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Tuesday, February 8
John Drury: Bold Ideas
by
John Drury
on Tue 08 Feb 2005 08:09 PM CST
 Bold Ideas
by John Drury
The Republicans in the Iowa Senate released their economic development
plan two weeks ago today and they have gotten remarkable press coverage
since then. Below is my letter to the editor printed in the Mason City
Globe Gazette the Sunday following their announcement. An excerpt was later
printed in The Des Moines Register.
Dear Editor:
The
Iowa Senate Republicans have released their economic development plan.
This plan is an alternative to the Grow Iowa Values Fund that was
developed two years ago and then shot down in the last legislative
session. There are some aspects of the Republican proposal I can
appreciate, but giving away more of our desperately needed state
revenue at a time of a budget crisis is not one of them.
One of
the key components of their plan is to eliminate income tax for people
under the age of 30. Apparently, they believe that having to pay income
tax is what is causing our 22-29 year olds to leave the state in
droves. The average yearly tax savings would be about $600 for this age
group. That amounts to $50 per month.
It isn’t the $50 a month
in taxes that is driving our well-educated youth to other states. It is
because they can make thousands more per year elsewhere. When a teacher
can go across the border and make $10-$15,000 more per year for the
same position, do our Republican leaders truly believe that saving $600
a year is going to keep them in Iowa?
Eliminating income tax for
those under 30 would cost the state approximately $200 million yearly,
according to the nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency. The state of
Iowa simply cannot afford this plan.
While it’s good to see that
Republicans at least recognize the problem of young people leaving the
state, this part of the plan only serves to show how out of touch the
Senate Republicans are with the reasons why.
Signed, John Drury
The
Friday following the announcement I attended a legislative forum in
Clear Lake. When someone inevitably asked our Senator about this plan,
he said that the headline of the plan was not supposed to be about
eliminating income tax for twenty-somethings. Instead, it was some of
the tax breaks and incentives to business that were supposed to be the
attention grabber.
Yes, tax incentives to business, that's a
new concept, sure to grab a headline I thought. Just once, I'd like to
hear a Republican lay it on the line and tell it like it is. I would
certainly have more respect for them even though it might go something
like this:
Constituent: “Sen. Rascal, can you explain how the No Tax Under 30 Plan is really going to help Iowa?”
Sen. Rascal: “Well,
that's not really going to do anything other than make some more young
Republicans, so you really need to look at that part of the plan as
more of a recruitment effort by the Republican Party. We are well aware
that saving $600 per year in income tax is less than chump change and
will have no effect other than to train our young-uns to hate paying
taxes. But thanks for the question, that’s a good question, I’m glad
you asked it because it’s a good question.”
Another
explanation of the No Tax Under 30 plan I heard that day was that the
Governor asked for bold ideas. Yes, that’s true, he did ask for bold
ideas but continuing to hand out more of our state revenue for no
return during a difficult budget crisis is not a bold idea. While other
states have held onto their revenues during hard economic times, Iowa
has continued to cut revenues leaving us unable to properly fund our
most basic services.
Perhaps the Senate Republicans thought the Governor was asking for old ideas.
On another topic, the ruling on the Canadian Outlet was issued today. Judge
James Drew issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the Huffs from
selling, receiving and processing prescription drug orders which are
placed with and filled by a Canadian pharmacy.
You'll remember from an earlier column that the Canadian Outlet was a business owned
by Scot and Cheryl Huff of Mason City. Customers received their
prescriptions from their doctors, then brought them to the Canadian
Drug Outlet where the drugs were then ordered from Canadian pharmacies
over the Internet. The pharmacies then shipped the drug directly to the
customers’ homes. The pharmacies paid the Huffs a commission on orders
received.
In
the ruling the judge wrote, “It is undeniable that the cost of
prescription medication in this country is causing extreme hardship for
many, especially senior citizens. Additionally, the fact that many
prescription drugs are available at a much lower cost in Canada
compared to the United States is extremely difficult to understand.
However, the desirability of allowing prescription drugs to be
purchased from foreign countries is an issue for the Legislature to
address.”
I couldn’t agree more, and I would suggest that you ask your legislators the following question at your earliest opportunity.
“Iowa
is in the top five in the percentage of its elderly population. Since
the federal government has failed its people on this issue, don’t you
think the state of Iowa has a moral obligation to meet the needs of
Iowans who cannot afford the drugs that are prescribed to them?”
“Thanks for the question, that’s a good question, I’m glad you asked it because it’s a good question.”
