Blog For Iowa

Below is an excerpt from an article about Senator Grassley published yesterday in Current Affairs by Alex Skopic.  It is an excellent read.

Be forewarned it is as long as Grassley’s career but necessarily so.  It meanders to and fro starting with Grassley’s aw shucks, farmy, public persona and related social media antics that seem to completely bewilder the author, as it would anyone not having lived in Iowa most of their life.  Later it includes a short list of ways Grassley has harmed Iowans and the country during his ridiculously long career.  Along the way the author references and compares historical figures and eras that have relevance to where we are now and how we got here.

It is an interesting, educational, lively read that would have been fun to spend time with if we were safe from being destroyed by Grassley’s contributions to the current MAGA hellscape we are in.

Skopic gets around to blaming Democrats for not being able to get rid of Grassley. I’m not sure about that although it’s always popular to make Democrats responsible for what Republicans do, for not being able to stop them, a phenomenon I’ve never particularly ascribed to. It’s like when there is an alcoholic, abusive father, the kids tend to yell at mom. It’s just not fair and it’s slightly off.

Even while recognizing Democrats are not perfect and need to seriously update how we do things, I’m more sympathetic than most about how they are often between a rock and a hard place because Republicans are expert at creating untenable situations. Their use of the media is critical to being able to do that. Having their own media is what holds it all together. Republicans get this.

As far as Democrats are concerned, I think the party is finally starting to stir, thanks to long overdue massive public pressure specifically, Hands Off, No Kings #1 and #2 and raucous town halls with irate constituents. And I don’t know what they’ve done but Democrats seem to have updated their media strategy. My only clue is finally, the truth seems to be breaking through to ordinary people, for the first time in decades.

I would say there are two things the author didn’t mention that are contributing reasons why it has been basically impossible to get Chuck out of office.  (1) the passive Iowa press link; and (2) the pervasive right wing propaganda on local Iowa radio stations all around the state, with hate speech being pumped into every Iowa community every day, multiple hours a day, in some cases as much as 15 hours a day, on our AM dials. (See The Power of Political Disinformation in Iowa  and Right Wing Media and the Power of Fear for stations across Iowa).

In the article I was also a bit disappointed to see no mention of Grassley’s ACA “death panels” comment or his iconic “pulling the plug on grandma” comment which also illustrates my point about the complicit Iowa press, when a central Iowa TV station refused to broadcast an anti-Grassley attack ad using the phrase because they said it was out of context.

But my all time “favorite” of bad things Grassley has done wasn’t named because I don’t think anyone really knows about it. I’ve never seen any reporting on it. I only know because I was following along at the time because I have an interest in media reform.

What I remember is Grassley made sure the Obama administration could not bring back the fairness doctrine. I believe Obama was considering giving it a try and I think Grassley thought so too. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin was out floating the idea in the media of the possible return of the fairness doctrine.  Politico ran a story in February 2009 about Senator Harkin supporting the fairness doctrine. Rush Limbaugh and right wing radio hosts freaked out. Exactly one week later Obama stated publicly he did not support the fairness doctrine. Links to both of those stories can be found on Google but the pages are gone.

But Chuck Grassley in the Republican way, left nothing to chance. Here is an excerpt of a letter from Chuck Grassley to President Obama’s FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in which he successfully put a fork in any idea of a return to the fairness doctrine, and that was the end of it. Obama’s media reform strategy became focusing on localism but Chuck was not for that either.

I am concerned that despite his statements that the Fairness Doctrine is unnecessary, Mr. Lloyd supports a backdoor method of furthering the goals of the Fairness Doctrine by other means. Accordingly, I ask that you clarify and reaffirm your commitment to me to oppose any reincarnation of the Fairness Doctrine. Further, I ask you to affirmatively state that you will not pursue an agenda that includes any new restrictions, fines, fees, or licensing requirements on commercial radio that would effectively create a backdoor Fairness Doctrine. I appreciate your prompt reply regarding this important matter.  Link

The entire letter is on Grassley’s senate.gov page – scroll down to August 14, 2009.

Grassley understands as all Republicans do, the extreme electoral power of deregulation of public interest standards on the publicly owned airwaves through the demise of the fairness doctrine. Grassley was not about to let Obama bring it back. And here we are.

Check out the excerpt and I definitely recommend reading the entire article. There is no paywall.  If you can please support independent media.

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Only a Failing System Could Produce Chuck Grassley

by Alex Skopic
currentaffairs.org

When the curtain finally falls on his life and career, how will he be judged? Not well, if you’re an ordinary working-class Iowan. At every turn, Grassley has consistently made decisions that make their lives worse.

If you like having your thumbs attached to your hands, for instance, you might not like Chuck very much. As the Iowa Capital Dispatch reports, he spent 2021 going around Congress collecting signatures for a letter to the Biden administration, urging it to loosen safety rules and let meat companies speed up the lines in slaughterhouses and packing plants. When you do that, as Chance Phillips recently wrote for Current Affairs, more workers get injured, including in grisly ways like amputation and “the loss of an eye.” But when reporters questioned him about his reasons, Grassley was refreshingly honest: “It’s going to affect profitability.”

If you’re an Iowan dealing with diabetes, as approximately 248,315 people (or 10 percent of the state’s population) are, Chuck has also screwed you over. Back in 2022, he spearheaded Republican efforts to get a $35 price cap on insulin taken out of the Inflation Reduction Act, arguing to the Senate “parliamentarian” that it violated an arcane budget rule.

Then, too, as head of the Senate Judiciary Committee Grassley had a major role in converting the Supreme Court to the openly right-wing institution it is today. Back in 2016, when he first led the committee, it was Grassley who delayed the vote on Merrick Garland’s confirmation to the Court until after the 2016 election, effectively stealing a seat from the outgoing Obama administration. Afterward, it was Grassley who was among the staunchest defenders of Brett Kavanaugh, even (and especially) after it became clear that Kavanaugh had lied to the American people about the sexual assault accusations brought against him by Christine Blasey Ford. So in a sense, all of the decisions that make up the Court’s post-2016 rightward turn—from the dismantling of women’s reproductive rights to the sweeping criminal immunity granted to Donald Trump—are Grassley’s handiwork.

Good news, though: if you’re a mentally ill person who wants to get a high-powered gun, Chuck Grassley is your best friend! One of his pet projects in 2017 was to repeal Obama-era regulations that prevented people from buying firearms if they had “mental impairments” so significant that they needed a third party to help them claim Social Security benefits. That seems like a rule even the most avid hunters and rifle collectors could agree with—if you can’t fill out a form unaided, you shouldn’t have a gun—but Grassley objected, claiming that the standards were too “vague” and that “if a specific individual is likely to be violent due to the nature of their mental illness, then the government should have to prove it” on a case-by-case basis. Never mind that, by the time the “proof” arrives, a school or a Walmart could be riddled with bullets and bloodstains.

Contrary to the “great man” (or rather “weak man”) theory of history, it’s not that these leaders cause the downfall of their regimes through their personal failings. Just the opposite. They’re not catalysts of decline, but morbid symptoms. The fact that they ever got near power is proof that the system itself is no longer functional.

Read the entire article here