“Strong Island Hawk” is an Iowa Democrat and political researcher based in Des Moines. Prior to moving to Iowa, he lived in Washington, DC where he worked for one of the nation’s top public interest groups. In Iowa, he has worked and volunteered on U.S. Representative Cindy Axne’s 2018 campaign and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 caucus team. 

I love a good argument. Maybe that’s because I hail from a family of lawyers and big talkers, all of whom very much like to argue. In any event, I love crafting a solid case for my position. Even more than that, I love to break down and pick apart weak arguments.

Over the past month, Governor Kim Reynolds’ private school funding plan has come under scrutiny from Democrats and Republicans alike—for good reason. I somewhat empathize with what Reynolds advocated. I transferred high schools, and it was certainly good to have the option—although for me, the better choice was transferring back to public school.

Anne Schechinger is Senior Analyst of Economics for the Environmental Working Group. This report, which she co-authored with the EWG’s Senior Vice President for Government Affairs Scott Faber, first appeared on the EWG’s website. 

The Environmental Working Group’s newly updated Farm Subsidy Database shows that federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2021 totaled $478 billion. This huge amount of taxpayer money does almost nothing to help farmers reduce their greenhouse gas emissions or adapt to adverse weather conditions caused by the climate crisis.

Our database update also shows that farm subsidy funding still goes to the largest and wealthiest farms, which can weather the climate crisis best, and that payments are getting less transparent, obscuring who has received almost $3.1 billion in payments. 

The Department of Agriculture’s subsidy funding could be used in much more useful ways that would help farmers in mitigating their emissions and becoming more resilient to hazardous weather conditions. Instead, it’s still a handout for rich landowners, city dwellers and family members of farmers. Even the USDA is benefiting, with one of its divisions receiving almost $350 million in payments.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Sometimes it’s easy to understand legislative proposals. Other times, not so much. House File 3, filed early in the Iowa legislature’s 2023 session, falls in the second category. To understand its potential effect on needy people, take a quick look at two preexisting food programs whose nutritional goals differ.

First, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the federal program once called food stamps. It exists to help low-income households and those on Medicaid buy groceries.

Second, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (commonly known as WIC) aims to meet the specific nutritional needs of its designated recipients. WIC doesn’t allow recipients to use those funds for meat, sliced cheese, butter, flour, or fresh produce.

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

This post about Presidents Herbert Hoover and Harry S Truman is driven in large part by concern about what Iowa may become under the anti-public education agenda that Governor Kim Reynolds spelled out in her Condition of the State speech on January 10. The Republican-controlled legislature then rushed to pass the governor’s school voucher plan.

Consider, too, that President Joe Biden might sum up the State of Union on February 7 as “perilous.”

Risks are inherent in systems of self-governance, but perhaps we can find some ray of hope in the lives and public service of two U.S. presidents who weren’t fully appreciated, despite all their meritorious actions.

Richard Sherzan (full bio below) is a lifelong Democrat now living in Coralville, who supports the principles of individual freedom, dignity, and happiness, which were advocated by John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Cesar Chavez.

I. Where are we? Economic underinvestment and economic decline

In my view, the Biden-Harris economic policies represent the same, old, outdated, and weak policies, which have spurred America’s economic decline since the 1970s. They helped Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election on a promise of an “America First” approach. 

New economic ideas and actions are needed, not only for the Democratic Party’s future political success, but for the American people to have a strong and prosperous 21st-century economy.

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

Not that she asked, but I have some advice for Rita Hart, the new chair of the Iowa Democratic Party.

Yes, Hart is an experienced practitioner of politics. She was twice elected to the Iowa Senate. She was the Democrats’ lieutenant governor candidate on the ticket with Fred Hubbell in 2018. And two years ago, she came within an eyelash—six votes—of winning a seat in Congress. She also is a former teacher and still farms with her husband near the Clinton County town of Wheatland.

Normally, I would trust the judgment of someone with her credentials on what her priorities should be as the Iowa Democrats’ top state leader. But this is the Iowa Democratic Party, and too many party activists, along with civic boosters and journalists, cling to the belief that the process of choosing presidential nominees absolutely and without question must begin in Iowa.

Pete D’Alessandro is co-founder of Campaign in a Box, a national consulting firm that specializes in progressive and first-time candidates. He lives in Des Moines and submitted this commentary prior to the Iowa Democratic Party’s State Central Committee meeting on January 28.

