We’re keeping this email short and sweet, but thank you once again for a powerful year and for being part of this space along the way. We’re ready to keep it pushing in 2026, and we look forward to staying in the fight with you then.
Last chance this year to protest MAGA Rep. Miller-Meeks!
Stop the Grinchiness! From our friends at Progress Iowa: “Join us Friday, December 19, at noon outside Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ Davenport office (201 W 2nd St, Davenport) for a festive holiday gathering to call out Rep. Miller-Meeks’ year of grinchy behavior! We’ll be outside her office for 30–45 minutes with speakers, caroling, and plenty of holiday spirit as we welcome Rep. Miller-Meeks back to Iowa after a year of downright Grinchy behavior. Bring your favorite Grinch-themed signs and festive attire.”
And now a word from former state senator and author of America’s Climate Century, Rob Hogg:
Please save the date for Called to Climate Action on Saturday, March 21, 2026, at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids. This is the annual statewide conference of the Iowa Faith and Climate Network, and I hope you can join us there.
If you or someone you know would like to attend and stay in the Cedar Rapids area overnight, either Friday night, March 20, or Saturday, March 21, we are encouraging people to stay at Prairiewoods Fransican Spirituality Center in Hiawatha. Rooms there will be available for reservation through Prairiewoods at 319-395-6700. When making your reservation, please let them know that you are attending the Called to Climate Action conference.
Also, if you are interested in helping with set up the day before the conference, please let me know.
Sunday, February 1, 2:00-4:00 p.m. – The local Citizens Climate Lobby is starting a book reading group, and for our first meeting on February 1, we are reading “The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future” by Gretchen Bakke. We will be meeting in the library at Christ Episcopal Church, 220 40th Street NE, in Cedar Rapids.
Up on Capitol Hill, Mariannette Miller-Meeks Votes for tariffs! Cuts healthcare! It’s our money she seeks! She steals from the ones she’s elected to serve To give her billionaire friends tax breaks they don’t deserve.
This season of giving, she’s taking away
Our tax credits and jobs, food stamps and ACA!
All to pay for more tax breaks for Trump and the richest
She’s all set to come back for a Christmas recess.
As our bills skyrocket this holiday season We know Miller-Meeks and her greed are the reason! But we steadfast Iowans won’t give an inch So join us in caroling: “Welcome home, Grinch!”
After a busy session of downright grinchy behavior, Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks is headed home for the holidays. Join us in welcoming her!
We will meet outside her office in Davenport with coffee, cocoa, and carols tailored to the behavior of our esteemed representative. Come hear from our speakers about the latest effects of Miller-Meeks’ votes and raise your voice in joyous dissenting song.
When: Friday, December 19th, 12:00 Noon Location: 201 W 2nd St, Davenport RSVP LINK
Bring your best singing voices and dress for the weather; it’s time to welcome home our very own Grinch of the Year!
Dec. 15 is the deadline to sign up on the ACA marketplace for health insurance effective Jan 1, 2025.
When I left the company and career of 25 years, securing health insurance was an issue. That was July 2009. There were no easy options, so I stayed on COBRA coverage.
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) gives workers and their families who lose their health benefits the right to choose to continue group health benefits provided by their group health plan for limited periods of time under certain circumstances such as voluntary or involuntary job loss, reduction in the hours worked, transition between jobs, death, divorce, and other life events. Qualified individuals may be required to pay the entire premium for coverage up to 102% of the cost to the plan. (U.S. Department of Labor website).
COBRA was expensive, so I looked around. I found the Iowa Farm Bureau offered a health insurance plan which was less expensive with reasonable coverage. More than farmers bought their plan, and so did my spouse and I. It wasn’t the best policy, yet it was good enough and met our needs.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law on March 23, 2010. When the ACA marketplaces were organized, I completed an online form and found that with subsidies, I was eligible at a lower cost than we were paying the Farm Bureau. I signed up for a plan and stayed with the ACA until I was eligible for Medicare.
Today, with Medicare supplemental insurance costs, our health insurance bill for two people is about $935 per month, not including dental or vision coverage. I looked at buying a plan for dental, yet the cost of paying regular care out of pocket was less expensive. The same with vision. Eye treatment related to a health condition was covered under the health plan. The cost for this is slightly less than what I was paying for COBRA in 2009.
The poverty guideline for a household of two is $21,150, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Our income is more than that, yet many struggle to bring that much home. Health insurance on such income? Without government help people can’t afford it.
All of this serves as a long build up to the significance of today.
I previously wrote the following about deadlines to sign up for health insurance on the ACA marketplace:
To be covered Jan. 1 you have to be enrolled by Dec. 15 and have paid your first premium. At this late date, I doubt Congress is going to act on the subsidies. In fact, last week, the U.S. Senate rejected extension of ACA subsidies proposed by both Democrats and President Trump. Here is from the website:
December 15: Last day to enroll in or change plans for coverage to start January 1. January 1: Coverage starts for those who enroll in or change plans by December 15 and pay their first premium. Open enrollment continues until Jan. 15 but there would be a lapse in coverage if you wait until then.
