Watch President Biden’s historic speech on saving the soul of our nation.
Presiden Biden: “And if we do our duty, if we do our duty in 2022 and beyond, then ages still to come will say, we, all of us here, we kept the faith. We preserved democracy.”
President Biden: “Vote! Vote! Vote!”
Enjoy the patriotic music beginning at around 11:00. President Biden’s remarks begin around 16:00.
https://lizmathis.com
Liz Mathis second district congressional candidate
“I’m a native Iowan. I love living here. And I love Iowa. So vote for me on November 8th. I’m Liz Mathis. I’m running for congress in District 2.”
Support Liz Mathis to defeat Trump loyalist Ashley Hinson. Check out her campaign website to volunteer or make a donation. https://lizmathis.com/
Follow her on facebook and Twitter
Partisanship is “poisoning our politics at every level.” – Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand
Support Rob Sand for State Auditor. Check out his campaign website at https://robsand.com/ to donate or volunteer.
Prairie Dog
From the September 2022 issue of The Prairie Progressive, Iowa’s oldest progressive newsletter. The PP is funded entirely by reader subscription, available only in hard copy for $15/yr. Send check to PP, Box 1945, Iowa City 52244. Click here for archived issues.
by Jesse Case
In the early months and the night hours of 2017, the newly elected Republican majority in the Iowa Legislature assaulted Iowa’s public servants by making changes to Chapter 20 of the Iowa Code.
Driven by out-of-state right-wing overlords like the Koch Brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and acting swiftly on an issue no one campaigned on, they stripped collective bargaining rights for 180,000 public sector employees in Iowa. Relieving public employers from their obligations to bargain with their employees on almost every working condition, they unilaterally changed a system that had served both employers and employees alike for more than 40 years – a system that was created in a bipartisan fashion with a Democratic majority in the statehouse and a Republican governor at the time.
In its place, they left a system where local entities like school boards, city councils, and boards of supervisors get to decide if and what they want to bargain. They created a space for union-busting law firms and consultants to manipulate local elected officials, most of whom aren’t experts in labor law or the history of collective bargaining and its effects on the people they govern.
This year marks the fifth year since the Iowa legislature destroyed the rights of our public servants to bargain collectively. For more than four decades, public servants in communities large and small, knew that Iowa had their backs and they could rest easy when they went home after work, knowing they had a say in their own working conditions and benefits. But five years ago, corporate-owned politicians decided that snowplow drivers, sanitation workers, school bus drivers, teachers, nurses, and other public servants shouldn’t have a voice on the job. The results have been devastating.
Gutless politicians from both parties sitting on school boards, city councils, county boards of supervisors, and the state of Iowa itself, began to voluntarily gut union contracts – not because they had to, but because they could.
Our members have been sharing their stories of how this attack on their union rights has personally affected them. A school bus driver told us that his District took bereavement leave out of his union contract right before his mother passed away and he didn’t have as much time off to grieve as he would have had just a month before. A snowplow driver tells us his insurance premiums keep going up, his wife has cystic fibrosis, and they are suffering both physically and financially because of this bad law. A county jailer tells us they lost their longevity pay, and years of public service to the county now mean nothing.
And now our communities are feeling the results. Public service jobs traditionally have had a higher percentage of women in the field than their private sector counterparts, a higher percentage public sector workers have college degrees, and public sector jobs used to be the best jobs in virtually every city and small town across Iowa. But now, we’re starting to lose those workers. They’re quitting at a higher rate than ever before because legislators took away their right to bargain.
It’s our belief that every worker has a right to a union, regardless of where you live and regardless of what you do. If you dedicate your life to serving the public – you
deserve a voice on the job and you deserve a union. Whether working in Des Moines or a rural community far from the closest interstate or airport, our public employees deserve respect, and they deserve a union.
We’re putting elected officials on notice. If you tried to bust our union in the last five years— you’re on our list. If you’ve been elected to office and you think it’s your right to deny workers a union, you’re on our radar. We will be reaching out to local elected officials in the coming months and asking them to restore union rights. If they don’t, we will picket, we will protest, we will stand up, and we will sit in if we must. Public sector union-busters are no longer going to get a free pass.
The attack on public servants has affected every city and small town across Iowa. It’s time to organize and fight back. Unions across Iowa are organizing more protests, pickets, and press conferences to expose the systematic attempts to bust unions and erode the living standards of Iowa’s working families. Please take the time to attend these events when you can.
Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/Teamsters238 to find out when and where.
It’s your fight, too.
—Jesse Case is Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 238 and
Vice-President of the Iowa Federation of Labor
Dave Bradley’s excellent post yesterday describes how the Republicans have devised a plan to take money from public schools and give it to their cronies.
Deidre DeJear, the Democrat running to oust Kim Reynolds is s a former educator. DeJear coached East High’s girls basketball team to a 26-0 season in 2012 and won the state championship. Why is that important? Because how she did that reveals what she has to offer Iowa as governor.
“Every time we approached an opponent we recognized the talent, the gifts, the assets that opponent had. We weren’t haters. Once we recognized their gifts and talents we then focused our attention on our own gifts and talent…on how we were going to overcome the barrier of winning each and every practice. These are the moments when we focus on ourselves, not only reminding ourselves what we’re capable of but we go and share with others what we are capable of.”
If you have not had a chance to see her in person please listen to Deidre DeJear’s Des Moines Register Political Soapbox remarks at the Iowa State Fair as she outlines what is happening and how to save public education in Iowa. Check out DeJear’s campaign website and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
1.5 billion dollars of your taxpayer money is sitting in an account that this governor is calling a trust fund. Well I’m of a mindset that you’ve got to be in a position of privilege to have a trust fund. That’s Iowa’s rainy day fund and it’s raining in our state – on mental health care, on education, on health care, on child care. We have to have leadership who is going to put your resources to work not circumvent the problem.” – Deidre DeJear
Many Iowans may have been pleasantly surprised Thursday morning to hear stories about Deidre DeJear’s plans to start Iowa on a trek back to the top of the educational heap in America. Education used to be one of Iowa’s bragging points. Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds over the past 12 years have taken Iowa from the top to below the middle with seemingly no plan to stop there.
Last year we saw what was yet another virtual cutback in school spending as the radical right Republicans only appropriated a 2.5% increase for schools for this coming year. That was much below the inflation rate at the time. It is now well below inflation.
Even after that skinty raise, Iowa’s current governor was not satisfied with making public schools hurt for funds. No, just to add insult to injury she worked her tail off to try to hand a large bundle of that money to privatized education. When she didn’t get her way, she went after her own party members who had voted against her plan to privatize schools.
You see, privatizing schools is Republican dogma these days. Anything that can be done to wreck the public system and promote education for profit is now at the heart of the Republican playbook. In a scathing article in the August 11 New Republic on education in America, writer Brynn Tannehill let’s us really know the sordid plans that Republicans have using ‘privatization”:
Republicans, and white conservatives, have long been hostile to public schools. School desegregation drove white evangelicals to become the strongest Republican demographic. Ronald Reagan promised to end the Department of Education in 1980. Trump put Betsy DeVos in charge of the Department of Education, precisely because she was a leading proponent (and funder) of defunding public schools, and funneling it to religious schools. During her confirmation hearings it became clear that she knew nothing about education, and provided plagiarized and laughably bad answers to questions, asserting that teachers need guns to ward off grizzly bear attacks.
Republican candidates talk about “school choice” and putting God and prayer back in schools. What they really want, though, will result in the end of public education for the poor, and disfavored minorities like LGBT people.
Their plan looks like this: Parents are given a voucher for several thousand dollars that comes out of the state education budget. The money can be spent on tuition for charter or private schools, microschools (collective homeschooling), or regular homeschooling. Republicans say the “money goes to the kids.” In reality, it reduces money going to public schools to a point where the schools will be dramatically underfunded.
<< snip >>
Florida’s history with vouchers shows us where this leads: poorer students promised a better education end up in low-cost, low-quality charter schools in abandoned strip malls that go out of business with little or no warning, with devastating results for the students. Republicans across the country have ensured that there is little to no oversight of charter schools, and that they do not have to meet many state education regulations. This is ostensibly to foster “innovation,” but in reality it is to make them more profitable, and conceal how shoddy many of them are. In Ohio, as Jane Mayer reported in her gripping new article about the destruction right-wing Republicans have wrought in that state, after a decade of GOP operatives siphoning off public school funding and directing it toward politically connected charter schools, state education rankings have slipped from fifth in the nation to 31st.