Two years ago, just after winning a seat on the Democratic National Committee, Jodi Clemens—who is one of the best grassroots organizers I have ever been around—ran for Iowa Democratic Party chair. Through the efforts of some longstanding establishment types, she was denied the position. I came to learn (off the record, of course) the winner’s positive qualities included not being “a Bernie person.” I think “Bernie person” is establishment code for not being “in the club.”

A full election cycle has passed, and we can now look at the results of that choice to bear hug the right-of-center, hide-under-your-desk establishment: total ballot box disaster.

The co-authors of this commentary are Tim Urban, president of Urban Development Corporation and a former Des Moines City Council member, and Lawrence Streyffeler, a retired Des Moines Public Schools elementary school principal.

The recent attacks by parents and politicians on our public schools are poisoning public education. Many states have recently empowered private education institutions by supporting charter schools, homeschooling, and state-funded vouchers for students to attend private schools instead of their local public schools.

Proponents argue that the declining quality of student performance in public schools warrants giving parents a choice where to educate their children. They often cite parents who want to enrich their children’s education, but cannot pay for it.

Such student outcomes are self-fulfilling In Iowa when public schools are starved.

Tim Nelson is a Des Moines-based campaign staffer.

The Iowa Democratic Party’s State Central Committee will choose the party’s next chair this Saturday, January 28, so I wanted to take a moment to explain why I am backing State Senator Sarah Trone Garriott’s campaign manager Brittany Ruland for the role.

First things first: I want to clarify that my support for Brittany isn’t in opposition to Rita Hart.

Dianne Prichard of DeWitt taught in public schools for 33 years before becoming a pastor.

I have questions for the legislators who voted for the “school choice” bill, which Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law on January 24. 

1. How will you support our public schools?

As House File 68 is written, vouchers will harm public schools. 

About 33,000 Iowa students go to private schools now; the governor predicts that number will increase by 5,000 students. Meanwhile, approximately 500,000 Iowa students will remain in underfunded public schools.

Jonna Higgins-Freese: Private schools choose their students. They have in the past, and they will in the future.

I’m slightly obsessed with George Lakoff, his cognitive science research about the metaphors we think with, and his recommendations for Democratic messaging (which we have mostly ignored; the national party fired him in 2006).

So you can imagine how delighted I’ve been to see Democrats finally adopting his suggestion to talk more about “the public.”

“Public Money in Public Schools” signs have been appearing all over my community for more than a year, and they have exactly the right message. 

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

You don’t need a crystal ball to see that private school vouchers appear to be barreling toward passage during the third week of the Iowa legislature’s 2023 session. These vouchers, or education savings accounts, or whatever you want to call them, would give parents $7,600 per year for each of their kids to attend a private K-12 school.

Although the outcome has been easy to foresee, it has not been easy to get answers to the many questions being asked across the state as Iowa lawmakers move toward this landmark change in education.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association Regional Director for 27 years until retiring.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ private school voucher plan, which is being rammed through the Iowa legislature, does more than throw public coffers open to private schools. It obliterates the line between church and state as a new entitlement spawns an unequal, two-tier publicly-funded school system. 

Ironically, 86 years before the US Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that a two-tier public-school system based on race was unconstitutional, the Iowa Supreme Court determined in Clark v. Board of School Directors, “Schools may not segregate students based on race.”

An unequal publicly-funded system didn’t work then.

It won’t work now.

Fresh off his assignment to the House Agriculture Committee, U.S. Representative Zach Nunn revealed a fundamental misunderstanding of who benefits from federal food assistance programs.

Although the first-term Republican told an interviewer that nutritional assistance goes “largely to blue state communities,” one federal food program alone serves nearly 10 percent of Nunn’s constituents in Iowa’s third Congressional district.

Glenn Hurst is a family physician in southwest Iowa and chair of the Iowa Democratic Party’s Rural Caucus. He was a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in 2022.

The Iowa Democratic Party is about to choose its leadership after another round of disappointing losses to Republicans at the ballot box.

Democratic candidates lost every statewide race except for state auditor. Iowa’s U.S. senators both hail from the Grand Old Party. Republicans now represent every U.S. House district in Iowa. Republicans hold large state Senate and House majorities and can run the table. And Iowa courts are stacked with conservative judges. The Democrats have lost…resoundingly.

None of these situations were sudden unexpected blows. Rather, the trend has been building for at least the last three election cycles. The one takeaway all Democrats should agree on: business as usual is not working.

