Bleeding Heartland is a community blog for Democrats and progressives in the state of Iowa. Join up, post your thoughts as comments or diaries, and help build up current majorities and keep our leadership honest.
I was glad to see this press release a few days ago from Becky Greenwald's campaign:
For Immediate Release
Contact: Erin Seidler
July 2, 2008 515-537-4465
Tom Latham's Other 'Milestones' In Congress
Des Moines - Tom Latham announced today that he has held 450 town hall meetings since taking office. The Greenwald for Congress campaign thought this was a good opportunity to discuss Tom Latham's other "milestones" since taking office in 1995.
7 The number of times Tom Latham has voted to continue the Iraq War, even as recently as June 19th.
92 The percentage of Tom Latham's votes cast in Congress that were following the Republican Party line. That is even higher than Steve King.
507 Amount, in millions, for veteran's healthcare that Tom Latham voted against in 2006 in favor of tax cuts for people making more than a million dollars per year. (HR 5385)
"Looking at the numbers, Tom Latham isn't listening to the people of the 4th District at his town hall meetings," said Erin Seidler, Communications Director. "It's time to make a difference in the 4th District and elect Becky Greenwald for Congress. "
The National Republican Congressional Committee is advising Republican candidates "to establish themselves in a personal manner, emphasizing local issues whenever possible." A recent strategy document warns against nationalizing the Congressional races in light of the GOP's very unpopular national brand.
It's no surprise that Latham would brag about his town-hall meetings. He has every reason to go by the new GOP playbook in his swing district where Democrats have made huge gains in voter registration and now slightly outnumber Republicans.
Remember, Democratic candidates have won special elections this year in Republican-leaning Congressional districts in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi.
If I were Greenwald, I would remind fourth district voters every day that on Iraq and many other issues, Latham has continually marched in lockstep with President Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress.
Don't be surprised if it gets upgraded to "Lean Republican" before too long.
Greenwald is working hard. She participated in three Fourth of July parades yesterday (in Clear Lake, Waukee and Iowa Falls) and is raising a lot of money. She has another big fundraiser coming up in Des Moines on July 10, by the way--for details, call 515-564-3883. The more local contributions she receives, the better the chance that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and EMILY's List will fully commit to this race.
Five great conservationists have been nominated for the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation's 2008 Lawrence and Eula Hagie Heritage Award. I am fortunate to know two of the five. Their knowledge and commitment inspire me.
After the jump you can read the press release that briefly describes each nominee. Click the links below to read longer summaries of what these people have accomplished. The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation will announce the winner later this summer.
Use this as an open thread to tell us about anything interesting that happened today at a parade or other holiday event.
The number of spectators at the Windsor Heights parade was way down compared to last year. I think more people than usual went out of town this year, because July 4 fell on a Friday. There were still a lot of people lining the streets, but nothing like last year.
At least 20 employees of the Iowa Democratic Party have been demoted or fired and a coordinated state-wide campaign was essentially disbanded, replaced by a focus on the presidential bid of Sen. Barack Obama.
Details are sketchy, but the changes could have an impact on November's legislative races, with field staff that was previously working for down-ticket races now being placed on the payroll of Obama's presidential campaign and working almost entirely on its behalf.
If this story is accurate, it could be very bad news for down-ticket candidates. Obama's campaign needs only to win the statewide popular vote, and no doubt its field plan will reflect that reality. They have every reason to focus on increasing turnout in Democrat-rich, highly-populated areas.
However, most of those precincts are in the first, second and third Congressional districts, and/or in urban state legislative districts where Democratic incumbents are safe.
I was hoping that the Iowa Democratic Party's coordinated campaign would put a special emphasis on getting out the vote in the fourth and fifth Congressional districts, as well as in the battleground districts for the Iowa House and Senate.
Governor Chet Culver recently donated $100,000 from his campaign fund to the Iowa Democratic Party's coordinated campaign. If I were Culver, I'd want to make sure that turnout efforts focused on building larger Democratic majorities in the state legislature.
the biggest impact could be on state legislative candidates, who depend on the pooled resources of the coordinated campaign for much of their volunteer coordination and get-out-the-vote programs. Candidates in close races had already paid the initial fee to join the coordinated campaign -- up to about $10,000 each -- before word leaked out that the Obama campaign would not participate in the joint effort. Money that was paid into the coordinated campaign by candidates will be used to fund the summer canvass and, if financially possible, to extend the canvass through November. Canvassers will focus on down-ticket races. The rest of the Democratic operatives deployed around the state will report directly -- and exclusively -- to the Obama campaign.
