Numbers released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is part of the U.S. Federal Statistical System producing data and official statistics, show that the U.S. economy grew by an astonishing 6.9 percent annual rate from October to December 2021. That puts the growth of the U.S. economy for 2021 at 5.7 percent in 2021. Despite the ongoing pandemic, this is the fastest full-year growth since 1984.
A copy of my note to PBS RE: 1/25/22 News Hour segment with Amy Walter and Tamara Keith: I hope this helps a little:
It distresses me that this feature seems so negative in its nature, week after week. I am not sure of its purpose. How informative or accurate are the polls themselves?
In contrast, I think President Biden has done quite a good job in his first year under extraordinary circumstances. Unlike the former president, he is a coalition builder and sincerely wants to build a more unified America. He brings a bit of dignity back to the office. Mr. Biden and our nation are being tried by the world's superpowers all the while. Despite all this, the economy has survived a pandemic and a terribly skewed wealth differential.
How is it that Ms Walter, in particular, sees so little of this in her feedback? How does she not see the entrenched sabotage by the Republican party which has vowed to negate any action the president takes, especially by use of the filibuster and false equivalencies? Or some states' voter obstruction movements and deliberate maligning of the President? Why are all these issues not illuminated, instead of making the President "appear non-Presidential" as was hinted by Ms. Walter tonight?
There is a distinct bias to this program, and I doubt it serves the purpose of informing us viewers.
I had read the Washington Post article earlier and given all the positive news that came from the White House today cements my thinking that Biden could not do any good in their paid off eyes. They aren't the only news outlet that has turned their back on Biden.
I watched the daily presser from the White House the other day to witness a well deserved spanking from Jen Psaki to Kaitlyn Collins. Collins chose to use the Trump route of bullshit questions and was schooled to the point of dropping her head without recourse. Least we forget, Collins is from CNN, not FOX Entertainment. But then, it's pretty much the same nowadays. I have to question how someone who used to be an entertainment reporter gets a press pass, but then how did a reality show host get to be President?
I am very much fine tuning my sources for news. I don't need the chatter, none of us do.
I come here to Heather for facts without drama and the daily White House briefings to hear what news comes out before it it spun.
Be safe. Be well. Take care if you are on the east coast. This snowstorm is going to be a doozy.
Where are we without children? (This from a pagan lesbian who swore off childbearing due to climate catastrophe and over-population.)
May Joe Manchin meet his fate. And soon.
Registering voters, working for democracy, advocating for excellence in education and health care...Resist, my friends, this tide of complacency and co-optation. This nation resounds for democracy, for choice, for green growth. If not now, when?
Comic relief anyone? I do not know who wrote this, sorry!
Sarah was in the fertilized egg business. She had several hundred young pullets (young hens) and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs. She kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced.
This took a lot of time, so she bought some tiny bells and attached them to her roosters. Each bell had a different tone, so she could tell from a distance which rooster was performing. Now she could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.
Sarah's favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but one morning she noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! When she went to investigate, she saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.
To Sarah's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job, and walk on to the next one.
Sarah was so proud of old Butch, she entered him in a show, and he became an overnight sensation among the judges. The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the "No Bell Peace Prize," they also awarded him the "Pulletsurprise" as well.
Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making. Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the unsuspecting populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention?
Vote carefully in the next election. You can't always hear the bells.
(If you don't send this on, you're a chicken...... no yolk)
I want to mention something that I thought was notable, in regard to all those texts pleading with Trump to try to stop the insurrection. The only Faux News host whose texts were missing, and the only one not to try to get Trump to stop the insurrection, was Tucker Carlson. When you consider that, and how hard Carlson has been working to normalize Russian propaganda and dictators, it suggests there’s a lot more going on between them than meets the eye.
