May 13 2008
McCain proves he’s a man
Would you like to see a 71 year old “war hero” pick on and attempt to ridicule a young lady who is 57 years his junior? (He was terribly proud of himself.) Here you go…
What was his answer to the question? Nobody knows. What he said made no sense whatsoever.
The teenager definitely came out the winner in that little show.
Sen. John McCain, at a town hall event held Wednesday in Michigan, singled out a girl wearing a t-shirt critical of him and challenged her to ask him a question. She asked about the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have corrected the Supreme Court’s destructive ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear: “I was wondering Senator McCain why you had the opportunity to vote to give equal rights to women equal pay [but] you didn’t show up to vote and you said that if you did you wouldn’t support it.”
“This question should be on the minds of millions of working women who may face pay discrimination during their careers,” said Kathryn Kolbert, president of People For the American Way. “Senator McCain had the perfect opportunity to embrace equal pay for equal work, but he instead parroted talking points fed to him by corporate lobbyists. It’s pretty clear from his response that he’s more concerned about the rights of big corporations than those of everyday Americans.”
4 Responses to “McCain proves he’s a man”
See the problem here is, as a woman…..I don’t want the government to dictate to my workplace what they can and cannot pay me.
That’s the point. NO GOVERNMENT IN THE WORKPLACE.
Jenn, the government is in the workplace anyway. There are all sorts of regulations and legislation. How can equal pay not be tolerable in this day and age?
I think he was asked a pretty straight question and gave a lawyer’s reply.
So, I love how this post claims that McCain didn’t know what he was talking about when it seems the author is the one who is lost. The legislation the girl asked about does NOT legislate equal pay for women, but rather sets a statute of limitations on how long someone has to file suit that they did not receive equal pay. The legislation mandating equal pay for women is already in place.
The law currently allows 6 months, that’s right, SIX MONTHS, for compensation to be challenged as being discriminatory. The legislation being questioned by this girl sought to remove that limitation. It can easily and reasonably be argued that this limitation reduces frivolous law suits, which is exactly the point McCain was making and which was very easy to understand for someone who is not already predisposed to turn off anything a Republican has to say.
Shawn: The problem is that the Ledbetter decision made it so that the six-month clock starts ticking down not from the time that the pay inequality is discovered, but from the time that it begins.
I knew a woman who found out after a year of doing excellent work that she was making dramatically less than her male colleagues. Under this decision, it would have been too late for her to act. How is that fair?