No, our equal pay laws aren't strong enough

When Republicans explain that while of course they support the general abstract concept of equal pay, we don't need any new laws to push for equal pay because we already have good enough laws, consider this:

Latinas earn about 54 cents for every dollar earned by white men, according to an analysis of federal wage and education data released this year by the American Association of University Women, one of several groups that have long advocated for more assertive government and private efforts to address the gender pay gap.

And the situation is quite bad for other groups of women, too. Native American/Alaskan Native women earn 59 cents for every dollar white men are paid. For Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders, it's 62 cents, and black women, 63 cents. White women take in 78 cents. And Asian women earn median wages that come closest to the median wages of white men, earning 90 cents for every dollar.

And if you were about to come back with "but it's about the jobs women choose" or "but it's about the time women take off from working to have babies" or any of the other favored excuses—each with their own glaring weakness pointing straight at sexism—of defenders of the pay gap, stuff it.

The gender pay gap persists even after researchers control for education and occupation. [...]

Also, after the American Association of University Women accounted for an even longer list of variables in a 2012 study — college major, occupation, economic sector, hours worked, months unemployed since graduation, GPA, type of undergraduate institution, institution selectivity, age, geographical region and marital status — they found a 7 percent difference in the earnings of male and female college graduates one year after school. The difference could not be explained in any other way but gender. Similarly, researchers found a 12 percent unexplained difference in earnings among full-time workers 10 years after college graduation.

This is your election-season reminder so that the next time John Kasich or Jeb Bush or Ben Carson or, yes, Carly Fiorina explains that women totally have it coming, you'll know how wrong they are.