Elizabeth Warren speaking at sunset in Iowa City, Iowa on Sept. 19, 2019
I was invested in Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for president and attended some events about which she wrote in Persist, her memoir published this year.
Like tens of thousands of others I waited in a selfie line and got my moment. I don’t recall what we talked about. Of all the things I thought about Warren during the campaign and afterward, the book is about something I hadn’t considered much: she’s a woman living in what largely was and remains a patriarchy.
The book is worth reading whether you are a fan or not. It explains some of her major policies in a way only a teacher could: clearly and rationally. For example, I didn’t understand the importance of child care to society until I read her explanation in Persist. When talking with friends and Democratic acquaintances during the run up to the Iowa caucuses, I heard the discussions about whether we should run another woman for president, whether a woman could win against Donald Trump. Those questions weren’t asked of men. Warren recounts these attitudes and what they meant in detail. I knew there would be wonkish policy stuff yet I didn’t expect the book to be as good as it was.
I couldn’t live the kind of life Warren does, mostly because I’m not as smart and don’t have the same kind of drive she does. The book serves as an example of a life worth living, an example of how to deal with prejudice, sexism, racism, economic injustice and more. It inspires us to dream big, fight hard and be better citizens.
We’ll never know what the United States would have been like with President Elizabeth Warren. For the time being we can be glad she’s in it with a position of power. We can also follow her suggestion and persist.
After watching Iowa Press this weekend, my question is, why do these seasoned reporters seem so clueless about the GOP in general and oblivious to the danger of GOP gerrymandering during redistricting? Please put your answers in the comments.
One thing I know is that the GOP is quick to apply bully pressure to the news media if they report something a certain way or publish something that is not in their party’s benefit. I have had personal experience with this when I was asked by a newspaper editor to make changes to a letter I submitted critical of a GOP state rep. because the paper didn’t want to hear from the GOP chair about it. I suspect it is even more true for the Des Moines press. That is no excuse.
You should be able to watch an episode of Iowa Press without wanting to yell at the TV. Republicans are allowed to come on the program and misrepresent and distort largely unchallenged. The Iowa Press reporters’ collective demeanor is welcoming, friendly and cajoling like come on in, have a cup of coffee. You’re at home with us. Their challenges are infrequent, respectfully put forward, and abandoned quickly. I’ve never seen them ask questions with an attitude or confrontational tone like they frequently use with Democrats.
For example on this week’s show I found it particularly appalling how they persisted in asking Zach Wahls no fewer than three follow-up questions, between Murphy and Henderson, challenging him as to why Democrats would be concerned about GOP gerrymandering – yes even snidely accusing Democrats and Wahls in particular of being guilty of playing chicken little. Let that sink in.
Have they ever talked to a Republican that way on the program? I can’t remember it if they have but I don’t watch every single program. So let me know if you’ve seen it. And please include a link. I’ll post it if you can find one.
On this program, Erin Murphy defended the honor of the GOP, who for once failed to do the wrong thing by declining to gerrymander, shocking most everyone – except for the Iowa Press reporters. After accusing Wahls and Democrats of playing “chicken little” Murphy wasn’t satisfied being schooled by Wahls once, but came back two more times with the same question and same result. Henderson tried a double-team but they were still no match for Wahls.
Sen. Wahls was clear it was because of public pressure from Iowans that Republicans passed on the opportunity to gerrymander. But the journalists were ready and delivered all of the GOP arguments. He had to remind these well-paid professionals that they were present when Republican senators Whitver and Grassley both declined to say they would not gerrymander. Wahls had to point out the unprecedented circumstances of the current redistricting process and educate them that we would have been in uncharted constitutional territory if it had gone to the amendment stage of the process.
Despite the hostile attitudes and behavior of the Iowa Press crew on display, I definitely recommend watching this masterful performance by Zach Wahls who nailed every question and likely made the questioner regret asking it.
