NaughtTEA Dee’s rant on WI War on Women

Why NaughtTEA WI Women will Reclaim WI
by NaughtTEA Dee
When I attended the WI Wave “One Year Longer, One Year Stronger” rally on Feb 11 2012, I was reminded of the reasons why this “Union Thug” nurse agreed to speak at the first WI Uprising rallies over a year ago on Feb 15 & 16, 2011.To see how our coalition forged of students, teachers, unions,veterans, farmers and citizens of every kind had grown was truly humbling as I thought of the over 1 million signatures gathered to recall the great TEApublicCON Walker and his Fitzwalkerstan regime .As a Reagan Republican female veteran, never thought I’d see a time when my right to chose to serve my country would be considered a reason to expect to be raped, or as a nurse that any Legislator consider coming between me and my doctor in regards to any aspect of my healthcare in regards to testing or medical management ! Never thought Fitzwalkerstan could be brought to WI by John Birch either…guess they forget I and all WI veterans once swore to uphold our Constitution against ALL enemies Foriegn & Domestic!…TEApublicCON artists are now on my list of enemies and on the list of many of our rural Progressive Republican women as well.
We NaughtTEA women believe that Paul Ryan, Gov Walker, and the Fitzgerald brothers should have to replace the (R) for Republican on the election ballot to a (T) for their TEA Party, better to identify them to voters as the candidates of the John Birch Society founded ALEC TEA Party, corporate TEApublicCons.Listening as Ryan expressed archaic views on women’s health issues while in denial of the fact that we women & seniors in WI have already rejected his proposals in regards to exchanging our Medicare system for his healthcare vouchers, I could not help but feel the irony of the situation the WI TEA Party has put my beloved party of Lincoln & LaFollette in since 2010.They all ran on creating jobs, but instead enacted bills that destroy our social safety nets through austerity which, if we look to Europe is collapsing their financial systems and destabilizing our Wall Street markets as well. They say that President Obama wants to turn America into a socialistic, atheisistic European country, while the TEA Party enacts Legislation that is almost facist in it’s stomping of American Constitutional Rights and Freedoms in their quest for smaller government.This is the great ALEC TEApublicCon , that only by destroying our citizen’s social programs can we remain Home of the Free.
I have been a Main Street Republican voter for over 20 years, but as I watched the Ryan Budget unfold, the GOP Presidential Primary debates, and experienced a year of Gov 1% Walker turning back the clock on 100 years of Progressive WI’s history of open and transparent government, I find that the only thing I seem to have in common with the new TEA GOP is the belief that WI will truly be “ground zero” in this ideological war on where our country will go next. And that WI rural NaughtTEA women voters will be the ones to bring down this TEApublicCon they have sold to our once proud, WI born party of Lincoln.We realize the healthcare contraceptive issue is an attempt to impose patriarchal religious values that violate our constitutional right as women to equal healthcare and prescription coverage. When Paul Ryan says it violates religious freedoms because “We all have to pay” for that woman’s choice to use a prescribed medication that may (or may not) be used prevent contraception, what he is not saying is that this definition of disallowed medications will be expanded to cover any prescription that may simply have a side effect of causing infertility or miscarriage as many cancer medications do.We WI women clearly have stated this issue should be between ourselves and our doctor, and we do not agree that male politicians or insurance corporations should control any portion in our personal healthcare options. That House Republicans had only an all male panel testify to this issue was an insult to all American women , and when the Komen Foundation publically announced it was defunding Planned Parenthood in WI we were aghast that Lt Gov Kleefisch supported their decision. A cancer survivor herself, she would deny the screenings to those women less fortunate? Women across America decried this , and Komen reversed it’s decision, yet it appears the TEA GOP politicians have not.Instead the mouthpiece of the TEA GOP Rush Limbaugh spouts off that Ms Fluke is a “slut”, insulting women across the country as he continued his rant on the radio for 3 days! To date he has lost 32 sponsors and 2 radio stations for his uncouth behavior!We find, after all, this was the plan all along, to defund Planned Parenthood, as Walker did in the 2011 WI Budget, reverse Roe V Wade, to deny preventative health services to women, children, and seniors by underfunding Medicare & BadgerCare were their ideas to defeat ObamaCare and win the White House in 2012.This plan has a fatal flaw, however, in that the portion of ObamaCare we women protested in the streets during the 2010 TEA Parties was the individual insurance mandate, not the portion that requires all healthcare insurance companies (including those utilized by religious institutions for their employees) to cover free contraceptive care for women! We felt no need for individual mandates in WI because our own GOP BadgerCare (founded by Tommy Thompson)was a huge success and did not impose this mandate upon us.We know that our BadgerCare is the father of the “Healthcare Affordability Act” (ie ObamaCare) , as well as RomneyCare in MA. WI citizens are proud that our Progressive politics allowed this to be passed in a bi-partisan manner, for the betterment of our families in providing the preventative healthcare that saves millions of taxpayer dollars in cases of diabetes, cancer, kidney disease, and pregnancies for our state.In 2010, between public, private, corporate insurances and BadgerCare , 97% of all WI citizens, despite the poor economy, had basic healthcare insurance…second only in America to MA’s Romneycare with 98% covered.We have since dropped to 93% since Gov Walker took office.
