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Saturday, December 31
Prairie Dog's Honor Roll 2005
by
Trish Nelson
on Sat 31 Dec 2005 11:00 AM CST
Prairie Dog's Honor Roll 2005
The Prairie Progressive
Rosa Parks’ greatness, said Congressman John Lewis, was that 'she got in the way.'
Gary Sanders, peripatetic gadfly from Iowa City, got in the way of the City Council and Board of Adjustment when they bent over backwards to make Wal-Mart feel welcome. Sanders and his intrepid attorney Wally Taylor filed a lawsuit to prevent the city from re-zoning 54 acres of land to accommodate a 22-acre Wal-Mart Super Center, and won a judge’s approval to depose city council members on what information – if any –they received outside of city council meetings. Send donations for legal expenses to Iowa City Stop Wal-Mart, 831 Maggard, Iowa City 52240
F. John Herbert also got in the way. The proprietor of Legion Arts drew attention to Cedar Rapids Mayor Paul Pate’s attendance at a prayer breakfast featuring Ken Hutcherson, a notorious opponent of equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans (“God does not condone homosexuality and neither will we”). Herbert publicly chastised the mayor for appearing with someone whose view directly contradicts the Cedar Rapids Municipal Code, which makes it illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of their sexual orientation.
“Philosophically, I’m pro-union. I just can’t see myself in one,” said a University of Iowa librarian. Thus an effort by UI professional and scientific staff to form a union went down swinging, despite widespread concern about hiring and classification inequalities, wages falling behind inflation, and job security in an environment increasingly hostile to public education, public health, and public employees. But dozens of P & S staff members found their voice, challenged UI administrators and colleagues to face difficult issues, and built considerable support in their first attempt to win the right to bargain collectively.
So maybe Gov. Vilsack, in preparation for a run at the Presidency, wanted to revamp his ‘English Only’ image as a small-town thinker from a nearly all-white state. Regardless of motive, Vilsack’s executive order restoring voting rights to felons who have served their time ended one of the most restrictive disenfranchisement laws in the country. 19 percent of those denied the vote in Iowa are black, even though the state’s population is only 2 percent black.
Dean Wright, professor emeritus of sociology at Drake University, said of legislation to prevent sex offenders from living within 2000 feet of just about everything: “Residency requirements are generally there to placate. These kinds of things make people feel like they’ve done something. Programs that make people feel good usually don’t work.” The Iowa Civil Liberties Union was equally outspoken, long before the Des Moines Register and legislators realized the unintended consequences of residency restrictions and their failure to make children safer.
Erin Buzuvis, the adjunct lecturer at the UI College of Law who received death threats for questioning the tradition of pink bathrooms in the visiting teams’ locker room at Kinnick Stadium, proved beyond a doubt that the only thing worse than perpetuating a stereotype is pointing it out.
Progressive Action for the Common Good exploded on the eastern Iowa scene, taking less than a year to enlist 1000 members actively engaged in a dozen social justice issues, from predatory lending to the Iraq occupation to workers’ rights. Two of them, Cathy Bolkcom and Karl Rhomberg, take to the airwaves (1270 AM) every Saturday morning to announce events and to banter about Quad Cities politics.
Eddie Moore, Jr., finally packed his bags for Seattle, but not before establishing the annual White Privilege conference at Central College as a major national event on race, gender, and class issues. Iowa will miss the Black Tulip of Pella.
The Prairie Progressive Iowan of the Year award goes to UI professor of pediatrics Jeff Murray for changing his mind after accepting a high-dollar job at Harvard: “I didn’t think the fun quotient was going to be as high there.”
—Prairie Dog
From the January 2006 issue of the Prairie Progressive, Iowa's oldest progressive newsletter, available only in hard copy for $12/yr. to PP, Box 1945, Iowa City 52244. Co-editors of The Prairie Progressive are Jeff Cox and Dave Leshtz.
Monday, December 26
This Week in Media
by
Arron Wings
on Mon 26 Dec 2005 11:20 AM CST
 This Week in Media
The
biggest news this week was all but ignored by the media. The
grassroots group Iowans for Better Local TV filed a formal Petition to
Deny with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), challenging the
renewal of a broadcast license to KGAN Channel 2 in Cedar Rapids, a
station owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group. The petition is
available online and the supporting affidavits and exhibits (close to
400 pages) will soon be available for reading at the Iowa City Public
Library.
Free Press was also active this week, filing a Formal Complaint with the FCC protesting “payola punditry.”
The
Senate confirmed two members to the FCC, Michael Copps (returning) and
Deborah Tate (new), on Wednesday. The confirmations fill four of
the five seats with a nomination for the fifth expected early next year.
A great editorial by Marie Cocco details the terrible track record of the press in 2005.
“This has been an annus horribilis for the American press.
