Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Keep the Calls Coming!

On Election Day, Americans spoke out against the radical liberal agenda in Washington, D.C. Voters demanded a Congress that will strengthen the economy and create more jobs. 
But, the liberal left is still pandering to feminists and trial attorneys at the expense of American jobs by bringing the so-called “Paycheck Fairness Act” to a vote during the Lame Duck Session that begins Monday, November 15th.
The “Paycheck Fairness Act” would stifle job creation, send existing American jobs overseas, and burden employers with expensive paperwork and frivolous lawsuits.   
Your calls are urgently needed to stop the feminists from causing unemployment rates to rise even higher!
Originally introduced by Hillary Clinton during her time in the Senate, and reintroduced by Sen. Harry Reid, the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 3772)(PFA) would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 and the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) in the following ways:
  • Allows for unlimited compensatory and punitive damages to be granted, even without proof of intent to discriminate.  Currently, an employer must be found to have intentionally engaged in discriminatory practices in order for an employee to receive monetary compensation, and even then, the employee is entitled only to back pay.  The provision in the PFA is unacceptable and unnecessary, as damages are already available under Title VII for pay discrimination.
  • Changes the “establishment” requirement.  The EPA currently requires that employees whose pay is being compared must work in the same physical place of business.  The PFA would amend the word “establishment” to mean workplaces in the same county or political district.  It would also invite the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to develop “rules or guidance” to define the term more broadly.  This leaves the door open for the EEOC to compare a woman’s job in a rural area to a man’s job in an urban area that has a much higher cost of living, which would drive up the cost of employing the woman in the rural lower cost area.  Such increase in employment costs would result in fewer people being employed, and would also result in employers shipping jobs overseas.
  • Replaces a successful pay discrimination-determining system with a proven failed system.  The PFA would invalidate the successful, Supreme Court-endorsed system for determining whether pay discrimination has occurred (known as the Interpretative Standards for Systemic Compensation Discrimination), and would replace it with the highly inaccurate Equal Opportunity Survey, which has found true discriminators to be non-discriminators 93 percent of the time.
  • Increases the numbers in class-action suits.  Under EPA, if an employee wants to participate in a class-action suit against his employer, he must affirmatively decide to participate in the suit.  The PFA would automatically include employees in class-action suits, unless they affirmatively opt out.  This change would result in booming business for trial attorneys, and huge costs to employers, who may decide to ship jobs overseas to avoid such costs altogether.
In addition to these changes, the PFA would institute a system of  “comparable worth” effectively allowing judges, juries and unelected bureaucrats to set employees’ wages, instead of employers.  Thus, an employee’s compensation level would be based on some vague notion of his “worth,” instead of on concrete factors like education, experience, time in the labor force, and hours worked per week.  The PFA would also cause employers to avoid hiring women in low-paying positions, since the employers may then become targets for burdensome lawsuits.  This trend would result in even higher unemployment for low-skilled women, potentially increasing the number of families dependent on government assistance. 
President Obama has called the PFA a “common-sense bill.” The truth is, this bill makes no sense during good economic times, and would only add insult to injury now, when unemployment is near double-digits nationwide. 
Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor under President George W. Bush, called the PFA a “job killing, trial attorney bonanza,” and said employers potentially would see female applicants as instigators of lawsuits, instead of contributors to productivity. 

The House of Representatives has already passed the Paycheck Fairness Act, and President Obama has said that he will sign the bill into law if the Senate passes it.  The Senate vote is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, November 17, so call your Senator and tell him or her to vote NO on S. 3772 the so-called “Paycheck Fairness Act!”
Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

Friday, November 12, 2010

Preparing for Next Week's Lame Duck Session

A word from Eagle Forum Headquarters:


Dear Friends,
We cannot thank you enough for your role in last week’s historic conservative victory!  We will soon welcome one of the most pro-family, conservative Congresses in recent history.  While we celebrate that victory, we need your continued help as we advance in our quest to elect conservatives to every level of government (click here to give to Eagle Forum PAC) and more immediately to stop the liberals from doing any more damage in this Congress when they return for the lame duck session that will begin next week.
We are watching several issues that could come up in the lame duck session.  We will issue more specific alerts about each once we know it will come to the floor. 
In the meantime, please urge your Senators and Members of Congress not to pass any more jobs killing or spending legislation, but to use the lame duck session only to:
  • Stop the automatic tax increases set to go into effect when the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year. 
  • Permanently repeal the death tax.  If Congress does not take action, the federal death tax, currently at 0% will jump to 55%.
Other issues of concern include:
  • The so-called “Paycheck Fairness Act,” which is a job-killing payback to feminists scheduled to come to the Senate floor next Wednesday, November 17th.
  • Efforts to repeal the 1993 law prohibiting homosexuals from openly serving in the military, commonly referenced as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
  • The so-called “DREAM Act,” which would facilitate amnesty for illegal aliens and their extended families.
  • New START Treaty — One of Eagle Forum’s greatest concerns is that liberals in the Senate will set a dangerous precedent by attempting to ratify the new START Treaty during the lame duck session.  Eagle Forum was among 33 conservative groups who joined in a memo outlining the concerns with the new START treaty, and urged Congress to refrain from considering it during the lame duck session.  Also, thirteen former U.S. Senators sent a letter to Senate Leaders Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell urging them not to consider the treaty during the lame duck session.
Please stay tuned for further alerts.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

SCHLAFLY: Government Trampling on Constitutional Rights of Parents

From EAGLE FORUM:


When the liberals and the feminists, including Hillary Clinton, began saying the "village" should raise the child, most people recognized village as a metaphor for government. We're now seeing how intrusive Big Government Nannyism really is.
State agencies operating under various names such as Child Protective Services (CPS) have been assigned the task of protecting kids from abuse or neglect by any adults, especially by their own parents. A new study casts doubt on the value of CPS.
Child Protective Services, which rushes into action based on anonymous tips, investigated more than three million cases of suspected child abuse in 2007. Researchers examined the records of 595 children nationwide alleged to be at similar high risk for abuse, and tracked them from ages 4 to 8.
The researchers concluded that CPS's intervention did little or nothing to improve the lives of the children, and there was no difference between children in the families CPS investigated or did not investigate.

......

More than 800,000 people are now listed on California's child abuse index. These listings are very hurtful to individuals since employers consult the list before hiring employees to work with children.
CPS puts people on this list from agency reports that are based on anonymous tips and suspicion, not proof. It's mighty easy for a malicious wife or ex-wife to allege child abuse as part of her game plan to get child custody or increased child support.
The issue in this case is the fact that there are no procedures, no standards, and no criteria for a wrongly accused person to get his name off the child abusers index. The Supreme Court is reviewing the Ninth Circuit ruling that Craig Humphries (whom a court pronounced innocent of all charges) had a "nightmarish encounter" with the California system, and "There is no effective procedure for Humphries to challenge this listing."
In 2006, Congress toyed with a plan to create a national child abuse registry. The plan was abandoned because of the unreliability of state lists and lack of due process. (blog.eagleforum.org)
The child abuse registry should not be confused with the sex offender registry, which lists only those who have been convicted of sex crimes. The child abuse registry puts men on the list who have never been proven guilty of anything or even charged with a crime, a punishment that is entirely contrary to our legal assumption of being innocent until proven guilty.
Humphries has been trying to clear his name for nine years. Congress should defund these abusive registries and we hope the Supreme Court declares them unconstitutional.