Although Iowa Progress has reported optimistically on this in the past, it seems that a workplace smoking ban is finally making progress in the state legislature. Debate is set for next week on a bill that would ban smoking from most workplaces. While the bill is imperfect and contains an exemption for casinos, it still offers a positive step towards improving the health of many Iowans. As this study by the American Lung Association shows, workplace smoking bans are not only good for public health but they’re good for business. In fact, it is estimated that secondhand smoke in the workplace costs Americans $10 billion a year.
Not only that, a recent Des Moines Register poll found that 75% of Iowans supported a workplace smoking ban. So why would anyone oppose a bill that’s popular, good for public health and good for business? It’s hard to say.
One strong opponent of a workplace smoking ban is House Minority Leader Christopher Rants. Rants frames his opposition in concern to the fact that it might deter smokers from going to bars and thus hurting local bar owners. Although a cynic might argue that Rants might be influenced by the fact he’s taken over $6,000 in donations from Big Tobacco over the past few years, those who appreciate Rants’ firm sense of personal morality know that his stand against public opinion, public health and Iowa business is solely in defense of the corner bar and the small town tavern and has nothing to do with any desire to profit from the largess of Philip Morris and other major tobacco companies.
However, despite Rants’ “principled” opposition, there’s still a strong chance that a workplace smoking ban will still happen in Iowa this year.
Dwayne Alons, Iowa’s resident climate change expert, pronounced today that global warming isn’t a problem because we have air conditioning. Alons opined that “we shouldn’t be as concerned, actually, about warming, especially now that we have modern refrigeration and air conditioning.” Unfortunately, unless we air condition the entire planet, we’re in trouble. Global warming means that the polar icecaps will melt and flood many coastal cities and islands. In fact, according to the National Resources Defense Council, 22,400 square miles of the United States, an area half the size of Iowa, will be underwater by the year 2100 as a result of global warming.
While Alons is on the record stating that global warming made the ancient Maya “giants - taller & stronger than modern men and women,” unless it gives future generations of Americans the ability to breath underwater, no amount of air conditioning will make global warming good for anyone.
As part of the minimum wage increase that was passed by the Iowa State Legislature last year, Iowa’s minimum wage will go up from $6.20 to $7.25 on January 1st. This marks one of the many advances made in Des Moines during the last legislative session when Democrats finally controlled both chambers of the Iowa State Legislature and Terrace Hill for the first time in 40 years.
Considering the accomplishments of the past legislative session, not just on minimum wage, but on civil rights, stem cells and a host of other issues, there should be a lot to look forward to in 2008. Although everyone is caught up in the upcoming Iowa Caucuses, it’s worth remembering that no matter who wins and who loses on January 3, it doesn’t matter as long as Democrats rally behind the eventual nominee. Iowa has made a lot of progress over the past year but it can make a lot more with a Democratic President in the White House.
Iowa Independent, which is the web site I have been spending most of my time on, has the story. Former Republican Governor Terry Branstad criticizes Presidential frontrunner Rudy Giuliani for “some baggage” he carries as a candidate:
“I think he’s got some baggage both from his multiple marriages and from his stand on some of the social issues,” Branstad said in a recent interview in Carroll.
Go read the full story at Iowa Independent. And bookmark it while you’re there, because there’s a lot of excitement to come out of that site, I promise.
State Representative Dawn Pettengill left the Democratic caucus for the Republican caucus today. The Register has the story from Chris Rants’s press conference, which just happened:
The change cuts the Democratic majority in the House to 53 seats and gives minority Republicans 47 seats. It takes 51 votes to pass legislation.
Pettengill had battled publicly with the House Democratic caucus this year over issues such as labor union fees and the cigarette tax increase. She had indicated publicly she might consider leaving the caucus, although she had suggested she was more likely to become an independent.
“The House Democratic leadership pursued an agenda which veered far from the principles for which my constituents and I stand,” she said in a statement. “My decision gives me the best opportunity to represent the values of my constituents.”
This is going to make progressives — particularly the ones I know who knocked doors for her during the last campaign — pretty unhappy. Pettengill is known for her emotional outbursts, and my sense is that she perceives her district to be more conservative than it actually is.
I posted a while back about why I didn’t think Pettengill was going to defect. It turns out I was wrong. This kind of transition, from the majority to the minority (particularly when it looks like the Republicans will likely remain in the minority through next campaign cycle) is surprising, but Pettengill planted the seed for a defection months ago.
As an aside, this comes as a double-disappointment for many progressives, who were hoping that Rants planned to announce his resignation today. Rumors that he will resign have been circulating for months, and there is no word yet on whether Pettengill’s switch will influence his decision on that one way or the other.
Today was a big day in the Iowa House, where Representatives voted 59-37 to pass Senate File 427, which updates Iowa’s civil rights law to outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (and perceived sexual orientation).
