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Tag: violence against women act
Final vote count of the Violence Against Women Act in the House.

House Renews Violence Against Women Act — But 172 Republicans Vote NO

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

The overwhelming majority of House Republicans voted against renewing the Violence Against Women Act Wednesday, just 24 hours after eight women – including six Asian American women – were gunned down in a shooting spree at a series of Atlanta spas by a shooter who is now claiming he has a sex addiction.

The legislation passed 244-172, with a mere 29 Republicans joining Democrats to support the bill. No Democrat voted against it. The bill now heads to the Senate.

The Violence Against Women Act is Clinton-era legislation that was sponsored in 1993 by then-Senator Joe Biden. Originally so uncontroversial it passed on a voice vote in the House and by 95-4 in the Senate, the law must be regularly renewed. It is currently expired because then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused to allow it to be re-authorized in 2019.

Urging passage of the critical bill, President Biden in a statement last week said: "Delay is not an option, especially when the pandemic and economic crisis have only further increased the risks of abuse and the barriers to safety for women in the United States. Domestic violence is being called a pandemic within the COVID-19 pandemic, with growing evidence showing that the conditions of the pandemic have resulted in escalated rates of intimate partner violence, and in some cases more severe injuries."

NRA Joins With Republicans To Keep Domestic Abusers Armed

NRA Joins With Republicans To Keep Domestic Abusers Armed

Abused women are five times more likely to be murdered if their abuser owns a gun. But instead of working to keep those women safe, the NRA is working behind the scenes with Republicans in Congress to make sure men who abuse women can purchase firearms.

The extremist gun lobbying group is officially opposing the upcoming reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which could pressure many Republicans to vote against it — or simply give them political cover to do so.

As part of its never-ending crusade against any and all gun safety legislation, the NRA is objecting to a provision within VAWA that would make it easier to protect victims by stopping a larger number of known abusers from owning guns.

Right now, law enforcement can only remove guns from abusers if they have been convicted of a domestic abuse crime, and if they are married or formerly married to their victim. The new provisions would extend that provision to current or former boyfriends or dating partners, as well as convicted stalkers and those who are subject to a court order on domestic violence or stalking.

But the NRA does not want the law’s “boyfriend loophole” to be closed, and is negatively scoring members of Congress who vote for the legislation. In the NRA’s twisted view, a vote for safety is a bad thing.

“The No. 1 way that women are being killed with guns is by their beloveds, their boyfriends, their significant others,” Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA) told the New York Times. McBath, whose son Jordan Davis, was shot to death, is a new member of Congress who has directly taken on the gun lobby.

The New York Times notes that the NRA has tried to fear-monger around the new provisions by claiming that harassing someone on social media could be enough to get someone’s guns taken away. But an expert pointed out to the Times that it usually takes a lot more than that to get an actual conviction for stalking.

“I am not paying attention to the rhetoric of the NRA because I can’t be distracted. What’s most important is putting forth good legislation to save as many lives as we can,” McBath told the Times.

The NRA didn’t decide to oppose the Violence Against Women Act in a vacuum. Republicans actively sought out the organization’s muscle to help bolster their opposition to the Violence Against Women Act.

Republicans have waged a war on women for decades — and now, with the NRA’s backing, they are putting themselves on the side of violent abusers.

The new Democratic majority in the House is finally passing legislation on gun safety, which Americans have clamored for after seeing too many gun massacres in schools, churches, and homes.

The NRA has been struggling as the public turns against its gun extremism. It has even had to shed some of the staff at its shameless propaganda arm, NRA TV, due to economic shortfalls.

The NRA’s chosen candidates have also been losing elections as the organization is under investigation for suspicious foreign donations, along with an admitted Russian spy operating within their ranks.

Despite all this, the NRA remains dedicated to its core mission of making America less safe — even if it means punishing lawmakers who try to help victims of domestic violence.

Published with permission of The American Independent. 

