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Term Limits In Iowa: A Policy Proposal

Term Limits In Iowa: A Policy Proposal

Cronstal 1st yearIOne of my favorite self-coined terms is “legi-saurs”.  As you may guess it refers to politicians at all levels of government who get elected–and then never go away.

Like many on the right I am convinced this semi-permanent presence in the halls of power is a destructive one in politics.  These careers start innocently enough.  The member actually has a job in the private sector, lives as a normal citizen, and regardless of ideology brings fresh ideas and solutions to the table.  But in most cases, over time, they eventually detach from the economy by not working  outside the Capitol, they develop grudges against their colleages, their ideas and thinking become stale, and they learn to play the legislative process like a game.

Here in Iowa

This happens at all levels in both Parties and unsurprisingly Iowa is not immune.  Our current six Federal representatives have an average of 19 1/2 years in office, with both our Senators having 39 years each.  While on average the Iowa Legislature isn’t as bad, looking through our current Senate reveals several examples of a certain timeless creature…legi-saurs.  For whatever reason this phenomenon in Iowa is more popular among Democrats, with the longest serving Republicans being elected in 1993 (Hubert Houser and Sandy Greiner).  This doesn’t hold a candle to the imperial reign of the 5 longest serving Iowa Democrats–one of which who has been serving for 40 years.  Here’s the list:

  • Bob Dvorsky – since 1987
  • Jack Hatch – since 1985 (out of office 93′ to 01′)
  • Mike Gronstal – since 1983
  • Dennis Black – since 1983
  • Wally Horn – since 1973!

I’m not going to go through all the arguments and counter-arguments for term limits here– I think we all know them (for=incumbency offers name ID, party infrastructure, media coverage, a donor base, special interest money etc. and against=”we have term limits…they are called elections”).  I will say however that the best question to ask someone who opposes term limits is, “So you support removing them for Presidency I assume?”–I’ve yet to hear anybody ever answer “yes”.

A Proposal

Below is a proposal released last week and co-written by both a current Republican and a Democrat serving in the U.S. House.  It is meant to be applied at the Federal level, but it would essentially work the same here in Iowa.  It is superbly well thought out, simple in nature, plainly written, makes the case for why term limits are needed, and offers a realistic way to make it happen.

I vote Yes!

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Finally, A Bi-Partisan Solution on Term Limits

Congressman Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) written with Congressman Beto O’Roarke (D-TX)

Many in our country and in the districts we represent feel that Congress is out of touch and that members are more focused on re-election than on providing real solutions to our nation’s biggest challenges. We hear from constituents all the time that there is a lack of urgency and focus when it comes to solving our country’s toughest issues like tackling the deficit and putting policies in place that will lead to economic growth.

The two of us, freshman members from different parties with divergent views on many issues, have come together because we believe a healthy debate is warranted on how we best serve the American people and whether, in a time of enormous powers of incumbency and multi-million dollar campaigns for Congress, we can be better public servants and curb the corrupting influence of money and power by limiting a member’s term in office.

Public opinion in favor of term limits for members of Congress is unquestionable. A Gallup poll released this past January reflects the same trend seen year after year from countless reputable research firms. Overall, 75 percent of American adults responding to the survey were in favor of implementing term limits and the support is unanimous across party lines.

That support stands in stark contrast to the overall approval rating of Congress, which hovers somewhere around 15 percent. Despite the unpopularity of Congress as a whole, sitting members still win re-election about 90 percent of the time due to the overwhelming benefits of incumbency. A system that rewards poor performance with job security is clearly in need of a shake-up. Congressional term limits could be the change needed to steer the institution back in the right direction.

Our proposal is a simple constitutional amendment. It does not prescribe the number of terms a member can serve; rather, it gives Congress the constitutional authority to pass and implement term limits. The reason for this structure is that by taking away the details from the amendment process, the likelihood of passage increases. We believe that even members who are philosophically opposed to term limits would support a constitutional amendment providing the legislative branch with the ability to debate and vote on the issue.

