Author Archive
Republican Report Card
The Republicans gave themselves a report card this week. Completely failing grade. They seem to understand lately that their party is struggling, but due to their failure to support education of any kind, they will again fail to learn why.
May I offer some suggestions?
It’s the racism. There are racists in your party, and none of you call them on it in public. It’s the religious hypocrisy. You keep trying to legislate morality according to your view of Christianity. You keep failing to use our country’s pooled resources to actually work on Christ’s mission of feeding, teaching and healing. The legislating of morality issue wouldn’t be so objectionable if you actually understood Christianity. None of you give any credence to Jesus’ actual examples. All you do is close your eyes and shout rules, rules, rules.
The crucifixion and the resulting New Covenant compel us to place grace above Old Testament rules. It’s the economic selfishness combined with stupidity. When corporations and billionaires are given tax breaks, they don’t add jobs, they pay their upper level employees more. If they had been taxed reasonably the past ten years, the spending on infrastructure would have grown and stabilized the economy.
Your stance on “obamacare” is stupefying. You chant “socialism,” and refuse to consider any ramifications of universal health care. Imagine businesses not having to offer health benefits, or to have the entire workers compensation program removed. Imagine workers not tied to jobs for healthcare. Minimum wage workers are never going to make enough to pay bills, save for retirement and buy health “insurance.” Healthcare is not a reward for exceptional people, it is a basic need for a stable economy.
It’s your hypocrisy about cutting spending and waste. Fraud and graft committed by rich republicans cause more waste and instability than any social program . You call social security a program for moochers, and have no comment on all of the retirees who lost everything to criminal actions by the executives at Enron.
It is your failure to regulate businesses whose shortcomings affect the entire world and its future. Instead of ruining the earth even more with your fracking schemes, choose to invest in renewables now.
It’s your war on women. Women are not property. Your “traditional marriage” interpretation is based on the tradition of women being “owned “by their fathers and husbands. It’s your failure to understand that you don’t get to decide what sexual morality is.
It’s your failure to understand that population growth does not equal economic growth. We need to a) increase the percentage of current population productively engaged in our economies, and b) use birth control to control population growth. We face serious land and water distribution problems.
It’s your disrespect for working class people. Workers deserve an inclusion in the teamwork concept at their jobs. This is not communicated by the attitude of “take it or leave it, I can hire ten other people at your current wages.”
It’s your attitude towards education. The Bible is not a science textbook. Smart, poor kids deserve all the help we can give. It is your refusal to admit that you want to gut education programs because most corporations benefit financially from having a larger pool of uneducated workers to take advantage of.
It is your failure to adequately define family values. Does “octomom’s desire for more children than she can afford fit the definition?
Maybe we need to tax members of “right to life” groups a special tax to cover society’s costs of inadequately raised children.
Maybe we should charge Republicans a war tax to pay for Bush’s war.
Obviously an incomplete list.
Laura Twing lives in Cedar county, with her husband and various animal companions.
Guns And Civility In Cedar County
Regarding the Cedar County Democrats Central Committee February meeting on Feb 12:
Thank you to Larry Hodgden and Sheriff Wethington for working together to provide a community forum about gun issues. There was a good turnout.I thank the Sheriff for his technical information on the various guns, and the audience for their civility throughout the presentation and questions.
We live in a unique country. We have many things to treasure about this land, and we all focus on our favorites. We are made up of people with many backgrounds and experiences. Even the original documents outlining our philosophies and legal theories were the result of many hours of discussion and compromises, not easily reached unanimous decisions. In the country’s “marriage” of so many differing views, input needs to be offered and received civilly, and discussed from a “bigger picture” point of view.
The Bill of Rights was added to our constitution after the fact, by men who spent a lot of time deliberating the wording. What then, do we make of their decision to begin the 2nd amendment with the militia clause? We do have a lot of personal and community heartache caused by the use of guns. If we rule out doing nothing to change that as one of our options, where do we start? How can those who wish to use guns for law-abiding purposes help their own interests by keeping guns out of the hands of “bad people?”