For people who don’t have health insurance now, the Dec. 15 deadline is meaningless. Even the Jan. 15 deadline can be difficult without the means to pay for a policy. There is a lot more to say on this topic, yet Tick! Tock! Life is going by at the speed of an eighteen wheeler with the hammer down.
I agree with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders it is time to guarantee healthcare for all in the United States.
According to the most recent data, the United States spends $14,570 per person on healthcare compared with just $5,640 in Japan, $6,023 in the United Kingdom, $6,931 in Australia, $7,013 in Canada and $7,136 in France. And yet, despite our huge expenditures, we remain the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right. (It’s time for the US to guarantee healthcare for all, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, The Guardian, April 29, 2025).
President Obama was handicapped by the influence of insurance companies while he negotiated the ACA. It is remarkable any healthcare bill at all was enacted into law. Step-by-step, Republicans are stripping away the meat of the ACA, and will continue until all that is left is its bones, which they will grind up for fertilizer. Eliminating the ACA subsidies is just one part of a long plan to remove all the good things the ACA accomplishes.
If you look at my personal journey on retirement health insurance, it was only with Medicare that my worries about how I would pay a medical claim were addressed. Before that, my privileged status as a white male who was able to find a job with health insurance enabled me to find care. The care was never what I wanted, but I didn’t go broke because we had bills after our child was born in a hospital, or a major surgery.
It is easy to say there should be, as Senator Sanders says, Medicare for all. Getting that done in the United States is nearly impossible with the influence of special interests and their money in Washington, D.C. This is what makes healthcare an abomination in America. I know we can be better than this.
I had several videos concerning the newest weapon corporations have to wrench every last nickel from our fingers. The practice of “surveillance pricing” is being brought out in the open. As it is right now it doesn’t look like there is a lot we can do. I am guessing that buying at the store and paying cash would keep your data from being sucked up by the AI monsters.
Anyway, this was the best of the bunch. It explains the concept of surveillance pricing very well. It runs about 19 minutes. Being forewarned about what is going on is at least a start:
Randy Rainbow’s newest (6 minutes, but a 2 minute commercial from @ :40 to 2:30)
Hanukkah is perhaps the longest continuously celebrated festival among humans. Celebrations go back to 164 BCE (before common era). The celebration goes back to the the revolt against the Greek Army by small group of devout Jews lead by Judah Macabee. The feast gets its name “Festival of Lights” because olive oil that should have burned for only a day lasted for eight days allowing the revolters to last out the siege.
As so many of the feasts around this time of year, the theme of the celebration is light. Lighting the Menorah is one of the main activities for the celebration. his year the festival starts tonight and goes through next Monday. As with many things, I may not be of the group but am more than happy to celebrate.
What to my wondering eyes should appear, but what seems to be a loosening of the iron grip that the Felon In The White House has on his cult. Maybe a Hanukkah miracle? Here is hoping!
A) Let’s go right to Hanukkah. How many candles does a Menorah hold?
B) Another gawd awful week in Trump world. What very red state spurned Trump’s push to re-gerrymander their state when the state senate voted the bill down?
C) Couldn’t be climate change, could it? What state is suffering through massive floods as an ‘atmospheric river’ rains down water on them?
D) The FIWH is getting involved in a corporate battle over what media property?
E) Why is the FIWH getting involved in this battle?
F) What time of day is the Menorah lit?
G) What grade did the FIWH give his economy in an interview last week before he went to make a campaign speech about the economy?
H) The senate failed to pass a bill concerning the impending gigantic raise in premiums for what?
I) In an action that would usually be declared an act of war, the US did what to a Venezuelan oil tanker?
J) What midwestern bred movie star turned 100 yesterday and shows little signs of slowing down?
K) What are the favorite foods during Hanukkah?
L) A federal judge ordered that US immigration officials could no longer detain what person who has been a focal point of Trump’s racist immigration policy?
M) The FIWH approached what newer issue by calling it a “hoax”?
N) Australia has begun its quest to keep children under 16 away from what modern problem?
O) Discoveries in eastern Britain indicate that man may have been making what 350,000 years earlier than previously thought?
P) What toy is often associated with Hanukkah?
Q) In yet another case of a Trump district turning blue, a Dem was elected to the state house in what state Tuesday?
R) Also Tuesday what major US city elected their first Democratic mayor in 30 years?
S) The Iowa-Iowa State played both men’s and women’s basketball this week. Who won?
T) Hanukkah has little impact in the popular culure with the exception of “The Hanukkah Song” performed by who on Saturday Night Live?
Republican billionaires now control every major social media platform, Fox News, CNN, WaPo, WSJ, CBS, and 200 local news stations in 100 markets.
They are creating a propaganda state that treats their misinformation as fact, and actual facts as conspiracies.