The result is tremendous variance in the quality of charter schools, mostly reflecting how much funding they have. “Allowing the market to decide” hasn’t created a rising tide that lifts all boats; students with less money get a worse education, and charter schools don’t seem to produce better results overall. You get out of a system what you put into it, and Republicans want to put as little as possible into education.
Is this what Iowans want for their future? I don’t think any rational person does. Yet here is what will happen to Iowa if Kim Reynolds gets her way. By the way, Reynolds reward would be a rising star in the pantheon of current radical party personalities.
Deidre DeJear will move Iowa back to the state that once prized education. Her plan is laid out on her website here.
At the end of the video, chair Jeff Kaufmann of the radical right party states Iowa’s students are on a better path. I respectfully disagree. Students are on a path, but not a better path. As noted earlier our path is headed down with no apparent stopping point.
Where once Iowa education was mentioned in the same league with Massachusetts and Minnesota, we are headed to being in the same league with Mississippi and Alabama. Your choice, Iowa. The choice is pretty clear. It is you future as well as the students and their parents.
Iowa has a real choice this fall.
Democrat Deidre DeJear for Governor
Randy Rainbow’ thoughts on thoughts and prayers (4 minutes): (not safe for work)
That was quite a news story to wake up to Friday morning: The Spirit Lake School Board voted to arm (meaning carry guns) ten members of their staff. What could possibly go wrong? Well, maybe a gun drops out of a pocket or purse and fires accidentally. Maybe (as happened a couple of weeks ago) a staffer leaves the gun in the bathroom after using the facilities. Or perhaps a student somehow obtains a gun when a staffer is distracted.
If the staffer does use his or her gun as directed, how are police to know they are “a good guy with a gun” when the bullets are flying? Teachers I have talked to have told me that if guns come into the schools then they are going out. Once bullets fly, they can hit anyone.
The more guns out there, the higher the risk they will get used. When they are used, who knows who they will hit.
Another week for the books.
A) In a totally anticipated move, President Biden relieved loan debt for what group of people?
B) Fifty-nine years ago today, on a very hot summer day hundreds of thousands staged a march in what city to protest for civil rights and jobs?
C) California air regulators voted Thursday to ban the sale of what starting in 2035?
D) Two Florida residents pled guilty Wednesday to stealing the diary of what member of the President’s family?
E) This diary in the question above was then sold to what scurrilous “news” company?
F) In the continuing defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, what Fox ‘star’ will be deposed?
G) August 3, 1980 saw the formation of what workers union in Poland that led to the downfall of communist governments a little over a year later?
H) It feels like this was bound to happen – what two major purveyors of covid vaccines are squaring off in court over patents?
I) In Texas, a law went into effect that requires schools to display donated signs that have what phrase on them?
J) In the fallout from the Uvalde school shooting, what civic leader was fired from his job last week over concern for his actions during the shooting?
K) Based on data from blood tests drawn by commercial labs in Iowa, the CDC estimates that what percent of children under 18 in Iowa have had covid?
L) The UK is looking at energy bills increasing by at least how much as winter sets in?
M) Dr. Anthony Fauci announced this week he will be stepping away from his duties at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases beginning when?
N) Tuesday’s election results once again favored Democrats. In a primary in Florida, far right activist Laura Loomer blamed her loss on election rigging by who?
O) September 1, 1939 5:30 AM, Poland. What happened?
P) 300 Top Secret classified documents were reported to be found where Tuesday?
Q) In Michigan, two men were convicted in federal court in a plot to kidnap who?
R) President Biden named Kim Cheatle to head what agency that protects the president and has been mired in controversy for several months?
S) In Ukraine, a potential world wide disaster may arise as shelling continues on a what in Zaporizhzhia?
T) “We got enough trees — don’t we have enough trees around here?” This is a quote from what Republican senate candidate in Georgia, whose public statements often make no sense?
Trump took 300+ classified documents. And not just classified documents, but material classified as Special Access. That’s not stuff he can declassify.
This is unbelievably bad.
It’s so bad, that we may not be able to access the damage without making it worse. – Stonekettle tweet
Tip of the hat to http://all-hat-no-cattle.blogspot.com
Answers:
A) people with student loans within certain restrictions.
B) Washington DC
C) gasoline powered cars.
