this is the place where it will happen

Trying to focus in on an idea to pontificate about for the week and the only thing that keeps going through my mind is that the legislature has been let loose in Iowa again. Best I can figure, they are out to hurt us once again.

With Republicans in full control, they will continue on their decades long rampage to kill PUBLIC SCHOOLS while explaining to voters that what looks like their poisoning of the school system is really medicine to make the schools better. Voters in turn, many of whom were not taught to think, believe them. Iowa’s media report pretty much what they are told to report. 

Therefore the rare analysis that what is happening is not good goes unread and undiscussed. Iowans will watch their tax-supported schools be slowly dismantled as tax money is shifted to PRIVATE schools. Iowa’s legislature will make it legal, even though it is slimy and quite simply a flim-flam.

As for public schools, let’s give them a list of books they can’t read, a list of topics they can’t teach and a camera in every classroom trying to catch any teacher they can violating the thought laws they are about to impose. As if teaching in a public school wasn’t hard enough, now Iowa’s teachers will need to be on their toes lest they utter some forbidden thought.

Teachers will leave, but Republicans have an answer for that. Let anyone teach. They haven’t sprung that one on the public yet, but don’t be surprised if they do. The idea is that if someone has had a long career doing something, that should qualify them to teach. 20 years at the local McDonald’s? You can be a communications teacher! Oh, and we can cut teacher’s pay. What a great deal for Iowa.

That should put a big hole in teacher’s unions. Another win! With all those savings we can cut taxes again. Whose taxes? Need you ask? 

Republicans will come up with a tax flip-flam like for instance the long debunked idea of a ‘flat tax.’ With a flat tax, the rich get their taxes lowered big time and the poor still pay a large percentage of their income. Thanks to the lack of critical thinking skills, which weren’t taught in Iowa’s public schools, most voters won’t understand what a screw job it is. 

Hold on there, pardner, I didn’t say critical race theory. Don’t be so sensitive. Iowa’s kids will never learn about such stuff thanks to our legislature. Unless they do it the way we learned such things – in the back seat of the car late at night. That is where I read my banned books. I still remember how that cover shimmered under the street light.

There has been such crazy ideas that one can almost not imagine what goofier ideas they can come up with. Maybe a little something to keep the pandemic spreading? How about some laws to forbid mask wearing in public spaces? Like schools once again. Or maybe a law that says a person in a health care situation can’t inquire if the care giver is vaccinated? That would be crazy and make people mad. 

I heard a rumor that someone was even floating an idea that every law in Iowa would expire every ten years – now that would be a crazy idea and lead to chaos. 

Ok, this has been a poor attempt at mocking Republicans in the legislature. But all of these and many more have been at least talked about in Iowa’s legislature. When a citizen stands back and looks at these proposals with a clear eye, they sound crazy. Yet this is the kind of goofy ideas that pass for serious discussion in the Iowa Legislature.

Iowa’s media reports on such ideas with a straight face. There was a day when normal folks would break out in loud laughter when discussing such ideas. Being treated by a health care worker who has not been vaccinated against who knows which diseases? Crazy, crazy, crazy. But this is what Governor Covid Kim and her legislative looneys want.

And these ideas are like a whack-a-mole game down at the old Chuck E. Cheese. One goofy idea pops up and before you can even raise your mallet, two more pop up. 

One thing you should note is that these goofy republican legislative ideas have little to do with Iowa and certainly have nothing to do with making Iowa better. These proposed laws are a part of a national effort to undermine a government that once upon a time was founded on the concept that all humans were created equal. This effort is aimed at turning the US Into an oligarchy. So far it seems to be working.