Let me start with a plug for one of the best sites to find information and solid analysis about Iowa issues: the Iowa Policy Project . Those folks over there look at the issues in very basic terms and translate what the legislative language means in real life. And their partners, Iowa Fiscal Partnership simply have some of the best peel-away-the-BS analysis around. Republicans don’t like them because they strip away the clouds that republicans like to hide their true ramifications behind.
Branstad’s rate of job creation ain’t exactly setting the world on fire. I think it quite comical that each Republican governor’s basic strategy for bringing jobs into his (or her) state is to steal them from other states by offering lots of giveaways and low taxes. Of course the targets are businesses in so-called blue states. My guess is that this strategy will lure many shaky businesses that will offer low wages. Good businesses will continue to stay where they can find a skilled educated workforce. Branstad’s policies on education are working to bring our education level down.
Why do the Republicans even run actual humans as candidates? They pretty much speak as a collective voice, mouthing the talking points of their leaders Rush Limbaugh and the Koch brothers. Why not just run an MP3 player?
On a cloudless, calm weather day yesterday I was amazed by the contrails hanging in the sky over relatively unpopulated Iowa. It is quite scary to think that the pollution in each of those contrail clouds will slowly drift down to settle on us, our food, our environment. I then thought of how throughout the earth’s history certain groups of animals have dominated only to be undone, often by being out of sync with their environment. And I can not help but think that is the direction humanity is headed. The remnant of the given species is the one that best fit the environment, not the one that dominated.
On a similar thought, I often listen to left wing radio on the internet. Usually I listen to KTNF in Minneapolis. One of the advertisers on this station is the Midwakaton Sioux. They have a casino and other stores in a suburb of Minneapolis. One of the tribe’s philosophy is to project out how what we do today will affect 7 generations out. This seems like an idea worth adopting. remember our government was established about 7 generations ago.
No doubt the most sickening things I have seen in the past 2 weeks is the cheering for Rick Perry’s record on the death penalty as Texas Governor and then less than a week later the crowd of tea baggers cheering “Let him die” for a hypothetical human who had not bought health insurance and was taken deathly ill. While Republicans may not believe in evolution, they appear to be proof of devolution.
Speaking of health care, it still amazes me that Republicans can convince people that paying extremely high prices for really crappy health insurance (or not being able to buy insurance at all) is better than all of us going together to get the price down and the coverage up. No doubt some day the Republican Party will be thoroughly studied as the ultimate in successful propaganda in the face of undeniable facts.
Let me put in a plug for one of my pet projects: give blood – they never have enough. I go to the U of Iowa’s DeGowin Blood Center to get what amounts to an oil change. I think it helps to replace the old with some new. But don’t do this at home, boys and girls. Leave it to professionals.
Hey, Rick Perry – if Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, then so is every insurance system in this country. I will be happy to point this out to your big buck insurance donors. Then you can explain to them how your stance on SS will be applied to them.
Last thing on the subject of the teabaggers cheering for someone to die. Here is a quite powerful story of how one woman’s brother died because of lack of health insurance.
Blog For Iowa 
The following are 14 reasons why Rick Perry would be a really, really bad president….
#1 Rick Perry is a “big government” politician. When Rick Perry became the governor of Texas in 2000, the total spending by the Texas state government was approximately $49 billion. Ten years later it was approximately $90 billion. That is not exactly reducing the size of government.
#2 The debt of the state of Texas is out of control. According to usdebtclock.org, the debt to GDP ratio in Texas is 22.9% and the debt per citizen is $10,645. In California (a total financial basket case), the debt to GDP ratio is just 18.7% and the debt per citizen is only $9932. If Rick Perry runs for president these are numbers he will want to keep well hidden.
#3 The total debt of the Texas government has more than doubled since Rick Perry became governor. So what would the U.S. national debt look like after four (or eight) years of Rick Perry?
#4 Rick Perry has spearheaded the effort to lease roads in Texas to foreign companies, to turn roads that are already free to drive on into toll roads, and to develop the Trans-Texas Corridor which would be part of the planned NAFTA superhighway system. If you really do deep research on this whole Trans-Texas Corridor nonsense you will see why no American should ever cast a single vote for Rick Perry.
#5 Rick Perry claims that he has a “track record” of not raising taxes. That is a false claim. Rick Perry has repeatedly raised taxes and fees while he has been governor. Today, Texans are faced with significantly higher taxes and fees than they were before Rick Perry was elected.
#6 Even with the oil boom in Texas, 23 states have a lower unemployment rate than Texas does.
#7 Back in 1988, Rick Perry supported Al Gore for president. In fact, Rick Perry actually served as Al Gore’s campaign chairman in the state of Texas that year.
#8 Between December 2007 and April 2011, weekly wages in the U.S. increased by about 5 percent. In the state of Texas they increased by just 0.6% over that same time period.
#9 Texas now has one of the worst education systems in the nation. The following is from an opinion piece that was actually authored by Barbara Bush earlier this year….
• We rank 36th in the nation in high school graduation rates. An estimated 3.8 million Texans do not have a high school diploma.
• We rank 49th in verbal SAT scores, 47th in literacy and 46th in average math SAT scores.
• We rank 33rd in the nation on teacher salaries.
#10 Rick Perry attended the Bilderberg Group meetings in 2007. Associating himself with that organization should be a red flag for all American voters.
#11 Texas has the highest percentage of workers making minimum wage out of all 50 states.
#12 Rick Perry often gives speeches about illegal immigration, but when you look at the facts, he has been incredibly soft on the issue. If Rick Perry does not plan to secure the border, then he should not be president because illegal immigration is absolutely devastating many areas of the southwest United States.
#13 In 2007, 221,000 residents of Texas were making minimum wage or less. By 2010, that number had risen to 550,000.
#14 Rick Perry actually issued an executive order in 2007 that would have forced almost every single girl in the state of Texas to receive the Gardasil vaccine before entering the sixth grade. Perry would have put parents in a position where they would have had to fill out an application and beg the government not to inject their child with an untested and unproven vaccine. Since then, very serious safety issues regarding this vaccine have come to light. Fortunately, lawmakers in Texas blocked what Perry was trying to do. According to Wikipedia, many were troubled when “apparent financial connections between Merck and Perry were reported by news outlets, such as a $6,000 campaign contribution and Merck’s hiring of former Perry Chief of Staff Mike Toomey to handle its Texas lobbying work.”
Rick Perry has a record that should make all Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Independents cringe.
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