D) Biden’s daughter Ashley
E) Project Veritas – expect charges to be filed against them for knowingly taking stolen goods.
F) Sean Hannity.
G) Solidarity
H) Pfizer and Moderna
I) “In God We Trust”
J) the police chief for the way he botched the situation
K) 84.5%
L) 80%
M) the end of this year
N) Republicans. She is a Republican
O) Germany invaded Poland starting WWII.
P) at Mar-a-Lago
Q) Governor Gretchen Whitmer
R) The Secret Service
S) a nuclear energy plant
T) Herschel Walker
“If the IRS can go after billionaires, they can go after anyone.”
Uhm, that’s the whole f*cking point. – John Collins
Tip of the hat to http://all-hat-no-cattle.blogspot.com
In my previous post, I made mention of a presentation that the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) had recently in Newton, Iowa. AFPI is a radical right wing think tank. One of Iowa’s current members of Congress, Marriannette Miller-Meeks has decided to throw her lot in with these radicals.
This seems to be a very bad choice. If it is not a bad choice for Miller-Meeks, it is most certainly a very bad choice for those she represents. This choice tells us that she will be giving groups like the AFPI more access. My guess is that Miller-Meeks sees aligning herself with radical groups such as AFPI as her road back to congress, rather than engaging her constituents and doing what is best for her district.
Miller-Meeks voting record and her statements really expose this as her campaign strategy. To hell with the district, I am going bid with the radical right!
The reason I bring this up is that there was an answer to a question at the very end the AFPI presentation that scared me to the quick. As reported in the Newton Daily News:
The Hoelscher referred to in the following excerpt is Doug Hoelscher who is n AFPI leader and ran the presentation: (ed. note: corrected spelling of Hoelscher 9/2/2022 per comment below. I regret this error and apologize for it.)
Hoelscher did allow a fifth person to question the panelists. The attendee specifically asked about AFPI’s stance on turning social security into a discretionary spending program, which is something U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., had spoken about recently.
“They want to make it so that social security has to be voted on every year by Congress,” the man said. “I want to know where does the America First Agenda fit into this because it’s not mentioned in the book. I want to know where it’s coming from and what do you support as far as social security.”
Hoelscher said AFPI wants to keep its commitment to seniors who need the safety net of social security. The organization, he said, is looking for long-term solutions to decrease the nation’s debt. Hoelscher then said he would speak with the man after the meeting since the panel was so short on time.”
In the part that is bolded (my bolding), note the reference to Social Security as a “safety net.” By couching Social Security as a safety net, most folks will miss the point that SS will have gone from being a social insurance program to being a welfare type program. Instead of now being a program that people earn through a lifetime of work, SS becomes a program that is given to people through a means testing process.
This is not what Social Security was meant to be. Imagine having means testing for SS? Imagine having Republican congresses lower the payment yearly while making it harder to “qualify” for Social Security. This is what Republicans want to do. Does Miller-Meeks want to do this? Did she object? NO!
Christina Bohannan will fight for workers. She will fight for the retired and the disabled. She will fight for women’s reproductive rights! We need her in congress right now.
During the rest of this campaign watch Miller-Meeks continue to aim he campaign at the extreme radical right. She apparently believes that is her path to victory.
I wish to note at this point that this district has for most of the last 40 years elected representatives who represented the middle ground. Both Jim Leach and Dave Loebsack represented the district well. Both would go out of their way to listen to voters on both sides of the aisle. Both have endorsed Christina Bohannan!
Christina Bohannan will stand up for real Iowans. She will continue the tradition of the representative who listens to her constituents. This year the vote you make may have a lifetime of consequences. Please pay attention to the issues.
https://bohannanforcongress.com
First district Democratic congressional candidate Christina Bohannan
https://bohannanforcongress.com
First district Democratic congressional candidate Christina Bohannan
We are now officially on the precipice of the campaign season, as if such existed anymore. Since the days of Ronald Reagan, republicans have turned campaigning for office into a 24 hour a day, seven day a week endeavor. There is no let up.
This past week I ran across some stories about the current campaigns in Iowa. The stories highlighted the true differences in Democratic campaigns with their opposition what is now a radically right group posing under the name Republican.
The Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair really highlighted the difference. Democratic candidates were out in abundance. They have something to share and are not afraid to be out with the people, stating their positions and answering questions.