Rachel Bruns is a volunteer advocate for quality maternal health care in Iowa.

The 2022 Iowa legislative session saw the most significant momentum in more than forty years of advocacy for the creation of a licensure of direct-entry midwives in Iowa. With the 2023 legislative session underway, I will review the pivotal moments in the 2022 legislative session and explain why the Iowa legislature and Governor Kim Reynolds should prioritize enacting a midwifery licensure bill.

While I have addressed the need to provide a licensure for Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) in previous pieces, I will go more in-depth in providing background on why all Iowans should want and support CPMs practicing in our state.

Note: I would not benefit directly in any way if this bill passed, as I am not a birthworker (doula, midwife, physician), and I do not plan on having any more children. Through my volunteer work with the International Cesarean Awareness Network, I have learned a lot about the different types of midwives and believe Iowans have been “dealt a bad hand” by not having knowledge or access to community birth options that are more readily available in other states and other high-income countries. Iowa families deserve to have all options available for safe and quality maternal health care.

Doris J. Kelley is a former member of the Iowa House and former Iowa Board of Parole Chair, Vice-Chair and Executive Director.

With Iowa in its 177^th year of statehood (December 28, 1846), we should have our ducks in a row by. But, we are one of six states still in the dark ages when it comes to the primary election process.

Iowa, along with Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee and Wyoming operate their primary elections, which selects candidates before the general election, under a process referred to as “partially open.” This system permits voters to cross party lines, but they are required to change their party affiliation.

Susie Petra is a retired educator and longtime state and community activist.

I assume you and I share the value of education. And I’d like to believe Governor Kim Reynolds and state legislators believe in our country’s democratic republic form of government, as I do. That involves being informed about education systems: what works, what doesn’t, and why public schools are important and necessary.

It appears that the governor and her supporters have not done due diligence when it comes to the latest “school choice” plan. Let me help.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

A staff editorial in the Sunday Des Moines Register offers a hard-hitting rebuke of the governor’s pet “choice” project, aptly illustrated with a unicorn. Ironically, in some circles a unicorn represents unity, the inclusion of the “other” in the circle of family, friendship, and democracy, an important purpose of public education.

Ryan Melton was the 2022 Democratic nominee in Iowa’s fourth Congressional district. The Iowa Democratic Party’s State Central Committee will elect new leaders on January 28.

There’s been a lot of debate post-election regarding the Iowa Democratic Party’s future. My view is we need to be more fervent and unrelenting in our advocacy for the people, making sure we don’t sacrifice that primary focus in the pursuit of corporate money, political calculus, or false, monolithic assumptions about the state’s voters. 

We need to be real. We need to be genuine. We as Democrats truly have the platform that advocates for the people. We have the platform that focuses on advancing the greater good. But too often, our leaders aren’t fully embracing the platform’s potential, to our detriment.

That’s why I’m writing to endorse Brian McLain for Iowa Democratic Party Vice Chair.

“May the mark Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. left on our country never be forgotten,” Governor Kim Reynolds posted on her Facebook and Twitter accounts on this year’s national holiday to celebrate Dr. King’s legacy.

It was a remarkable act of chutzpah for an official who has repeatedly amplified racist tropes for political gain, most recently last week.

I’m reading a Stephen King book where the teenage protagonist travels to another world. The world seems like a fairy tale, but something is wrong. The fairy tale has a a horror twist. 

Reading the book reminded me of Governor Kim Reynolds’ Condition of the State speech, a not so beautiful fairy tale/horror story. 

Kurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register, where this essay first appeared. He serves as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization.

I don’t know when I first encountered the word “graffiti.” It probably happened in high school. I vaguely recall a late-night adventure that included spray painting “class of ‘72” on a few country bridges… and maybe on the rear window of a school bus. Upon reflection, I think our gang of (mostly) benign rascals was simply ahead of our time. Graffiti was not a major public nuisance at the time.

Then, too, maybe our semi-legible scribbling was an early example of graffiti art, arguably the only visual art form with its origin in the U.S. Since graffiti art is too broad a subject to tackle here, I will concentrate more narrowly on freight graffiti, defined as expressive painting on train boxcars.

Henry Jay Karp is the Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Emanuel in Davenport, Iowa, which he served from 1985 to 2017. He is the co-founder and co-convener of One Human Family QCA, a social justice organization.

I am writing this from a hotel room in Scottsdale, Arizona where I am isolating after coming down with COVID-19.

