Iowa's Best Days are Ahead
by Paul DeatonReaders won't find a lot of coverage of the Republican campaigns to win the August Presidential straw poll on Blog for Iowa. The corporate media will cover them ad nauseum, and there is more than enough work to do focusing on progressive issues. That is what we hope to do.
Iowa Republicans are attempting to enact a weird form of “trickle down” economic progress that asserts lower taxes and getting government out of the way of business, to create an environment for private business to create jobs. Emblematic of the trickle is the “Re-open Iowa for Business Rules and Regulations Tour” announced shortly after the beginning of the 2011 Session and still meandering its way around the state. Republicans are busy listening, and perhaps waiting for the 2012 session to actually do something about improving Iowa's economic environment. Absent legislative action, their focus has been utilizing the executive branch to change as many of the administrative rules as possible to favor business and their ideological interests.
In the 2011 Session of the 84th General Assembly, most legislation proposed by Republicans has gone nowhere, despite their best efforts in the House to crank it out. The lack of compromise on most issues reflects the ideological nature of their intent to suppress voting, deprive indigents of their right to counsel, strip consumer protections, remove the effectiveness of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, and diminish the effectiveness of Iowa's public school system. In Orwellian irony, they say they are doing the opposite.
While Republicans claim to be more fiscally responsible, this claim is ridiculous. Their approach to fiscal responsibility is like an independent logger chainsawing the old growth rain forest, paying little attention to loss of biodiversity, release of greenhouse gases and topsoil erosion caused by their actions. They don't get it.
When Republicans were in power during Governor Branstad's previous terms, they made Iowa's business climate the way it is today, and the unintended consequence was that Iowa became a place where lack of innovation put business at the mercy of competitive market forces. They made their bed, but now don't like sleeping in it. BFIA posted on how this impacts the telemarketing business here.
Another example of this is the South Korea – US Free Trade Agreement of which Governor Branstad and other Republicans are enamored. They see the opportunity for new agricultural exports to South Korea, with little understanding that this treaty could actually be a mechanism for China to flood the US market with agricultural commodities by re-exporting through South Korea. Some cattle ranchers have already expressed this concern, but the Republicans are firing up the chain saw, oblivious to anything but the talking points they develop in their caucus.
We all know decent folks who claim the Republican party on their voter registrations. These people are misinformed and pandered to, and eventually, we hope to help them find their way back to a movement that will look out for their best interests. But for small differences, they are Democrats.
Progressives should avoid the Republican cavalcade of candidates pressing the flesh in Iowa, spending zero time thinking and talking about it. We should focus on our neighbors with a message that we are in this together, and despite Republican talking points to the contrary, there is a better way. Progressives must reject the cynical, trickle down view of the Republicans and replace it with hope that our best days are ahead. This is what progressives do. This is who we are. ~Paul Deaton is a native Iowan living in rural Johnson County and weekend editor of Blog for Iowa. E-mail Paul Deaton
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