Until yesterday, few people expected the bill to make it to the floor of the House at all, even though it passed the Iowa Senate last month. Without a guarantee that the bill would pass (or even a guarantee that all of the Democrats would sign on), the leadership was reluctant to force its members to make a vote that could hurt them in their reelection campaigns. Ex-Speaker and current Minority Leader Chris Rants was doing everything he possibly could to prevent any Republican members from supporting the bill (even though some Republicans were definitely interested), and it looked like he might succeed in forcing a stalemate through the end of the legislative session.
In the end, though, the Democratic leadership put civil rights ahead of political concerns, and put the bill up to a vote. The result was a resounding victory. And, although Murphy and McCarthy have been getting a lot of grief about VOICE and a few other issues that have worked up our blogging community, this should earn them back some street cred.
More from Mark’s diary over at BleedingHeartland (partially cross-posted with permission):
Senate File 427 updates Iowa’s Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination in employment, public accommodation, housing, education, or credit practices based on age, race, creed, color, sex, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.
The discussion on various blogs throughout the state over the past few months has focused on what the Iowa Legislature has FAILED to accomplish - rather than the victories. This bill is truly a victory for progressives and for everyone who would like to call Iowa home. Leadership in both chambers made this bill a priority throughout the session - and now we can separate ourselves from the 33 other states where it’s OK to dismiss employees because of their real or perceived sexual orientation.
In particular, it was leadership from Democrats in cooperation with Iowa businesses and civil rights leaders who pushed this bill through to final passage. Corporate America is rapidly realizing that creating a tolerant atmosphere for everyone to work is an important part of growing a business - and a state. According to an article in Fortune Magazine:
So it’s clear where big business is going. What’s interesting is to watch it pull the rest of the country along. It turns out that the most important factor shaping people’s feelings about gay issues is not their age or even their religion - although those do matter - but whether they have relatives, friends or co-workers who are gay.
“The more out and open people are, the more changed the straight people are all around them,” says Joe Solmonese, the Human Rights Campaign president. HRC began organizing workplaces to secure benefits for gay employees. This has inadvertently become a shrewd political strategy as well. “To move the mindset of the American people, we need to find the places where they congregate,” Solmonese says. “Priority one is corporate America.”
Empty suit Jeff Lamberti, heir to the Casey’s General Store petroleum-and-stale-pizza fortune, endorsed John McCain today. McCain couldn’t have been more thrilled:
Senator John McCain expressed his appreciation for Lamberti’s support. “During his career in public service, Jeff has been a tireless advocate for our shared common sense conservative values,” said Senator McCain. “Jeff is a respected Iowa leader and I’m proud to have his support as we continue to build our grassroots organization.”
You might remember empty suit Jeff Lamberti’s particular brand of “common sense conservatism” from his deceptive hit pieces against Leonard Boswell, who beat him pretty resoundingly last November. I particularly like the grainy pictures he used when he talked about the Boz:
I don’t know what Lamberti was trying to do there, but doesn’t that photo make Leonard Boswell look a little like Elvis? Maybe that’s why the millions of hit pieces that got mailed out by the RPI and 527 groups to hurt Boswell ended up failing so miserably.
This is all to say, of course, that John McCain has obviously switched gears since the last time he ran for president, back when he thought that you could win the Republican primaries by placing importance on authenticity and “straight talk.” Now that he knows that Republicans don’t care about those things, he and Jeff Lamberti can have a wonderful friendship.
I suppose the only real question left, then, is whether Lamberti should’ve shaved the handlebar mustache or not. (I vote no.)
I guess this is what happens in a political world where a few consulting firms call almost all of the shots: Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Steve Beshear just got caught lifting part of Chet Culver’s energy policy text. As the Lexington Herald-Leader documents,
For example, Culver’s plan says: “As Governor, I will challenge the private sector and encourage the development of new power sources, fuels and clean coal technologies by developing new laws and regulations that encourage innovation and the production and sale of home grown fuels.”
The Beshear plan states: “As Governor, I will challenge the private sector and encourage the development of new renewable power sources, alternative fuels and clean coal technologies by developing new laws and regulations that spur innovation and the production and sale of home grown fuels.”
Obviously, neither candidate had any idea that the text was going to be used in multiple places, but it’s a pretty inexcusable mistake on the consultants’ parts. In a world with the Internet, someone in Kentucky might be able to find out what a candidate in Iowa is saying, and vice versa.
Quoting, again, “Beshear’s campaign manager, Jim Cauley, said the campaign saw Culver’s plan for energy online ‘and we liked it.’” Go Chet!
(Beshear is running for the Democratic nomination for Kentucky Governor against several other candidates. The primary is next month.)
Angela Davis is our commencement speaker this year at Grinnell College, and nobody I know here is 100% pleased. The presidential candidates we invited all turned up their noses at us (perhaps expectations at commencement are too high, and some folks are bound to leave at least a little underwhelmed), and I guess Angela Davis was somewhere on the list.
Of course, I know that Grinnell College is one of the most liberal in the United States. That goes without saying.
