An elderly couple upgrades their ride and trades in my dream car.

My local car salesman calls me because he knows its in my price range. The month is coming to a close and he has bills to pay.

The mechanic says it’s clean and mechanically sound with a great price.

The owner of the dealership says he’s hoping my husband’s company makes it because his car dealership is dependent on its employees. He’s also running for school board and wants our vote. He thanks us for buying the van – and he means it, he doesn’t want his business to go under.

We stop and buy insurance from our friends from church. They thank us for getting the loan locally, they’re also on the bank’s board.

My husband calls a local bank, he does freelance work for them, the manager gave us an interest rate at 6%, 3% lower than other banks we asked.

They make plans to play golf in the future.

We spent $7,500 for our dream van.

The salesman made a commission, the car dealership made a profit, the insurance broker made a commission, the bank manager made a commission and the bank took its cut.

That’s at least 5 families and 3 small local businesses whose economies were positively impacted by the purchase of my van.

Hopefully, all of them will look to my husband in the future for freelance graphic design and advertising and it will come full circle. We’ll be needing another car eventually.

That’s what we did to affect the unemployment rate and the economy yesterday.

Post from: Blisstree

Economic Dominos – Buying Local

Duh. Moment. That’s when you realize it’s completely asinine to have not done something before.

You know. Like insist on Equal Pay for Equal Work for Women, including mothers. And if you violate that out of some good old boy mentality or some other equally stupid and archaic reason – then you get sued and lose lots of money.

Duh.

Can’t tell you how relieved I am to finally be able to read that news and not want to kick some sense into my representatives head.

Well, actually my personal representatives – Conservative Texans – still need someone to kick them in the head because they are too stupid to get it.

Gladly, they are currently outnumbered!

Seriously thinking of running against them.

President Obama sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law yesterday.

This means that companies will be held accountable for screwing women out of equal pay for decades and decades.

If I were in an HR department right about now – I’d be checking some employment records and making sure – real sure – I was paying my female workers equally.

Take a moment to tell your Congress Person how proud you are (or not, depending how the voted) that they finally did the right thing by following this link via Momsrising.org.

Also check out the AAUW’s Position on Pay Equity, The group is quite good and giving voters easy access to how their representatives voted on key gender issues.

Gender discrimination in the United States of America stops now. Because we decided.

Image Source: Momsrising.org - go visit and join the rising of mothers in this nation who are finally going to be treated with respect.

Post from: Blisstree

Equal Pay! Hurray!

–Barack Obama, Speech in Washington, DC

November 10, 2005

Fixing the Nation’s Health Care System: More than 19 million women are uninsured in this country, and women are more likely than men to delay or not get medical care because of high costs.

Empowering Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS: In the United States, the percentage of women diagnosed with AIDS has quadrupled over the last twenty years.

Supporting Research into Women’s Health: Heart disease is the leading cause of death among women, accounting for nearly 39 percent of all female deaths. Also, arthritis, asthma, autoimmune diseases, and depression.

Fighting Cancer: Ovarian cancer is the fourth-leading cause of cancer-related death among women in the United States

Reducing Health Risks Due to Mercury Pollution: More than five million women of childbearing age have high levels of toxic mercury in their blood and more than 630,000 newborns are born every year at risk.

Supporting Stem Cell Research: President Obama and Vice President Biden believe that we owe it to the American public to explore the potential of stem cells to treat the millions of people suffering from debilitating and life-threatening diseases.

Supports a Woman’s Right to Choose: President Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him.

Preventing Unintended Pregnancy: President Obama was an original co-sponsor of legislation to expand access to contraception, health information, and preventive services to help reduce unintended pregnancies. Introduced in January 2007, the Prevention First Act will increase funding for family planning and comprehensive sex education that teaches both abstinence and safe sex methods. The Act will also end insurance discrimination against contraception, improve awareness about emergency contraception, and provide compassionate assistance to rape victims.

Reducing Domestic Violence: One in four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. Family violence accounted for 11 percent of all violence between 1998 and 2002.

Strengthening Domestic Violence Laws: Approximately 1,400 women a year — four every day — die in the United States as a result of domestic violence. And 132,000 women report that they have been victims of a rape or attempted rape, and it is estimated that an even greater number have been raped but do not report it.

Fighting Gender Violence Abroad: The genocide in Darfur has had particularly devastating consequences for women. Tens of thousands of women have been killed, raped, and displaced since the conflict began in 2003.

Fighting for Pay Equity: Despite decades of progress, women still make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes.

Expanding Paid Sick Days: Today, three-out-of-four low-wage workers have no paid sick leave. It is fundamentally unfair that a single mom playing by the rules can get fired or lose wages because her child gets sick.