I have to wonder about Jeff Bezos owning The Washington Post. Having one of the billionaires who has gained so much in the Damndemic owning a publication people — no matter how discerning — look to. Thanks, HRC, for keeping it real and starting the truth about growth and so much more. Personally? I am sick unto death of the filibuster, Joe Manchin, negativity-side reporting, The Big Lie, the Damndemic, Kyrsten Sinema, Tucker Carlson, DJT, tummy aches over the threat of Democracy hanging by a thinning thread, the carryover of Ronald Reagan’s devastatingly anti-democratic, disgusting and destructive policies, a few tech giants benefiting from public schools, roads, healthcare and more that all Americans pay for for their employees, making them filthier richer, Mitch McConnell’s double-dealing and Russia loving duplicity, the fact that Biden’s approval rating is a projection of how depressed exhausted and grieving Americans are instead of a reflection of the stellar job Biden is busting his rear to do to turn this U.S. party bus around. Seriously. We are paying for the sins of the Reagan administration in so, so many ways. History will prove his time and tone and tearing down of government was the beginning of the end of so much progress, ultimately paving the way for another bad actor Republithug to become a puppet of the Russians and the oligarchy by playing the “government is the problem” trump card that empowered the Orange Menace to trash protective systems from the inside out. I am breathing. Gonna meditate. Advocate for so many good policy shifts. Keep working to prevent and heal trauma; build resiliency in my job and personal life. See as much of this beautiful nation as I can before my time is up. Keep reading HRC here and in her books, and keep enjoying the posts of you incredibly wise and justice seeking patriots. Thanks for being here. Despite Damndemic isolation, your presence here helps defy my sometimes sense of loneliness. Peace, and thank you all. Oh. And let’s all thank the wonderfully idealistic and selfless Justice Breyer for his optimism and timely retirement.
Because, generally speaking, people are far less concerned with economic growth figures than they are with their own lives, they’re far more likely to feel the brunt of surging inflation, rising gas prices, pandemic fatigue, the dissolution of the child tax credit, not to mention the failure to deliver universal child care and Pre-K, investments in housing, in elder care, and in climate. And, regardless of who’s to blame, voters will blame Democrats, who control both Houses and the White House. As for the media, its programming is likely to reflect public sentiment. Change the dynamic of the public’s narrative and the stories that get reported likely will shift accordingly.
My proposed remedy has not changed from my previous postings: I repeat that, nationwide, the country needs an Educator-in-Chief to educate the general public about what they’re losing every time President Biden’s agenda is stalled.
In the early 1980's "supply-side economics" was a central theory for economic analysis and "sold" as a tool to help fight inflation. Having just finished an MBA program, trying to get a foothold in the investment management business, and grinding my way through the annual Chartered Financial Analyst exams, I remember regurgitating (to pass the exams) the salient points of the Laffer Curve and supply-side economics which had yet to play out in practice. 25 years later, one of my kids (in an MBA program) voraciously (and correctly) challenged those misguided theories/policies.
I could not agree more with the observations of today's letter and the sentences below. And, I too have felt the disappointment/frustration that the media seems more disingenuous with superficial and somewhat misleading reporting of the actual successes garnered by the Biden Administration.
"Biden’s plan, Yellen explained, has focused on 'labor supply, human capital, public infrastructure, R&D, and investments in a sustainable environment.' Rather than focusing on putting money into the hands of the 'demand side' of the economy—consumers—it focuses on developing a strong labor force in a strong democracy to create growth through hard work and innovation."
"On January 21, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained to the World Economic Forum that the Biden administration rejected Republican supply-side economics, ushered in during the Reagan administration. That system relied on tax cuts and aggressive deregulation to spark private capital—the supply side—to drive the economy. Supply-side economics has not increased growth, Yellen said, while it has failed to address climate change and has shifted money upward as it moved the burden of taxes from capital and put it on workers."
I guess HCR doesn't read the comments - pity - as there are some gems. However, as a conservation biologist, I find the continual harping on GROWTH, as terminally depressing. It's the current obsession with GROWTH (at all costs) that is causing our environmental problems - and it is so embedded in our psyches, that we can't imagine a steady state economy. Of course, when you are arrayed against the Repugs - you feel that you have to play their game, but in the long run - it is destructive, seriously destructive. Sadly, as I have said before, we are now almost all derived from an urban culture, almost completely disconnected from the real world, that is the biological world, - on which we are totally dependent (but don't appear to be aware of this). Can we change? Will the current impasse allow us??