The pricey and very exclusive college has long been a bastion for those with communistic tendencies, but rarely have they been so bold about it as they are now.
Recently, I received a press release from the college, seeking publicity over its commencement keynote speaker. Of course, this is probably not the kind of press coverage they wanted, but any coverage is good coverage, right?
Angela Davis will be speaking. The name may not mean much to you. It didn’t mean much to me until I continued to read the first paragraph of the press release.
“She was associated with the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the Communist Party of the United States of America,” the press release stated. “Still an activist, she now works for … prison abolition.”
Let’s take these one by one, shall we?
And then he takes them “one by one.” He hates the Black Panthers for being anti-capitalism and anti-authority. He hates the Communist Party because its goal was supposedly to devastate our country, Soviet style. And he hates the prison abolition movement because he doesn’t quite understand it.
But believing in academic freedom isn’t just for communists. Pretty much all of our Founding Fathers believed in it. Sure, it takes a certain level of self-awareness and maturity to know how to listen to what others say, consider it carefully, and decide not to agree with it, but doing that on a regular basis is a worthwhile endeavor. It’s how we learn in college, and hosting an important thinker like Angela Davis makes sense in that context.
A few days ago, The Register wrote an article documenting State Representative Dawn Pettengill’s dissatisfaction with the Democratic leadership in the State House. Here’s a snippet:
“I’m just trying to get through this term as a Democrat,” said Pettengill, the former mayor of her hometown of Mount Auburn who is now in her third year in the Iowa House. “People elected me as a Democrat, and I would not change during a term, that’s for sure.”
Her indecision leaves Democratic leaders questioning whether they should recruit a replacement candidate for the 2008 primary, and Republican leaders wondering if she might be on their team by the general election.
Will she defect? Well, she says she won’t during this term. In general, though, I’m not too worried about it. Pettengill has always seemed concerned with her ability to get elected in a district that she perceives as leaning more Republican than Democrat. She has developed a reputation (partly, but not wholly, deserved) for being emotionally volatile. Although she has condemned other legislators’ pet projects and voted against them, she is somewhat famous for her own pet projects: last year, she sponsored legislation to ban stores from selling sex toys to minors, and this year, she was the main proponent of the bill that recently passed preventing Iowa from having any business dealings with businesses supporting the genocide in Darfur. (I don’t mean to claim that either of these bills is bad policy, but neither is exactly in the front of most Iowans’ minds.)
The Register notes a few key places where Pettengill differs from the Democratic leadership in the House, but none of them are cut and dry reasons for a defection to the Republicans (or even to the Independent ticket):
But the strain of the last month has taken a serious toll as she struggled with her dislike of bills dear to many Democrats — raising the minimum wage (she voted yes after some reluctance), upping the cigarette tax (she voted no), campaign finance reform (she may vote no), and allowing public employee unions to charge nonunion members a “fair share” fee (she firmly intends to vote no).
On raising the minimum wage, she did end up voting yes, and the political realities in her district meant that “some reluctance” on the vote was smart. On voting against the cigarette tax, she justifies her decision for liberal (dare I say Democratic) reasons:
During a caucus meeting on the cigarette tax two weeks ago, Pettengill wept as she explained that when she was 19 years old, she found herself living on her own with a baby, balancing college classes and a job. She couldn’t afford cigarettes, but they were such a critical source of comfort that she sacrificed food to buy them.
She objects to a cigarette tax because it is increcibly regressive — it takes money disproportionately from the poor, and, because it is a flat fee, it takes a greater percentage of the disposable income of a poor person than it does a rich person. Yes, it internalizes an externality, yadda yadda yadda; but there is a principled, liberal argument to be made against it. Frankly, I was surprised more members didn’t express that opinion. Maybe only a small minority of the party holds this view, but it isn’t because they are the more conservative members of the party.
On campaign finance reform, it really isn’t clear that all of the Democratic leadership are fully supporting the VOICE bill. Good liberals generally like it (despite the short-term strategic disadvantages it may present to parties currently in the majority of the legislature), but this isn’t exactly an issue that everyone is closely aligned over.
And finally, on FairShare, it disappoints many labor activists that Pettengill does not support it, but again, there is a fair amount of diversity among Democrats on this subject. Some have more union shops in their districts than others, and some have different opinions of labor unions than others. Our Democratic State Senator, Tom Reilly, voted against FairShare, and he isn’t leaving the party anytime soon. Again, it’s an issue where some people within the labor movement are doubting policies like this, so it isn’t’ only conservatives who oppose it.
So is it really just the House leadership’s fault that Pettengill is disgruntled, as others have claimed? No. The House leadership is doing its job. Their job is to push a Democratic agenda in the legislature, and they have to keep their members in line whenever they can. They’re getting results, and, unless Pettengill does end up defecting, no one will even remember this story in six months.
Empty suit Jeff Lamberti, heir to the Casey’s General Store petroleum-and-stale-pizza fortune, 
