In answering, the main thing we learned was that commercial property taxes are very high in Iowa, ranked at #45 in the country. Every Republican hammered this home. We were also told that the IPP was a very biased group.  Sen. Jim Hahn noted that the tax cuts must be backfilled. By cutting services, Sen. Hahn?

Thank goodness the Democrat brought some sanity back to this parade of sorrow for the over taxed business community by reminding us that less than a year ago, Forbes Magazine (not very liberal, mind you) rated Iowa the #3 state for business in the US.

The next question was from a woman who recently found out a relative was gay, and asked the legislators' opinion on gay marriage. Despite its dubious constitutionality, all of the Republican legislators called for a vote on an anti-gay marriage amendment.  (BTW – did you know the first state laws concerning marriage were passed in Alabama shortly after the civil war? I’ll let you figure out why.)

Nuclear power was next. Should Iowa proceed with nuclear power, considering the situation in Japan? It was my question so I paid close attention when I was told that a time of fear is no time to react to a situation. (Isn’t this what our legislators do all the time? Often they create the fear, like the fear of gay people or fear of bankruptcy or fear of Muslims or fear of government takeover of health care, in order to hype an issue.) So not bending to the fear of a real situation, they all plan that we go ahead on the nuclear power.  And it was termed as a progressive concept on power.

Something that surprised me here is that Sen. Hahn said that there is now a new nuclear plant that does not need another power plant to run the cooling system but is self-contained.   And by golly, he was sort of right. I looked it up and Toshiba (Westinghouse) has a PLAN for such a thing on a very small scale. Will it work? Who knows? Just like any nuclear reactor, no one will insure it, so it may be on the drawing board for a while yet.

Next we learned of the voucher system for pre-K schooling. The amount paid scales up to the point where families with an income of over $67,000 / year will pay full price. Almost sounds like a blue print for slowly privatizing our school system.

Then for some reason, we were treated to Rep. Jeff Kaufmann repeating several times that he had made an appearance in Iowa City at the Chamber of Commerce. I guess he repeated it so we would get that this was an act of courage on his part to venture in to the lair of the left. I may be wrong, but going to a Chamber of Commerce anywhere doesn’t sound like an act of courage for any Republican.