Glass Half Empty, heck Glass All the Way Empty, that's what sells.
There is one media outlet that does it best, but you know what?
They all do it.
Sometimes there is True Negative - a story with no upside (media coverage). But there is a whole lot of never ending, teenage cool, False Negative - it’s all bad, always bad (media coverage).
It’s time to grow up. At the very least, do a Side by Side, a Point / Counter Point. Help people think. Sell clarity. That would be Fair. That would be Balance.
That's such a killer quote "“I’ve never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s children" .it shows what the current "Republican" really stands for.
As for putting the blame on the Democrats for the demise of the payments - I despair. In what sense do these "Republican" legislators represent their constituents?
For decades we've been plagued by right wing fallacious rhetoric and sophistry. It has largely achieved its goals. Both the rhetoric and its success continue to take their toll.
Recently we hear Republicans, to deflect attention from the findings of the January 6 committee, saying 'the 2020 election was the real insurrection.' But to fully savor right wing rhetorical perversity, consider their appropriation and weaponization of the term 'pro life'.
I have seen its first use ascribed to A. S. Neill in his 1960 book Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Childrearing - where he denounces socially accepted cruelty, from striking children, to ostracizing out of wedlock birth, to criminalizing homosexuality, to capital punishment. the 1970s psychologist Erich Fromm used the term biophilia to identify a love of life and all that is alive. And in the 1980's biologist Edward O. Wilson used biophilia in hypothesizing an innate human tendency to focus on the animate rather than inanimate. So far so good. This all makes sense. And certainly fits with the progressive social and environmental agenda.
It even makes sense that early anti abortionists - who advocated for the full range of government policies and programs essential for pregnant women, mothers, children, and families to thrive - would call themselves pro life.
The rhetorical disconnect comes with the Reagan years. The years in which GOP operative Lee Atwater infamously spoke of 'how to be a racist without sounding like a racist.' While Paul Manafort and Roger Stone were weaponizing religion as a wedge issue to divide the working class. (Anti abortion as a wedge issue didn't quite work at first, because if Catholics were for it the Evangelicals were reflexively agin it, but they came around.) With Reagan, and through Gingrich's discipline and bondage approach to straightjacketing GOP lockstep language, we get the first contemporary drip, drip, drip, of the right wing 'firehose of lies.'
The method goes back to the defeated South resurrecting historic traitors as heritage heroes - literally elevating them in every town square. (Much as Grover Norquist wanted to erect statues of Reagan to celebrate his flushing government down the drain.) The application has been polished from the effete equivocations of William F. Buckley and his wannabes through the distortions by his Murdoch media acolytes, ending in the violent incitements of Buckley's internet heirs. All in service of arousing the Republican populist masses to service the Republican plutocrat paymasters.
The Republican rich want all the benefits of government without paying for any of them. They don't want regulations, they don't want to pay taxes, and they certainly don't want government paying for essential and emergency services. They also want cheap labor. And a workforce at each others throats rather than joining hands. What better than racism and religion to achieve their goals. What better way to make unbridled greed and oppression go down easy than a sugar coating of lies and more lies packaged as god given truths, sweetness, and light.
In the Senate debate about voting rights and about the filibuster, Republicans used their time to announce that overturning Roe was just the beginning and that chemical abortion is on the chopping block. A GOP senator used universal love for puppies, kittens, and the late great Betty White to prove there could be agreement in the Senate. And then put up a blow up of a fetus in utero and waxed poetic about protecting 'her' future. So easy to go to the mats for the unborn when you don't intend to lift a finger to provide anything children need to survive let alone thrive - from access to healthcare, housing, and education to economic and environmental justice. Up by your bootstraps from birth. Pro life my foot!
And by the way, Betty White and Golden Girls Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty were outspokenly in support of women's rights including reproductive healthcare - going so far as to make pro choice television ads.
A copy of my note to PBS RE: 1/25/22 News Hour segment with Amy Walter and Tamara Keith: I hope this helps a little:
It distresses me that this feature seems so negative in its nature, week after week. I am not sure of its purpose. How informative or accurate are the polls themselves?
