Steve King, who has a reputation as being one of the craziest Congressmen in the House of Representatives, (which is quite an achievement considering his competition) is back and better than ever in the 110th Congress. After previous legislative accomplishments ranging from working to keeping 600,000 American citizens from voting to registering a bold protest against the use of condoms to fight Aids in Africa. Since, obviously, condoms promote AIDS. That’s right, on June 28, 2005, Steve King gave a speech in Congress attacking the establishment of a “condom culture” in Africa. He warned that once you create this “condom culture,” it can lead to “the elimination… of abstinence until marriage and monogamy after that”
So what’s Steve doing now? Well, he’s celebrating the 100 hours by sponsoring a Constitutional Amendment. This isn’t just a run of the mill amendment banning flag burning or making English our nation’s official language, his amendment, HJ 16, would make the Federal Income Tax unconstitutional. This is the type of bold legislation that our nation needs. Most politicians would hesistate to eliminate the income tax in a time of massive budget deficits and a foreign war. They wouldn’t have the zeal or the vision that Steve King has. After all, we didn’t need an income tax the last time we fought and won a unilateral war in the Middle East. We beat the Barbary Pirates with our government funded solely by tariffs. We can beat Al Queda and the Iraqi militias the same way.
So what’s Steve King’s next step once he eliminates the income tax? The word on the street is he’s gunning to run for Senate against Tom Harkin (despite some rumors that Harkin might retire). However, it seems likely that Harkin will run and make Steve King the 6th sitting Republican Congressman he’s defeated. And even Harkin doesn’t run, almost any Democrat should beat King if he runs for Senate. Iowa may have a quirky electorate but Iowans aren’t quirky enough to elect someone who is so clearly deranged to the U.S. Senate.
The Iowa Caucuses aren’t democratic. In fact, they are so undemocratic, they make the Electoral College seem like a triumph for those who believe in “one man, one vote.” Caucusgoers aren’t voting for Obama, or Hillary or John Edwards. They vote for delegates to a county convention who then go on to vote for delegates to the State Convention who then go on to vote for delegates to the National Convention. Delegates are apportioned to each county and each precinct within the county by the combined number votes cast for the President and the Governor in the two previous General Elections. So, for example if more people in County X voted for the combination of John Kerry and Chet Culver in 2004 and 2006 than voted for the combination of Al Gore and Tom Vilsack in 2000 and 2002, County X will get more representation than it did in the 2004 caucuses. If less people voted for the top of the ticket, County X will get less representation. There are 3000 delegates at the State Convention and each county gets an appropriate share and the results for the caucuses are computed by factoring approximately what percent of the delegates a candidate will get at the State Convention. (Here are the 2004 results for an example)
So what has changed since 2004? Well of the big five counties in Iowa (Polk, Linn, Scott, Black Hawk and Johnson), all but Polk have gained delegates. In fact, Johnson has shown the largest net gain of any county, going from 141 to 164 delegates. Linn also made a big leap from 228 to 242 delegates. Scott jumped from 161 to 170 and Black Hawk creeped up from 136 to 140. In contrast, Polk had a small dip of two delegates but still makes up nearly 15% of the total number of delegates with 428. The biggest leap in terms of perecentage was made by Jefferson County which is going from 13 to 18 delegates while the biggest fall in percentage was Ida County, which goes from 7 to a paltry 5 delegates. For us in Poweshiek County, we gained an extra delegate to go to 21. Statewide totals (which are rough because they haven’t been rounded) for 2008 are below the fold and the totals for 2004 can be found here.