Other
years have produced more spectacular scandals — the serial fabrications
of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair come to mind. But
nothing resembles the depressing mixture of press failure,
brass-knuckled administration enforcement of secrecy, and blatant,
taxpayer-funded promotion of government propaganda we suffer now.
Add to
this the corporate slashing of newsroom budgets that decimates staffs
and diminishes what the remaining, overworked journalists can produce,
and you have a poisonous stew.”
Click here to read the entire editorial.
And Free Press Minutes Media Minutes are here.
Please
consider becoming more active in Media Reform as one of your
resolutions for the New Year. Sign up to be an Free Press
E-Activist here or join Iowans for Better Local TV by sending an email
to feedback@IBLTV.ORG.
Thursday, December 22
Group Delivers Petition To Deny the Broadcast License of KGAN Channel 2
by
Trish Nelson
on Thu 22 Dec 2005 04:00 AM CST
 Group Delivers Petition To Deny the Broadcast License of KGAN Channel 2
Iowans for Better Local Television to hold broadcaster to a higher standard of service
Iowans
for Better Local Television (IBLTV) are gathering at the offices of
KGAN-TV to deliver a copy of their Petition to Deny the License Renewal
to Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The petition requests that
KGAN-TV Channel 2’s application for license renewal not be granted
until a public hearing is held to ascertain whether the broadcaster has
met the “statutory public interest” standard.
Television
station licenses are granted by the FCC for an eight year term. The
deadline for Iowa television stations to apply for license renewal was
October 1, 2005. The public has until December 30, 2005 to file
petitions to deny these renewals, or informal comments to the
FCC. Thus, it will be another eight years before citizens have a
chance to examine the performance of their local stations. According to
IBLTV Co-Chair Trish Nelson, KGAN and its corporate owner, Sinclair
Broadcast Group, have failed to meet the FCC’s programming and
management standards required of all television license holders.
The
petition states that KGAN owner, Sinclair Broadcast Group, appears to
have lied to the FCC, violates the FCC’s ownership rules, has a
technically inadequate signal, fails to meet standards for children’s
programming and does not do an adequate job of reporting local issues.
“Filing
a license challenge against a broadcaster is an enormous effort,”
Nelson said. “We’ve met to work on the petition twice a month for the
past year; we’ve visited KGAN nearly a dozen times; we’ve recorded,
watched and analyzed hundreds of hours of KGAN programming; we’ve read
hundreds of public comments; many of us have even taken vacation time
from our jobs to complete the project by the FCC’s deadline.”
In the
coming months the FCC will review IBLTV’s license challenge and report
back its findings to the group. “If the FCC is ever going to deny a
television station license renewal, this is the case,” IBLTV member
Arron Wing said. “Sinclair, honored by Business Week as one of the
worst managed companies in the country, manages to increase profits,
while its revenues decrease, by engaging in joint operating agreements,
cutting staff, and totally ignoring its statutory and moral obligations
to the community. If the FCC won’t deny a license renewal for one of
the worst television stations, and worst broadcasting companies in the
United States, perhaps there ought to be a congressional hearing on the
FCC’s performance as well.”
Iowans for Better Local TV -
IBLTV.Org
Thank you, Iowa!
10 more signatures needed
to reach 500 by Thursday noon!!
Click here: There is still time to
sign
our petition to the
FCC
Monday, December 19
Non-partisan 'Families' Focuses on Middle-Class Economic Issues
by
Trish Nelson
on Mon 19 Dec 2005 04:00 AM CST
 Non-partisan 'Families' Focuses on Middle-Class Economic Issues
The Dyersville Commercial
The following is an excerpt from a story in the December 14, 2005
issue of The Dyersville Commercial, a small town paper that still provides excellent
reporting on local topics of importance to citizens. The Commercial is available in print only.
by Josh Jorgenson
A new grassroots organization is doing its part to shift the
national political focus back to middle-class economic issues. Working Families Win held one of its first Iowa town hall meetings in Dubuque Wednesday night. Some of the issues the group hopes to address
are support for increasing the minimum wage, opposition to trade deals like
NAFTA and CAFTA, stronger union rights and the protection of health care and
pension benefits.
David Osterberg, the executive director of the Iowa Policy
Project, recited statistics that
indicated a declining number of Americans have health insurance. The former Iowa state legislator noted 25 percent of all positions
in the U.S.
are non-standard positions, which he defined as being part-time or temporary
jobs. Of those with non-standard positions, Osterberg said 79 percent are left
without health insurance.
The outsourcing of positions has also hurt American workers,
said Merle Duehr, the business representative for United Steel Workers Local
1861. Duehr noted the shrinking
workforce at one Dubuque
based company alone in the last four years. Currently, Flexsteel Industries has
285 employees, compared with around 600 in 2001. “We’ve got a problem in this country,” Duehr
said. “We need to elect officials, and I don’t care what party they are from,
that are going to support fair trade policy.”