It was a thing of beauty, like a Jen Psaki press briefing, accurately re-framing the issues and educating not just the interviewers but everyone watching. #Psakibomb
Well, it is one of those magic days of the year. Ghouls and ghosties and all sorts of kids dressed as sci-fi characters , critters and most everything in between. Stay safe and have fun.
We will probably tilt toward some fun today.
A) Something serious to start with – Friday a report came out that what had jumped more in the last quarter than it had in 20 years?
B) Dracula – what does the name mean?
C) Iowa finally approved a set of redistricting map. Which Iowa congress member was not included in the district they currently represent?
D) Jack-o-lanterns were originally made from what vegetables?
E) What car rental biggie ordered 100,000 Teslas last Monday?
F) “META.” That is the new name for what major cyber company?
G) Along with approving redistricting maps, what other legislation did Iowa lawmakers pass during their special session?
H) When was the first meeting between a sitting US president and a Pope?
I) What retired pro football quarterback repaid $600,000 of an $828,000 bill he owed the Mississippi Welfare department for a fraud scheme?
J) So what is the biggest selling candy bar for Halloween in the US?
K) Halloween’s origins trace back to the ancient Celtic festival of what?
L) What two states have gubernatorial elections this Tuesday?
M) What two major meetings will President Biden be attending during his trip to Europe?
N) Whoa, that’ll make a lot of pies! An Italian farmer set a new world record with a pumpkin that weighed over how many pounds?
O) The judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse murder case said that the people killed could not be referred to as what, since it is a loaded word?
P) Republicans in Georgia and nationwide are falling in line to back what hugely flawed senatorial candidate for next year’s election?
Q) Thanks to pandemic related stress, sales of what product increased last year for the first time in 20 years?
R) The FDA is expected to approve Covid vaccines for what age group next week?
S) How many were hanged during the Salem Witch Trials?
T) Two major trials are going on in Southern states. One is about the “Unite the Right” rally in what city in 2017?
U) Extra Halloween Question:What were the first names of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
It’s worth remembering that every single Republican in the Senate is worse than Joe Manchin; a society where billionaires can go to space and veterans can go to food pantries is acceptable to them. – John Fugelsang
Note: this certainly includes Grassley and Ernst
Answers:
A) Wages
B) Son of the Devil
C) Mariannette Miller-Meeks
D) Turnips
E) Hertz
F) Facebook
G) Unemployment insurance for those who lose their jobs because they refuse to get vaccinated
H) 1919 between Woodrow Wilson and Pope Benedict XV
I) Brett Favre – he has another month to repay the rest
J) Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – in Iowa it is M&Ms
K) Samhain
L) Virginia and New Jersey
M) The G20 (economic)in Rome and the COP26 (climate) in Glasgow
N) over 2700 pounds
O) “victims” – they could be referred to as “rioters” and “looters and “arsonists.”
P) Herschel Walker – for one thing, Walker lives in Texas.
Q) tobacco products
R) children under 12
S) 19
T) Charlottesville, Va.
U Extra) Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde
Joe Manchin just said that he can’t put the burden of debt on his 10 grandchildren.
But he is clearly not worried about his coal company destroying the planet they live on. – ReportDaNews tweet
Des Moines, Iowa — Progress Iowa executive director Matt Sinovic issued the following statement calling on Iowa’s federal delegation to support the Build Back Better framework announced today:
“Iowa families and future generations need significant investments to fight climate change, improved access to childcare and early education to thrive. The Build Back Better plan announced today will help make those investments a reality, and Iowans need every member of our federal delegation to support it.”
“This plan is the largest expansion of public education in a century, will provide health coverage for millions of Americans, it makes the largest investment ever in fighting the climate crisis, it invests in our immigration system to make it more humane, and it provides real relief and support for working families including housing, school lunches, and higher education. It achieves all of this by tipping the scales back in favor of working families, making sure billionaires and corporations pay what they owe in taxes.”
