American Forum

AMERICAN FORUM

By Jennifer S. Smith, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Kristen Forbes of Noblesville, Indiana, had recently graduated from college when she was diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer at age 22. After a yearlong, painful battle, she succumbed to the disease, leaving behind a bright future and grieving family members and friends.

Like most of the 4,000 women in the United States who die of cervical cancer each year, Kristen’s death was preventable. We now have the medical know-how and the tools to stamp out this major cancer once and for all. What we need now, as our country honors National Cervical Cancer Awareness Month this January, is the will among members of the public health community – government officials and policymakers, medical professionals, insurers, women and others – to make it happen.

Cervical cancer used to be the leading cause of death for women in the U.S. With widespread use of Pap test screening in the last 50 years, cervical cancer rates have declined significantly, but have leveled to about 12,000 cases each year. This disease should be relatively easy to prevent. We know it’s caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV, a common sexually transmitted infection. Most HPV infections go away on their own, but persistent HPV infections can lead to cell changes that can progress to cervical cancer. Fortunately, with proper treatment, the disease can usually be stopped before cancer develops.

Click here to read the full article. 

Riane Eisler

AMERICAN FORUM

By Riane Eisler and Kimberly Otis

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia just asserted for a second time that our Constitution does not protect women against discrimination. That was one of the arguments for passing the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)., and ironically, people of Scalia’s “conservative” persuasion often countered that the ERA was not needed precisely because women are already protected by the 14th Amendment.

Kimberley Otis

Indeed, many Supreme Court cases have invoked the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to strike down laws that blatantly discriminate on the basis of gender. But now we’re told that these cases for four decades were wrong because the Constitution was never intended to protect women. And that’s true if we only look at original intent. The focus of the framers of the Constitution was to protect the life, liberty, and property of white men who owned substantial property. And the focus of the 14th Amendment was implicitly on African-American males.

Of course, the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause uses the term “person,” and in this 21st century it’s bizarre that a jurist would think “person” does not include members of the female half of humanity.


Click here to read the full article.

KENTUCKY FORUM

By Steve Boyce

Many Kentuckians share a frustration with the lack of legislative will to pass real tax reform which has resulted in a decade of annual revenue shortfalls, cuts in essential programs, one-time stop gap measures and a failure to make investments that will move Kentucky forward.

As a member of the Kentucky Forward Coalition, I have grown impatient with yet another state tax reform study, especially since it’s not clear that the study will be transparent or guided by Kentuckians’ values.

The Kentucky Forward Coalition proposes that any revision of our tax structure -- whether coming from the commission that Sen. Williams has called for, or any another -- begins by establishing a set of principles that benefit all Kentuckians and move us forward.


Click here to read the full article.

KENTUCKY FORUM

By Chris Hartman

Barriers have fallen as President Barack Obama recently signed into law the repeal of the military's discriminatory "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which has caused the forcible discharge of more than 13,000 of our nation's service members since its 1993 introduction.

We are now witnessing perhaps the most sweeping anti-discrimination reform of our nation's armed forces since President Harry S. Truman's 1948 executive order desegregating our military. We must look to this as a first step on a long path to full freedom and equality in America, but there are still so many left to tread along this journey.


Click here to read the full article.

AMERICAN FORUM

By Mitchell Gold

As a business owner who has created hundreds of jobs over the past two decades, I understand economic policies that build sustainable growth. Yet the billions in tax cuts for the wealthy just signed into law compromise our shared future.

The promise of “trickle down” economics has failed. When recent studies suggest that 1 in 3 working families are near poverty, it defies common sense that some elected officials have prioritized giveaways to the wealthy. This greed and excess is what got us into the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. It defies good business and core American values to pass this burden on to increasingly vulnerable working families, and to our children and grandchildren. How much more damage to the middle class can the country endure?

It’s clear that our political leaders need to shift course in order to build a healthy economy. We need to put aside the myths and rationalizations that excuse the unprecedented greed the last decade has witnessed. We need to have a basic sense of decency and focus on policies that benefit us all.


 Click here to read the full article.