Tuesday, February 1
Extreme Makeover: GOP Edition
by
Chad Thompson
on Tue 01 Feb 2005 12:34 PM CST
 Extreme Makeover: GOP Edition
This past weekend, three things came to my attention that were - to put it mildly - completely unreal.
One.
A 'leak' from a GOP Congressional retreat detailing the strategy (with
example speeches!) to sell the phase-out of Social Security. Here
it is (via Kos) - a fairly large PDF document:
Social Security Phase-Out Playbook
Of course, this isn't surprising - it's par for the course.
Two. The Los Angeles Times running an article detailing the marketing campaign for February (Black History Month): The GOP is the party of Civil Rights.
Bush,
who keeps a bust of Lincoln prominently displayed in the Oval Office,
is making Civil War references a staple of his speeches promoting
democracy overseas and policy changes at home. And
a glossy, GOP-produced "2005 Republican Freedom Calendar," spotlighting
key moments in the party's civil rights history, has been distributed
to party officials nationwide.
"We
started our party with the express intent of protecting the American
people from the Democrats' pro-slavery policies that expressly made
people inferior to the state," Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach)
wrote in a letter printed on the calendar.
The
letter continued: "Today, the animating spirit of the Republican Party
is exactly the same as it was then: free people, free minds, free
markets, free expression, and unlimited individual opportunity."
In order
to make inroads on this strategy, Sen. George Allen (R) is
co-sponsoring a bill condemning the Senate for filibustering
anti-lynching laws earlier in the century. Sen. Allen is hoping
that the association is made with the "Democratic Party" being
associated with this - working hard to avoid the reality that the prime
movers in such campaigns were people like then-Democrat,
soon-Dixiecrat, then-Republican Strom Thurmond.
Sen. Allen also has his own skeletons in the closet. (As little as four years ago...)
According
to the Associated Press in 2000, Allen was discovered to have been
displaying a hangman's noose and the confederate flag in his law
office. As governor, Allen "signed a Confederate Heritage Month
proclamation without denouncing slavery." Allen also "opposed a state
holiday honoring Martin Luther King" and referred to the NAACP as an
"extremist group."
According to reporters, Allen did not apologize, but instead "defended the flag and noose as mere decorations."
Three.
On a related note, one of the best-selling 'conservative' books lately
has been a book titled "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American
History". The New York Times Book Review published its take on the book:
If
you're going to call a book "The Politically Incorrect Guide to
American History," readers will expect some serious carrying on about
race, and Thomas Woods Jr. does not disappoint. He fulminates against
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, best known for forcing restaurants and
bus stations in the Jim Crow South to integrate, and against Brown v.
Board of Education. And he offers up
some curious views on the Civil War - or "the War of Northern
Aggression," a name he calls "much more accurate."
The
introduction bills the book as an effort to "set the record straight,"
but it is actually an attempt to push the record far to the right. More
than a history, it is a checklist of arch-conservative talking points.
The New Deal public works programs that helped millions survive the
Depression were a "disaster," and Social Security "damaged the
economy." The Marshall Plan, which lifted up devastated European
nations after World War II, was a "failed giveaway program." And the
long-discredited theory of "nullification," which held that states
could suspend federal laws, "isn't as crazy as it sounds."
It
is tempting to dismiss the book as fringe scholarship, not worth
worrying about, but the numbers say otherwise. It is being snapped up
on college campuses and, helped along by plugs from Fox News and other
conservative media, it recently soared to No. 8 on the New York Times
paperback nonfiction best-seller list. It is part of a boomlet
in far-right attacks on mainstream history that includes books like Jim
Powell's "FDR's Folly," which argues that Franklin Roosevelt made the
Depression worse, and Michelle Malkin's "In Defense of Internment," a
warm look back on the mass internment of Japanese-Americans during
World War II.
It
is not surprising, in the current political climate, that liberal
pieties are being challenged, and many of them ought to be. But
the latest revisionist histories are disturbing both because they are
so extreme - even Ronald Reagan called the Japanese internment a "grave
wrong" and signed a reparations law - and because they seem intent on
distorting the past to promote dangerous policies today. If
Social Security contributed to the Depression, it makes sense to get
rid of it now. If internment was a good thing in 1942, think what it
could do in 2005. And if the 14th Amendment, which guarantees
minorities "equal protection of the law," was never properly ratified -
as Mr. Woods argues - racial discrimination may be constitutional after
all.
The author, Dr. Woods - also has a political group.
So,
given the perfect storm of all of these things - it seems that what was
once considered the lunatic fringe has now found a new home in the
'mainstream' in 2004 America.
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