Guns are a unique tool. One can certainly use a car to kill people, but almost no one buys a car for that purpose. One cannot use a gun for transportation. One can definitely use a hammer to kill a person, but nearly all hammers are purchased to repair or build things. One cannot use a gun to build a house. One can use knives to kill people, but most knives are not bought with that in mind. I use mine for slicing bread, vegetables and baling twine. Guns can’t do any of that.
What guns do well is to frighten or kill people. They can do this from a distance, through doors, past other obstacles that would keep you safe from someone with a knife. Guns, as a unique tool, require unique circumstances in our legal system.The American attitude of self-reliance, taking care of one’s self made our country what it is today. Who could have conquered the West with a different attitude? We no longer have any “west” left to conquer. We have finite borders, many more people, roads and communication systems undreamed of by our ancestors. We have become a very complex society.
Should we work on improving our ‘rule of law’ system by properly funding law enforcement, or scrap it in favor of every man for himself? Should we throw all the blame on “evil” people, or change our attitudes about mental illness, and work at providing appropriate medical help for people with problems?
What changes would you suggest? Requiring licensing and liability policies as we do with cars? Could law-abiding gun owners be more vocal about advocating the responsibilities of gun-ownership? Changing our cultural attitudes about what defines the balance between using the gun as a last resort, versus using it anytime someone startles you?
Perhaps you have heard the saying, “the only constant in life is change.” Our culture changes daily in tiny ways and occasionally in big bursts. What we cannot do is pick a time in history and remain there. All of our rights, God-given and otherwise, bump up against the rights of others.
When and where do we place the boundaries?
Laura Twing lives in Cedar county, with her husband and various animal companions.
Tags: cedar county iowa, community meetings on guns, ending gun violence in Iowa, gun violence | 
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Iowa Legislature Should Focus On Reality Not Ideology
The 2013 Iowa legislative session has begun. There is a lot of talk about education reform and property tax issues.
I would like to talk about conservative ideals versus reality.
Previous sessions have invested a lot of time into anti-abortion and gay marriage issues. Does anyone have a breakdown of how much legislative payroll has been spent on that? Both of these are a waste of time, serving only to make conservatives “feel good” and not actually improving life for anyone. Will an amendment to ban gay marriage cause domestic abuse to disappear? Are most of the children going through our DHS being parented by gays? Do gay married people never visit their parents or volunteer in their local communities?
The same goes for anti-abortion efforts. Will banning abortions prevent child abuse? Will banning abortions cause all parents to make wise decisions in the future?
I can tell you that none of the abortions performed today, yesterday, last week or ever will affect my life or that of my community. There were equal odds that the children aborted would have been a help or a hindrance to their communities.
I can however tell you that unaborted fetuses that become children and that grow up with inadequate parenting do affect my life and that of their communities.
Heartbeat or not, embryos and fetuses are not sentient, separate beings. They are not “persons.” They do not have rights to finish developing into a full term baby. Women in the middle of their lives do have a right to terminate a pregnancy and control their life’s path.
Conservatives’ pursuit of ideals while ignoring realities that can be affected by legislative means are frustrating to say the least.
Just as sad, are the two main arguments that they claim as justification: Christian based arguments, for these ignore the entire body of Christ’s teachings, sermons, and actual examples. Instead, conservatives claim Old Testament and old covenant values as more important than Christ’s New Covenant gift of grace.
They also ignore the fact that basing morality laws on their version of religious values violates the spirit of our constitution.
We have so many urgent infrastructure and safety issues to work on this year. I hope that the legislature will keep its eyes on our reality and future, and let the ideals be a private prayer issue off the taxpayer’s dime.
Laura Twing lives in Cedar county, with her husband and various animal companions.
What Should Be Government’s Role In A Complex World?
