Ban on Medicaid Dollars for Abortion

Women's eNews' Allison Stevens has a great piece on TAP that reminds us of the fact that abortions in this country are increasingly a privilege for the middle class and wealthy. Pro-life groups have done a great job of marginalizing choice, and now women are now economically forced to make very tough decisions.

A New Idea Is Not Neccesarily a Good Idea

Matt Yglesias linked to an old Jon Chait article called "The Case Against New Ideas," written in the wake of the 2004 election. It indicates that Democrats don't necessarily need to spend time coming up with new proposals -- they already have tons of them -- they simply need power. He says, "[Lack of media coverage on Democrats' ideas] isn't because reporters harbor a bias against liberals. It's because they harbor a bias against ideas that stand no chance of being enacted." This was especially true in 2004, and now it's changing a bit.

The simple fact of the matter is that getting things passed is hard, especially with a divided government and the power of nearly any given lobby. Even when a party gets an idea through the House and Senate, it's usually altered -- sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.

Communications Control

There are two things that are happening in communications regulation lately:

• Pandora has been fighting a campaign to save Internet radio. A recent ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board has determined that Internet radio (apparently in an extreme departure from regular radio) cannot play copyrighted music on the Internet, even if it's for the purposes of streaming. This causes popular sites like Pandora to go under, if they must pay for each song that a user accesses. For more on why copyright is overrated, read Wendy Kaminer's column in TAP and the (somewhat) recent New Yorker article on the Google Books project.
  
• The Post Office is planning to put a higher rate on publications under a certain circulation, essentially in an effort to "tax the poor." This is one that affects many of the magazines I actually read. I'm sure it made sense to the Postal board at the time -- give high-volume senders a discount -- but this is the same reason why Wal-Mart shuts out small stores.

It seems as if the young listeners to Pandora effectively delayed a decision on this copyright situation, but it's questionable whether the aging readers of small publications like TAP, The Nation, and a number of others will be able to affect such change.

Investigative Superheroes

In anticipation of Spider-Man 3 this weekend, I've been watching a lot of superheroes movies to psych myself up: Batman Begins, Spider-Man 2, Superman Returns, and Toby Maguire on The Daily Show. It struck me, though, what's with this weird phenomenon of superheroes masquerading as journalists?

In all seriousness, it could be construed as a commentary on the profession of journalism. Journalists are typically least critical of those closest to them. It's their job to investigate people, but when those people are also cozy with them, they don't want to disrupt personal relationships. It's a paradox journalists must always face. In order to get "the story" they have to get close to people, but it's this closeness that can also cause them to miss really important stories.

Tech-Savvy?

This account of the Obama MySpace scandal is intriguing. They seem to have made a bad move by muscling out an Obama fan -- someone who was just doing it because he loved the candidate. They should have worked harder to bring him on board full-time with the campaign.

The unanswered question raised at the end of the article, "Why couldn't the Obama people find the money to work out an amicable arrangement with Anthony? What are they spending the $26 million they raised last quarter on?" is a good one.

The first comment is somewhat creepy: "It's really sad to witness what a so-called 'volunteer' for the Obama campaign is willing to do to blackmail the campaign. Honestly, no serious Barack Obama supporter would behave like this."

It's always been my issue that people who like Obama really like Obama. They almost obsessively and unquestioningly follow him. Who is a "serious Barack Obama supporter" anyway? How do they pick them out from the un-serious ones?

Pink + Green

A friend of mine was asked to speak at the "Pink and Green Coalition" conference here in Washington the other week. At the time, she said something about reproductive freedom is important for controlling population, which has an impact on the environment. While that is true, the difference and alliance of the feminist movement and the environmental movement is a complex one.

As Anne Statham said in 2000 (note: I could only access the abstract), feminists tend to have a more reactionary view of the world, while environmentalists take a "holistic life view." So the idea of joining these two movements isn't exactly a brand-new one. I was thinking about it on my own, and I came up with a few things that feminists that are pro-environmental can think about:

• One thing brought to my attention was the simple cost of having a period. Seems silly, right? But the amount of waste generated by this monthly experience is something to think about. Tampons, sanitary napkins, and panty liners all generate a significant amount of waste over the period of a lifetime. Products like the Keeper and the Mooncup are designed to reduce waste. I myself haven't tried these products, but I have to admit, it's food for thought.
• If periods indeed generate so much waste, why not simply reduce the number of them? With hormonal birth control, you can simply have a period once every three months instead of once a month, thus cutting the use of feminine products by two-thirds.
• Given that, I'm not sure if hormonal birth-control treatments are manufactured in an environmentally friendly way. Where does the waste go?
  
• Besides all that icky period stuff, there's something for third-wave enviro-feminists to think about in particular. Makeup that's manufactured in an environmentally and animal un-friendly should be avoided. Not to mention that the volume of packaging makeup sometimes comes in is a bit ridiculous.

Those are just a few things I started thinking about that, as a feminist, I never really considered before. I don't know if this means I'm going to run out and buy a Mooncup, but I'll definitely bethinking about those kinds of things more going forward.

May Day

Happy May Day!