IMAGE: Handguns are seen for sale in a display case at Metro Shooting Supplies in Bridgeton, Missouri, November 13, 2014. REUTERS/Jim Young

Supreme Court Sets Aside $3.4-Million Verdict For Child-Porn Victim

Supreme Court Sets Aside $3.4-Million Verdict For Child-Porn Victim

By David G. Savage, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Victims of child pornography whose images of sexual abuse have circulated on the Internet may claim damages from every person caught with illegal images, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

But justices rejected the idea that a single person who possesses such images may be assessed the full amount due to the victim, setting aside a $3.4-million verdict against a Texas man in a favor of a woman whose childhood rape was photographed and widely circulated on the Internet.

The 5-4 decision upholds part of the Violence Against Women Act, which calls for restitution to victims of child pornography, but it adopts a middle-ground position on how to set the amount. It said those who possess the images must pay something because they have contributed to the abuse.

“It makes sense to spread the payment among a larger number of offenders in amounts more closely in proportion to their respective causal roles and their own circumstances,” said Justice Anthony Kennedy. “This would serve the twin goals of helping the victim achieve eventual restitution for all of her child pornography losses and impressing upon offenders the fact that child pornography crimes, even simple possession, affect real victims.”

His opinion in Paroline v. United States leaves it to federal judges to decide on the proper amount in each case.

The case began when a young women using the name “Amy” learned the photos of her sexual abuse as a young child were circulating on the Internet. Her abuser was her uncle who was prosecuted and paid $6,000 in restitution.

Amy went to courts around the country seeking restitution orders from others who had pleaded guilty to child pornography charges for possessing her images. One of them was a Texas man named Doyle Paroline.

A federal judge refused to order Paroline to pay restitution because there was no proof his offense caused or contributed to Amy’s abuse. But a federal appeals court in New Orleans, taking the opposite approach, ruled for Amy and said Paroline was responsible for paying the full amount she had sought, a total of $3.4 million.

The Supreme Court reversed that judgment, but said Paroline can be required to pay a reasonable amount in line with his role in the crime.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, saying Congress had failed to make clear how judges should decide on the damages.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented separately, saying the defendant should be assessed the full amount of the required restitution.

Photo: Matt H. Wade via Wikimedia Commons

5 Ways Rand Paul Shows That He Doesn’t Really Care About Women

5 Ways Rand Paul Shows That He Doesn’t Really Care About Women

Most people assumed that the churlish attacks from Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) on Bill Clinton were just a way for the junior senator from Kentucky to try to intimidate Hillary Clinton into not running in 2016. But its clear now that he had a more immediate goal in mind.

The former president is heading to Kentucky to campaign for Alison Lundergan Grimes. Clinton is the last Democrat to win the state in a presidential election and encouraged the Grimes campaign even before she announced her intention to win the Senate seat held by Mitch McConnell (R-KY) since the 1980s.

Grimes, the Bluegrass State’s current secretary of state, leads McConnell by four points in the most recent poll, and Clinton will help her make a dent in the Senate Minority Leader’s prodigious fundraising advantage.

Senator Paul has aligned himself with his leader after McConnell first opposed the Tea Partier’s Senate bid, in what seems like a pretty basic marriage of convenience. Paul helps McConnell keep his job, then McConnell provides establishment support for the former optometrist’s 2016 bid for president.

However, Paul has been unwilling to go on the attack against McConnell’s Tea Party challenger Matt Bevin, who is trailing by a substantial margin anyway. Nipping at Clinton’s leg raises Paul’s 2016 profile and helps McConnell against his real threat, points out Louisville-based reporter Joe Sonka.

But Paul’s attempt to label one of the most popular politicians in America a “predator” is not only decades old, it also forces the spotlight on Paul’s record when it comes to women’s rights.

Here are five examples of how Rand Paul’s concern for women doesn’t show up in his policies.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Violence Against Women Act

Senator Paul voted against the Violence Against Women Act, which helped decrease intimate partner violence by two-thirds in the first decade and half it was in effect, claiming that he didn’t want to borrow money from China to pay the bill — as it’s not something important, like tax cuts for the rich.