“Every Iowan should be grateful to Cindy Axne for her support of the Build Back Better agenda, and it is long past time that Senators Grassley, Ernst, and the rest of Iowa’s delegation follow Axne’s lead and put their constituents first. Iowans deserve the opportunity for a better future, but this won’t be possible without the meaningful investments in our neighbors, friends, family, and fellow community members laid out in the plan announced today.”
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Progress Iowa is a multi-issue progressive advocacy organization with a network of more than 75,000 progressives. Year-round, Progress Iowa advocates for a stronger middle class, first-class public education, and fairness for all Iowans under the law.
Progress Iowa P.O. Box 548 Des Moines, IA 50302
Comment: This will bring plenty of GOOD PAYING JOBS to Iowa.
If it doesn’t pass, the fault is not with one or two Democrats but with 100% of Republicans who vote as a bloc out of fear of Donald Trump. That includes Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, Randy Feenstra, Ashley Hinson and Mariannette Miller-Meeks.
Well it is that time of year when it seems like every Tom, Dick and Harry is cramming my mailbox, my computer and my TV screen with their so-called Medicare ADVANTAGE! programs. It is that time of year when the for-profit ghouls trot out their snake oil with glossy mailings and over the hills stars who tell us how great their products are.
Ever since these went on the market they have promised the sky while saying it will cost you nothing – hell, even less than nothing!
What’s that old saying? “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” I have been wondering for a long time how for-profit insurance companies can make their big bucks yet offer even better coverage than Medicare. Seems like a pretty good trick.
Until this year I haven’t been so curious that I wanted to try to look into it. Mostly I let it pass since their advertising period was only supposed to be from October to December. But as with most things it looks like the Trump admin allowed these companies to go way outside those limits.
So how do they make big bucks while spending big bucks on advertising and commissions? Well I am not sure of I can answer that question, but I did find out that as expected, this is a form of a scam on the old folks.
“Still, while many offer $0 premiums, the devil is in the details. You will find that most have unexpected out-of-pocket expenses when you get sick, and what they pay can differ depending upon your overall health. Here’s a look at some of the disadvantages of Medicare Advantage Plans.
In general, Medicare Advantage Plans do not offer the same level of choice as a Medicare plus Medigap combination. Most plans require you to go to their network of doctors and health providers. Since Medicare Advantage Plans can’t pick their customers (they must accept any Medicare-eligible participant), they discourage people who are sick by the way they structure their copays and deductibles.
To see how a Medicare Advantage Plan cherry-picks its patients, carefully review the copays in the summary of benefits for every plan you are considering. To give you an example of the types of copays you may find, here are some details of in-network services from a popular Humana Medicare Advantage Plan in Florida:
Hospital stay—$100 per day for the first 4 days
Emergency Room – $120 copay
Diagnostic radiology—up to $100 copay
Lab Services—up to $50 copay
Outpatient x-rays—up to $50 copay
Outpatient surgery – up to $100 copay
As this non-exhaustive list of copays demonstrates, out-of-pocket costs will quickly build up over the year if you get sick. The Medicare Advantage Plan may offer a $0 premium, but the out-of-pocket surprises may not be worth those initial savings if you get sick. “The best candidate for Medicare Advantage is someone who’s healthy,” says Mary Ashkar, senior attorney for the Center for Medicare Advocacy. “We see trouble when someone gets sick.”
This is only a small part of the list of problems with Medicare Advantage. I recommend you click on the link and read the full article. When some flesh is put on the bones that the sales brochures and ads give us, this turns into a really ugly monster.
Medicare has problems. What we need is universal health care for all in America. The problems that Medicare has are decidedly NOT solved by Medicare Advantage.
Had I had Medicare Advantage this year I would be considerably poorer after my Nurse Practitioner found an almost undetectable heart problem. The fix was not cheap. Had I had Advantage I would have been stuck with some big co-pays. With Medicare and the supplement my only real cost was a way overpriced drug that did not have a generic. We need drug price negotiating power with Medicare badly.
Think really hard and dig really deep on what the true costs of Medicare Advantage is before signing on.