Despite an abundance of regional Democratic Party elected
officials and candidates, along with a number of union members, at the event,
[David] Leshtz, the meeting facilitator,
said the program is intended to be a non-partisan. He noted Republican
gubernatorial candidate, U.S. Congressman Jim Nussle, along with other GOP
First Congressional District candidates, were invited to the event.
The Working Families Win initiative is coming to seven
states. The Dubuque meeting was the second of
such held in Iowa.
Iowans for Better Local TV -
IBLTV.Org
There is still time to
sign our petition to the
FCC
Monday, December 12
This Week in Media
by
Arron Wings
on Mon 12 Dec 2005 11:00 AM CST
This Week in Media
The
“must read” of the week is “When Message and Medium Look to Fool” by
Leonard Pitts Jr. It takes on the Bush administration's abuse of the media both here and in Iraq.
“...while political
manipulation of the news is hardly new, Team Bush has a long and
singularly sordid record of trying to turn the media into a wholly
owned public relations subsidiary. Now they’re taking their act
on the road. And get this: They’re doing it under the guise of building
democracy. Which is rather like stealing from the collection plate
under the guise of giving to the needy."
Click here for the full
story.
Indecency
is back to center stage as Federal Communications Commission Chairman
Kevin J. Martin pressures the industry to clean up offerings and the
Congressional Research Service Study says proposed indecency rules
likely violate First Amendment.
John
Nichols and Robert McChesney, founders of FreePress have a new book
out. “Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin
Elections, and Destroy Democracy.” Associated Press article is
here, and Buzzflash review is here.
A
transcript of “Town Hall Meeting on the Future of Media” held October
5, 2005 in Iowa City is now available here. Audio is available
here.
Free Press Media Minutes are here.
Monday, December 5
Greenspan Predicts Deficits Built by Nussle Could Lead to a Reduction in Benefits for Baby Boomers
by
Trish Nelson
on Mon 05 Dec 2005 04:00 AM CST
 Greenspan Predicts Deficits Built by
Nussle Could Lead to a Reduction in Benefits for Baby Boomers
Iowa Democrats.Org
DES MOINES – Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan
said the budget deficits, which have exploded under House Budget Chair Jim
Nussle, could lead to reduced Social Security and Medicare payments for baby
boomer retirees.
“In that taped speech to a conference in Philadelphia,
Greenspan said that Congress would likely have to make ‘significant adjustments’
in reducing benefits for future retirees. He said it appears the country has
promised more than it can afford to deliver in Social Security and especially
Medicare payments, given that health care costs have been exploding.”
[Associated Press, 12/2/05]
“Under Nussle’s watch, the U.S.
budget went from record surpluses to historic deficits. Now, retiring baby
boomers will have to suffer the consequences of Nussle’s reckless budgeting,”
says Iowa Democratic Party Chair Sally Pederson.
Next week, the U.S. House is expected to vote on $70 billion
in tax cuts that would add an estimated $20 billion to the $412 billion federal
deficit. Nussle has expressed his support for this plan.
(click here to read the entire article)
Iowans for Better Local TV
The Time To Act Is Now!
Sign our petition to the FCC
Thanks to everyone from towns all across Iowa who have helped double our number of signatures in the last 2 weeks!
Saturday, December 3
Working Families Win - A Town Meeting in Dubuque
by
Trish Nelson
on Sat 03 Dec 2005 11:00 AM CST
Working Families Win - A Town Meeting in Dubuque
Working Families Win
Higher Expectations for Iowa’s
Working Families!
A Town Hall Meeting for people concerned about good
jobs,fair taxes, and a healthy future for our community
Wednesday, Dec. 7
7:00-8:30 PM
Midway Best Western
3100 Dodge
Dubuque
We know that too few of us connect the dots between public
policies and our pocketbooks, and too few of us believe that things can be
different. Health care can be
affordable. Jobs can pay good wages. Our communities can provide a safe
environment for our children who want to stay and work here as adults.
Join us to learn more and to take action!
Panelists
David Osterberg, Executive Director, Iowa
Policy Project
Amalia Anderson, Project Coordinator, League of Rural Voters
Merle Duehr, Business Representative, United Steel Workers
Local 1861
Welcome: Roy Buol, Mayor-elect, City of Dubuque
Sponsors
Dubuque
Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO
National Catholic Rural Life Conference
Iowa Farmers Union
Iowans for Sensible Priorities
Iowa for
Health Care
Immigrant Voices Project
Iowa Federation
of Labor, AFL-CIO
Iowa Citizens
for Community Improvement
Iowa Postal
Workers Union
Iowa Citizen Action Network
AFSCME Council 61
League of Rural Voters
Iowa/Nebraska Primary Care Association
Women, Food and Agriculture Network
Service Employees International Union Local 199
Intro to American Government class, Northeast
Iowa Community College
Working Families Win/Americans for Democratic Action
Education Fund
For more information, contact: Dave Leshtz, Working Families Win,
319-621-4205
Iowans for Better Local TV - IBLTV.Org
Sign our petition to the FCC
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