The situation mirrors what happened in Colorado, where the Obama campaign announced last last month it would not be joining the state's coordinated campaign and instead would operate alongside it. The move drew criticism from some Colorado Democrats who fear the party will end up duplicating efforts and squandering resources.
The difference is that Colorado is likely to be much more closely contested in the presidential race.
I am concerned that Iowa Democrats will lose some close districts as a result of letting the Obama campaign run the statewide field operation. For the first time in my life, a Democrat is running a strong campaign in my own House district 59. As an environmental activist, I know we can't make headway on a number of important issues unless we get more good Democrats to the statehouse.
I would like assurances from the Obama campaign that they will dedicate substantial GOTV resources to the key legislative districts, and not only to the areas likely to produce the largest number of presidential votes for Obama.
if anyone wins in Iowa, they owe their victory to Obama's machine, not the Iowa Democratic party's GOTV machine. I wonder if this is quietly happening everywhere, or just in the swing states.
I've asked a lot of other state bloggers whether the Obama campaign will coordinate all GOTV in their states. Someone from Missouri wrote back to say that Missouri Democrats would never allow that to happen, because in 2004 the state Democratic Party cooperated with the Kerry campaign, and then the Kerry campaign pulled the plug on all GOTV in Missouri in October.
That makes me even more worried. What if Obama is feeling very confident in Iowa by October, but looks like he may be in trouble in other states? Could his campaign shut down the bulk of his Iowa field operation in order to invest the resources elsewhere?
Whether Obama wins Iowa by 5 percent or 10 percent is of no concern to me, but whether we have 51 or 53 or 55 or 57 Democrats in the Iowa House could make or break a lot of important legislative initiatives in 2009.
When I came back from my first tour of duty in Iraq, I spent a Veteran's day cookout with my uncle and his friends. My uncle's friends lived in Santa Monica at the time. The day was gorgeous, even by Southern California standards, so when my uncle and I took our leave of the festivities we decided to pass a moment on a bench and enjoy the day. We sat, chatting and soaking up the sun, when a car backfired.
I dove for the ground immediately, and only just regained my senses in time to keep from falling from the bench. My breath quickened, my pulse raced. My uncle, God bless him, knew what was going on immediately, and began to soothe me. It only took a moment for me to regain my composure, but even in Santa Monica, and even though I had seen no combat to that point, the stress of constant vigilance had followed me back to my civilian life.
I later learned what incoming fire sounds like (it's a frission, a small sonic boom that sizzles the air around it). A car backfire and a gunshot really sound nothing alike. Yet every time an old wheezing jalopy rolls by, I become uneasy.
The same is true for fireworks. Not the big, professional kind. While I don't enjoy them nearly as much as I used to, I can observe them with no apprehension. It's the amateur fireworks I can't stand. The whistling, popping, exploding-at-random-intervals kind that rub my nerves raw. All of my neighbors, it seems, are fireworks enthusiasts, and every 4th they come out of the woodwork. The night's events bother my dog less than me, while I spend the evening on pins and needles, jumping at every explosion, transported for a split-second back to that hellhole until I remind myself that I am home, that I am safe, that I survived.
If you know a veteran of this or any other war, take a moment tomorrow to make sure that they are all right, that the images of horror and death don't weight too heavy on them. That they are as close to normal as they'll ever be.
Personally, I hate fireworks, the noise, the explosions. Always reminded me of Pathfinder Force over Germany. Don't much like the 4th of July either.
But I just wanted to say that for a lot of people, this is a very tough day, especially with PTSD. While everyone else is celebrating, they're either alone, or pretending nothing is wrong. And every firecracker reminds them exactly what is wrong, and why they aren't the same.
It's easy to talk about sacrifice on the 4th of July. But who talks about what people live with?
I avoid amateur fireworks because of the safety hazard, but after reading filmgeek83's diary I'm even more convinced that they are a bad idea. Just go watch your local city or county's fireworks display. Don't mess around with stuff that could injure you or increase the anxiety of those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Unfortunately, John McCain's hostility to Amtrak over the years blew any chance of building a modern, effective passenger rail system before the price of oil hit record highs:
In 2000, when he was chairman of the Senate Science, Commerce and Transportation committee, McCain killed $10 billion in capital funding for Amtrak. He denounced Amtrak as a symbol of government waste, claiming, "There's only two parts of the country that can support a viable rail system - the Northeast and the far West."