The news that the Covid-19 vaccination for children under 12 may be approved the first week of November was greeted with joy in our family. Thanks to that we are feeling pretty sure that well before Thanksgiving all members of our family will have been vaccinated. Thus the threat of a severe Covid infection and possible death will be greatly lessened. That will give us a chance to move a little bit away from that sword of Damocles that has been hanging over our heads.
Knowing that the Biden Administration has been prepared to distribute vaccines for a couple of weeks once the OK is given helps also. I believe we can expect all children in our family to be among the early vaccinated. Planning and preparation should lead to a successful roll out. These vaccines and their counterparts for adults have been shown to be extremely effective and safe.
Planning and preparation are the keys to keeping illnesses and deaths in time of pandemic to low numbers. Last week Dr. Deborah Birx, who was a member of the Trump pandemic response team estimated that the very poorly implemented Trump response has been responsible for as much as 130,000 needless deaths in the US.
Others have put the number that died needlessly much, much higher.
This brings up a big question. The US had protocols to deal with a possible pandemic. These protocols were implemented for the Ebola scare during the Obama administration. While Republicans freaked out and screamed predictions of massive numbers of dead, the Obama Administration followed the protocols, moved swiftly, isolated cases and did thorough contact tracing follow ups. The result were 11 total cases, only 2 of which were contract in the US and no deaths.
Certainly Covid is much more contagious than ebola is, yet given a chance, ebola could have turned into a major disaster. Response was the key to keeping the disease from spreading. Hospitals had the proper equipment, personnel, training and facilities. Contrast that with the response of the Trump Administration.
According to various news media reports, response was muted for many reasons. These included for such reasons as a belief that mostly Democrats were dying from Covid, so this could aid the Republicans in the presidential election; private enterprise was given a chance to make some big money of selling PPE and there was a concern that a crisis pandemic could hurt Trump’s re-election.
Among many of the other reasons that response was so bad was the push in the administration to get businesses reopened to make it seem like there was no pandemic going on. As other decisions, this decision was made to help Trump’s reelection chances. Protocols were totally ignored in order to advance Trump’s re-election.
You may agree or disagree with that assessment. This pandemic has killed at least 750,000 Americans in about 20 months. I can’t remember all the numbers this surpasses, but I believe one of those records is that this is more Americans than have been killed in all our wars. The 750,000 figure is probably a very low count since reports from several states are not reliable.
Why, oh why is there not some congressional committee, some independent counsel with subpoena power, some group with power – not investigating what is the single biggest tragedy in our history so that these failings are never repeated? We should be all over this, yet we hear little.
In Brazil there are loud calls for the removal of Jair Bolsonaro as he is being charged with crimes against humanity for his similar response in his country. The man responsible for our disastrous response is not only NOT being similarly charged, he is running for president again. After what he caused to happen?
In the aftermath of the disaster that Trump left for Biden one of the worst legacies is a sizable number of people, especially of people in positions of power, who are doing all they can to keep the pandemic going only for political reasons. I am looking at you, Kim Reynolds and the Iowa Republican Party. This makes recovery spotty at best.
I am particularly surprised that businesses are not pushing for mandatory vaccinations harder. An unstable business climate has to make planning, hiring and simply running a business very hard, not to mention the costs of higher insurances and the costs of absences.
“When most people think about the future of COVID-19 in the United States, they’re unlikely to think about this: orphanages.
“People don’t remember the world as it was a hundred years ago,” said Yaneer Bar-Yam. “To live in that world, a world where orphans are common, and children dying is common, and the destruction of society is ongoing because of disease, is very hard for people to imagine.”
<< snip >>
“I lost an uncle to scarlet fever,” said Bar-Yam, “and a grandfather to typhus. That wasn’t that long ago.” The modern expectation is that you can live your life without concern over contagious disease. People don’t worry about getting cholera from a glass of water or think about polio when they jump into the community pool. “What they know is this promise that they see from TV commercials. That you can take a trip, enjoy the beach, and come home—all without worrying that you pick up a virus and die from it.”