Once again, Governor “COVID Kim” Reynolds has shown us her true colors. She is governor to the rich, enabling the rich to get richer, while she works to widen the class divide in the state. She is seeking to secure a defined underclass, by undermining the public school system; a system created to provide equal educational opportunities to all and a pathway to self-advancement for every Iowan.

If she is successful, we can see similar private school voucher programs popping up in many other red states.

RJ Miller is an advocate, activist, and executive director of Greater Opportunities Inc, a Des Moines-based nonprofit. He was an independent candidate for the Iowa House in 2022.

I’m running for the at-large Des Moines City Council seat now held by Carl Voss, because I believe the council needs more diversity and more council members who come from a grassroots background, for and from the people they represent.

I’m running because our city needs real leadership. Des Moines needs someone who will unify and truly fight for the people’s best interests. Residents deserve someone who will fight against gentrification, redlining, and eminent domain. More important, the city deserves an anti-sellout, anti-establishment councilman.

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

The legislature wrote Iowa’s public records law 55 years ago, and one of the statute’s tenets was the belief people deserve to know how state and local governments spend their tax money.

Another important concept in the law is that fees for copies of government records must be reasonable and cannot exceed the actual cost of providing the documents.

That brings us today to Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, where administrators appear not to grasp what “reasonable” means.

Brenna Bird wasted no time putting her mark on the Iowa Attorney General’s office. Big changes commenced before the Republican’s formal swearing in on January 5.

The Iowa legislature’s 2023 session begins on January 9.

Over the years, I’ve participated in some great Iowa legislative forums and some that left me with what the old commercial called an Excedrin headache. Most of the time, those headaches came because I didn’t prepare, and I left things unsaid or unquestioned. It’s a little like being in a debate with someone and knowing just the right thing to say, a few hours too late.

For that reason, I offer a simple guide for discussing private school vouchers at legislative forums. Although Iowa House Republicans have twice refused to pass Governor Kim Reynolds’ scheme, and a statewide poll last year showed 52 percent of Iowans opposed using public money for private schools, the governor seems determined to force a yes vote. Those who oppose vouchers need to be equally determined and prepared.

Linda Schreiber is a member of the League of Women Voters of Johnson County.

Rural policy is an area where Republicans and Democrats should be able to find common ground (no pun intended). The new Congress presents a real opportunity as work begins to pass a Farm Bill in 2023. This legislation is renewed roughly every five years to authorize rural development programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The current Farm Bill will expire on September 30, 2023.

Reauthorization allows policymakers the ability to review programs included in the legislation, consider changes, and address implementation barriers that may have come up since the previous Farm Bill passed.

Ira Lacher was an assistant sports editor at the Des Moines Register during the 1980s.

Wait for it.

As Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin continues to lie, inert, connected to whatever devices keep him alive, someone is sure to call for American football, a sport unique in the world, to be banned.

Certainly what occurred on the turf of Paul Brown Stadium on Monday night, January 2, 2023, bears introspection. How are you supposed to feel when you witness a 24-year-young man almost dying, in full view of tens of thousands of spectators, and millions more watching on high-definition television?

Rachel Bruns is a volunteer advocate for quality maternal health care in Iowa.

A 2022 report from March of Dimes shows that “36% of counties nationwide — largely in the Midwest and South — constitute ‘maternity care deserts,’ meaning they have no obstetric hospitals or birth centers and no obstetric providers.” While their report does not provide state rankings, you can see whether your county classifies as being a maternity care desert here. Additionally, a report from Stacker in June 2022 ranked Iowa eleventh on a list of “states where the most people live in maternal health care deserts.”

Even if your area has maternal health care providers (OBGYNs, family physicians, midwives), finding quality care is another challenge facing pregnant and postpartum individuals in both urban and rural areas. I’ve discussed some of those problems in previous articles for this website. 

The good news is relatively low-cost, evidence-based solutions are available to make maternal health care more accessible in Iowa, which would improve outcomes. I have identified and prioritized opportunities that should be bipartisan based on successes in other states.

Note: I am not including abortion access in these recommendations, since the procedure continues to be legal in Iowa, the media regularly cover this topic, and several organizations advocate on this issue. This article from Commonwealth Fund explains how states with restrictive abortion laws have worse maternal health outcomes.

Randy Evans can be reached at DMRevans2810@gmail.com. 

In politics, having a “trifecta” in government is a good thing for a political party—until the trifecta’s inaction on some popular issue starts to haunt those in power.

