Tuesday Reads: Rocks and Hard Places.
Posted: June 24, 2014 Filed under: morning reads 37 CommentsGood Morning!
Sometimes I feel like things are just getting a lot more complex and time consuming than they should be. I’ve found some interesting stories about people that have been caught up in what appears to be a very complicated and unfair system. The first story is about the woman that was arrested for leaving her children in a car while trying to find a job. She was in a set of circumstances that certainly had a large amount of rocks and hard places.
On the morning of March 20, Shanesha Taylor had a job interview. It was for a good job, one that could support her three children, unlike the many positions she’d applied for that paid only $10 an hour. The interview, at an insurance agency in Scottsdale, Ariz., went well. “Walking out of the office, you know that little skip thing people do?” she said, clicking her heels together in a corny expression of glee. “I wanted to do that.”
But as she left the building and walked through the parking lot, she saw police officers surrounding her car, its doors flung open and a crime-scene van parked nearby. All the triumphant buoyancy of the moment vanished, replaced by a hard, sudden knot of panic. Hours later, Ms. Taylor was posing for a mug shot, her face somber and composed, a rivulet of tears falling from each eye. A subsequent headline in The Huffington Post said it all: “Shanesha Taylor, Homeless Single Mom, Arrested After Leaving Kids in Car While on Job Interview.”
The article ricocheted across the Internet. Many viewed her story — that she, unable to find child care, had left her two sons, aged 6 months and 2 years, in her 2006 Dodge Durango while she went to a 70-minute job interview — as emblematic of the harsh realities of today’s economy, where jobs are scarce and well-paid ones even scarcer, and where desperate choices have become common. Certainly, many people could identify with the cruel math of Ms. Taylor’s pretrial report, which put her monthly income at $1,232 (including food stamps), while her monthly expenses totaled $1,274.
Ms. Taylor, 35, was charged with two counts of felony child abuse, and soon became the subject of syndicated columns calling her the “true face of poverty,” petitions asking the prosecutor to drop charges and a crowd-sourced fund-raising campaign that gathered $115,000. After 10 days in jail, she was freed after strangers paid her $9,000 bail. Her story was featured on the “Today” show; her lawyer was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly. Then came the backlash, as critics contended that a woman who had put her children in peril was being made into a hero. Bill Montgomery, the Maricopa County attorney, contradicted news reports that Ms. Taylor was homeless and unemployed, saying she was actually neither. Her children — she also has a 9-year-old daughter who was in school at the time of the job interview — were removed from her custody.
All at once, Ms. Taylor had become a symbol of both economic desperation and shirked responsibility. Her story became fodder for polemic and preaching. But until a recent interview with The New York Times in a conference room at the office of her lawyer, Benjamin P. Taylor II (no relation), she had not spoken publicly.
You may read more about her story at the link.
Charlie Rangel’s frustration with the gridlock in Congress and the flair up in racially-based politics has lead to an interesting set of comments about pols 
from slaveholder states. The congressman can’t imagine being a politician that would screw over his own voting base just to get back at a President.
New York Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel, locked in a contentious primary battle, suggested in an interview that aired Monday that the level of Republican opposition to President Barack Obama is partly due to race.
When asked by MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt whether GOP opposition to the president is “based on race,” Rangel paused and said, “You know, that’s a subjective question. But, let me say this: Are most of the states that they represent, are they in the Confederate states that fought the Union? Were they slaveholder states? And when they come to Washington, do you see more Confederate flags than American flags?
Rangel, an 84-year-old, African-American congressman who has served in Congress for more than four decades, added that he thought some Republicans were willing to hurt themselves politically by opposing the Obama administration’s domestic agenda just to attack him.
“Who would hurt their own people — in terms of cutting off health, job opportunity, food stamps — to get after this president? It takes a lot of hatred to hurt yourself just to embarrass the president. So, I’m trying to think with the tea party — and basically what they have said and what their spokespeople have said — this would not be the same if the president was not of color,” he said.
Rangel’s comments come after Sen. Jay Rockefeller last month said that Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act was motivated in part by race. The retiring West Virginia Democrat said that some in the GOP don’t want the implementation of the health law to succeed because they don’t personally like the president and maybe he’s of the wrong color.”
Before going too far into other things, I’d like to show you something funny that really inspired me to this theme. A US student had to be rescued from a statue that basically was a huge stone vagina. He got stuck and had to be dislodged.
On Friday afternoon, a young American in Tübingen had to be rescued by 22 firefighters after getting trapped inside a giantsculpture of a vagina. TheChacán-Pi (Making Love) artwork by the Peruvian artist Fernando de la Jara has been outside Tübingen University’s institute for microbiology and virology since 2001 and had previously mainly attracted juvenile sniggers rather than adventurous explorers.
According to De la Jara, the 32-ton sculpture made out of red Veronese marble is meant to signify “the gateway to the world”.
Police confirmed that the firefighters turned midwives delivered the student “by hand and without the application of tools”.
