Obama DID Confront Palin Yesterday... She's Against Equal Pay For Women.

[KittyWampus]

Posted: Sunday, August 31, 2008 3:40 PM by Domenico Montanaro
TOLEDO, Ohio -- At an economy town hall here Sunday afternoon, Obama said his rival's pick for vice president was against equal pay for equal work.

“We're gonna make sure that equal pay for equal work is a reality in this country,” he said. “You know, John McCain's new VP nominee seems like a very engaging person, a nice person, but I've got to say, she's opposed like John McCain is to equal pay for equal work. That doesn't make much sense to me.”

When asked what Obama was basing that line on, campaign spokesperson Jen Psaki linked Palin to McCain's agenda.

"Sen. McCain has a clear record of opposing equal pay and as his running mate Gov. Palin is tasked with promoting his agenda,” she said.

Obama is hoping to win over many of Hillary Clinton's women supporters by focusing on kitchen-table issues and on policies of importance to women. McCain's selection of Palin, a mother of five, is widely seen as part of an effort to appeal to some of these same voters as well as to women in general.

“I've got two daughters and when I think about them, I say to myself, I want to make sure that those girls have exactly the same opportunities as anybody's sons will,” Obama continued. “That's why were gonna fight for equal pay for equal work. That's why were gonna fight for sick days for workers if their child is sick or they've got an ailing parent. That's why were gonna make sure that we expand family leave so that more people can utilize it and so that women who are in the workforce are able to balance work and family. And men too.”


*** UPDATE *** Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella issued this response: “For Barack Obama to accuse Gov. Sarah Palin of opposing equal opportunity for women, when she actually opposes the trial lawyers’ effort to overturn the longstanding statute of limitations in America’s courts -- is not only an absurd accusation, it’s a disgrace.” But if we're reading this statement correctly, this means that Palin backed the Supreme Court's 5-4 majority decision that invalidated Lily Ledbetter's equal-pay lawsuit.

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/08/31/1315768.aspx

[BrklynLiberal]

1. If she runs with McSame, I would think she would have to echo his policies....

:shrug:

[undeterred]

2. Give her a salary cut and send the difference to me.

I don't want the poor thing to have to work against her principles.

[akangel2008]

4. LOL too funny...I want some too

but in reality she did take a paycut here in Alaska so in a way its sorta right :-)

[Coexist]

3. will she take a pay cut out of the VP salary if elected?

[spooky3]

5. You ARE reading the statement correctly; she backs it. But Comelia is wrong.

The interpretation of the statute of limitations she's referring to was NOT "longstanding"; the SC overturned prior precedent. See the Ginsburg dissent for details about what the majority did and why it was wrong.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/05-1074.ZD.html

for example:

"In tune with the realities of wage discrimination, the Courts of Appeals have overwhelmingly judged as a present violation the payment of wages infected by discrimination: Each paycheck less than the amount payable had the employer adhered to a nondiscriminatory compensation regime, courts have held, constitutes a cognizable harm. See, e.g., Forsyth v. Federation Employment and Guidance Serv., 409 F. 3d 565, 573 (CA2 2005) (“Any paycheck given within the period … would be actionable, even if based on a discriminatory pay scale set up outside of the statutory period.”); Shea v. Rice, 409 F. 3d 448, 452–453 (CADC 2005) (“ employer commit(s) a separate unlawful employment practice each time he pa(ys) one employee less than another for a discriminatory reason” (citing Bazemore, 478 U. S., at 396)); Goodwin v. General Motors Corp., 275 F. 3d 1005, 1009–1010 (CA10 2002) (“ hastaught a crucial distinction with respect to discriminatory disparities in pay, establishing that a discriminatory salary is not merely a lingering effect of past discrimination—instead it is itself a continually recurring violation… . ach race-based discriminatory salary payment constitutes a fresh violation of Title VII.” (footnote omitted)); Anderson v. Zubieta, 180 F. 3d 329, 335 (CADC 1999) (“The Courts of Appeals have repeatedly reached the … conclusion” that pay discrimination is “actionable upon receipt of each paycheck.”); accord Hildebrandt v. Illinois Dept. of Natural Resources, 347 F. 3d 1014, 1025–1029 (CA7 2003); Cardenas v. Massey, 269 F. 3d 251, 257 (CA3 2001); Ashley v. Boyle’s Famous Corned Beef Co., 66 F. 3d 164, 167–168 (CA8 1995) (en banc); Brinkley-Obu v. Hughes Training, Inc., 36 F. 3d 336, 347–349 (CA4 1994); Gibbs v. Pierce County Law Enforcement Support Agency, 785 F. 2d 1396, 1399–1400 (CA9 1986).

Similarly in line with the real-world characteristics of pay discrimination, the EEOC—the federal agency responsible for enforcing Title VII, see, e.g., 42 U. S. C. §§2000e–5(f)—has interpreted the Act to permit employees to challenge disparate pay each time it is received. The EEOC’s Compliance Manual provides that “repeated occurrences of the same discriminatory employment action, such as discriminatory paychecks, can be challenged as long as one discriminatory act occurred within the charge filing period.” 2 EEOC Compliance Manual §2–IV–C(1)(a), p. 605:0024, and n. 183 (2006); cf. id., §10–III, p. 633:0002 (Title VII requires an employer to eliminate pay disparities attributable to a discriminatory system, even if that system has been discontinued)."

I'm sure Comelia knows this (because aides surely told her) but the McCain-Palin campaign is banking that most Americans don't know this. They are probably right about whether people understand what really happened in the case, but I hope that Obama campaign calls them on their misrepresentation of it. And I hope Obama's co-sponsored bill correcting this horrible decision passes, the sooner the better.

[KittyWampus]

6. kick