In contrast, I think President Biden has done quite a good job in his first year under extraordinary circumstances. Unlike the former president, he is a coalition builder and sincerely wants to build a more unified America. He brings a bit of dignity back to the office. Mr. Biden and our nation are being tried by the world's superpowers all the while. Despite all this, the economy has survived a pandemic and a terribly skewed wealth differential.
How is it that Ms Walter, in particular, sees so little of this in her feedback? How does she not see the entrenched sabotage by the Republican party which has vowed to negate any action the president takes, especially by use of the filibuster and false equivalencies? Or some states' voter obstruction movements and deliberate maligning of the President? Why are all these issues not illuminated, instead of making the President "appear non-Presidential" as was hinted by Ms. Walter tonight?
There is a distinct bias to this program, and I doubt it serves the purpose of informing us viewers.
Thank you Heather.
I had read the Washington Post article earlier and given all the positive news that came from the White House today cements my thinking that Biden could not do any good in their paid off eyes. They aren't the only news outlet that has turned their back on Biden.
I watched the daily presser from the White House the other day to witness a well deserved spanking from Jen Psaki to Kaitlyn Collins. Collins chose to use the Trump route of bullshit questions and was schooled to the point of dropping her head without recourse. Least we forget, Collins is from CNN, not FOX Entertainment. But then, it's pretty much the same nowadays. I have to question how someone who used to be an entertainment reporter gets a press pass, but then how did a reality show host get to be President?
I am very much fine tuning my sources for news. I don't need the chatter, none of us do.
I come here to Heather for facts without drama and the daily White House briefings to hear what news comes out before it it spun.
Be safe. Be well. Take care if you are on the east coast. This snowstorm is going to be a doozy.
Where are we without children? (This from a pagan lesbian who swore off childbearing due to climate catastrophe and over-population.)
May Joe Manchin meet his fate. And soon.
Registering voters, working for democracy, advocating for excellence in education and health care...Resist, my friends, this tide of complacency and co-optation. This nation resounds for democracy, for choice, for green growth. If not now, when?
Gratitude, dear HCR, for your forthright courage.
Comic relief anyone? I do not know who wrote this, sorry!
Sarah was in the fertilized egg business. She had several hundred young pullets (young hens) and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs. She kept records, and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced.
This took a lot of time, so she bought some tiny bells and attached them to her roosters. Each bell had a different tone, so she could tell from a distance which rooster was performing. Now she could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.
Sarah's favorite rooster, old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but one morning she noticed old Butch's bell hadn't rung at all! When she went to investigate, she saw the other roosters were busy chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.
To Sarah's amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak, so it couldn't ring. He'd sneak up on a pullet, do his job, and walk on to the next one.
Sarah was so proud of old Butch, she entered him in a show, and he became an overnight sensation among the judges. The result was the judges not only awarded old Butch the "No Bell Peace Prize," they also awarded him the "Pulletsurprise" as well.
Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making. Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the unsuspecting populace and screwing them when they weren't paying attention?
Vote carefully in the next election. You can't always hear the bells.
(If you don't send this on, you're a chicken...... no yolk)
I want to mention something that I thought was notable, in regard to all those texts pleading with Trump to try to stop the insurrection. The only Faux News host whose texts were missing, and the only one not to try to get Trump to stop the insurrection, was Tucker Carlson. When you consider that, and how hard Carlson has been working to normalize Russian propaganda and dictators, it suggests there’s a lot more going on between them than meets the eye.
