Things That Piss Me Off | Redhead Ranting

Mommy Wars 2012: The Choices Women Make

Filed under People, politics, Things that piss me off by Jen on April 13, 2012 at 11:11 am {4 comments}

Photo of Ann Romney at the Reagan Dinner in Des Moines on October 27, 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hillary Rosen made a statement this week that has fired up the mommy wars all over again. Rosen said that Ann Romney could not understand the struggles of women in the sluggish workforce because she “never worked a day in her life” as a stay-at-home mother.

Before this week I’d never heard of Hillary Rosen and I am sure most of you hadn’t either. Rosen was trying to criticize Mitt Romney for being out of touch with women by criticizing his wife’s choice to stay at home and raise their five children.

Women and men on both sides of the aisle quickly proclaimed a collective:

“Oh, no she didn’t”

Rosen apologized the next day and tried to get everyone back on track of criticizing Mitt Romney but the damage was done. Even in her half assed apology she still doesn’t get it, and neither do many women pundits.

As I was driving my daughter to school today I was listening to two women (sorry, I came in late to the program and did not catch their names) try to explain to the audience what Hillary Rosen really meant.

According to these two women on MSNBC radio she meant that Ann Romney had made a choice to stay home with her kids and raise them because her husband Mitt made a boat load of money and so earning an income wasn’t something she had to consider when making that choice. They went on to complain that they didn’t have the luxury of that choice, they had to work to support their family and thus could not stay at home to raise their children.

BULLSHIT!

Yes, I call bullshit on that assessment.

We all have the opportunity and the luxury to make amazing choices about how we live and how we raise our children. The choices might be difficult but we mothers always have choices. When we stop believing we have choices, which these two women apparently have, we become slaves.

When I first started this blog five years or so ago I had just started working for a local tech company. It was a great job, I made a fair wage, my boss was accommodating to my single parenthood and I was well regarded in the small company. After working there for 6 moths I was offered a raise with the condition that I spend more time in the office. Before that I had been allowed to work from home occasionally. The job was great and most mothers would have been tickled to work for such a fair and accommodating company.

We all have choices

I didn’t take the raise and ended up quitting because even though my boss only wanted me to be in the office an hour extra each day (half hour on each end of the day) it meant I couldn’t be there before my kids went to school and I wouldn’t be there when they got home. Also, summer was coming up and I couldn’t put my son in charge of his sister for 3 months which would have meant nothing but TV watching all day long.

I had no idea how I was going to make ends meet but I knew I couldn’t be away from kids at that time in their lives.

It was a struggle, we did without a lot and we gave up a lot of what we had. We stopped eating out, we gave up after school lessons of any kind and vacations were out. Our clothes wore out long before we bought new ones.

It wasn’t easy but I knew it was the right CHOICE to make because I wanted to be there for my kids.

So far I am very happy with my choice to stay home, start my own business (though I earn considerably less than when I worked outside the home), and raise my kids. It was hard but it was worth it. My son graduated high school Cum Laude last year and is now on track to finish his engineering degree in three years. I can’t take the credit for his achievements but I do believe that being home helped to keep him on track and stay out of trouble.

Knowing that I always had a choice made a difference

I’ve said it before but we as Americans have really become a nation of pussies. We have more choices, options, luxuries and opportunities than any other country on this planet and yet we whine about whether or not we have to choose to work or raise the kids.

Many women do both and they love it. Many women, on the other hand, chose to do neither and our country supports that choice, even pays them. The women who think they have no choice but to work outside the home are the ones who are afraid to live with one car, take fewer vacations and wear clothing from TJ Maxx.

I’m not suggesting that mothers in the US can have it all, I don’t think that is possible, but we have so many more choices and FREEDOMS, than any other country. Of course with those freedoms and choices comes responsibility and possible failure.

I think it’s worth it.

I’m sorry Hillary Rosen and these other women feel as if they don’t have choices, life must be incredibly difficult for them.

THE DEMOCRATS’ WAR ON WOMEN (CONT’D): Hillary Rosen: Ann Romney never worked a day in her life. … (pjmedia.com)
Ann Romney hits back at Hillary Rosen attack (worldviewtonight.com)
Buckle Up, It’s Going to be a Bumpy Ride (proudprogressive1.wordpress.com)
Romney fires back at never-worked charge (kshb.com)
The View Co-Hosts Spar Over Ann Romney’s Resume (mediaite.com)

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Crazy & Odd Laws Effective in 2012

Filed under Things that piss me off by Jen on February 1, 2012 at 11:04 am {one comment}

I’m happy to introduce to you a guest poster, Allison Dean. Allison has written several articles on Tribal Blogs and she was kind enough to write one for Redhead Ranting too. Enjoy the crazy laws!

Illinois

HB 2860 is a transportation act that went into effect on January 1st of 2012. According to the act, “A county, or a municipality with less than 2,000,000 inhabitants, including a home rule county or municipality, may not use an automated traffic law enforcement system to issue violations in instances where a motorcyclist enters an intersection against a red signal indication when the red signal fails to change to a green signal within a reasonable period of time because of a signal malfunction or because the signal has failed to detect the arrival of the motorcycle due to the motorcycle’s size or weight.” Effectively, not only may motorcyclists run a red light after waiting a “reasonable” amount of time if they’re in a city with under 2 million people, but they may not be ticketed for running the red light. What’s ironic about this law is this: It is a law that allows motorcyclists and bicyclists to legally break a law.