Ryan’s Budget changing Medicare to HSA’s and vouchers is the same back door way of defunding Medicare as Gov Walker’s plan to allow new WRS employees to opt-out of healthcare and retirement benefit premiums. In defunding Medicare, which provides the federal portion of BadgerCare funding through SCHIPPS, Ryan’s plan would soon risk our seniors facing medical bankruptcy, and our underinsured children one medical emergency away from bankruptcy as well.He neglects to reveal that Medicare is fully funded by our working citizens through payroll tax, even as Gov Walker failed to reveal his supposedly “Balanced Budget” underfunded BadgerCare in 2013 by over $500 million requiring our DOA to request an exemption from compliance with the National Healthcare exchanges (which he did not accept $38 million in federal aid), and the provision in ObamaCare that requires all healthcare insurance companies spend 80% of premiums on patient services. Healthcare exchanges were to be used by our rural family farms and small businesses to band together and get group insurance rates for their employees. The 3% of profit the private healthcare insurance companies now enjoy in WI is being actively used to fund groups such as “Americans for Prosperity” and “Heritage Foundation” , political PACS that are now flooding our airwaves with “It’s Working” pro-Walker commercials, whose John Birch Society founded legacy can be seen in the donor lists including Cline Mines, Bradley Foundation, Koch Industries, etc. It was not coincidence that our Gov Walker was at a New York fundraiser , hosted by the American Insurance Group, begging more money to protect him from those “Big Union Bosses” and their “Out of state money” as Wisconsin citizens turned in over 1 million signatures in Madison to recall him from office! David Koch in a rare Palm Springs interview openly admitted spending alot of money supporting Gov Walker and plans to spend alot more to support their “Poster Boy” 1% Walker.
We take offense to the lies Gov Walker…we rural conservatives. We take offense to attacking womens rights to equal pay and enforcement of the Lilly Ledbetter Act. It was we rural women who quietly asked our families, our friends, our co-workers and neighbors over our Thanksgiving and Christmas meals to sign a pledge, our recall petitions, to recall Gov Walker & Lt Gov Kleefisch for failing to uphold WI laws and Constitution by their repeated violation of open meetings laws, ramming through Act 10 that overturned over 50 years of collective bargaining and it’s peaceful Labor/Management relations. Those “Union Thugs” he hurt the worst were our daughters, our parents…nurses and teachers, mostly female professions. We spoke of how school fees had increased this year, the larger class sizes or local closing of a neighborhood school , required ream of paper for each student , as our teachers , our families, our schools struggled to deal with the over $800 million dollars cut from public education . Of how local grocery stores and hardware stores , the Mom & Pop businesses, could not longer afford to stay open as the State Employees lost $400-$600 per month in takehome pay at the end of August. The Waupaca Area with it’s schools & vets home is losing about $100,000 per month as these employees no longer can afford those few “extras” in the grocery store, or that new appliance or renovation, or to go out once in a while to dinner. The areas with prisons like Oxford, Red Granite, Oshkosh, and Portage are also feeling this economic crunch. We did Can Walker/Kleefisch – Feed WI Families Food Drives to help replenish the shelves at our local food pantries, depleted by high unemployment over the past 6 months.The women who came quietly to smalltown recall stations to sign a pledge to save our WI from those who refuse to hear the collective cries of their women for protection of our rights and our childrens educations!Many of our chauvanistic male family members who were used to our imagined compliance with their “sit down, shut up & do what I tell you” attitudes were upset or angry with our actions, but many more listened as we all know a family in our community struggling in these hard economic times. We are strong women, we have to be in this Frozen Tundra , where we work with our families to haul wood, feed livestock, raise our children, and many of us also work outside the home as well to make the bills .We believe that real party of Lincoln Republican politicians would not sign pledges to Grover Norquist , or legal non-disclosure statements on secret redistricting plans, union busting, privatizing our public education through expanded vouchers or deregulation of our air, water or land enviromental protections by violating the Soveriegn Nation Treaties of the Bad River tribes.Or to deny our Constitutional 1st Amendment right to freedom of speech and Assemby by making rules that only lobbyists can enter our Capitol in groups of more than 4 people without a permit!Or cause us as taxpayers to question the ethics of those who control the fate of our State Trust Funds, as they flaunt breaking our WI Laws that they swore to uphold when they took office last January, failing to protect the open & transparent governence inspired by “Fighting Bob ” LaFollette’s “WI Idea of Democracy”. Honest Abe most assuradly would not call this type of politician a