Blog For Iowa

As you know if you are a regular visitor to Blog for Iowa, I write frequent reviews of the IPBS program Iowa Press now proudly in it’s 51st year on the air. I am not a fan of the program. No one I know will watch it.  I have called for the program to be cancelled because I believe it is doing more harm than good. Iowa Press invites Republicans on the program (last year twice as many republicans were on compared to democrats) and allow them to tell falsehoods unfettered by reality based fact checks or challenges from the panel of reporters. It’s essentially a platform for GOP talking points.

Conversely, the panel treats democrats with skepticism and disdain. They interrupt democrats with challenges but I have never once seen a member of the panel interrupt a republican to call out a lie.  If they challenge a republican on anything which is rare, they wait until the republican is done talking.  Don’t believe me. Watch the show and see for yourself. I am backed up by my fellow progressives who tell me they stopped watching Iowa Press long ago for this very reason.

If you would like specific examples of what I’m talking about type “Iowa Press” in the search box on this page.  To be fair, I have not watched every single program so I could have missed something but I do watch most of them.

This weekend the guest on the program was republican Amy Sinclair, president of the Iowa senate.  I didn’t get as far into the weeds in this review as far as specifics as I sometimes do,  but this is my impression after watching the program.

It appears republicans are feeling the heat of public pressure regarding some of their big issues including destroying public education and taking away individual rights. I’m guessing this because the panel seemed ever so slightly emboldened to follow up and clarify Sinclair’s responses with a bit more journalist attitude similar to what they typically display toward democrats.  Of course democrats are generally telling the truth while Rs are generally stretching the truth to unrecognizable levels, so there’s that. But still it was a good surprise that the panel seemed less timid questioning a republican than usual and I chalk that up to the public pressure put on the GOP  this legislative session by Iowans who showed up and spoke up in huge numbers to voice their disagreement with republican policies.

As far as this episode of Iowa Press, the strange republican formulation of reality and corresponding word salad by Sinclair was too much to dissect.  The panel seemed comfortable asking a few pointed  questions and Sinclair seemed to be feeling the heat, offering a long diatribe/filibuster and then adding a disclaimer, saying she was “passionate” on the issue.  Verbal filibustering is a frequent tactic of republicans I’ve seen them use when they don’t like the direction of the conversation. I’ve even seen Kim Reynolds appear to check the clock while blathering away to see how it’s going.  Check out the response below by Sinclair  to a question about the wildly unpopular AEA bill and others.

Erin Murphy:  “…Collectively, what are you hearing from superintendents, school officials in your districts? Are all these things creating stress on their systems?”

Great question.  How much will the republican admit to what we know they are hearing from their districts?  Other republicans are not shy about simply denying they are hearing from anyone who disagrees.  But in this case on the topic of AEAs that number was likely near zero, adding to the difficulty of making something up that would fly. But Sinclair did try to advance an alternative narrative while attempting to obscure what they really did in this lengthy response that was so long (just shy of 4 minutes) with no sign of slowing, it prompted the moderator Kay Henderson to jump in.

Henderson:  “Senator, we’ve got a lot of questions on other topics.”

Sinclair: “You can tell I’m passionate about this.”

What I could tell was that she was embarrassed about her obvious, over zealous, pathetic attempt to cover for the republicans’ evil schemes.

Here is the text of her response to Murphy’s question if you don’t watch the recording.  Yes, it does go on for days.

Sinclair:

So, I asked some of those very specific questions. Those are questions that matter. I have long been the advocate for rural schools in the state of Iowa from freeing up categorical dollars in those rural areas to increasing transportation funding because that was a built-in inequity in our system and rural schools were most disadvantaged in that position. I have been the voice of rural education. So yeah, of course I have asked those questions. As far as how parental rights, parental choice in education has impacted rural schools, it hasn’t. There isn’t a choice outside of homeschooling for those rural folks to take. What impacts rural districts more in the area of choice is district open enrollment. And so that is always a rub on — because you have winners and losers in that proposition from a public school perspective. The education scholarships are not impacting rural districts to any large degree. In fact, spoke with some administration at a fairly rural district that I used to represent a portion of prior to redistricting and because of the additional dollars that come to the public districts for even currently enrolled students, even though they had lost a handful of students who were now able to access a non-public education, financially they were better off. And that is just the fact of the way we set up the scholarship system. Those schools do get additional dollars to make sure they are maintaining their underlying infrastructure and cost of doing business. And so, it didn’t impact the one that had some students leave, it didn’t impact that district at all, except to impact it positively. As far as the AEA conversation goes, why are we not talking about the overarching issue of why we had that conversation? We have the federal Department of Education telling us that we are not appropriately meeting the needs of students who are receiving special education services. We’re not meeting their needs. We haven’t been for five years. We have had an achievement gap that was unacceptable to the federal government. This didn’t come out of left field. We have been talking about the fact that we have an achievement gap that is leaving those most vulnerable students behind. COVID didn’t help it. We have to address it. We have to address it. So, is there some potential impact to rural districts? There could be. And if they aren’t meeting the needs of students, Erin, there should be, right? Our purpose as legislators in setting up the rules for education is that we’re meeting the needs of students. And if the systems that we have are not meeting the needs of students, shouldn’t we change the systems that we have? The AEA bill that we ultimately passed includes a task force to oversee the changes that we have made and to make further recommendations in case the path we chose forward didn’t do the right things. But to layer in transparency and where dollars are going, to layer in oversight that doesn’t come from an internal source within the AEAs, to layer in local control that puts money in the hands of the school board members and administrators and teachers who are actually serving the kids day-to-day, to put the money in their hands to make the determinations that are in the best interest of the students that they serve daily and to increase teacher salaries for the teachers in the classrooms with those students so that we can recruit and retain the best and the brightest in our classrooms, Erin, those are good things that do nothing but improve our systems and increase student achievement over time.”

Republicans are practiced liars.  In the above passage she relied on several evasive tactics.   1- portraying herself as a tried and true rural advocate generally while not answering the question; 2- use of random republican talking points and phrases like parental choice/parental rights that have nothing to do with answering the question; 3- plain old lying (e.g., “education scholarships are not impacting rural districts to any large degree”). Then doubling down, “as far as how parental rights, parental choice in education has impacted rural schools, it hasn’t.”; 4- cherry picking – she found one hearsay anecdote to tell from one district to frame in such a way to back up her false assertion “..it didn’t impact that district at all, except to impact it positively.” 

There’s more. They questioned her about the republican so-called “fetal heartbeat” bill, eminent domain, the opioid settlement, the immigration (arrest and deportation) bill, her passionate defense of pesticide makers from lawsuits related to cancer and other illnesses.

You’ll just have to watch. But I bet you already know how it’s going to turn out.

If you’ve made it this far, Sinclair has a democratic challenger for her senate seat, Nicole Loew.   https://www.loewforiowa.com/