Straw Pooff

Subject:   the Iowa Republicans’ Straw Poll

To:          Des Moines Register

               National Public Radio 

               New York Times

               Wall Street Journal

14 August, 2011

I love you all and rely on you for news and information.  I write today because, as an Iowan, I know that you have put the Straw Poll in a completely incorrect perspective.  So I ask you to rely on me for a change for news and information about the Straw Poll to which you have all given too much attention.

First, it is a fund raiser.  Second, there is nothing democratic about it.  Therefore, and third, it is not important.  Like the scouting report on the new recruits for the football team which declared them all to be small, but slow, this event is meaningless, but insignificant.   And irrelevant.

So please quick treating it like a big deal! 

16,683 ballots were cast over the course of several hours during a party in Ames, Iowa on Saturday afternoon.  Those who voted either paid $30 for an admission ticket or, as was probably even more common, received a ticket as a gift from one of the candidates.  Some drove a long way to attend this party.  All went to far more trouble to attend than would be involved in participating in a normal election.  So while the participants may represent someone or something, it is neither Iowa nor the USA, and certainly not the typical Iowa or US citizen or voter.

Iowa Republicans should discontinue this event even though it raises money.   It does Republicans a disservice because it fails to represent them, and it does Iowa a disservice by undermining Iowa’s reputation as a credible host of the nation’s earliest election cycle caucuses. 

Being realistic, we should not count on Republicans to discontinue the Straw Poll.  You, however, could quit making such a big fuss over it.  It happens.  Every four years.  Please leave it at that.

How NOT To Create More Jobs in the US

If one were making a list of things Congress could do to guarantee that our nation’s economic recovery will remain painfully slow with maddeningly high rates of unemployment, the first item would be to cut government spending.

The second would be to eliminate government borrowing.

The third would be to make income taxes more regressive.

It appears Congress is concentrating its efforts in all the right places to prevent a strong economic recovery with vigorous job growth.

— David J. Nelson, Des Moines

Branstad Bullies Iowa about Biennial Budgeting

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad’s recent insistence on biennial rather than annual budgeting is unreasonable.  The advantage of biennial budgeting is that it requires planning further ahead.  Since there is nothing about annual budgeting that prevents planning ahead, however, this single advantage is hardly a persuasive reason to switch to biennial budgeting.  The disadvantages are several.  It is less flexible, it is less responsive to changing circumstances and it concentrates power in the hands of the executive branch at the expense of the legislative branch of government.   

Of course the concentration of power factor is attractive to Branstad.   It is convenient for him to overlook that what is important to him is also important to the legislature and to the people of Iowa, both of whom are better served by clear separation of power and the greater flexibility and responsiveness of annual budgeting.

The legislature should override his veto and adopt the budget they have carefully crafted by working through the compromises that were necessary to make it acceptable to a majority of the legislators of both parties.  Let us hope that our legislators will have the fortitude to keep Branstad from bullying them.

Relaxing gun carrying regulations = Craziness

If our legislaturers make more changes to gun laws like the ones now under consideration, we may need to change the country's name from the USA to the VSA.  (The Vigilante States of America.)

The Iowa Impeachment Debacle

Perhaps the Democrats of the Iowa House are taking too seriously the threats of their Republican colleagues calling for the impeachment of Iowa’s Supreme Court Justices.  In spite of the fact that a majority of Iowa voters were persuaded to vote not to retain the three justices on the ballot last November, it seems that hardly anyone is so thoroughly misinformed as to believe that any judicial ruling constitutes grounds for impeachment.  I suggest that, if the Republicans do propose impeachment, the Democrats should let the issue come to a vote without stretching out the debate.  It is unlikely that such a resolution will be approved by the House because only a small minority of the Republicans will be foolish enough to support it.  Even if the resolution should pass the house, it will surely not succeed in the Senate where 34 of the 50 members would have to find the justices guilty.  That simply will not happen, but the process will expose the proponents of impeachment as the fools that they are.

Stretching out a debate on an impeachment resolution will divert the House’s attention from other matters of considerably greater importance.  I say “give the fools a little rope, and they will hang themselves.”

Iowa's Misinformed Public

The news that members of the Iowa House of Representatives are pursuing impeachment of Iowa’s four remaining Supreme Court justices is stunning.  That Leader Paulson said he would not stand in the way of the effort is breathtaking. 

These people need some basic civics lessons. What the Supreme Court decided in April 2009 regarding same sex marriage was that the law prohibiting same sex marriage violated the Iowa constitution. The fact that a majority of Iowa voters voted against the three justices who were scheduled for retention in this year’s election shows how widespread is the misunderstanding of basic constitutional democracy, and it reflects badly on the whole state that so few of us understand that the court’s job is to interpret and preserve the constitution, especially when, in the judgment of the court, the other branches of government stray off course as the legislature and governor had done.  That is the court’s responsibility, its job, its reason for being.

It seems impossible that we have elected law makers who are so ignorant of the constitution. But we can hope that it may be one of those situations in which David Letterman might say “No, Wait. They’re not that ignorant.  They’re just exploiting the fact that most Iowa voters are that ignorant.”

Sen. Grassley's Abandonment of Integrity

I applaud the Des Moines Register’s editorial of November 9 criticizing Sen. Charles Grassley for his hypocrisy last week.  It’s too bad the Register didn’t notice this before the general election.   On November 4 Grassley responded to an Associated Press story about AARP’s health coverage for employees by criticizing AARP’s support of the recent partisan health care legislation because it “cut Medicare by almost $500 billion…Despite their employer’s support, AARP employees are learning that the health care law is not going to address the top priority of making health care coverage less expensive.”   

The Register rightly observed that, before the health reform act was passed, Grassley had applauded the concept of taxing high-cost health plans because their “Cadillac” coverage encourages people to overuse health services, driving up total health spending.  Now that health insurance reform is the law of the land and Grassley and Company are sworn to make Mr. Obama a one-term president, Grassley has completely reversed course in order to find grounds upon which to criticize the law. 

Sen. Grassley’s lack of integrity was just as blatant during the debate over the new law when he professed to pursuing bi-partisan cooperation with Sen. Max Baucus, all the while speaking out of the other side of his mouth with such antics as repeatedly telling crowds of Iowans that he opposed “pulling the plug on Grandma.”   For weeks he conveniently (for him) omitted noting that no such a provision had ever been proposed.

Following the general election of 2008, Sen. Grassley abandoned the integrity for which he had become famous over several decades, and that is why I did not vote for him this year.  I wish the Register had paid closer attention before it endorsed his reelection.  It was a mistake.