Free Republic

Reducing income inequality is an imperative in our society. The Pope and President Obama have both called it the defining issue of our times. The 1% protesters took the issue to the streets, economist Thomas Picketty to the elites. How to deal with this shame? Fortunately, thanks to recent research from one of the world’s premier research organizations, the drivers of income inequality have now been unmasked. Income inequality is fueled by personal desires, finds the study, “Marry Your Like: Assortative Mating and Income Inequality,” which examined demographic data from 1960 to 2005. Published by the National Bureau of Economic...

As the result of a Freedom of Information Act battle, new documents have emerged tying the messaging of the Sept. 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, to the White House. ... Among the top administration PR personnel who received the memo were White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Deputy Press Secretary Joshua Earnest, then-White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, then-White House Deputy Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, then-National Security Council Director of Communications Erin Pelton, Special Assistant to the Press Secretary Howli Ledbetter, and then-White House Senior Advisor and political strategist David Plouffe. In addition a document showed Susan Rice was...

Equity: The president touts equal pay for equal work but hasn't practiced what he preaches with the women he has employed — including a well-known staffer who complained of a hostile work environment. It remains a mystery as to why equal pay for women was one of the questions elected by unofficial Team Obama debate coach Candy Crowley of CNN during the second presidential debate. But it let President Obama launch into breathtaking hypocrisy regarding the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Lilly Ledbetter, which in Crowley's view ranked right up there with BenghaziGate as a pivotal issue, woke up one...

The Democrats know how to hold a party convention. They can give speeches, fire up the base, energize their key demographics, and hoodwink the willing news media. What they can’t do is manage the government. The 2012 Democratic National Convention presented the Democratic Party’s best face to the world, declaring support for American values while attacking them, championing the middle class while punishing it, pledging allegiance to “opportunities for the poor” while stripping those opportunities from the very fabric of American life. THE SPEAKERS Who are the Democrats’ faces in 2012? Lily Ledbetter, a tire factory worker who sued her...

Female employees in the Obama White House make considerably less than their male colleagues, records show. According to the 2011 annual report on White House staff, female employees earned a median annual salary of $60,000, which was about 18 percent less than the median salary for male employees ($71,000). Calculating the median salary for each gender required some assumptions to be made based on the employee names. When unclear, every effort was taken to determine the appropriate gender. The Obama campaign on Wednesday lashed out at presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney for his failure to immediately endorse the Lilly Ledbetter...

To reduce bills rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them, Obama "will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days." One of President Obama's major campaign planks was making government more open and accountable. It's a reaction to a habit in Congress of rushing bills through the House and Senate without giving people much opportunity to know what the bills would do. Indeed, sometimes members of Congress don't even know what's in the bills. So...

Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act on Jan. 29, 2009, keeping a longstanding promise to counter a Supreme Court decision that limited workers' ability to sue for pay discrimination. We moved the Obameter and gave him a Promise Kept. But we also had to give him his first Promise Broken for the same signing. As part of his agenda to bring more transparency to government, Obama said he would institute "sunlight before signing" -- posting laws to the White House Web site for five days of public comment before he signed off on them. The Ledbetter Act...

With President Obama’s signing today of a new federal law, the size of your paycheck may become just a little more interesting to your co-workers. Enactment of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is likely to spark many employees’ interest in possible pay discrimination. The measure will remove obstacles to lawsuits on the issue by reversing a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that refuted pay-discrimination charges by Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber plant in Alabama. The high court had rejected Ms. Ledbetter’s claim because it wasn’t filed within the 180-day statute of limitations. The new legislation...

President Obama signed his first bill on Thursday, an equal-pay measure that makes it easier for workers to sue for discrimination on the job. The Lilly Ledbetter bill extends the period an employee can file a claim of discrimination for making less money than another worker doing the same job. "That there are no second class citizens in our workplaces, and that it's not just unfair and illegal -- but bad for business-- to pay someone less because of their gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion or disability," he said before a packed East Room audience.

Civil Justice: Litigation was up 9% last year, driven in part by a 6% rise in employment cases. But that'll seem modest in comparison if the Lilly Ledbetter legislation is passed by Congress and signed by President Obama.Ledbetter worked for Goodyear Tire & Rubber for 19 years, but only after retiring in 1998 with benefits did she sue her employer over what she alleged were discriminatory wages set by a long-dead supervisor. Ledbetter claimed she wasn't paid on the same scale as men, and was victorious in the lower courts. The Supreme Court, however, ruled that she filed after the...

UPDATE: On January 15th, 2009, the Senate voted on the motion to proceed to S. 181, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. The motion passed by a vote of 74 to 23 (Roll Call 4). This means that the Senate may begin debate on S. 181 at any time. The Majority promised Republicans that amendments would be allowed. Eagle Forum is urging Senators to reject S. 181 and instead support Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's alternative bill, S. 166. We will keep you updated as things develop. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) filed cloture on the motion to...

The jobless rate just hit its highest level in 16 years: 7.2 percent, which means more than 11 million Americans are unemployed. So the Democratic House responded by passing two bills making it more costly to hire workers. Barack Obama has been preaching that our economy is in crisis and Congress absolutely must pass another mammoth stimulus package right now. "Today's jobs report," he said, "only underscores the need to move with a sense of urgency and common purpose." But, alas, his first legislative priority is a stimulus package for trial lawyers and liberal/feminist special-interest groups. The only things these...

In addition to the Lilly Ledbetter Paycheck Fairness Act noted by David Freddoso below, Democrats are expected to push several other pieces of employment-related legislation in the first few months of the Obama administration. Among them is the Civil Rights Act of 2008. The Act contains sweeping changes to a variety of federal employment laws, including Title VII, ADA, the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”), and the Equal Pay Act (“EPA"). Among other changes, the bill would: · eliminate existing damage caps on lawsuits brought under Title VII and the ADA. Currently, the damage caps...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Workers who are underpaid by discriminatory employers are one step closer to getting stronger legal recourse after a Friday vote by House lawmakers to amend civil rights legislation. U.S. representatives voted 247 to 171 in favor of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would amend the Civil Rights Act to clarify that each discriminatory paycheck creates a new opportunity for workers to file charges against employers.

Thank You Brian for reminding our Representatives that our first priority is to get our economy on track and that isn’t done by eliminating statutes of limitations and eliminating caps on punitive damages besides the act being “UNFAIR”.

At issue in the Ledbetter case was the deadline for filing charges under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court did not deny that Ms. Ledbetter had suffered discrimination, but said she should have filed her claim within 180 days of "the alleged unlawful employment practice" -- the initial decision to pay her less than men performing similar work. The Supreme Court rejected the argument that each paycheck was a violation of the law. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the statute of limitations must be strictly interpreted to protect employers...