Despite widespread popularity, congressional term limits are incredibly difficult to implement because doing so requires a constitutional amendment with two-thirds of both chambers as well as ratification by three-fourths of America’s state legislatures. Having super majorities agree on the details of term limits, including the exact number of terms, is nearly impossible. Since 1995, there have been several attempts to move specific term limits amendments, but all have ended right where they began by being voted down in the House.

Previous term limit efforts have also failed because the only people who can begin the process to impose term limits are those who will be most affected – incumbent members of Congress. By voting in favor of, or even publicly supporting a term limits amendment, a member of Congress can be exposed to charges of hypocrisy or disingenuousness if they don’t also voluntarily limit their term of service. This has a chilling effect on those who would otherwise support term limit efforts.

Congress owes the American people action on term limits, including a new approach that actually stands a chance of becoming law. Our approach provides the flexibility needed to enact term limit laws by a simple majority and to allow future generations to decide the term limit law that works best for them through the regular legislative process.

For far too long, Congress has failed to give the people what they clearly want. We should pass this amendment and finally put that power in their hands.

Jim Bridenstine represents the First District of Oklahoma

 

Braley Votes Again For Obamacare—Why This One Was Worse Than The First

Braley Votes Again For Obamacare—Why This One Was Worse Than The First

Bruce B.Yesterday the Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted once again to repeal Obamacare in full—a vote that passed 229-115 on party-lines besides two democrats who crossed over.  Not the least bit surprising was that Rep. Bruce Braley once again voted in favor of Obamacare—but my how much different this must have felt than his first vote for it three years ago.

A Different Landscape

Besides the obvious fact that Braley is now a U.S. Senate candidate, a variety of things made yesterday’s vote a much bigger political gamble.

Consider this, on the day the Senate passed Obamacare through the Reconciliation process—March 25th 2010—the Real Clear Politics approval rating for Congress was a shocking 17.4% approve to 77% disapprove.  As bad as that seems, at that time in 2010 there was still a residue of “change” excitement in the air, the Tea Party was only just forming, Democrats had not yet lost the House, and President Obama could still credibly make the argument (especially to Independents) that he had successful solutions to the nation’s problem.

Since that day however the absolute failure of the trillion-dollar Stimulus Bill has been fully revealed, the implementation of Obamacare has been continually problematic, the economy has not recovered, and the national debt has further ballooned.  And this is not even to mention the numerous scandals and mini-scandals that have surrounded the administration for the past week and a half.

Perhaps even more troubling for Braley’s Senate candidacy is that the mood of the public is remarkably similar to the grim view they had the day Obamacare passed.  The following are the RCP polling averages from then and now: Congressional approval on March 25th 2010 was 17.4% approve to 77% disapprove—Congressional approval from 5 days ago on May 9th stood at 16.8% approve to 76% disapprove.  Public approval of the Obamacare legislation one day after it passed on March 26th 2010 was 50.7% oppose to 39.4% support–and 8 days ago on May 9th it was 49.8% oppose to only 39% who support.

2014 Impact

For Braley’s purposes what perhaps will be the biggest difference from then and now is he has left the friendly confines of Iowa’s 1st Congressional district (D+ 27,356) and has entered a statewide contest (D+ 4,952).  On top of this he has just voted in favor of one of the largest and most expensive initiatives in American history—one which only 39% of the public currently support. 

Braley no doubt believes in this legislation to his core and will never vote against it.  Nevertheless it’s a safe bet that as he pushed the “nay” button yesterday he was keenly aware that the circumstances had changed drastically since his first vote on the legislation.  What has transpired since then has not been kind to the bill nor to any purple state legislators voting for it. 

Though President Obama and many Congressional Democrats were not held accountable for their economic and policy failures in 2012, at some point their luck will run out.  If in November 2014 Obamacare still can’t even muster 40% support and implementation keeps getting more and more messy–the Republican who emerges to challenge Braley will need less and less luck.          

