Phil Miller? Where have I heard that name before? You may remember Phil as the man who elected in a special election to fill the empty seat left by the passing of Curt Hanson in 2017. Hanson was a highly respected legislature from Iowa’s House district 82. The district covers Van Buren and Davis counties and most of Jefferson County, which is home to Fairfield. Fairfield is the home to Phil Miller’s veterinary practice.
Miller served out the rest of Curt Hanson’s term in the legislature. He then lost to Jeff Shipley in the 2018 election.
Since that election Shipley has made a name for himself as a kind of unserious gadfly. He created quite a storm earlier in the spring as the coronavirus pandemic was just revving up by claiming that the virus wasn’t that serious. From the southeastiowaunion.com:
“He wrapped up his first term in the statehouse by drawing sharp criticism and statewide headlines for downplaying the seriousness of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus. In a speech on the Capitol steps to a group advocating that parents, and not governments, should decide on vaccinations. Shipley said “the virus isn’t even killing anybody.” As of midday Tuesday, 725 Iowans have died from the novel coronavirus. {editor note: Iowa’s coronavirus deaths now stand at 1016}
Coronavirus is only one of many issues where Shipley stands pretty much alone. From the gophallofshame we see Shipley has also:
The sole legislator to oppose increasing the largest funding source for Iowa’s public school districts and one of only three to oppose a one-cent sales tax so the state could renovate more than a dozen elementary schools.
Supported legislation to install new obstacles for Iowans sick due to asbestos exposure looking to hold companies accountable, bolstering recent Republican-introduced ALEC model legislation benefiting Koch Industries’ bottom line.
Sponsored several anti-LGBTQ bills to allow for discrimination, eliminate civil rights protections, and restrict educators from discussing sexual orientation and gender identity.
On the other hand Phil Miller brings over 4 decades of service to the community to his candidacy. Miller is a level headed small businessman who understands the area and the people of district 82. Miller’s announcement statement pretty well sums up Miller’s qualifications:
We all want the same things: good schools for our kids, safe communities to live in, and jobs for our working families. Lately, however, it feels like Des Moines has forgotten that. They’d rather bring divisive Washington, D.C. politics here to Iowa while nothing gets done.
I know, as a small business owner and father, I don’t have the luxury of choosing not to get work done. I work hard every day, even with people I don’t see eye to eye with, to support my business, our community, and keep food on the table for my family.
I’ve lived in our community for a long time, and giving back has always been at the heart of my time here. As a kid growing up on a family farm in southeast Iowa, I was inspired to become a small and large animal veterinarian. Today, and for the past 45 years, that’s what I’ve done. Through this, I’ve seen and heard the stories of farmers here in our community – and understand how important it is our farms and soil are healthy and productive. As President of the Fairfield School Board, I’ve worked hand in hand with families and seen our town’s children turn into adults right before our eyes.
I think Des Moines has forgotten the values we share here in Southeast Iowa, and it’s time someone reminded them what’s important to us out here. We need someone who will go to Des Moines and fight for strong public education funding, better paying jobs, and affordable healthcare.
That’s why I’m officially announcing my candidacy for the Iowa House of Representatives here in District 82. I’ll get us back to the basics and champion common-sense, bi-partisan solutions that make sense in every part of our state.
My name is Dr. Phil Miller, and I hope to earn your vote on Nov. 3, 2020. I look forward to talking with you and your family in the months ahead.
A very welcome email landed in the inbox Tuesday evening. Not sure why I was on the list, but I was tickled to death (pun sort of intended) to see that the ISEA and the Iowa City CSD were suing the state of Iowa alleging that Kim Reynolds has overstepped her authority by requiring school districts to primarily hold in-person classes.
Very welcome lawsuit! Reynolds created some very artificial – and nearly impossible to reach – criteria before schools could then APPLY to do remote learning. Her goal is to force all students and teachers back into small rooms where this highly, highly transmittable disease would most likely be spread quickly. As far as we know the only reason for this is to please Donald Trump.
The lawsuit is especially welcome now that a case reporting glitch has been discovered that makes the data decisions to open and close schools suspect.
Reynolds, like Trump, seems to screw up nearly everything she touches. She is also getting very experienced at dodging questions just like Trump.
Wow what a week again!
Last Friday, August 21, was the anniversary of Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831. What was Nat Turner’s Rebellion?
Dear Leader not only has a problem with mail in voting, Thursday he said he also has a problem with what other way to vote?
A funeral was held in the White House Friday. For what national luminary was the funeral held?
Alexei Navalny was poisoned in Russia last week. Why was Navalny poisoned?
Dear Leader called for Americans to boycott Goodyear tires. Why did the president call for such a boycott?
New unemployment claims topped what ignominious level after being below it for one week?
Among many high spots during the Democratic convention was Sarah Cooper doing her send up of what major politician?