Iowa Republicans served up an example of the consequences of such inaction in the days leading up to Christmas. This story involves military veterans, a highly sought-after constituency that is part of any solid political movement.

Governor Kim Reynolds, the state legislature, and Iowa Supreme Court rulings inspired the majority of Bleeding Heartland’s most-read posts from this year.

This list draws from Google Analytics data about total views for 570 posts published from January 1 through December 29. I wrote 212 of those articles and commentaries; other authors wrote 358. I left out the site’s front page and the “about” page, where many people landed following online searches.

In general, Bleeding Heartland’s traffic was higher this year than in 2021, though not quite as high as during the pandemic-fueled surge of 2020. So about three dozen posts that would have ranked among last year’s most-viewed didn’t make the cut for this post. Some honorable mentions from that group:

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake School of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there until retirement in 2004. He was executive secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

Enough already!

Enough about how Iowans have been “kicked in the teeth” by Democrats losing the first-in-the-nation status of the Iowa caucus. If we really want to know who or what kicked Iowa in the teeth, the answer for Iowans is in the mirror.

Such self-reflection should put an end to the mourning about no longer casting Iowa as the center of the political universe.”We should put our own house in order first.

Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered a dramatic, crisp, and impactful address to the American Congress in Washington on December 21.

Dramatic because it brought front and center the danger the Ukrainian people face continuously from Russian aggression. Crisp because Zelenskyy wasted no words in describing Ukraine’s situation. And impactful because his message aligned his country’s fate with proud moments in American history.

U.S. Representative Ashley Hinson is at it again.

In January 2022, the Republican made news in Iowa and nationally when she took credit for “game-changing” projects in her district, despite having voted against the infrastructure bill that made them possible.

Hinson is closing out the year by bashing the “wasteful spending” in an omnibus budget bill, while boasting about her success in “securing investments for Iowa” through the same legislation.

Gerald Ott of Ankeny was a high school English teacher and for 30 years a school improvement consultant for the Iowa State Education Association.

Earlier this month, the Kansas City Star’s editors wrote about White Kansas City-area high school students who were racially taunting Black players on an opposing basketball team.

In the same week, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights levied serious changes against the Ottumwa, Iowa school district (as per numerous newspaper accounts). Following release of the OCR’s report, the Ottumwa Courier’s editors took the superintendent to task, saying he has “skirted the harsh realities of what happened.” The realities of racial abuse are clearly enumerated in the OCR report, which is online (and reproduced at the bottom of this post).

The agency’s findings are grave and require the school district to take extensive steps of remediation.

Steve Corbin is emeritus professor of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa and a freelance writer who receives no remuneration, funding, or endorsement from any for-profit business, nonprofit organization, political action committee, or political party.      

Thankfully we are nearly six weeks past the 2022 midterm election. I can hear many voters exuding a sigh of relief and shouting, after $17 billion was spent on disinformation, misinformation, and the occasional truthful political ad, “yes, finally, the election is over.”

Normal life is back, and we’ve jumped right into the holiday season. Let’s ponder how to make this year’s holiday season better than we’ve experienced heretofore.

Silvia Secchi is a professor in the Department of Geographical and Sustainability Sciences at the University of Iowa. She has a PhD in economics from Iowa State University.

What’s a farm? Who is a farmer? These are political questions.

They are important questions for Iowa, as so much of the state’s identity is wrapped around its historical role in U.S. agriculture. The questions also matter for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which implements policies that strongly favor Iowa’s farm and agribusiness sectors. The higher the number of farms, the more legitimate it is to keep claiming that “Iowa feeds the world.” Funding depends on that number too.

Brittany Ruland is a community advocate, politically passionate individual who has been consulting and managing campaigns in all capacities around the country since 2015. She is a mother, grassroots organizer, and Iowan who most recently has worked for Senator Sarah Trone Garriott as well as Senator Bernie Sanders and President Joe Biden’s campaigns in 2020.

2022 was a rough year to be a Democrat in Iowa. Watching the results roll in felt like a collective gut punch. Next came the stinging realization that even with mostly-good results for Democrats nationally, we again lost ground in the middle of the country, even in places many of us were confident were winnable. It felt like salt on the wound.

A silver lining emerged as returns continued to come in, with Democratic State Senator Sarah Trone Garriott taking down one of the most dangerous Iowa Republican legislators, Senate President Jake Chapman. At that moment, I realized that even though we lost seats in the state legislature, this race could be a turning point for our party.