I have to wonder about Jeff Bezos owning The Washington Post. Having one of the billionaires who has gained so much in the Damndemic owning a publication people — no matter how discerning — look to. Thanks, HRC, for keeping it real and starting the truth about growth and so much more. Personally? I am sick unto death of the filibuster, Joe Manchin, negativity-side reporting, The Big Lie, the Damndemic, Kyrsten Sinema, Tucker Carlson, DJT, tummy aches over the threat of Democracy hanging by a thinning thread, the carryover of Ronald Reagan’s devastatingly anti-democratic, disgusting and destructive policies, a few tech giants benefiting from public schools, roads, healthcare and more that all Americans pay for for their employees, making them filthier richer, Mitch McConnell’s double-dealing and Russia loving duplicity, the fact that Biden’s approval rating is a projection of how depressed exhausted and grieving Americans are instead of a reflection of the stellar job Biden is busting his rear to do to turn this U.S. party bus around. Seriously. We are paying for the sins of the Reagan administration in so, so many ways. History will prove his time and tone and tearing down of government was the beginning of the end of so much progress, ultimately paving the way for another bad actor Republithug to become a puppet of the Russians and the oligarchy by playing the “government is the problem” trump card that empowered the Orange Menace to trash protective systems from the inside out. I am breathing. Gonna meditate. Advocate for so many good policy shifts. Keep working to prevent and heal trauma; build resiliency in my job and personal life. See as much of this beautiful nation as I can before my time is up. Keep reading HRC here and in her books, and keep enjoying the posts of you incredibly wise and justice seeking patriots. Thanks for being here. Despite Damndemic isolation, your presence here helps defy my sometimes sense of loneliness. Peace, and thank you all. Oh. And let’s all thank the wonderfully idealistic and selfless Justice Breyer for his optimism and timely retirement.
For shame, Washington Post, double shame, Joe Manchin, and triple shame, GOP for refusing to see and to admit to the truth!
P.S. Where has the "like" button disappeared to? My heartfelt thanks for your uplifting letter, Heather!
I applaud Yellen for bringing the nation's attention to the lie of supply-side economics.
Because, generally speaking, people are far less concerned with economic growth figures than they are with their own lives, they’re far more likely to feel the brunt of surging inflation, rising gas prices, pandemic fatigue, the dissolution of the child tax credit, not to mention the failure to deliver universal child care and Pre-K, investments in housing, in elder care, and in climate. And, regardless of who’s to blame, voters will blame Democrats, who control both Houses and the White House. As for the media, its programming is likely to reflect public sentiment. Change the dynamic of the public’s narrative and the stories that get reported likely will shift accordingly.
My proposed remedy has not changed from my previous postings: I repeat that, nationwide, the country needs an Educator-in-Chief to educate the general public about what they’re losing every time President Biden’s agenda is stalled.
In the early 1980's "supply-side economics" was a central theory for economic analysis and "sold" as a tool to help fight inflation. Having just finished an MBA program, trying to get a foothold in the investment management business, and grinding my way through the annual Chartered Financial Analyst exams, I remember regurgitating (to pass the exams) the salient points of the Laffer Curve and supply-side economics which had yet to play out in practice. 25 years later, one of my kids (in an MBA program) voraciously (and correctly) challenged those misguided theories/policies.
I could not agree more with the observations of today's letter and the sentences below. And, I too have felt the disappointment/frustration that the media seems more disingenuous with superficial and somewhat misleading reporting of the actual successes garnered by the Biden Administration.
"Biden’s plan, Yellen explained, has focused on 'labor supply, human capital, public infrastructure, R&D, and investments in a sustainable environment.' Rather than focusing on putting money into the hands of the 'demand side' of the economy—consumers—it focuses on developing a strong labor force in a strong democracy to create growth through hard work and innovation."
"On January 21, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained to the World Economic Forum that the Biden administration rejected Republican supply-side economics, ushered in during the Reagan administration. That system relied on tax cuts and aggressive deregulation to spark private capital—the supply side—to drive the economy. Supply-side economics has not increased growth, Yellen said, while it has failed to address climate change and has shifted money upward as it moved the burden of taxes from capital and put it on workers."
One would almost think the WaPost, NYT, even PBS are hoping to elect Trump or De Santis in 2024 and a Republican Congress in 2022.
I guess HCR doesn't read the comments - pity - as there are some gems. However, as a conservation biologist, I find the continual harping on GROWTH, as terminally depressing. It's the current obsession with GROWTH (at all costs) that is causing our environmental problems - and it is so embedded in our psyches, that we can't imagine a steady state economy. Of course, when you are arrayed against the Repugs - you feel that you have to play their game, but in the long run - it is destructive, seriously destructive. Sadly, as I have said before, we are now almost all derived from an urban culture, almost completely disconnected from the real world, that is the biological world, - on which we are totally dependent (but don't appear to be aware of this). Can we change? Will the current impasse allow us??