I wonder if he had one of those epiphanies that are supposed to come with a rebirthing exercise?
The White House had a summit yesterday on Working Families. It’s still difficult to hold down a challenging, poorly paying job in the US at nearly every level of responsibility and raise a family. Here’s a list of the administration’s priorities. Notice that we’re one of the few countries in the world does not have paid pregnancy leave yet.
Supporting the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. While the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 took a crucial step toward protecting pregnant workers, too many women still face discrimination in the workplace and a serious and unmet need for reasonable accommodations that would allow them to keep working while they are pregnant. For that reason, President Obama will urge Congress to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would require employers to make reasonable accommodations to workers who have limitations from pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions (unless it would impose an undue hardship on the employer). The legislation also would prohibit employers from forcing pregnant employees to take paid or unpaid leave if a reasonable accommodation would allow them to work.
Empowering Pregnant Workers with Better Information About Their Rights. At the President’s direction, DOL will release a new online map that will be a one-stop shop where working families can learn about the rights of pregnant workers in each state. The map will also allow families to see which states are leading the charge in protecting their rights and which are lagging behind. This live map will continue to reflect any future changes in state and federal policy.
Other priorities include supporting nontraditional families. It’s amazing that after so many years of women being an important part of the work force that we still struggle for family friendly policies.
Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and other top administration officials took turns telling their personal stories about the struggle to balance work and family at a campaign-style “summit” stacked with cheering Democratic supporters at a posh Washington hotel.
“I remember taking the night shift when Malia was born and when Sasha was born and being up at two in the morning and changing diapers and burping them and singing to them,” Obama said, talking about his daughters, who are now teenagers.
“The point is, I was lucky enough to be able to take some time off,” he said. “I want every father and every child to have that opportunity.”
Obama issued an order requiring federal agency heads to expand flexible workplace policies as much as possible. The goal is to make it easier for parents or workers to take care of family needs and to enable more people to find and keep jobs.
Praising businesses that have taken similar steps, Obama said family leave should be available across the country.
It’s nice to know at least one President that fesses up to changing his children’s diapers and considers spending time with them to be “parenting” and not “baby sitting”.
Another issue that puts women in hard place is being open about their sexuality.
Sandra Fluke heard it when she talked about insurance coverage for birth control. Sara Brown from Boston told me she was first called it at a pool party in the fifth grade because she was wearing a bikini. Courtney Caldwell in Dallas said she was tagged with it after being sexually assaulted as a freshman in high school.
Many women I asked even said that it was not having sex that inspired a young man to start rumors that they were one.
And this is what is so confounding about the word “slut”: it’s arguably the most ubiquitous slur used against women, and yet it’s nearly impossible to define.
The one thing we do know about “slut” is that it’s the last thing a woman should want to be. Society is so concerned over women and girls’ potential for promiscuity that we create dress codes, school curricula,even legislation around protecting women’s supposed purity. Conservative columnists opine that women having sex is tantamount to a “mental health crisis”, and magazine stories wonder if we’re raising a generation of “prosti-tots”.
Leora Tanenbaum, the author of SLUT! Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation, told me that “a ‘slut’ is a girl or woman who deviates from norms of femininity. The ‘slut’ is not necessarily sexually active – she just doesn’t follow the gender script.”
This nebulous, unquantifiable quality of the slur is what makes it so distressing – there’s no way to disprove something that has no conclusive boundaries to begin with. And because it’s meant to be more of an identity than a label, it’s a term not easily shaken off. “Slut” sticks to a person in a way that “asshole” never will.
So what makes you a slut? It seems the the only hard and fast rule is that you have to be a woman.
So, have you found yourself between a rock and a hard place recently? What’s on your reading and blogging list this morning?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
The roadblocks that the poor in this country must navigate are a stain on the legacy of our nation. In my area there are one or two stories a year that a similar to Shanesha Taylor’s. Single parents trying to find a job who leave their children unattended either at home or in their cars. It’s heartbreaking to see people desperately struggle to achieve the American dream only to be shown that they just didn’t try hard enough and now they face scorn, possible imprisonment, and possibly the loss of their children. All because they tried to get a job.
A friend of mine is a government contractor who was unemployed for almost two years. Now that jobs are opening up, he’s having trouble getting security clearance. Why? Because is credit rating is so bad because he was unemployed for two years!!! Without government intervention, the number of poor people will only increase. The free market that is touted by so many conservatives has failed the American people as well as the American economy. Time for the government to start spending some money to help people who want to work and join society again.
One of the things that is most frustrating is that you have to continually work to prove your poor or unemployed or hungry or whatever over and over and over again. It’s hard work. You’re constantly searching for the same paperwork and sending it to the same people and places over and over again. Then, the still audit it and question it. If they spent that much time on crooked businesses, rich people, and politicians the country would be rich.
Absolutely right.
Damn right!
Very well said, Janice and Dak!