Investing in Women-Owned Small Businesses: Women are majority owners of more than 28 percent of U.S. businesses, but head less than 4 percent of venture-capital-backed firms.

Protecting Social Security: Americans are increasingly at risk of working their entire lives only to face retirement in poverty.

Raise the minimum wage: President Obama and Vice President Biden will raise the minimum wage, index it to inflation and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit to make sure that full-time workers earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs.

Helping Low-Income Workers: The President and Vice President will invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathway programs that implement proven methods of helping low-income Americans succeed in the workforce.

Protecting Title IX: President Obama and Joe Biden support eliminating gender discrimination in American schools.

Expanding Early Childhood Education: President Obama has been a champion of early childhood education since his years in the Illinois legislature, where he led the effort to create the Illinois Early Learning Council.

Post from: Blisstree

Obama Administration Agenda On Women

Congratulations America! Tomorrow’s inauguration of Barack Obama culminates a dream.

It’s a dream that will heal us all – black, white and all other colors and races.

(I scored this shirt last Martin Luther King Jr. Day from a street vender in Atlanta at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.)

Photo Source: The Girl Revolution.

Post from: Blisstree

The Dream

Go look and make sure you know how the people you hired voted. Send them a letter telling them what you think.

YOU are the only ones who can hold government officials accountable.

Post from: Blisstree

Hold YOUR Leaders Accountable

Remember last month when we asked you to demand that Congress and the states stop treating part-time workers like chopped liver and provide them with unemployment insurance? Well, after nearly 10,000 of your letters to Congress, the New York Times reported that President-elect Obama and Congressional Democrats are now proposing an extension of unemployment insurance to part-time workers! [1]

Give yourself a high five, then let’s keep the ball rolling, or more aptly, keep that broccoli going down the hatch.

Tell your Congressional Representatives to support the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act (UIMA) as part of the economic recovery package they’re working on now: Congress is making big decisions, right now, about what to include in the economic recovery package — they need to hear from as many people as possible that this issue should be at the top of their list for inclusion in the recovery package.

The Lowdown: Including the UIMA in the economic recovery package is essential because right now only 37 percent of unemployed workers receive unemployment benefits. That leaves 63% of people out! This is because Unemployment Insurance was created in 1935, but the workforce has changed dramatically since then: There are far more low-wage, part-time, and women workers in the labor market whose incomes are essential to the family budget.

To be an effective safety net, Unemployment Insurance needs to be updated to meet 21st century economic demands on families. Without these updates, the economic recovery package will fall short of supporting working families who will be the engine of our long-term economic success. Current Unemployment Insurance programs that do not cover part-time workers and low-wage workers discriminate against mothers and threaten the economic security of families.

Click here to ask your Congressional Representatives to include the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act in the American Recovery and Reinvestment plan proposed by Congress and President-Elect Obama:

Post from: Blisstree

Unemployment for Part-Timers! Act Now!

I scored this healthy air popper from the 1970s at a thrift store for $2.

The top part is broken, but it’s still functional.

But, then I saw this really pretty Nastalgia Electrics Hot Air Popper . I thought it was so cute I bought one for my brother’s family for Christmas too. It was our special family Christmas treat.

It SUCKS!!!

It didn’t even pop a lot of kernels and the bowl it fills is 1/3rd the size of my other bowl. Popcorn – popped and unpopped – flies all over the room. The second time we used it – it smoked.

One side effect of the last several years of hyper-consumerism is that makers of products – from cars to popcorn makers – began making disposable products that don’t even work when you buy them.

Mixers, blenders, popcorn makers We buy them and they work for about 30 days until we can’t return them anymore and then bam – dead.

Yet, if I pick one up from the 70s and 80s at a thrift store it’s still just chugging along.

Back then manufacturers still believed consumers expected their products to last 20 – 30 years instead of 4 weeks.

Images source: The Girl Revolution

Post from: Blisstree

Pop Off ‘78 v. ‘08

I got an invitation to the most historic event of the 21st Century to date – Barack Obama’s Presidential Inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009.

Now all I need is a free bus. Maybe PunditMom will let me crash on her couch?

Post from: Blisstree

Invited to Obama Innauguration

It’s so nice how open and communicative our President-Elect is about his plans and ideas.

Post from: Blisstree

Communicative President-Elect’s Economic Recovery Plan

We just heard that the House is set to vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act this week, and the Senate could vote as early as next week! Turns out that while the economic security package is tied up in negotiations, there is a rare window of unscheduled open time to pass long-needed bills. Congress is thinking action…and thanks to the incredible advocacy of MomsRising members and our aligned partners over the past year, Congress is thinking fair pay!

Tell Congress to not to miss this open window to pass Fair Pay!

Follow this link and send your letter: Momsrising.org.

Post from: Blisstree

Fair Pay on Obama’s Desk