Democrats from top to bottom took advantage of the opportunity to talk about their plans at one of the state’s brightest spotlights. Those from the radical right shied away from the spotlight as if they had something to hide.
From Admiral Michael Franken running for senate on down to the four Democratic candidates for Iowa’s congressional seats (Christina Bohannan, Liz Mathis, incumbent Cindy Axne and Ryan Melton) and gubernatorial candidate Deidre DeJear, Auditor Rob Sand and Attorney General Tom Miller – Democrats turned out in full.
On the right about the only one who showed up was Zack Nunn running in Iowa’s 3rd district. Others were very noticeable by their absence: Chuck Grassley, Marriannette Miller-Meeks, Ashley Hinson, Randy Feenstra and Kim Reynolds all showed their disdain for the public by forgoing appearances.
This continues a trend we have seen building all spring and summer. Democrats are out meeting with the public – the real public not just hand-picked audiences. Meanwhile Republicans when they do make appearances do so in safe counties or in front of hand-picked audiences. This may look good for a TV camera, but a public official who won’t meet the public is bad for Iowa and the country.
While radical right Republicans have been hiding, Democrats have been eagerly seeking out opportunities to meet AND listen to voters. Here is how Robert Leonard described a Bohannan event:
With the help of Marion County Democrats, Mahaska County Democrats, Indivisible Warren County, Jasper County Democrats, Bohannan’s campaign, and possibly others, Bohannan went on a “listening tour” of Jasper, Marion, Warren, and Mahaska counties in late June. Many candidates go on “listening tours,” but most are more accurately described as “lecturing tours” because candidates are tightly scheduled, give their stump speech, answer one or two questions, and sprint to the next destination. Not Bohannan. She took her time, made connections, and learned.
<< snip >>
“Bohannan’s stump speech is simple and powerful. She first presents her background, says what she and other Democrats have done and will do for America, and hammers her opponent, Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks, on her voting record. Miller-Meeks voted against the Biden infrastructure bill, parts of which she often takes credit for, voted against allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, and against burn pit legislation that will help our Veterans receive the care they deserve. Here is Miller-Meeks’s presentation justifying her no vote. Miller-Meeks also voted against the “CHIPS ACT,” which would return semiconductor manufacturing to the states. The list of reasons Bohannan offers to vote for her and not Miller-Meeks is long and growing.”
Meanwhile Bohannan’s opponent hid in a forum put on by the America First Policy Institute. This was described as mostly a presentation. AFPI can easily be considered a very radical right wing policy group. For this event disgraced former interim Attorney General Matt Whitaker was on the panel. From the Newton Daily News:
“Although it was advertised as a town hall meeting, the America First Policy Institute’s “How We Plan to Save the Country” event held Aug. 18 in Newton gave little opportunity for the public to ask questions, and instead used its own representatives to lead the discussion towards the organization’s agenda.
That agenda was further emphasized by the panel of conservatives mostly comprised of AFPI staff and former members of the Trump Administration like AFPI board chairperson Linda McMahon and co-chair of AFPI’s center for law and justice Matthew Whitaker. Altogether, the event lasted about an hour.”
Miller-Meeks was hiding in plain sight. Her votes, her statements, her allegiance to the disgraced and possible treasonous former president all give her reason to keep quiet. When she does speak she makes claims that she takes credit for things she didn’t do, such as works projects coming out of votes that only Democrats voted for.
Ashley Hinson is almost Miller-Meeks twin in the House. As with Miller-Meeks, Hinson votes as she is told by the party and not to represent her district.
And Chuck Grassley – who has a better reason to hide these days than Grassley – voting against a cap on insulin prices then claiming he didn’t vote that way. Recently making statements that may well lead to attacks on IRS agents – on a and on. Whose side is this guy on, anyway?
Democrats are running openly on issues that they are proud to tell you about. America is facing crises such as the climate, an impending oligarchy that Republicans have maneuvered us into, not to mention the Republican crises on the validity of our elections. Your vote for sane Democrats has never been more important.
Admiral Franken
Cindy Axne was named the most bipartisan member of Iowa’s congressional delegation two years in a row. She gave a rousing speech at the Des Moines Register Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair.
“I’m not the one who’s going to be up on TV or in the paper nationally to talk about some ideology. I’m the one who’s going to get things done.”