This is by design. – Melanie D’Arrigo
tip of the hat to all-hat-no-cattle.com
Answers:
A) 9 – 8 of the same height and a taller one in the middle called the shamash
B) Indiana
C) Washington
D) Warner Brothers – Discovery
E) SIL Jared Kushner’s company Affinity Partners is tied in with Paramount trying to take over WBD and Trump wants to see CNN come under control of a Trump friendly Paramount
F) after the sun goes down
G) A ++++++ or more pluses
H) health care more specifically government subsidies for those on the ACA
I) The US seized a Venezuelan oil tanker
K) Dick Van Dyke
L) Kilmar Abrego Garcia
M) affordability
N) social media on the internet
O) fire. While man used fire they were not able to start fires until scientists though 50,000 years, Now that timeline has been moved back
P) the dreidel
Q) Georgia – the district was +12 Trump
R) Miami, Fl
S) Iowa State won both – women’s 74 to 69; Men 66 to 62
T) Adam Sandler and here it is:
At the time our country and constitution have never been in more trouble, tomorrow – December 15th – is Bill of Rights Day.
Tom Harkin speaks at the Iowa Farmer’s Union last weekend:
“My friends, I am not overstating it to say we are at our most perilous time in saving our constitution, in saving American democracy, in securing for future generations the blessings of liberty and opportunity and personal freedoms since the adoption of the Constitution in 1788.” Sen. Tom Harkin
Former Iowa Senator Tom Harkin can still fire up the people. And he does it with the truth (20 minutes)
“Lincoln with malice towards none, with charity towards all. Trump with malice towards my opponents…and with charity towards none.”
“Trump and his team of dedicated modern-day Nazis and fascists are transforming America from a caring, inclusive, diverse, and respected nation, moving America, from yes, even Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill, moving us to a mean, loathsome bully on the top of the heap.”
Here is the question – Iowa has four Democratic candidates to fill this seat next November. Can one of them – Wahls, Turek, Sage or Henry – fill the seat the way Tom Harkin did? I believe any one of them can, but any Republican will only be a Trump stooge.
The University of Iowa opened what is called a “Center For Intellectual Freedom” at the university. As I understand it, the idea came from the Iowa legislature last year. Like so many projects fostered by the extremist right of this country, this Center has a very misleading name for the actual goals it appears to want to achieve.
Like the infamous right wing environmental bill of the George W. Bush days named “The Clear Skies Act” whose purpose was to gut the original Clean Air Act, the “Center For Intellectual Freedom” seems to have a goal of quashing true intellectual freedom and inquiry. How do we know? They told us. As a matter of fact, they are proud of it.
From an opinion piece written by David Randall and John Hendrickson (David Randall is director of research at the National Association of Scholars; John Hendrickson is policy director for the Iowans for Tax Relief Foundation.) published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen and the Des Moines Register
Gov. Kim Reynolds has just signed into law House File 437, which establishes a Center for Intellectual Freedom at the University of Iowa. Reynolds did a great service to Iowans — as did Rep. Taylor Collins, who shepherded the bill through the Legislature, and all his colleagues who supported and voted for House File 437. The new center will do a great deal to improve Iowa’s public higher education. It will improve intellectual diversity on campus, and it will help address Iowa’s crisis in civic education.
The Center for Intellectual Freedom will provide faculty, courses, and entire programs dedicated to teaching courses in American history and government that lead students to a greater understanding of the principles of the American Founding and the Constitution. Because the center will be administratively autonomous within the University of Iowa, it will be immune from capture by members of the education establishment who are allergic to depoliticized, truly civic instruction. Iowa policymakers still should exercise oversight, to make sure no bureaucrats attempt to veto legislative intent, but the Center’s administrative structure should make sure that a mission-aligned executive director can proceed without sabotage from the larger university. The ideologically extreme advocates of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) would undermine the center if they were given the chance.
While making claims for “intellectual diversity” with the “Center for Intellectual Freedom” in one paragraph, they also claim that DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) is extreme in the next paragraph, thus mocking their own claims.
Below is a conversation from Iowa City radio station KCJJ with Iowa State Representative Dave Jacoby where he and the interviewer peel away the dishonesty of the so-called “Center For Intellectual Freedom” and expose what extreme right wing agendas always want to do: suppress dissent and create their own narrative that is not to be questioned. (25 minutes) Note: Dave Jacoby serves on the state Education Committee.
The first day of the University of Iowa Center for Intellectual Freedom’s two-day inaugural event sought to answer two questions — what is wrong with higher education, and what caused these problems — with discussion from academics and activists involved with the center or invited by its interim director.
There wasn’t much debate among panelists and audience members, with the group seeming to agree that the root of the problems facing higher education comes from liberals and the ideas they bring with them.
There is little doubt that this “Center” is nothing more than yet another cog in the Republican led freedom suppression bandwagon. Iowa’s stature in education has gone from the top to the bottom 3 as noted by Captain Steve in the video. Thanks Republicans.
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)
And now a word from former state senator and author of America’s Climate Century, Rob Hogg:
Up on Capitol Hill, Mariannette Miller-Meeks
Blog For Iowa 