At Dissent, Colin Gordon writes—What’s the Matter with Iowa?
Since January, much of our political attention has been drawn to the dangerously dysfunctional first hundred days of the Trump presidency, whose major policy forays, notably around immigration and health care, have been marked by a frightening combination of flailing incompetence and blunt cruelty. But as Washington has become absorbed by Russia, tax returns, and Twitter tantrums, the right’s legislative agenda has unfolded at breakneck pace in the states. In November, Republicans won a trifecta (control of both houses and the governorship) in four more states, bring the total to twenty-four (Democrats control just six). And it’s here that the most damage is being done, as the blueprint used in Scott Walker’s Wisconsin and Sam Brownback’s Kansas is unrolled in Iowa, South Carolina, Kentucky, and New Hampshire.
Consider Iowa. In November, the Republicans gained two seats in the statehouse (increasing their majority to 59-41) and six seats in the state senate—flipping control from 25-23 Democratic to 29-20 Republican. In recent years, Republican aspirations and priorities in the state—the usual medley of tax cuts, privatization, and starvation of the public sector—have been clear enough, as has the role of the senate in blocking passage of the nastiest and craziest legislative proposals. But no one fully anticipated how quickly and dramatically the new trifecta would act. The battle in Wisconsin unfolded over months after Walker took office in 2011. In Iowa it was more like a bomb was dropped; three weeks into the legislative session, the damage was done.
The first blow was House File 291, a gutting of public-sector collective bargaining that was unveiled February 7 and signed by the governor ten days later. As in most states, Iowa’s public-sector bargaining law was a bipartisan bargain struck in the early 1970s, which raised pay and labor standards for public workers (especially teachers) in exchange for an effective no-strike pledge. The new public-employee relations code outdoes even Wisconsin in dismantling this bargain. Bargaining is now limited to “base wages,” with annual increases limited to 3 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower. All other contract details—health care, pensions, working conditions—are off the table. Public-sector unions must win a recertification vote before each new contract (every two to three years). To twist that knife, the law requires the union to win a majority of workers in the bargaining unit (not just those voting) and it requires for the union to pay for the election. And unions are now barred from collecting dues through payroll deduction, a practice that was already voluntary.
Having landed a decisive blow against middle-class jobs and wages, legislators next took a jab at the state’s lowest-paid workers. Since raising its minimum wage to $7.25 in 2008 (just before the federal increase to that rate), Iowa has allowed labor standards to languish. In response, four Iowa counties raised local minimums, all pushing the rate over $10 by 2019. The merits of the local increases were clear: they effectively targeted poor working parents, raised the minimum closer to a basic living standard, and did so while posing little threat to employment. Enter House File 295, passed March 9 by the statehouse and on track to be approved by the senate. The bill preempts local action on minimum wages, paid family leave, and other conditions of employment. For good measure, it also strips cities and counties of the right to levy soda taxes or ban plastic bags. (Language aimed at protecting discriminatory landlords and blocking local civil-rights initiatives were dropped from the version passed.) [...]
[There’s a lot more of this destruction at the link—MB.]
QUOTATION OF THE DAY
”I do not see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea.”
~Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child, published in 1915
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2012—Troubled Waters: Two Americas, Revisited:
On December 28, 2006, while standing in front of a boarded up home in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans and surrounded by huddled masses of Katrina survivors, John Edwards announced his presidential bid. He chose that locale, he said, because it best illustrated the "two Americas" he had spoken about since 2004. The message was simple and delivered with heartfelt and palpable anger: one America works hard but still struggles while another works little and lives a lavish lifestyle.
This theme of "two Americas" and the twin idea of social injustice permeated almost every aspect of his campaign. Yet, back in 2006 and 2007, his message was met with skepticism in the traditional media. High-paid members of the chattering class shook their heads at his “angry” rhetoric and questioned whether the tone of his message was turning off voters.
Indeed, for many Americans, while they agreed with the principle idea of a divided America, they did so only in abstract sense. While one could sympathize with the 47 million uninsured, the families living paycheck to paycheck, and the senior citizens choosing between food and medicine, many could not empathize with these situations. Poverty, or even the possibility of poverty, was not a daily worry for most Americans.
Sure, in 2005, America was jostled into at least acknowledging the existence of this hidden America when Hurricane Katrina hit. The storm's waters glistened like a reflecting pool and showed Americans the one facet of our nation that was up until that point hidden in the shadows of national shame.
HIGH IMPACT STORIES • TOP COMMENTS
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Hey, surprise! Earth’s own Mos Eisley Spaceport, Trump Tower, is full of Russian mobsters! And there’s even a Spring Training league in Florida! Is there also a Breitbart -Russia connection? Thoughts on Gorsuch. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Nor does one.
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