Another Potential Scandal Brewing In Iowa’s Education System

Another Potential Scandal Brewing In Iowa’s Education System

Iowa map educationWith a sweeping education reform package currently being worked on by a bi-partisan Conference Committee at the Statehouse, some potentially damaging information about how the state is representing student achievement is coming to light.  Late last week the citizen group Iowalive released a report that would, if true, give all Iowa parents and legislators cause for grave concern.

The crux of the report is Iowalive’s claim that the standards our Department of Education is using to report student proficiency levels is misleading.  This, according to the group, stems from Iowa having adopted a lower standard to measure student learning called the “40th National Percentile Rank”.  This current set of standards was adopted a decade ago by the then Governor Vilsack administration and is different from a more “honest” standard used by other states known as the “65th National Percentile Rank”.  The 40th National Percentile Rank standards that we use now apparently do not actually require a student to be proficient in various skills at their grade level to be deemed as such.  The obvious problem here being that if this is the case, parents are being told their child is succeeding at their grade level when in fact they are not.  If true this is absolutely unacceptable.

Between long declining national education rankings, the misrepresenting of graduation rates at some Des Moines High Schools, and the entire Nancy Sebring debacle–the education system here in Iowa hasn’t exactly built a huge reservoir of trust recently.  Despite this, and despite the fact spending on K-12 has increased $650 million since 2002 (+35.4%), the legislature is potentially poised to yet again increase the dollars flowing into this institution by almost $200 million any day now.  If the claims of Iowalive have any merit it’s long past the time to say enough is enough–the river of funds needs to be damned until the system functions honestly and properly.

 

More To Come

This issue will be looked into further by this website in the coming weeks, including a specific explanation of the two sets of standards.  At first glance the source–Iowalive–appears to be legitimate group with expertise in education and statistics (I was unfamiliar with them prior to late last week).  In the meantime I encourage you to visit their website (link here), and become informed on their general claims.  If everything they say checks out, this level of brazen misrepresentation and deception to Iowa parents will be a massive outrage.  If a teacher tells a parent their child is performing “at a 3rd grade level” in a subject, that better mean exactly that–anything else would be totally unacceptable.

Without a doubt Iowa legislators from both parties and both chambers should demand an explanation from Jason Glass and the Department of Education.  If it turns out they have been “cooking the books” with a deliberately low standard to enhance our schools perceived performance, then the reform bill currently being discussed should be tabled immediately.

Below is an excerpt from the Iowalive report, here is a link to the report complete with tables and source data, and more can be found at their website.  Though the information is not presented in a lively way, these are serious charges that demand being responded to by our elected and unelected government officials.  We as Iowans must have answers on this very, very soon.

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GROSS MISREPRESENTATION OF % OF IOWA STUDENTS, THE  DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION REPORTED PROFICIENT

Greetings, Governor Terry Branstad and all—

Finally, at 3:34 PM, Friday May 10, (to make it nearly impossible to make the Sunday Papers) the Department of Education provided Percent Proficient data Iowalive requested on Jan.14, 2013.  The data would not have been provided at all except for prodding from State senators and the State Ombudsman—who are gratefully thanked for their help.

As shown in the table below, the Department of Education reported to parents, students, legislators, taxpayers and others that 74.4% of Iowa 4th graders are Reading  Proficiently (Expertly) at the 4th grade level, when in fact the Department of Education just admitted only  40.3% are actually reading at the 4th grade level, when tested.  This equates to an 85% inflation, or misrepresentation, of student achievement—perpetrated by use of the bogus 40th National  Percentile Rank (NPR) Proficiency standard, adopted by the Department of Education, under Governor Vilsack and the ISEA  teacher union.

Similarly, the table shows parents, students, legislators, taxpayers and  others were told 78.2% of Iowa 4th graders are doing Math Proficiently (Expertly) at the 4th grade level, when in fact the Department of Education just admitted only  40.1% are actually doing Math at the 4th grade level, when tested.  This equates to a 95% inflation or misrepresentation of student achievement.