He made these claims though Amtrak investment had the support of several notable Republicans. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi warned that Amtrak "is guaranteed and doomed to failure if we don't give it an opportunity to succeed. If you don't have modern equipment, if you don't have the new fast trains, if you don't have a rapid rail system, it will not work."
Tommy Thompson, the secretary of Health and Human Services during President Bush's first term, was Amtrak chairman when McCain blocked the funding. Thompson said, "The traveling public are sending a distress call to escape our nation's endless traffic jams and airport gridlock."
How much better off would we be if we had invested $10 billion in upgrading Amtrak's equipment eight years ago?
Click the link to read the whole column by Derrick Jackson. While Barack Obama has co-sponsored a Senate bill to increase investment in passenger rail, McCain's website has no mention of rail in the transportation section.
We can't afford to let McCain screw up our transportation policy any more than he already has.
If you are interested in passenger rail, I highly recommend these diaries by Daily Kos user BruceMcF:
Healthcare for America Now coalition includes a who's who list of liberal organizations such as MoveOn.org, the housing group ACORN, Americans United for Change, the Campaign for America's Future, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the National Education Association, Planned Parenthood, the Service Employees International Union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, United Food and Commercial Workers, and National Women's Law Center. Many state organizations are also participants.
Many of these are also participating in John Edwards' Half in Ten Poverty Initiative.
By the way, today is Elizabeth Edwards' birthday. Many happy returns to her and her family!
If you're not going out of town for the holiday weekend, I highly recommend that you march or ride with fellow Democrats in your local Independence Day parade.
These events are fantastic outreach opportunities for campaigns and a great way for you to meet like-minded neighbors.
It's not too late to volunteer. Just contact your county Democratic Party, or the campaign of a local candidate, or the Obama campaign office if there is one in your city. Ask where and when you should show up if you want to help out during the July 4 parades. (Keep in mind that some communities have parades on the evening of July 3.)
A few more tips to help you enjoy the parade are after the jump.
Barack Obama's communications director in Iowa for the general election campaign will be Brad Anderson, who was Governor Chet Culver's spokesman until May.
The Obama campaign hired Tripp Wellde to be Iowa field director. He was one of the early hires in Obama's Iowa campaign, arriving in Davenport in March 2007 according to Hotline.
Anyone out there planning to volunteer for Obama in Iowa this summer? Do they have anything special going on for the holiday weekend? I assume they will have a presence in July 4 parades all over the state.
The TPM Veracifier team put together a tremendous collection of clips on how pundits have distorted what Clark said on Face the Nation this Sunday:
Media Matters points out the obvious: the manufactured outrage over Clark's so-called attack obscures the fact that Clark praised McCain's military service, while noting that military service alone does not qualify him to be commander-in-chief.
The Register ran an editorial on June 23 with this headline: "Don't Leave Behind the High Achievers."
Huh?
The notion that gifted children "suffer" and are "invisible" vis a vis their lower-achieving classmates flies in the face of my impressions as a parent and the spouse of a teacher in the Des Moines school district.
Weep neither for gifted kids nor their parents. The kids, after all, are gifted. Just ask their parents. They get lots of mail printed on the district's gifted and talented stationery and plenty of bumper stickers trumpeting their prodigies' ascension to the middle school honor rolls. At least here in Des Moines, the gifted, not to mention the talented, have thrown off the cloak of invisibility.
I do need some help getting my mind around the concept of "languid" performances by "top students." Guess I'm just another low-brow clamoring for some one-on-one.
- Mike Wellman, Des Moines
Really, Mr. Wellman? You can't get your mind around the concept that some bright children don't do well in school?
It takes more than a letter from the school district and a bumper sticker for a parent's car to challenge and engage gifted students day after day. Too many of these kids get bored and tune out.
Mark your calendar for July 9: Moveon.org is organizing events at gas stations around the country in a "National Day of Action for an Oil-Free President." The main goal is to inform voters that
John McCain's campaign is run by oil lobbyists,1 it's funded by oil companies,2 his policies are straight out of Big Oil's playbook,3 and he won't solve our energy crisis.
After the jump you can read the full text of the e-mail I received from Moveon.org. It includes footnotes supporting the assertions in that quote.
No one in the entire country is more important to Democratic credibility on foreign policy than Wesley Clark. No one. And this isn't just my opinion, it is the opinion of Democratic congressional candidates who requested him.