Republican. The GOP was founded in Ripon WI, and it is Honest Abe who we refer to as our inspiration for the Democratic Senators to leave our State when Gov Walker and his Fitzwalkerstan Regime started this fight to repeal the Collective Bargaining Laws in the infamous “Budget Repair Bill” last February. We remember Republicans as being like Teddy Roosevelt, who founded the National Parks system to preserve our pristine forests and streams. Our grandparents and parents fought under Eisenhower who warned us of the “Industrial War Complex” system of corporate colonialism…wars for protection of corporate interests paid by our taxpayers. We are Main Street Reagan Republicans, and despite what any one believes of his policies, we women love our heros! We always knew Reagan was an actor, but he inspired America to believe in itself, and made us all feel it to be our patriotic duty to pay our taxes , as he raised them on the corporations as well as the citizens. And we are the mothers who supported Tommy Thompson’s BadgerCare and his “Welfare to Work” educational grant program during the dot.com recession as we helplessly watched Wall Street devaluate our 401K pension funds through risky investments like the Enron scheme. We stood up to Gov Thompson at a later time as nurses and doctors when he raided the “Medical Malpractice Funds” for his budget fix as well. We believe our Trust funds should not fall to political raids on either State or Federal levels. We are the Grandmothers who fought for WI unions in the 30’s and the “Hippies” who burned our bras for women’s lib in the 60’s. We have served in every war since America was founded as nurses, now as equals in many fields.
We feel it our duty to call out Gov Walker and Paul Ryan for misleading the media in saying that the women in WI, of any political party, would unilaterally stand in support of the governmental intrusion into our healthcare, or that insurance companies should have the right to refuse us any needed healthcare related test or prescription coverage, We do not believe that Insurance companies or any corporation are people having the right to influence our Democracy of, for and by our real people, the taxpaying citizens. The only people who should be allowed to determine if a medication, test or surgical procedure is necessary for our health is our doctors, not our church, our politicians or our government!Women preserve our society while governments wage war to protect our Freedom & Democracy. We know it is our parents, spouses, siblings and children who answer the patriotic call to defend the American Dream and way of life throughout our nations history. It is womens tears that fall as a family member pays the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty,a blood sacrifice too many gold star mothers have had to endure. We remind those politicians like Walker & Ryan that it is we women who have always defended our heros, our veterans, while you both cut veteran benefits in your respective budgets. And Gov Walker’s restrictive ALEC Voter ID law is disenfranchising many WI veterans from the right to vote in 2012 elections, we saw some already turned away on Feb 21st for not having “approved” photo ID. How can it be that our defenders of Democracy and Freedom are not allowed to participate in the right to vote for representation?They, as well as seniors in nursing homes, homeless vets, tech school students those who do not drive, will not be able to go to DMV and walk out with a free voter ID anymore as these have been “outsourced” to California…more privatizing of our public services which is so promoted by this TEApublicCON state of Fitzwalkerstan he has created out of our Progressive WI! When you add the FBI probe of illegal campaigning while Gov Walker was Milwaukee County Executive, which alleges his illegal campaign website was funded in part by monies embezzled from the veteran charity by Tim Russell, his friend and aide who should have been fired like any other county or state employee when the descrepancy was reported, we see a pattern emerging of taking money and rights from our veterans that is offensive. We NaughtTEA women believe that Paul Ryan and Gov Walker’s intentions for our State, our Country, to be real violations of our freedom, our right to obtain quality healthcare at an affordable price, to equal pay for equal work. To trade our enviromental protections of air, water and lands is a violation of our childrens right to a clean enviroment that should be a trust for future generations. We will not be silent, relegated back to the days of barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen, even as we were not silent in LaFollette’s days in our quest to reclaim our Republican Party from the clutches of the Citizens United Corporate sponsored ALEC TEApublicCON destruction of our WI Idea of Democracy. We’ve come along way in 100 years, we vote and our message to the WI TEA Party politicians is simple…leave our women’s healthcare, our BadgerCare, our Social Security and Medicare alone! You have no right to call yourselves Republicans while promoting this type of platform of issues, so please comply and put a T not R behind your names on those recall ballots! Standing in Solidarity for a Progressive WI reclaimed from the ashes of Fitzwalkerstan through the WI Constitutional Right to Recall you all!!!