Similar misrepresentations for 8th and 11th grade reading and math are shown in the table.  It must be stated that the Department  of Education made NO corrections for cheating, as if none exists, despite gross cheating already under investigation in Davenport.

The problem is: Iowa’s low 40th NPR ‘proficiency’ standard considers 4th graders scoring at the 3.1 Iowa grade level to be ‘proficient’ or expert 4th grade readers!  Similarly, Iowa’s low standard considers 8th graders scoring at the 6.9 Iowa grade level to be ’proficient’ or expert 8th grade readers, and 11th graders scoring at the 9.2 level to be “proficient” or expert 11 grade readers.  The same applies to Math–and all grades tested.  This is nearly double the number actually Proficient.  And it is going on in grades 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, & 10 as well.

Large Iowa media news editors have failed, and stubbornly refuse, to report these shameful, if not outright fraudulent,  conditions to Iowans.

Governor Branstad, you’re a lawyer—if this misrepresentation isn’t fraudulent, what is??  What are you going to do about it?  This happened on your watch—even though it started under Governor Vilsack!   DE Director, Jason Glass, could have stopped using the bogus 40th NPR Proficiency Standard and replaced it with the honest 65th NPR, but he did not, Governor.  How come?

(Read Report With Tables)

 

South Carolina Republicans Embarrass GOP

South Carolina Republicans Embarrass GOP

sanford 2Last Week Steven Colbert said the results of Tuesday’s special election to fill a South Carolina House seat ‘scared him to his core’—I couldn’t agree more.

Of course he was referring to disgraced Republican Governor Mark Sanford completing his political comeback by beating Colbert’s sister Elizabeth Colbert Busch (54% to 45%) on Tuesday night.  Sanford’s victory came despite him being less than four years removed from weaving a web of lies that included cheating on his wife and leaving the country during his term as governor to be with his mistress.

What were they thinking?

The only justification for voting en mass for such a man was that palmetto Republicans didn’t at all like Ms. Colbert Bush.  I’m not saying I blame them since even though she tried to run as a moderate, she was a terrible candidate and was clearly anything but (think Christie Vilsack).  Having said that there is no way Sanford should have had the support to win this seat, and this result puts a temporary nationwide stain on Republicans.

While voting for someone who has been unfaithful to their spouse is bad enough—Louisiana Senator David Vitter comes to mind—Sanford’s situation was even worse.  Not only did he cheat on and lie to his wife, he abandoned his state entirely by actually leaving the country while on the job.  Either of these should disqualify him from being in Congress, let alone a combination of both of them at once.

Ideally this situation should have been taken care of before the general election in the 16 way Republican primary that Sanford placed first in.  At this time there was no “lesser of two evils” dynamic for Republican voters.  It’s inconceivable that another Republican in the district wasn’t more qualified to forward Republican principles than this guy. Even if Sanford was the only candidate who could win the general election, on principle Republicans in the state should have lost this House seat and been proud of doing so.  The truth is right now this seat isn’t at all crucial, and they very likely would have won it back in two years anyway.  It would have been a far more reasonable alternative to this shameful outcome.

This Trend Much End

How can the Republican Party stand on such high-minded pillars as morality, responsibility, and accountability and elect a guy like Mark Sanford?  No matter how bad the alternative—the answer is we can’t.  Beyond the general stamp of approval this victory represents, sending someone with such a proven and utter lack of self-control to make our most important decisions is insane.

I would like to believe Iowa Republicans wouldn’t allow such a thing to happen if presented with a similar candidate—and I’d be pretty stunned if they did.  The scary thing here is that, especially since Democrats are notoriously unwilling to morally judge their candidates, we now can’t be surprised should we see a John Edwards comeback.  I know right now you’re saying ‘no chance’…but nobody would have predicted this Sanford embarrassment either.

Republicans may have won a U.S. House seat last week but we lost yet another chunk of moral high ground.  Oh what a ridiculously wicked web we weave these days.