With friends like the Washington Post, who needs enemies?
Glass Half Empty, heck Glass All the Way Empty, that's what sells.
There is one media outlet that does it best, but you know what?
They all do it.
Sometimes there is True Negative - a story with no upside (media coverage). But there is a whole lot of never ending, teenage cool, False Negative - it’s all bad, always bad (media coverage).
It’s time to grow up. At the very least, do a Side by Side, a Point / Counter Point. Help people think. Sell clarity. That would be Fair. That would be Balance.
That's such a killer quote "“I’ve never really felt it was society’s responsibility to take care of other people’s children" .it shows what the current "Republican" really stands for.
As for putting the blame on the Democrats for the demise of the payments - I despair. In what sense do these "Republican" legislators represent their constituents?
For decades we've been plagued by right wing fallacious rhetoric and sophistry. It has largely achieved its goals. Both the rhetoric and its success continue to take their toll.
Recently we hear Republicans, to deflect attention from the findings of the January 6 committee, saying 'the 2020 election was the real insurrection.' But to fully savor right wing rhetorical perversity, consider their appropriation and weaponization of the term 'pro life'.
I have seen its first use ascribed to A. S. Neill in his 1960 book Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Childrearing - where he denounces socially accepted cruelty, from striking children, to ostracizing out of wedlock birth, to criminalizing homosexuality, to capital punishment. the 1970s psychologist Erich Fromm used the term biophilia to identify a love of life and all that is alive. And in the 1980's biologist Edward O. Wilson used biophilia in hypothesizing an innate human tendency to focus on the animate rather than inanimate. So far so good. This all makes sense. And certainly fits with the progressive social and environmental agenda.
It even makes sense that early anti abortionists - who advocated for the full range of government policies and programs essential for pregnant women, mothers, children, and families to thrive - would call themselves pro life.
The rhetorical disconnect comes with the Reagan years. The years in which GOP operative Lee Atwater infamously spoke of 'how to be a racist without sounding like a racist.' While Paul Manafort and Roger Stone were weaponizing religion as a wedge issue to divide the working class. (Anti abortion as a wedge issue didn't quite work at first, because if Catholics were for it the Evangelicals were reflexively agin it, but they came around.) With Reagan, and through Gingrich's discipline and bondage approach to straightjacketing GOP lockstep language, we get the first contemporary drip, drip, drip, of the right wing 'firehose of lies.'
The method goes back to the defeated South resurrecting historic traitors as heritage heroes - literally elevating them in every town square. (Much as Grover Norquist wanted to erect statues of Reagan to celebrate his flushing government down the drain.) The application has been polished from the effete equivocations of William F. Buckley and his wannabes through the distortions by his Murdoch media acolytes, ending in the violent incitements of Buckley's internet heirs. All in service of arousing the Republican populist masses to service the Republican plutocrat paymasters.
The Republican rich want all the benefits of government without paying for any of them. They don't want regulations, they don't want to pay taxes, and they certainly don't want government paying for essential and emergency services. They also want cheap labor. And a workforce at each others throats rather than joining hands. What better than racism and religion to achieve their goals. What better way to make unbridled greed and oppression go down easy than a sugar coating of lies and more lies packaged as god given truths, sweetness, and light.
In the Senate debate about voting rights and about the filibuster, Republicans used their time to announce that overturning Roe was just the beginning and that chemical abortion is on the chopping block. A GOP senator used universal love for puppies, kittens, and the late great Betty White to prove there could be agreement in the Senate. And then put up a blow up of a fetus in utero and waxed poetic about protecting 'her' future. So easy to go to the mats for the unborn when you don't intend to lift a finger to provide anything children need to survive let alone thrive - from access to healthcare, housing, and education to economic and environmental justice. Up by your bootstraps from birth. Pro life my foot!
And by the way, Betty White and Golden Girls Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty were outspokenly in support of women's rights including reproductive healthcare - going so far as to make pro choice television ads.