It’s time to end Christianity’s influence on abortion’s “morality
http://www.examiner.com/article/it-s-time-to-end-christianity-s-influence-on-abortion-s-morality
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/a-unified-theory-of-hillary-20140618
There was a story shortly after Ms Taylor’s comparing her to a second case in the same month. In the second case. the mother was drunk and drove off with her baby, in a car seat, on top of the car. Luckily the baby was unhurt when the car seat fell off the car into the street but still that’s pretty astounding negligence. Her punishment was something like 100 hours of community service and no other ramifications. Of course the prosecutor couldn’t make an example of this middle class white woman.
Hunting for an administration scandal, he found one of his own. 🙂
tpm: Grassley’s Hunt For An Obama Insider Trading Scandal Backfires On GOP
ouch!!!
GOPer felled by dick tweet.
tpm: GOP Rep’s Chief Of Staff Resigns After Porn Star Tweets Photo Of His Penis
Ralph Did you see Suarez bit some one again? Found this story on him that’s great!! http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/10984370/portrait-serial-winner-luis-suarez-soccer-most-beautiful-player
LOL
Uruquay beat Italy 1-0. I’m not fond of Uruquay but I like the Italian team even less.
dislike Italian soccer players … boring players and mellow dramatic over nothing
Teams advancing, so far: Brazil, Mexico, Netherlands, Chile, Columbia, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Argentina, and Belgium.
Usual suspects
Except Costa Rica. They’ve never advanced before. I like their team a lot.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/24/tn-football-player-wants-rape-case-dismissed-because-unconscious-victim-was-promiscuous/
TN football player wants rape case dismissed because unconscious victim was ‘promiscuous’
George Will would approve.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/arkansas-gop-official-says-hillary-would-probably-get-shot-if-she-showed-up/
Arkansas GOP Official Says Hillary Would ‘Probably Get Shot’ If She Showed Up
This is not a good situation. Do you think Johnny Rhoda of Arkansas would have said that to Bill Clinton. I hope Bill brings Hillary back to Arkansas, and with him a truck loads of secret service agents.
Hillary has taken a lot, but this is over the top. The republican party of Arkansas is calling for the assassination of the former First Lady of Arkansas, of the White House, and our former Sect. of State.
We have has an escalation of gun violence in this country, an escalation of violence against women, and we are scared to death to travel in our own country. Today Arkansas joins Nevada in the Republican road map to home grown terrorist, who are promoting violence and terrorism in this country. These are republicans who gave birth to the war on women, and they will continue to endanger our liberties, and our freedom to move about in this country.
I think a public protest ought to get underway. We cannot let they get away with the verbal, and physical violence, or let them take laws into their own hands like Cliven Bundy.
Just think about it, what it means, think about the image of Hillary Clinton shot down in cold blood at the border of Arkansas. Remember what they did to Benazir Bhutto, she was assassinated when she attended a campaign rally.
The only reason he called her out for assassination is because she is a WOMAN, she is a MOTHER, and she is soon to be a GRANDMOTHER, as well as our next PRESIDENT.
George W. Bush said we have to fight terrorist “over there, so we don’t fight them here”……..boy oh boy was he ever wrong in more than one way, this is what George W. Bush gave birth too. Arkansas will not be a peaceful place to visit, I suggest we alert citizens to this terrorism.
Let’s hear those phones ringing:
Johnny Rhoda, Rep. Chair, Arkansas, Second District 501-592-1570
Governor, Mike Beebe, Arkansas (Dem.)
501-682-2345
I trust that the FBI is looking into this as well. Threats of this kind against our former First Lady, Senator from New York, and Sec. of State cannot be ignored.
Following up on the discussion yesterday about John Schindler sending a woman a photo of his penis, the woman has explained that she was a willing participant in the interaction with him. She didn’t report him to the War College and doesn’t know who did. She asked her “friend” to help her tweet the private e-mails and text messages, but it’s not clear why. She knew he was married and still continued the flirtation after she got the picture. She says she wanted to embarrass him and let his wife know what he did. Again, not clear why. Perhaps they had a falling out. The messages were from May.
From Forbes:
He should know better.
Yes. But this does seem to qualify as “revenge porn.”
That’s life. He really should have kept it in his pants. In today’s world, there’s precious little privacy and he certainly knew that better than most.
True. Pretty ironic. I can’t understand why some men are so proud of their private parts that they want to take photos. Although in this case, the woman apparently requested it.
Ain’t that the truth..
Study finds oil from BP spill impedes fish’s swimming
Yay, Crystal Moore got her job back in South Carolina as Chief of Police. You might remember she was fired because she is gay. Town folks voted her back in. Yay, we stand with Crystal Moore. Walk proudly through those doors!
Yay!!! Very good news, Fannie. Those South Carolina voters did the right thing! That’s something to remember when we are feeling down about the current direction the country is going.
Sky Dancers, we need to keep believing that good will triumph over evil. We need to keep fighting for what is right even when it seems like the crazies are winning more often than not. You all know that. Hope may not be a plan but it is a powerful force that keeps us from giving up when the going gets tough. Hold on to it.