The worst kind of political gamesmanship

Recently, Republicans have been claiming and running attack ads that Democrats did not vote for the pay increase for teachers in the last legislative session. This is loathsome propaganda. Democrats have been calling for pay raises for a decade, as well as increased funding for schools, which would have led to better pay. They were all on board to pass a bi-partisan piece of legislation to do just that, when Governor Reynolds and her allies decided to make it part of the horrible AEA restructuring bill. There was no reason at all to tie the two together, except to be able to use it for political gain. The worst kind of political gamesmanship. Disgusting!

As someone who has devoted his life to educating the next generation of Iowans (actually at this point I am on my second or third generation), I am appalled by our Republican majority’s assaults on public education. I understand that all of our problems cannot be placed solely at the feet of the Republicans, but their push for privatization and their attacks on educators certainly have not helped. The list of offenses is long and getting longer: years of underfunding, stripping educators of collective bargaining rights, banning books, mandating what (and whose) history will (and will not) be taught in our schools, dismantling our AEA’s, creating a voucher system that uses public dollars for private schools, appointing a director of the Department of Education who is an advocate for vouchers and who has no experience in education…

The majority of Iowans do not support these initiatives and there was no cry for reform (except from a small group of zealots). In fact, most of these measures were based on model legislation from advocacy groups outside of our state. This is the problem with supermajorities, they often lead to arrogance, kowtowing to special interests, and abuse of power. I for one am tired of being part of our Republican supermajority’s social experiments. Amy Sinclair has been at the forefront of these onslaughts and Sam Wengryn certainly won’t stand up to the agenda.

That is one reason why I wholeheartedly support Nicole Loewe for Iowa Senate and Sonya Hicks for Iowa House. Neither of them is a career politician and both of them see public education as a top priority. As Sonya says, “Public schools are the heart of rural Iowa”. They do not have an agenda and they are not beholden to special interests. I trust them to do what is best for all our students and the communities they are a part of. Get out and vote on November 5th!