Presidential nominee Joe Biden’s acceptance speech drew high praise from what unexpected corner of media?
One of the best one liners of the convention “Just remember: Joe Biden’ goes to church so regularly, that he doesn’t even need tear gas and a bunch of federalized troops to help him get there.” Who said it?
It was bound to happen. Steve Bannon was arrested Thursday for fraud. Ironically, enforcement officers from what branch of the government arrested him?
The other ironic aspect of the Bannon arrest is that most of the people he defrauded could be described as what group of people?
So much else going on. The Senate Intel Committee released part 5 of their report on Russian interference in the 2016. What was their main conclusion?
Which Trump campaign chair maintained a “close relationship” with a Russian intelligence operative during the 2016 election?
Many Republicans endorsed Democratic nominee Biden, including the wife of what former Republican presidential candidate?
100 years ago last Tuesday the electorate doubled as the 19th amendment gave the vote to what huge group of people?
As the Democratic convention took the spotlight, the Trump administration continued to destroy what government entity that will be deeply involved in the election?
In a really strange and wholly unwanted action, Dear Leader pardoned what historical figure this week?
In a major loss, a Manhattan judge ruled that Dear Leader had to give what group access to his tax returns?
“Pioneer” is the Secret Service code name for which Democratic presidential ticket nominee?
Maybe the best news of the week. The Girl Scouts announce a new cookie flavor for 2021. The cookie is based on what breakfast treat?
Our children are all grown and long gone from our house. With the way out of control coronavirus pandemic, like many these days we spend our time with kids via the phone or Zoom. We have come up with a little game we play between ourselves. We don’t have an official name for it.
Since the beginning of the pandemic and the horrible response from the president across the whole country and by individual Republican governors we seem to have a section our conversations that goes sort of like this:
Me: boy, did you hear what my goofy governor did last week?
Daughter: Oh yeah, well here ’what’s been going on down here …………
Or
Me: Reynolds is going to force the schools to open in the middle of the pandemic!
Daughter: So is our governor! Seven hours a day, five days a week. He doesn’t expect anything will happen…….
Now for clarity the governors that we are talking about are Iowa’s Governor Kim Reynolds (who I often refer to as “Branstad’s revenge”), Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona.
So we often spend 5 to 10 minutes discussing which of these esteemed (sarcasm for the humor impaired) governors made a statement or action that was a definite blow to the people of their state. While the competition is stiff, I can proudly say that Reynolds is holding her own against a couple of real Trump followers.
One of the main aspects of this competition seems to be which governor can show the most reality to Donald Trump no matter the consequence to the people of his or her state. For instance if you remember back around early May the big question of the day was what states would open and to what degree?
In Arizona, Ducey was proceeding cautiously with opening until his state had a visit from the Trump himself. Next day Ducey did a 180* about face and said “let’s open up everything.” As most know the downside of that decision was disastrous s coronavirus cases and deaths skyrocketed.
Kim Reynolds in her turn went for what seemed like more cautious openings. In reality she had most of the state open in 2 weeks with the expected big raises in cases and deaths. Kevin Stitt down in Oklahoma tried to win this round by not only opening his state but proudly being a guest of honor at Trump’s big failure in Tulsa at the end of May. State even won the prize of a case of coronavirus for his efforts.
There is no scoring in our little game. After all, we are all kind of loyal to our governor’s stupidity. In the round described above I would have to give the trophy to Arizona’s Ducey just for the incredible change of direction and the massive aftermath his decision had.
Kevin Stitt’s doing nothing about the Trump rally and then getting the coronavirus were both true gamer moves in an attempt to prove how incapable he is. Reynolds really didn’t step up to the plate in that round, although her treatment of workers in meat plants before and during this period was simply outstanding for its stupidity and incompetence. Boy what a stupid policy.
Recently the competition has shifted to who can screw up schools the worst. Remember that back in March all 50 states quickly shut down schools when the number of cases were less than 100,000 and closing places where large groups of people – and yes human children and teachers are people – was the only real sane policy to follow.
Now as cases will be nearing 7 million by Labor Day and deaths will be closing in on 200,000, our governors seem to be fighting to see which of them can force school openings that will do the most damage. Kim Reynolds has seemed to decided that she is an Emperor in Iowa on this issue. She brooks not a discouraging word in her mission to get those schools open and make her Leader (Trump) happy. Reynolds is pushing hard to force all students physically into class rooms. In our little game, this may be a winning strategy.
Down in Oklahoma schools have already opened. In an unusual move there has been a student who knowingly went to school after testing positive for coronavirus.
Out in Arizona, Governor Ducey seems to be wobbling badly on this. He is taking advice from the state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction that has caused him to back off on the big psh to open schools. Looks like Ducey may just cede the school opening competition to Reynolds and Stitt.
