectively killing the bill by sending it back to the Finance Committee) also failed 45 -- 54. An alternative to the Crapo motion, offered by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) which would protect middle class families from tax increases, passed 97 -- 1.

Forward momentum on the bill came to a standstill today in the form of a new stalling tactic from Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK). Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) o

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Calls on Progressive Catholics to Resist Pressure from the Bishops on Abortion

2009-12-17T01:48:33Z

Peggy Simpson reported this for the Women' Media Center; it's reprinted here with permission.

At a critical moment for health care reform, Townsend says it is essential for religious progressives to speak up.

December 16, 2009

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend broadened the Kennedy family’s dispute with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Tuesday night.

She elaborated on an op-ed she wrote for Politico.com criticizing the Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to health care reform unless an unprecedented expansion of restrictions against abortion is included. “I don’t think the bishops should be allowed to do that,” she said Tuesday night. “I think we should be speaking out (against them).”
Townsend, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, also said it was crucial for progressives from within religious groups who had fought for women’s rights and gay rights to be “more articulate” about their faith.

“We progressive religious people have our backs against the wall. We allowed it to happen,” she said.

Citing Pew Center polls that show Republicans are more likely to say they are religious than Democrats, Townsend said not allowing one party to claim religion “means speaking about it and talking about it.” Already, she said, evangelicals are changing course, supporting progressive civil rights causes, “while our bishops are stuck.”

She questioned whether “you can build on something that is fundamentally corrupt

Watch Tiffany's Compelling Story About Health Care Coverage

2009-12-04T17:52:26Z

Congressman Stupack and The Oglethorpe High School Cheerleaders

2009-11-29T18:40:12Z

Friedrike Merck, a talented sculptor, passionate philanthropist, and great friend wrote this commentary with a perspective on the health reform battle that I have not seen elsewhere. She has allowed me to share it with you. Let me know what you think.

Recently, some enthusiastic cheerleaders where barred from holding up Bible verse banners for their football team to bust through at the start of a game because the banner practice was considered a breach of the First Amendment, the religious Establishment Clause part. The students cried "censorship", as did local pastors and politicians, but they could not do an end run around the First Amendment of the Constitution, which states that there shall be no establishment of religion, that in a public school it gives the impression that the school endorses religion, and endorsing religion in a government funded institution is unConstitutional.

Recently, some enthusiastic Congressmen rammed their religion based amendment into the health care reform bill but strangely enough no one cried, "Establishment Clause!" If the rosy cheeked cheerleaders of Oglethorpe High can't jump with Jesus, then how is it possible that a United States Congressman is allowed to? Have the Fundamentalist faction incrementally lulled us over the last three decades into thinking that their religiously motivated politics is OK in Washington and OK in our democracy? The Stupack Amendment brouhaha