Matt Sinovic is the executive director of Progress Iowa, a research, communications, and issue advocacy organization with a network of more than 75,000 across the state and country.
Iowans work hard to take care of our families. We want leaders who will do what’s right so that we can do our best. But for the past decade, the needs of working families have been ignored by Corporate Kim Reynolds.
Fewer Iowans are working today than when Corporate Kim Reynolds took office. There aren’t enough workers to keep schools, hospitals, and small businesses open. But the governor continues to double down on the policies that created her workforce crisis. The ones that give the wealthy and big businesses tax breaks, while taking money away from our public schools, public safety, and health care services.
Just last week, she signed her unfair tax bill into law that rewards wealth, not work. Under her plan, Iowa’s highest earners will receive a massive tax cut, while potentially increasing taxes on the poorest in our state.
Corporate Kim Reynolds has also sold out our kids with her disastrous education policies. While Democrats in the legislature proposed investing $300 million in Iowa schools, Corporate Kim Reynolds proposed giving that $300 million to her corporate donors, robbing public schools to fund private schools instead.
And for far too long, Corporate Kim Reynolds has stood in the way of our access to health care. She has outsourced health care to private companies who get to decide whether we live or die based on profit. And she has prevented Iowans from accessing critical health care like family planning services and abortion.
Iowans understand that we are part of a community and stronger when we come together. Unfortunately, Corporate Kim Reynolds uses divisive issues to distract us from the fact that she’s a corporate sellout who prioritizes her wealthy donors over hardworking families. Iowans want a leader who works to improve our lives, not a corporate sellout who only wants to tear us apart.
Top photo of the author published with permission.
1 Comment
ALEC
Gov. Reynolds is a staunch disciple of the rightwing American Legislative Exchange Council. She is an alumni in good standing. ALEC provides states with model right-leaning bills on issues such as deregulation and reducing individual and corporate taxation, combating illegal immigration, eliminating environmental regulations, tightening voting rules, weakening labor unions, and opposing gun control.
The primary objective, as per its strategic plan: “Significantly expand the reach of ALEC to new audiences and build up a network of concerned citizens who can help advance the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism.” This sounds like a giant, claustrophobic militia of unelected but identical authoritarian robots, reminiscent of a Stephen King novel.
More recently, the rightish arsenal includes opposition to LBGTQ rights, opposition to public school instruction about race-related history, opposition to school equity and diversity policies, statewide bans on books in school libraries, subordination of public health and community welfare to private interests, laws favoring K12 school privation and vouchers, denigration of public schools and teachers, and anti-social programs for needy, many finding their ways into Iowa’s code book.
In Iowa, Sen. Jesse Green, Rep. Mike Bousselot, and Rep. John Wills are the state ALEC chairs. The organization claims to be America’s largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism. It is hardly nonpartisan.
ALEC was co-founded by conservative activist Paul Weyrich, who also co-founded The Heritage Foundation. Henry Hyde, who later became a U.S. congressman, and Lou Barnett, who later became national political director of Ronald Reagan’s Political Action Committee, also helped to found ALEC. Early members included a number of politicians who went on to statewide office, including Terry Branstad of Iowa,
The ALEC agenda is not about solving a state’s problems. Nowhere in the agenda are repairing bridges, combating climate change, cleaning up polluted rivers and lakes, curbing gun violence, restoring the prominence of a state’s public schools and universities, making healthcare accessible, or helping families with childcare.
For me Reynolds’ alligence to an out-of-state agenda is sufficient cause to deny her another term in the Governor’s Office.
Deidre for governor.
iowagerry Wed 9 Mar 8:35 PM