An Explanation of the Republican Party’s District Executive Committees

An Explanation of the Republican Party’s District Executive Committees

Chad Brown(The following is a guest piece from Polk County GOP Co-Chair Chad Brown)

The political season in Iowa never ends, and the county leadership of Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District is on the move to organize. The harder we work to organize the counties, both Iowa’s 3rd Congressional District and RPI will grow in strength. Some of my activist friends have wanted an explanation of the District Executive Committees, so I wrote this explanation to detail their role.

District Executive Committees have traditionally been a vital ingredient to the success of the Republican Party in Iowa. Their important role is detailed in the RPI Constitution. Traditionally, the Republican Party is built as a grass roots Party that was always strong because it had a firm foundation and was built from the ground up. Unfortunately, the District Executive Committees were deactivated within recent years and that vacuum was filled by powerful single issue groups that dominated the leadership selection process by preventing Republican County leaders from talking to each other and promoting leadership from the grass roots. We want to restore the grass roots to the Republican Party and include more people. This is why people used to refer to the G.O.P. as The Big Tent.

It’s unfortunate that these long-standing Committees were deactivated and silenced, but the new counties’ executive leadership in the 3rd Congressional District are getting back to basics!  We are here to improve and unify the Republican Party and get more people involved. The executive leadership of the county-level central committees of the Republican Party of Iowa located within the Third Federal Congressional District of the State of Iowa have called for its first official meeting to be held on May 7 to discuss and consider certain specific matters.

This is an exciting time as we begin to restore an important tradition of grass roots to the Republican Party in Iowa.

Chad Brown, Polk County GOP Co-Chair and 3rd Congressional District Executive Committee ————————————————————————————————-

Article VII, paragraph 1 of the RPI Constitution states:

Article VII District Executive Committees

1. The District Executive Committee shall consist of the Chair and Co-Chair of each County in the Congressional District plus one additional representative for every fifty thousand (50,000) population in that County based on the most recent federal census. The additional County representative sh…all be elected by the County Central Committee.

2. The District Committee shall: (1) direct and coordinate Republican activities in the district, including organizational, candidate recruitment, and finance efforts; (2) coordinate the congressional and legislative campaigns in the district for the duly selected Republican nominees; (3) perform all of the duties relating to any election to fill a district vacancy on the Republican State Central Committee; (4) advise the congressional district’s representatives on the Republican State Central Committee; and (5) do all other things which serve to promote the welfare of the Republican Party and the orderly and successful conduct of the election campaign in the congressional district.

 

Matt Whitaker Takes Center Stage… For Now

Matt Whitaker Takes Center Stage… For Now

Matt Whitaker, Former US Attorney, Republican US Senate Candidate,Former US Attorney Matt Whitaker announced today that he intends to be a candidate for the US Senate seat being vacated by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), and will make the official announcement on June 3.  He made the announcement today on WHO Radio’s Simon Conway show.

Whitaker is currently the managing partner at Whitaker Hagenow Gustoff LLP.  He served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa from 2004 to 2009, and previously worked for two other law firms and SUPERVALU as corporate counsel.  in 1998, Whitaker graduated from the University of Iowa College of Law and also earned his MBA there.

Matt Whitaker is the first Republican to announce an intention to run for the seat currently held by Harkin.  Bruce Braley, a Democratic Congressman, has also indicated he will run for the open Senate seat.  It is expected now that Representative Steve King has declined to run, several other Republican candidates will step forward.

Senator Harkin has been in the US Senate for 28 years, and when he retires will have spent 40 years in Washington DC as a Congressman and Senator.  Republican opponents to Harkin in 5 US Senate elections have averaged a 12.2 point loss, with the closest to winning being Jim Lightfoot in 1996 (5 points) and the farthest being Chris Reed in 2008 (26 points).  Tom Harkin has always come across as likable and reasonable to the public, and has always had a substantial war chest when campaigning.  Running against anyone but Tom Harkin will likely be considered a relief by Republicans in this election.

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