Blog of the week

[skdadl]

Holy mackerel, Berlynn!

Can this woman blog or what?!?  

Here is Politics'n'Poetry, with fresh copy several times a day, it appears, for your delectation.

Y'know that old line that is so true of so many women but at the same time leaves us smiling wryly at best? "I hear she does it all herself!"     :wink:

[skdadl]

The award of the week -- heavens, the award of the day! -- goes to Debra of Bread and Roses, aka April Reign, who has today not only blogged and front-paged but put her message board on some unquestionably nice if powerful supplements.

Yay, Debra!   :D

[Bacchus]

Excellant blog Deb, except here in canada viagra is generally not allowed on company drug plans and birth control is (at least for Great West life and some of the major players)

[sparqui]

Very cool :clap:

[chcmd]

drift/My company drug plan will only pay for my contraceptive if I am using it for something other than a contraceptive :shock:  :?  :x  :roll:/end drift

edited to indicate drift

[Debra]

My company drug plan will only pay for my contraceptive if I am using it for something other than a contraceptive

Tell them it's an anti depressent cause you're going to be mighty depressed if you get pregnant and have to take time off work.

Thanks skdadl!!  I feel both :oops: & :D

[Bacchus]

:lol:
I love that Deb  :lol:

[chcmd]

Tell them it's an anti depressent cause you're going to be mighty depressed if you get pregnant and have to take time off work.

 :

I actually had them fooled for a while, but the buggers finally read the small print on the prescriptions I submit

[Bacchus]

Geez I wish I could fool them on the viagra but alack alas I cannot :oops:

[skdadl]

I feel both Embarassed & Very Happy

As we used to say in Albertie: "mighty proud, and jes' a li'l bit humble."

[k'in]

Excellent Debra-you exposed so many of the challenges women are up against.

One concern in particular is income security for senior women.  I know very few people who will receive a company pension, especially the defined benefit type.  CPP pays a current maximum of $860 and only those who work at the maximum contribution level for most of their potential employable years can collect this at age 65.  I think there have been a few improvements in the formula to allow for time out of the workforce (i.e. parental leave) but most of the women I know won't be collecting anywhere near the maximum.  Society pushes (& economic reality dictates) that basic lifestyles are now "carried" and precarious.  The current situation would be much worse if not for the fact that many of today's seniors have equity in their own homes.  Will this be true a decade or twenty years from now?  So... will we be working until we die?  Will anyone hire us?  Will they pay us enough to live on?  

chcmd:  your company drug plan actually gets to dictate that they will cover a specific drug only when they approve of the "reason" it is being prescribed?  I find this unfair & intrusive.  If they cover/don't cover a drug that's one thing . I thought most drug plans still covered oral contraceptives but maybe I'm out of the loop here.

[pogge]

This thread seems to have faded away. Maybe I can revive it by pointing to a site I recently became aware of: My Left Wing. It's not exactly a blog. It's a Soapblox community, which is a site based on a platform called, oddly enough, Soapblox. That's a derivative of Scoop which is the software that drives Daily Kos and Slashdot.

I became aware of it when the self-proclaimed Fairy Blogmother, Maryscott O'Connor, wrote to tell me that she had added pogge to her blogroll and wondered if I'd be interested in returning the favour. Which I did after sniffing around the site and finding her manifesto, a portion of which follows (all emphasis in the original):

ABORTION

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Maryscott O'Connor. I am a 37 year old woman, married (to Adam Crocker, pictured below), a sometime professional actress, writer and now full-time mother with a 6 year old son (Terry O'Connor, pictured below with his father)… and possessor of 2 ovaries and 1 viable uterus.

My Curriculum Vitae: 3 pregnancies: 1 abortion, 1 miscarriage/D&C and 1 live birth (and, oh, what a fun time was had by all).

This here legal and safe availability of abortion, me boyos, see, it's what people call a “DEAL BREAKER.” We women, being possessed as we are of the vessel of human reproduction and all its attendant joys and woes, tend to feel a bit proprietary about it. We like to think we ought to be let alone with our doctors when making decisions about it (seeing as it's part of our anatomy and all - and being as it's customary in a civilized society to acknowledge and support an individual's right to a pelvic exam in private, barring the prying eyes of our national legislature and even our neighbours or… sometimes… whatever man happened to plant his part of the reproductive process in said vessel).

Am I getting through?

ABORTION IS A MEDICAL PROCEDURE. The decision to have one or not is a MEDICAL DECISION. Which means no fucking government interference with abortion.

If I have to fucking spell out why the right to make one's own medical decisions (as in the case of abortion, but certainly not limited to that procedure) is FUNDAMENTAL to human beings --well, hell, we got nothin' to talk about.

But don't let's let THAT stop us.

I quite like her. I thought some of you might too.

[skdadl]

Excellent Debra-you exposed so many of the challenges women are up against.

One concern in particular is income security for senior women.  I know very few people who will receive a company pension, especially the defined benefit type.  CPP pays a current maximum of $860 and only those who work at the maximum contribution level for most of their potential employable years can collect this at age 65.  I think there have been a few improvements in the formula to allow for time out of the workforce (i.e. parental leave) but most of the women I know won't be collecting anywhere near the maximum.  Society pushes (& economic reality dictates) that basic lifestyles are now "carried" and precarious.  The current situation would be much worse if not for the fact that many of today's seniors have equity in their own homes.  Will this be true a decade or twenty years from now?  So... will we be working until we die?  Will anyone hire us?  Will they pay us enough to live on?  

Wish I'd see these questions before, k'in, because they are all so important.

A lot of people but especially women are not going to have private pensions -- check. A lot of women are going to have very modest CPP earnings -- check, and for all the reasons we know: women's earnings have been, on average, very low; and women are likely to be taking years out of their paid work lives at one time or other to act as caregivers, which means that the CPP takes a real hit. I believe that a majority of women working outside the home no longer qualify for EI or parental benefits.

I am a widow. The survivor's portion of my husband's CPP is larger than the full CPP that I will have "earned," and his CPP was already derisory. And I've been working for forty years, although the labour for some of the last years has been unpaid.

Most of the people I know who are now receiving CPP get about $400/month. Younger people will do better since/if salaries have risen, except by the time they get there, they may find that in real terms, they are in the same situation we are now.

Our public pension system is a joke, and of course things are about to get a lot worse.

[skdadl]

Terrific link, pogge: thank you.

I haven't read the whole of the manifesto yet, but it looks like a great rant. Haven't yet seen anything I couldn't sign on to. Even early on, when she's just getting warmed up (on U.S. party politics), she is very pithy:

Sorry, boys – I have no wish to be in the centre of what now appears to be half a fucking spectrum.

I shall read some more and return.  :)

[skdadl]

Cap'n Dyke, Pirate Queen and Rogue Blogger

Just met her, courtesy the Galloping Beaver. She looks like a lot of fun, yes?