There are those who think that Obama is being super secret strategic on this one, and playing both the McCain campaign and the media for a fiddle. However, if you really want to be strategic, you need to see the whole board. Going well beyond this media cycle, and even going beyond this presidential election, Republicans score a huge strategic victory if they are able to permanently damage the credibility of the leading Democratic spokesperson on national security.
Paul Rosenberg had a priceless comment in that thread:
Incompetent is you think tactically instead of strategically.
Idiotic is you think tactically instead of strategically about the strongest surrogate you have on your weakest suit in the game.
Getting back to the main point of this post, Moveon.org is right to hit McCain campaign over energy policy. He is worse than Obama on that issue, and the price of gas is at the forefront of voters' minds this summer.
If you attend or help organize one of the July 9 events, please put up a diary here to let us know how it went.
Starting a year from today, Windsor Heights will have its own zip code. A majority of the Des Moines suburb's residents who mailed surveys back to the U.S. Postal Service voted yes to the change.
City officials have been working toward this for more than a decade, but I don't think they would have succeeded if Ed Fallon had not challenged Leonard Boswell in the Democratic primary to represent Iowa's third Congressional district.
I've reposted the release after the jump. It lists not only all of the delegates and alternates, but also members of the various National Convention Standing Committees.
Not only does Steve King embarrass all Iowans on a regular basis, he doesn't even serve his constituents well. The Sioux City Journal researched the question How effective is Steve King?, and couldn't come up with many accomplishments.
In fact, only three of the 44 bills King has sponsored even made it out of committee. Keep in mind that for the first two of King's three terms in the House, Republicans controlled the chamber.
King has managed to get one bill through, according to the the Sioux City Journal. That was a resolution on "Recognizing the importance of Christmas in the Christian faith."
(First-person accounts of what politicians are telling their constituents are very useful. I hope other Bleeding Heartland users will post diaries about what they hear from elected officials and candidates (not only at town-hall meetings, but also any noteworthy radio ads or direct-mail pieces). - promoted by desmoinesdem)
Senator Grassley discussed the pending FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveilance Act) legislation today at a town meeting I attended. He either does not understand the issue or he purposely misleads his constituents. I don't know which explanation is more alarming.
When one woman asked about FISA, the Senator said it had passed the Congress and was going on to the President now. He then rambled on about how FDR intercepted postal mail during WWII and how Obama supports the new bill and how there are Al Qaeda cells in the US. He said the government has to listen to all foreign calls without a search warrant because "by the time you got a warrant the call would be over with."
Doesn't he know that warrants are typically granted after the fact for calls that were intercepted without warrants? Doesn't he know that calls are not targeted one at a time? If he doesn't know that stuff, he is less informed that many internet readers. If he does know, he has just misled his audience.
He went on to say there had been many terrorist plots uncovered since the warrantless wiretapping began, citing the preposterous plots to bomb the Holland Tunnel and to attack Fort Dix, and reminding us of the "dirty bomber" arrested at O'Hare Airport. Does he know that none of these episodes had anything to do with warrantless wiretaps?
I immediately followed up the woman's question by telling the Senator that the FISA bill was indeed coming before the Senate again next week. I argued against retroactive immunity for wiretapping crimes that had not even been investigated yet and reminded him that the wiretaps had begun before 9/11.
Grassley said that if the President told the phone company to do it then they should not be punished. He said the lawsuits would be more than the entire value of the phone companies. Apparently he thinks they are guilty and face a big penalty.
Luckily he did not say that, "If the President orders someone buried alive, it would be OK to do it." That question was raised in a Congressional hearing last week and the witness dodged it. It should be put to Grassley.
Our senior senator does not seem to doubt the unlimited power of the President. If the current President wants to secretly violate laws instead of getting them changed by a famously compliant Congress, Grassley has no problem with that.
A proposal before the state Board of Education would limit how and when teachers can lock up children and would ban risky methods of restraint, including chokeholds.
Teachers also would be trained to use "positive" alternatives, such as talking through disputes with children.
These proposed rules were probably inspired by media coverage of horrendous misuses of timeout rooms in the Waukee Community School District. After news of those incidents emerged last August, I talked with an acquaintance who pulled her son out of a Waukee elementary school because of a similarly inappropriate use of timeout rooms for discipline.
The Register reports that
studies have shown teachers confine students [to timeout rooms] for the wrong reasons.
A James Madison University survey of teachers at one Minnesota school found that teachers were more likely to lock up children for minor misbehavior.