During the pandemic, the United States has already slid backward toward that plagued past. At least 1 in 500 children in the United States have lost a caregiver. However, as the daily toll of cases declines, many people—and dozens of editorials and news articles—seem to be advocating that endemic COVID-19 is inevitable and acceptable. What they don’t explain is the consequences.
“One of the pieces of the picture being put forward is that the disease somehow becomes milder,” said Bar-Yam. “They didn’t become milder a hundred years ago. This disease has all of the qualities of a disease that becomes more severe over time rather than milder. We’ve seen that through several generations of variants.”
To conquer this disease, we must work together. That means we mask, we all get vaccinated now and for whatever comes along. And those who refuse will need to be pushed to society’s edges so the rest can survive. Don’t forget that we will be fighting this in a world of severe climate change where viral diseases may be amplified.
Grassroots progressive activists including Blog for Iowa, have been saying for some time liberal billionaires should invest in media. This is great news.
A new public benefit corporation backed by billionaires Reid Hoffman, George Soros, and others is launching Tuesday to fund new media companies and efforts that tackle disinformation.
Why it matters: Good Information Inc. aims to fund and scale businesses that cut through echo chambers with fact-based information. As part of its mission, it plans to invest in local news companies.
The group will be led by Tara McGowan, a former Democratic strategist who previously ran a progressive non-profit called ACRONYM.
ACRONYM invested in for-profit companies that built media and technology solutions for progressive causes. It ran one of the largest digital campaigns to defeat President Trump in the 2020 election, totaling $100 million.
One of the companies it invested in, called Shadow, made headlines last year for contributing to the delayed reporting of the Iowa caucus results.
Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, backed ACRONYM.
Details: Good Information is launching with a multi-million seed investment led by Hoffman and joined by investors Ken and Jen Duda, Incite Ventures, and George Soros.
“We are disclosing our investors, because we believe — especially right now in this environment of mistrust — that transparency is really important,” McGowan said.
Good Information Inc. will invest in new businesses and solutions that tackle the disinformation crisis. That could mean funding new or existing companies that boost news from existing news outlets.
The company’s advisory committee consists of nearly two dozen political, media and tech experts, including former White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, Civic Signal Founder Eli Pariser, Check My Ads co-founder Nandini Jammi, former Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times Editor Mark Jacob, Accountable Tech co-founder Nicole Gill and others.
In less than two weeks, RuralVote.org is hosting its first-ever National Rural Strategy Summit. We will have progressive political strategists, organizers, activists, candidates and elected officials, strategize how we can effectively organize in rural areas in battleground states ahead of the 2022 election.
The National Strategy Session will be held on Nov. 6 from noon-4 pm ET. Over 100 progressive political strategists, organizers, activists, candidates and elected officials are gathering for a virtual strategy session hosted by J.D. Scholten of RuralVote.org. Join us on Saturday November 6, 2021 to discuss strategies for engaging rural voters ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
The four-hour digital event will elevate locally driven strategies for rebuilding the progressive brand in small towns and rural communities across the country ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
If there’s one complaint I hear over and over again, it’s that the Democratic party doesn’t support rural organizing enough. Rural campaigns are often overlooked and underfunded. We must change the game on the ground if we want to win statewide races in 2022 and expand the Democratic Senate majority.
That’s why I’m selling my beloved campaign RV the Sioux City Sue and using the proceeds to give out grants to local rural organizations. We need to support groups that are working to build the progressive brand and improve Democratic performance outside major metro areas, especially in battleground states and districts.
We’ll be announcing the winners of the Sioux City Sue Legacy grants soon so the rural organizing groups can hit the ground running in 2022. We’re not waiting for the Democratic Party, we must start organizing in rural areas NOW.
Governor Kim Keynolds: (515) 281-5211 U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 Iowa Members of Congress - Rep. Randy Feenstra (R) - Rep. Ashley Hinson (R) - Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R) - Rep. Zach Nunn (R) Iowa US Senators - Senator Joni Ernst (R) - Senator Charles Grassley (R)
Blog For Iowa 