Agrarian and Industrial Societies: A Change In the Industrial Revolution
Limited Government , Under God, Vote Republican
On my way to Iowa City, I drive past an election sign still standing proudly in someone’s yard. Some days, I smile to myself, amazed that anyone could think our country would be improved by that philosophy. Most days, it just depresses me, knowing how many people fall for such simplistic thinking.
By “limited,” do these people mean fewer laws and rules governing business and personal conduct? Perhaps they only wish to limit the ways in which the government can assist individuals.
I suspect they intend both, framing these ideals in a glorified yet incorrect version of our country’s history.
Yes, many of the Europeans who came to this continent were seeking a place where they could worship God in their own way, but many of them incorporated “their way” into community requirements with no tolerance for other peoples’ version of “their way.” After nearly 150 years of this intolerance, when our country separated from English rule, with its own infighting between Catholics and Protestants, the men who wrote our constitution saw fit to include a provision disavowing government sponsored religion.
How would the sign-owner then define “under God”? Would his “limited government” require all citizens to declare a belief in God? Who’s version?
As to limited government, our world is a completely different place than it was when we set out to create government by and for the people. Before us, all governments were the system by which powerholders kept that power. No governments were interested in the welfare of its citizens beyond avoiding rebellions. Commercial interests were controlled by and for the ruling parties.
Our world is now incomprehensively complex, compared to when we began this nation. We now have the ability to affect people whom we will never meet face to face. Our technologies allow us to cause great harm to the earth in many other places while we live safely out of danger.
We started this nation as a conglomerate of villages, small towns and farms. Most people lived on farms and produced their own food, or had access to hunting grounds. Not until the Industrial age did we have large numbers of people crowded together away from food sources. Medical care beyond bonesetting and nursing, was practically non-existent. People lived more active, healthier lifestyles.
When governments do not step in to help with some of the problems created by our increasingly complex and crowded world, those problems do not go away, they morph into other problems. One function of a government by and for the people, is to promote the general welfare of its’ citizens, and the scope of this function has changed along with our technology.
I so wish that “limited government” meant not legislating morality issues. I do wish that people would stop confusing religious freedom with “one nation, under God.”
Laura Twing lives in Cedar county, with her husband, and various animal companions.
Limited Government (Under God)
When our nation’s founders wrote their remarkable (in theory and in actual words chosen) document, they worked on many versions, arguing with each other over many points. They knew it was not dictated by God, not perfect, not a miraculous final word for all the ages. For the first democracy of its kind, at that time in history, they did the best they knew how, compromising with each other on various points.
And so it is now, in a very different setting of social complexity, technical knowledge, and faster pace of change, we need to redefine our expectations of our government.
We are no longer an agrarian nation. We never will be again. Our farms are now businesses. Having no food assistance for poor people in cities is completely different from having no food assistance for people with the time and place to grow their own food.
When our government began, medical care was very basic for everyone. Doctors couldn’t do much better than dedicated nursing care from the family in most cases.
Where else do we want to limit government? Education? In those days, rich children were educated at home, privately. Poor children left their families at very early ages, if they were lucky enough to find an apprenticeship somewhere.
Should we limit our national imagination and progress to only the already wealthy?
Courts and the justice system
Should we throw out all of our laws and start over from scratch?
At the time of our country’s beginning, all other governments were strictly and entirely about keeping the currently powerful people in power. They were not about capitalism. Laws made in every corner of the earth benefitted those in power, not businesses. Justice was rarely an issue.
If we limit laws and the justice system, people without honor will soon abuse others.
Laura Twing lives in Cedar county, with her husband, and various animal companions.
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- Too Many Little Elections?
- Like Iowa, Like Armenia
- Who Can Vote?
- Schultz Vindicated: Voter Fraud Proven!
- Schultz Raises Dead Voter Scare Again
- Repubs Stage Crime at NH Polls
- Wondering About GOP Caucus Count
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