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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.
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
Wednesday, December 21
Raising the Issue of Impeachment
by
Caroline Vernon
on Wed 21 Dec 2005 05:14 PM CST
 Raising the Issue
of Impeachment
By John Nichols
thenation.com
All I can say is, it's about time
someone on the Hill demands accountability from the crooks who have
hi-jacked our country! Thank you John Conyers! I can't believe the
Downing Street Memo wasn't enough to reveal their nefarious intentions
early on... to top that, it's now completely obvious (to me) that Bush,
Rove, Cheney and Libby all had a hand in the outing of the CIA
operative, Valerie Plame. When will it end?. The corporate media is
just as culpable for letting them get away with anything and
everything.
At a time when we are seeing an
attack on our civil liberties like never before and cuts are being made
to social programs who help the most vulnerable in our society, I find
it ironic that the radical right has been so concerned with keeping
"under God" in the pledge of allegiance and yet they conveniently
ignore the last sentence; "with liberty and justice for all." What an
oxymoran... Even Orwell would be amazed!
As
President Bush and his aides scramble to explain new revelations
regarding Bush's authorization of spying on the international telephone
calls and emails of Americans, the ranking Democrat on the House
Judiciary Committee, has begun a process that could lead to the
censure, and perhaps the impeachment, of the president and vice
president.
U.S.
Representative John Conyers, the Michigan Democrat who was a critical
player in the Watergate and Iran-Contra investigations into
presidential wrongdoing, has introduced a package of resolutions that
would censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney and create a
select committee to investigate the Administration's possible crimes
and make recommendations regarding grounds for impeachment.
The
Conyers resolutions add a significant new twist to the debate about how
to hold the administration to account. Members of Congress have become
increasingly aggressive in the criticism of the White House, with U.S.
Senator Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, saiying Monday, "Americans have
been stunned at the recent news of the abuses of power by an
overzealous President. It has become apparent that this Administration
has engaged in a consistent and unrelenting pattern of abuse against
our Country's law-abiding citizens, and against our Constitution." Even
Republicans, including Senate Judiciary Committee chair Arlen Specter,
R-Pennsylvania, are talking for the first time about mounting
potentially serious investigations into abuses of power by the
president.
But
Conyers is seeking to do much more than schedule a committee hearing,
or even launch a formal inquiry. He is proposing that the Congress use
all of the powers that are available to it to hold the president and
vice president to account – up to and including the power to impeach
the holders of the nation's most powerful positions and to remove them
from office.
The
first of the three resolutions introduced by Conyers, H.Res.635, asks
that the Congress establish a select committee to investigate whether
members of the administration made moves to invade Iraq before
receiving congressional authorization, manipulated pre-war
intelligence, encouraged the use of torture in Iraq and elsewhere, and
used their positions to retaliate against critics of the war.
The select committee would be asked to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
To read the rest of the article, click here:
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
Saturday, December 17
Moyers has his say
by
Trish Nelson
on Sat 17 Dec 2005 11:00 AM CST
 Moyers Has His Say
FreePress
Bill Moyers became the central figure
in absentia in the controversy surrounding former Corporation for
Public Broadcasting (CPB) Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson. It was Tomlinson
who pointed to Moyers’ Now newscast on PBS as a chief reason for his
efforts to bring “balance” to public broadcasting by adding
conservative shows. Moyers has since left Now and is currently
president of the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy.
He spoke with B&C's John Eggerton in the wake of a CPB Inspector
General report concluding Tomlinson had violated the law by dealing
directly with a programmer during the creation of a show to balance
Moyers' programht-wing partisans like Tomlinson have always attacked aggressive reporting as liberal.
You are the exemplar of liberal PBS bias, according to Ken Tomlinson. Was your show liberally biased?
We were
biased, all right—in favor of uncovering the news that powerful people
wanted to keep hidden: conflicts of interest at the Department of
Interior, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and the oil
industry, backdoor shenanigans by lobbyists at the FCC, corruption in
Congress, neglect of wounded veterans returning from Iraq, Pentagon
cost overruns, the manipulation of intelligence leading to the invasion
of Iraq.
We were way ahead of the news curve on these stories, and the administration turned its hit men loose on us.
If
reporting on what’s happening to ordinary people thrown overboard by
circumstances beyond their control and betrayed by Washington officials
is liberalism, I stand convicted.
(click here to read the entire article)
(source)
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.
Women Voters See Health Care as Moral Issue
by
Trish Nelson
on Mon 12 Dec 2005 04:00 AM CST
 Women Voters See Health Care as Moral Issue
CQ.com
by Gregory L. Giroux
Health care has long been a paramount policy issue for voters - and one on which the Democratic Party traditionally has polled decidedly more favorably than the Republican Party, which tends to do best on issues of taxes and national security.
The latest survey to suggest a persistent Democratic edge on health care issues was released Thursday by two groups long allied with the party: Americans for Health Care, a project of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and EMILY’s List, the political action committee that promotes Democratic women candidates who support abortion rights.
The Democratic strategists who presented the results at an event in Washington Thursday said their party’s candidates in the 2006 midterm elections should use health care as a motivator to rally women voters who do not align with either political party — but who the strategists say will be decisive in next year’s midterm elections. The poll showed that women are more likely than men to identify health care as one of their top concerns.
“Independent and swing women voters can have a significant impact on the election,” said Ellen Golombek, SEIU’s director of government affairs. “Independent and swing women voters are clearly a force to be reckoned with, and health care is clearly an issue that moves them significantly.”
“Health care cannot be approached solely as a pocketbook issue,” White said. “Women see health care as a family value. For women, this is a morals issue, and if voters don’t hear it in that light, it will not be as effective as it could be solely as an economic issue.”
CQ Politics Weekly is a free newsletter published by Congressional Quarterly.
(click here to subscribe)
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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