Left Side of the Aisle #111 - Part 4

Clown #1: Marsha Blackburn

Now for the Clown Award, given for acts of meritorious stupidity.

This week I had two leading candidates, so close and such sterling examples that ultimately I couldn't decide between them, so I declared it a tie and gave the big red nose to each of them.

Our first winner is Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. She embraces all the usual right-wing jackassery, such as opposing Hurricane Sandy relief after accepting federal aid for her district in the wake of floods, claiming action against global warming will "destroy millions of American jobs and damage our economic competitiveness for decades to come," and trying to defund Planned Parenthood. But she goes above and beyond the required norm: For example, in 2011 she gave lightbulbs as Christmas gifts because of a wholly fictitious supposed government plan to ban incandescent bulbs and she wanted people to have stockpiles of them before they were banned.

So her status as a clown is well-established. But she is the gift that keeps on giving, and she gets her award for her appearance on Meet the Press on June 2, where she declared that women "don't want" equal pay laws:

They don’t want the decisions made in Washington. They want to be able to have the power and the control and the ability to make those decisions for themselves.

Um, just what decisions is she talking about? What, what women want is the power to decide for themselves to be underpaid? To get paid less for equal work, equal worth? Or what? I guess that's what she means, since Blackburn voted against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Oh, maybe she means women want companies to on their own, just out of the sheer goodness of their hearts, to just decide to pay them the same as men. Right. Just look how well that worked out so far: Despite literally decades of pushing, the gender pay gap remains; in fact, it has expanded in recent years. In 2012, women earned less than 81% of what men earned for the equivalent work. According to a recent analysis, over the course of a 40-year career, the average US woman now stands to lose out on $443,000 in pay.

Which will pay for a lot of clown make-up for Marsha Blackburn.

Sources:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/rep.-marsha-blackburn-offers-bill-to-defund-planned-parenthood/article/2517576
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/12/12/rep_marsha_blackburn_delivers_gop_address_on_climate_change.html
https://southernbeale.wordpress.com/category/rep-marsha-blackburn/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/02/marsha-blackburn-equal-pay-laws_n_3375167.html?ref=topbar
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/07/gender-wage-gap-2012_n_2830173.html