We are not playing this for fun and it is not a game. It is our version of gallows humor. We have a grave danger let loose in our society by Donald Trump’s refusal to do his job. Throughout the country we have really bad governors who areemulating Trump. Our three governors are three of those, although not the worst. This is a truly grave, life and death situation.
As schools open we will see steep rises in infections and in deaths. The worst of the consequences could still be avoided with some common sense decisions. But these are republican governors we are talking about and they are much more concerned about loyalty to ideology and Trump that they are to real solutions.
You must vote as if your life and the lives of loved ones depend on it, because they do.
Donald Trump is a person who has been catered to all his life. Many people and institutions have had opportunity to stop his illegal and immoral activities but in 73 years no one has. Not his parents, not banks, not law enforcement, and especially not the the Republican led sentence. After each interruption in his chaotic life Trump has come back and done more and worse.
Remember what (soon to be former) Senator Susan Collins of Maine said after she was just one more in a long line of tragic cases who failed to stand up to Donald Trump? In an interview with CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell, Collins replied to O’Donnell’s question saying Trump learned a lesson:
O’Donnell: But the president says he did nothing wrong. Why do you think he learned something?
Collins: He was impeached. And there has been criticism by both Republican and Democratic senators of his call. I believe that he will be much more cautious in the future.
Seriously Susan. Just a pinch of due diligence would have revealed that the only thing Trump ever learns is to be a bigger asshole and destroy what he sees as enemies with even more force. Thanks to you, Susan Collins, and colleagues like Joni Ernst licking Trump’s boots and letting him free to have his revenge. Here was Joni Ernst’s pathetic reasoning:
Sen. Joni Ernst said on Sunday she’s confident President Donald Trump will not solicit foreign interference in another U.S. election if he’s acquitted as expected in the Senate impeachment trial.
“I think that he knows now that, if he is trying to do certain things, whether it’s ferreting out corruption there, in Afghanistan, whatever it is, he needs to go through the proper channels,” the Iowa Republican said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Apparently Ernst never thought to ask Trump if he was going to wreck the Post Office. Of course had she, Trump would have lied. That is what Trump does – he lies. Oh and by the way, Ernst, Trump is still working with foreign powers to rig the election. And to think, you were fool enough to believe him.
So without warning to anyone, Trump hired a henchman by the name of Louis DeJoy who could stand to make a huge amount of money if the USPS should go under to run the USPS. That would be like Walmart hiring the CEO of Target to run Walmart also at the very same time. DeJoy knew what his job was. Destroy the USPS.
An added bonus for both Trump and DeJoy is that if the USPS is hamstrung at this crucial time in the election cycle it could greatly affect the election. By Trump’s calculations, trashing the USPS will give him an advantage in the election.
So DeJoy with the blessing of his boss Trump immediately went about removing and now destroying the the machinery and changing the rules that are vital to the running of the USPS. The United States Postal Service is, I mean WAS, one of the most efficient and admired businesses in the world. Trump and DeJoy destroyed that in about a week on purpose.
If you think destroying one of the most admired entities in the world is the very worst thing Trump can do, better hold on to your seat because it is about to get much, much worse.
One of the reason that the Post Office was established IN the constitution was that the founding fathers wanted citizens to be able to get material on candidates and issues of the day. A way to safely move mail was seen as a basic building block of a true democracy. While destroying the USPS yields two immediate rewards for Trump –rigging the 2020 election and making rich men richer –there is a long range reward also.
Destroying the USPS is one of the basic steps in dismantling democracy. Like the mail sorting machines DeJoy had ripped out of post offices around the country, Trump has been ripping out pieces of our government and hamstringing other other pieces of our government.
Now we see the mail sorting machines being dismantled and made forever useless, turned into junk to be thrown into dumpsters and ingloriously hauled to the dump. Similarly Trump is dismantling pieces of our government, making them no longer able to do their jobs through executive orders and cabinet department heads just simply stopping their functionality.
Republicans have also taken over 3 of the 4 sections of the federal government – presidency, senate and judiciary – in such a way that as the government is dismantled none of the “checks and balances” that were such a unique way to stop the acquisition of power by one branch from happening. Now the aggrandizement of power is to the Republican Party and the three branches of government are cooperating in that.
Once the checks and balances were dispensed with – the impeachment sham in the senate was the epitome of this happening there was nothing to stop Trump. The party is now Trump and Trump is the Party. Now he can move ahead with almost no opposition. The next thing after rigging these current elections will be to make elections obsolete.
Think it can’t happen? All those checks in the constitution haven’t stopped Trump from doing what he wants. If he steals this election that will be it.
Get your vote in for Democrats from the White House to the courthouse. Check your registration, request an absentee ballot and vote early so you know you have voted. Take your absentee ballot to your county courthouse and put it into the absentee ballot receptacle or hand it in to your auditor. This is a live or die election.
