“If you have courage and convictions, your new soulmate will be Steve Deace. He delivers.” —Mike Huckabee

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What Would Julia Think?

by Jen Green

One of the tools of Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is a slightly creepy website called the life of Julia. On this site, the viewer can stroll through the life of this fictional female, while being educated on all the ways an over-reaching, enormous government will coddle her, enable bad behavior, and render her so completely dependent on the federal nanny she will never be free of it even if she wanted to, doomed to the life of a government educated and funded sponge.

They might put it a bit differently, but you get the point. It’s propaganda at its worst.

One of the points this site happily makes is that because of Barack Obama’s support of the last “Fair Pay” act, Julia will grow up and get a job where she’s paid “fairly.” You may have heard of the legislation, named after Lilly Ledbetter. Ledbetter is a “women’s equality” advocate who sued Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co.  (She lost her case before the Supreme Court.)

The Life of Julia website claims, “Because of steps like the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Julia is one of millions of women across the country who knows she’ll always be able to stand up for her right to equal pay.”

For the moment, let’s say we grant the premise that there is a gender gap in pay for “equal” jobs (don’t worry, we’ll debunk it momentarily). Sounds like a good thing that our helpful government is creating an environment for all to be treated “equally” and that men and women are paid the same for the same job.

One problem.

The very Democrats who pushed for this legislation are violating it even as I write this piece. The worse offenders? The Democrat Senate women . . . three of them who are the most vocal on this subject.

Hypocrisy, thy name is  . . . you get my point.

According to the website freebeacon.com, the group of Democrats who “declared war on the so-called ‘gender pay gap’” are the very ones who are underpaying their female staffers by up to 41% less than their male staffers. The worst of the worst are Patty Murray (D, Wash), Dianne Feinstein (D, Calif.), and Barbara Boxer (D, Calif.).

On a whole, men working for Democrats on the Hill made significantly more than their women counterparts. According to freebeacon.com, “Women working for Senate Democrats in 2011 pulled in an average salary of $60,877. Men made about $6,500 more. While the gap is significant, it is slightly smaller than that of the White House, which pays men about $10,000, or 13 percent, more on average, according to a previous Free Beacon analysis.”

I’m not sure how they are going to spin this one . . . but that assumes anyone will call them on the carpet for it.

We will. But what we’ll call them out on is the original premise. There is no pay gap.

Our show has interviewed several of the incredibly bright women at the Independent Women’s Forum who do a great service teaching women that we don’t need a nanny government to help us succeed in society.

Carrie Lukas of IWF writes, “There is no evidence that women are routinely paid a fraction of what men make for the same work, or that discrimination drives statistical differences between men and women’s earnings.” Lukas says the Department of Labor’s stats ignore many factors, including “number of hours worked, industry, years of experience, and education, to name but a few. When such information is taken into account, the wage gap shrinks, and in some cases even reverses.”

So, no. In general, there is no countrywide, insidious pay gap between men and women. It’s a fallacy driven by a liberal and feminist agenda determined to victimize an entire class of people and make them more dependent on ubiquitous government meddling and legislation.

But if there were a gap . . . those pointing the longest, boniest fingers might want to remember there are three pointed back at them.

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