Miner Queries | Cherie Miner
After spending what feels like months writing about the orange menace recently elected president, I’m ready to turn to events closer to home. Unfortunately, the outlook here in Iowa isn’t much better.
Like voters nationwide, Iowans voted to give Republicans one-party rule in Iowa – with little evidence it will help citizens.
Recent articles paint an ugly future for the next state most likely to inspire a book entitled, “What’s the matter with . . .?”
In case you’re not familiar with Thomas Frank’s 2005 book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, it outlines how a firmly populist state turned into a solid Republican bastion. Its prescient publication was followed by the election of former Senator Sam Brownback as the state’s governor on a solidly right-wing Republican platform. And the results?
The Kansas City Star recently reported economic conditions in Kansas were so poor, Brownback’s administration has tried to bury a report it commissioned. “Because the reports never showed that the 2012 income tax cuts he and the Legislature approved were injecting new life into the state’s economy. Instead, they revealed that Kansas far too often was doing poorly on crucial financial measuring sticks when compared to other states in this region as well as all of the United States. Even worse, Kansas sometimes was faring worse than it had before Brownback became governor.”
As both the Des Moines Register and Cedar Rapids Gazette reported, Iowa’s Revenue Estimating Conference recently projected a $100 million shortfall in our budget. So when the legislature resumes in early January, we can expect calls for more cuts in government spending. Iowa’s legislators, especially Republicans, refuse to tax to cover services, instead preferring to cut schools, health care and benefits for Iowa’s civil servants.
The editorial staff of the Cedar Rapids Gazette wrote on Dec. 15, “Spending always should be scrutinized. But it seems there’s too little scrutiny aimed at the lengthy list of the tax reductions, carve outs and credits lawmakers have handed out over the years, each sapping available revenues… Over the years, lawmakers from both parties have given away tax exemptions, deductions and credits to an array of special interests lobbying for a break. Individually, the cuts look small. Added together, they have a significant budgetary impact.”
The Gazette’s staff predict a number of contentious issues in the coming session: tax cuts, education savings accounts (which they call “a ruse”), privately run charter schools, accelerated rural school consolidation, continuing preschool education, refusing to pass a bullying program and not renewing the 1 cent sales tax for school infrastructure.
Likewise, State Senator Herman Quirmbach wrote in The Des Moines Register: “As chair of the Senate Education Committee for the last six years, I have seen a lot of right-wing education bills from certain Republicans. As education chair, I have been able to put the brakes on. No more. Now there are no brakes, or if there are, they have to be supplied by ordinary Iowans who care about public education.”
So if Iowans don’t want public schools gutted, we are going to have to march to the Capitol and bang our pots and pans.
In addition, we can look forward to a health care crisis. On Dec. 21, Iowa Starting Line reported the latest on Iowa’s privatization of Medicaid: “‘Catastrophic’ was the word used by one of the managed care organizations to describe the current state of affairs with the Reynolds/Branstad privatization effort, in a letter they sent to state officials. The state’s actions ‘jeopardizes the sustainability of the Iowa Health Link program,’ said another. The three organizations’ blunt appraisal of the setup confirmed many Iowans’ worst fears about the rushed and secretive switch over to a privately-run Medicaid system.”
Blind faith in partisan politics, citizens’ lack of awareness of government and media outlets too obsessed with false balance instead of transparency helped create this morass. Add to that a cabal of wealthy businessmen using campaign financing and all the above to buy government, and we’re in a dangerous place.
It’s starting to look a lot like Kansas.
Cherie Miner is a local parent, community volunteer, freelance writer and artist. In a former life, she was a corporate writer and public relations professional. Contact her at news@redoakexpress.com or on Facebook.