Dan Pfeiffer, senior advisor to Barack Obama and author of Un-Trumping America: A Plan to Make America a Democracy Again has some advice for Democrats. He is co-host of the podcast Pod Save America
I see so much confusion out there among friends,strangers and acquaintances. People ask, why can’t our government solve these problems that the vast majority of the people agree on such as common sense gun legislation, sensible immigration reform, health care. Steve Schmidt provides a crash course in what is going on and why. Both parties are broken but Republicans are more broken according to this former Republican who left the party after it gave itself over to Donald Trump.
Former Republican strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project Steve Schmidt is always worth a listen and as a special treat, unlike most TV interviews, Frontline asked good questions.
Here are just a few of the highlights followed by video of the full interview.
On Obama’s presidency:
“President Obama was not able to forge compromise and the reason may well be the implacability of the people sitting on the other side of the table. Sometimes you can’t get to yes with someone who won’t say anything other than no. When you look at the rise of the tea party movement the real issue that the Obama admin faced, which is an age old one, is that you can’t fix crazy. And the fact of the matter is you had a fair number of crazy people who started getting elected to the congress on the tea party wave who there was no dealing with.”
On Congress:
“Congress for a long time now has not been responsive to broad public opinion. It’s been responsive to the most intense voters who are in factions who are incited by a billion dollar anger industry on radio and television and that’s the audience, that’s the constituency. The compromising middle has been eradicated through gerrymandering, redistricting and the technological advancements that allow politicians to pick their voters rather than the other way around.”
The politics of incitement:
“The tea party, stoked by a culture of incitement on news radio and cable stations that pay big bucks – a movement was stoked that was oppositional and fueled by the politics of incitement.”
The economic collapse of 2008:
“The economic collapse of 2008 and the economy that Barack Obama inherited, I think is the defining event of this generation even more so than 9/11 and it profoundly reshaped American politics.”
On Sarah Palin:
“She was the first of a generation of politicians who lived in a post-truth environment.There’s no polite way to say it she was a serial liar. Over and over and over again dozens of times a day she would say things that were simply not true or things she had read on her Blackberry, things that were picked up from the internet…and this obliteration of fact from fiction, of truth from lie has become now endemic in American politics. But it started then. And so the fact of the matter is that overwhelming percentages to this day believe that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S., that Barack Obama is a Muslim and there’s no convincing those people that that is not the case.”
The creed of the United States Postal Service, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” is currently under attack. Recent policy changes made by the Postmaster General have led to slowdowns and some mail not being delivered at all. This is unacceptable.
Iowans, and especially those living in rural areas, rely on the USPS to get their medical prescriptions, receive important tax notifications and refunds from the IRS, vote by mail, and get their paychecks and many other packages and letters safely from one place to another.
The Postal Service is vitally important for those living in rural areas. Many Post Offices serve as a central part of small, rural communities. It is imperative that all Iowans, no matter where they live, have a postal system that works for them so that they can receive their mail without delay.
I will continue fighting to ensure the Postal Service has the resources it needs to make timely deliveries and ensure Iowans receive their mail without delay.
ICYMI: Once Again, Senator Ernst And Senate GOP Skip Town As Americans Lose Their Jobs, Get Sick And Die
Des Moines, Iowa—On Thursday, Senator Ernst and her colleagues adjourned the Senate—choosing to go home until September while American families suffer the crushing economic impacts of Donald Trump’s failed coronavirus pandemic response.
For months, Senator Ernst and Senate Republicans have refused to take up the HEROES Act passed by House Democrats in May and allowed extended unemployment benefits to expire, leaving American families to fend for themselves. Meanwhile. Donald Trump has continued to undermine, experts, downplay the dangers of the virus, and push schools and states to reopen before it is safe to do so, with disastrous results.
In response, Executive Director of Progress Iowa and Protect Our Care Iowa Matt Sinovic released the following statement:
“Once again, Senate Republicans are choosing to do what they do best – make life harder for American families.
“By refusing to take up the HEROES Act for months and then delegating negotiating efforts to an unserious White House, Senator Ernst and Senate Republicans have let unemployment benefits expire, allowed funding for coronavirus testing to lapse and repeatedly backed up Donald Trump’s botched pandemic response.
“Meanwhile, Donald Trump is busy driving the economy further into the ground and putting more American lives in danger with his repeated politically-motivated push to reopen states and schools before it’s safe.
“Families across the country are struggling to figure out how to put food on the table and wondering if their kids are going to get sick when they’re forced to go back to a crowded school. And Senator Ernst and Senate Republicans are fleeing town as more Americans lose their jobs, get sick and die.”
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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.
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)
Urgent message from Rep. Dave Loebsack:
Update from 