Michigan

Effective this year in Michigan is a law that allows children under the age of 10, which was previously the age cut-off, to use a firearm to hunt. Children must have a license and be accompanied by a mentor who is at least 21 years old. Here’s what’s funny about this law:

Children 10 and under have REALLY LONG attention spans and will probably NEVER accidently shoot their guns.
Have we all forgotten about Dick Cheney? He’s a grown man and even he accidently wounded someone while hunting. Hunting accidents happen frequently; giving a gun to a child is TERRIBLE idea.
Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources Director Rodney Stokes said about it: “This is a great opportunity for Michigan’s youth. Our youngsters can start hunting earlier with a safe program, which can have a lifelong impact on their interest in conservation and natural resources.” Last anyone checked, hunting entailed killing animals, not conserving them; sure hunting is legally allowed or disallowed based on animal population control, but no hunter goes hunting to conserve animals.

Georgia

A new law effective this year in Georgia changes the legal definition of golf carts to “personal transportation vehicles.” The purpose of this law is to mandate safety measures/accessories on golf carts. Interestingly, because of the law change, local governments may pass ordinances that allow golf cars to be driven not only on residential streets, but city streets. But why stop there? Let’s get golf carts legal on interstates and turnpikes. As you can see on the right, golf carts are dangerous enough on the golf course.

New York

Residents of New York may no longer throw away electronics, such as computers, video game consoles, portable music players, etc. Instead, they must take or send them to a recycling center. The idea is for waste and hazardous materials to not end up in landfills. Taking a step back, what’s odd is that at some point items will not be recyclable. Where will the non-usable parts go if not in a landfill? Probably to Grandma’s house.

California

In California, a new law was mandated that made it illegal for gay or disabled people who made important contributions to the world to be excluded from educational materials and teachings. What’s truly crazy about this is that it even had to be mandated. Regardless of anyone’s views on homosexuals or prejudices against disabled people, their contributions are the same none-the-less.

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Allison Dean is a writer bringing to us odd new laws that went or will go into effect this year.
Allison also writes about medical malpractice attorneys.

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Bank of America: What’s the Deal?

Filed under Things that piss me off, WTF? by Izzy Woods on January 27, 2012 at 10:07 am {2 comments}

Image via Wikipedia

Apparently the Bank of America have chosen this moment to announce a gimmicky new ‘deals’ service. It’s called ‘BankAmeriDeals’, and as well as having a ridiculous name, seems to be a ridiculous new way for the bank to try and squeeze just a little bit more hard-earned cash out of its long-suffering customers. This new venture is supposed to be similar to the Groupon deals website, with Bank of America’s account-holders being given offers when they log on to their accounts.

Well, now that all sounds quite nice of them, doesn’t it? Money off shopping just for logging into your bank account? Except for a few pretty obvious problems. First of all, apparently they will choose which offers to give you based on your spending. So if they see lots of transactions at Walmart, then that’s what they’re going to give you. Great, so these aren’t actually treats at all, just an encouragement to spend more on everyday groceries that you were just going to buy anyway. You can also bet your bottom dollar that they’re making money out of this themselves somewhere, probably giving details of your shopping habits to the stores they’re working with. Isn’t that really just a major privacy breach? You can opt out of the scheme, they say, but not everyone’s going to realize why they should.

Now is not the time

Then you’ve got the biggest issue: is this really what a failing, struggling bank should actually be doing? I have my doubts. This is a bank that only exists because us taxpayers provided it with billions of dollars in bailout money. Since that bailout back into 2008, there doesn’t seem to have been any significant change in the way Bank of America does things. According to CNN Money the bank is still struggling to stay solvent, despite an ongoing cost-cutting operation. Despite making thousands of people redundant, the Bank of America’s operating costs have actually risen in the last quarter. Of course, they haven’t made any commitment to cutting the pay of their investment bankers. You know, the ones who got them (and us) into this mess in the first place.

In that context, is it really appropriate for Bank of America to be wasting their staff time and money on a gimmicky deals scheme? Perhaps this is the attitude that led to all their problems: the idea that you can just paper over the cracks, you can just make everything look as if it’s OK on the surface and the fact that it’s nothing like OK can simply be ignored. If I was in charge of Bank of America, I’d be spending my time hauling their investment department over the coals, not thinking up new ways to try and get ordinary people to give me their money through some cheap bribes.

Weasel words

The thing is, Bank of America are just one of many companies who really seem to think that they just need to throw out a few scraps and they’ll have us all on their side. It’s the politician’s mentality: just say a few clever words and you’ll have the public eating out of your hand. Never mind the substance, never mind the things that really matter. The 2008 crisis proved that the wealthy really were living in an entirely different world to the rest of us. The failure of the banks was, when you look back on it now, inevitable. And those in charge of those banks could surely have seen that, if they’d chosen to look. But they just didn’t seem to care. Perhaps because they knew that we would be there to deal with the consequences of their failure.

Rather than changing their attitude, turning themselves around and rebuilding from the bottom-up, all they are doing now is to try to cover up their misdemeanors with gimmicks. Rather than becoming more like us, the banks are pulling further away. They just don’t want us to realize it. It’s almost impossible to know can and cannot be trusted amongst today’s cohort of bankers, businessmen and politicians. There are calls for the Bank of America to be broken up but what are the chances of that happening? The fact is, it won’t. They’ll just continue to try and make us believe they’ve spent our taxes well, while their executives go home each night to caviar and champagne and shake the last cents from the change jar.

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Izzy is a freelance writer with an axe to grind, so would like to thank Jen for entertaining her own ranting (even though she’s not a redhead!). When she isn’t waxing lyrical on the financial system, she writes on behalf of numerous companies including a leading sectional sofa company.

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