"Without any guidance and policies, they make very poor choices, and kids suffer the consequences of it," said Joseph Ryan, a Clemson University professor who worked on the 2004 survey.
The rules to be considered by the State Board of Education would force teachers to keep records of how timeout rooms are used, and would also stipulate that educators
- Can't hold a child face down or otherwise use force that hampers a child's ability to breathe.
- Must provide "continuous" supervision of children in timeout rooms.
- Must get permission from an administrator to confine a child for longer than an hour.
- Can't lock up or restrain children for "minor infractions."
- Can lock the door of a timeout room only if they hold the lock in position, or the lock automatically releases when school alarms go off or power is cut off.
- Must use timeout rooms that are safe and suitable for children of varying sizes, ages and conditions.
I am not an expert on appropriate discipline for special-needs children, but those guidelines sound much more reasonable than what I have read about the way some schools have used the timeout rooms in the past.
Members of the public can submit comments on the proposed rules until 4:30 pm on July 8. The address to which those comments should be sent is after the jump.
There will also be public hearings on July 8 to discuss the rules, and details about where and when they'll be held are after the jump.
Experts say people who are wrongfully convicted are uniformly poor and disproportionately a minority. One recent study by the Innocence Project in New York, the nation's first program founded in 1992, showed at least 156 of 216 people exonerated through DNA testing were African-American, Latino or Asian American.
Many of the cases also fall apart when scrutinized for unreliable or limited science, faulty eyewitness accounts, false confessions, poor defense work and unreliable testimony from informants, experts say.
The nonprofit Innocence Project of Iowa began last year out of a discussion among lawyers at Drake University who wanted to start their own program. Years ago, the University of Iowa's law school provided legal assistance to Iowa prison inmates, but it never had a program focused exclusively on exonerating people believed to be wrongfully convicted.
Brian Farrell, a Cedar Rapids attorney who specializes in appeals and post-conviction cases, said the group could not find a home or funding at the state's two big law schools at the U of I or Drake, but both schools nonetheless liked the idea of getting students involved.
[...]
Mark Gruwell, program coordinator for the paralegal-legal studies program at Iowa Lakes Community College, said about a dozen of his students have been reviewing correspondence from inmates, which the organization has been soliciting since last fall.
Those students submit analyses and reports, which are forwarded to a committee in Des Moines. That committee decides whether to reject a case or look into it more. From there, law and journalism students at the U of I will assist pro-bono defense lawyers with cases worth pursuing.
The project has identified two cases to pursue thus far.
Drake law students also are expected to get involved in the future.
[...]
Farrell said the project's only financial support is from the Iowa Public Defender's Association, but it hopes to develop other sources of funding.
The article mentions David Flores, but it's not clear whether that case is one of the two that the Innocence Project will be focusing on. Flores has served 12 years in prison for first-degree murder. He will have a hearing next month to determine whether his sentence can be vacated. Des Moines police withheld evidence naming a different suspect in that murder case from Flores' attorneys.
The blog Talk Left, which often covers crime-related issues, has posted on Flores' case here and here.
The DNC is trying to narrow that gap, but it will need a lot more donations from individuals, because like Obama's campaign, the DNC is not accepting donations from Washington lobbyists or political action committees.
They've designed a t-shirt that says "Democratic Party--Not Paid For by Special Interest PACs or Washington Lobbyists." If you click this link and donate at least $30, you can get one:
I am not currently donating to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, because I am dissatisfied with the House and Senate leadership and prefer to give to individual candidates.
However, I encourage everyone to support the DNC, because I believe Howard Dean's investment in the 50-state strategy will pay huge dividends to our party. Two or three years ago, some skeptics thought it was a waste of time for Dean to invest in the state Democratic parties, but we have won three special Congressional elections in a row this year in Republican-leaning districts.
After the jump I've put the full text of the DNC's fundraising e-mail that went out today.
If you haven't donated to any Democratic candidates yet in the second quarter, what are you waiting for?
The various major blogs are raising money for some of their favorite candidates for the U.S. House and Senate, and many deserve your support. For instance, Larry Kissell (NC-08) lost to Republican incumbent Robin Hayes by only a few hundred votes in 2006.
If David Mizner, veteran of a hundred blog flamewars between supporters of Barack Obama and John Edwards, can give money to Obama, you can dig into your wallet and give money to some good Democrats today.
I've already donated to Rob Hubler and Becky Greenwald, who are running for Congress against Steve King and Tom Latham.
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