He laid out his reasoning against the bill further “in a letter last year to a leader of The Fatherhood Coalition, one of the organizations of the ‘Men’s Rights Activist’ movement, perhaps the most the wretched hive of scum and misogyny you’ll find in America,” in the words of Joe Sonka. The reasoning boils down to “charities should be doing this,” neglecting to note that no charities did so before the 1994 bill became law. And VAWA’s transformation of how law enforcement approaches crimes against women continues to save lives.

Health Care

12-5-12-Medicaid-Graphic-480x267

Paul wants to repeal Obamacare, even though his state exchange has enrolled over 240,000 people and cut its uninsured population by a third in mere months. This would allow insurers to treat being a woman as a pre-existing condition again, and end the birth control mandate, which has helped bring abortions to a new low. He would also like to end Medicare as we know it, immediately.

But the senator’s most devastating health care policy would be what he wants to do to Medicaid. Paul would change the way the program is funded to block grants and cut the amount paid to states even more than the draconian cuts Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) proposed.

Women make up two-thirds of Medicaid beneficiaries and the program is one of the largest payers of pregnancy-related services, covering 60 percent of births in some states. Paul’s cuts would likely leave millions of them without a crucial lifeline.

Birth Control

don't take my birth control

Who should decide what kind of health care a women gets? Paul thinks it should be her boss.

The senator supported the Blunt Amendment, which would have allowed employers to deny any health care service for “moral reasons.”

That’s not the only way he’d like to make it harder for women to get birth control. Paul has also said he would like to completely defund Planned Parenthood, even though 90 percent of the services it provides are directly related to prevention and wellness and no federal funding goes toward abortions. Texas has done exactly this. “Nearly half of…women said they couldn’t access birth control in the three months before they got pregnant,” Mother Jones’ Jaeah Lee reported.

Photo: WeNews via Flickr

Women ‘Won’ The War On Women

Rush Limbaugh Rape Filibuster

Paul’s rants against President Clinton were preceded by his bizarre response to a question about whether Mike Huckabee’s comments about “Uncle Sugar” and women’s libidos were “helpful”:

This whole sort of war on women thing, I’m scratching my head because if there was a war on women, I think they won. You know, the women in my family are incredibly successful. I have a niece at Cornell vet school, and 85 percent of the young people there are women. In law school, 60 percent are women; in med school, 55 percent.

First, his stats were off.

“Rand Paul was wrong when he said that 60 percent of law students and 55 percent of medical students are women,” FactCheck.org reported. “The share of female students at law and medical schools in the United States is 47 percent each and hasn’t varied much in 10 years.”

Also off was the gist of what he was saying.

While women have made leaps in society in the less than a century they’ve had the vote, they still represent only 20 percent of the Senate and 18.5 percent of the House, despite making up more than 50 percent of the population.

“Though women ask for promotions and raises, they are given less compared to their male co-workers,” ThinkProgress‘ Annie-Rose Strasser wrote. “Women are more likely to be asked for favors but less appreciated when they do them because people feel ‘entitled to female help.’ Men out-earn their female counterparts by 33 cents on the dollar nationally.”

On the most basic level, more than a million women are victims of domestic violence every year. An estimated 600 women report being raped every day. And that’s only what’s reported.

Screenshot via The Rush Limbaugh Show

The End Of A Woman’s Right To Choose

abortion

Rand Paul is a libertarian. But like his father, he believes in “personhood,” meaning that once a woman’s egg is fertilized, her liberty goes bye-bye. His opposition to abortion rights even in cases of rape and incest, along with his desire to overturn Roe v. Wade, puts him in the minority of Americans who want to completely erase a woman’s right to choose.

Since we know that in countries where abortion is illegal, it is actually more common, Paul’s fringe beliefs on reproductive rights would simply lead to back-alley procedures that threaten women’s lives and their ability to conceive later.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr