Iowa Has a Worse Anti-Worker Rating Than Most States

When unions are active, workers' wages rise. When a state repeals the minimum wage increases enacted by individual cities and counties back to the lower wage, as Iowa Republicans did in March 2017, that's a really bad sign for workers. In the case of Iowa, Republican majorities in the legislature in 2017 led to rampant anti-worker policies. Collective bargaining rights were gutted for most public workers, though not for some law enforcement officers and firefighters. A court challenge to the inequality of collective bargaining rights failed for no good reason other than the fact that Iowa's judges are only as good as the governor who appointed them.

The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has considered appealing Polk County District Judge Arthur Gamble's decision to a higher court. So has the Iowa State Education Association, which sued on similar grounds (a violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution), since public employees are treated unequally by the new collective bargaining law.

If the federal minimum wage had kept up with productivity, the minimum wage would be $19.33 in 2017. Iowa's minimum wage is still $7.25. Productivity continues to rise, as do CEO salaries, but workers' share of that productivity has been stagnant and falling since 1968, especially in states like Iowa. CEO salaries have risen 90 times faster than typical workers' pay since 1978. Wealth inequality across the nation continues to increase.

The national tax plan signed into law at the end of 2017 continued the transfer of wealth from the working poor and the middle class to corporations and the richest of the rich, speeding up wealth inequality.

Where are the torches and pitchforks? For there to be a peaceful transition of power, there has to be a Democratic wave, a blue tsunami in the midterm elections of 2018. I can only hope that Democrats will undo most or all of the destruction done by Pres. Trump, Republicans in Congress, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds (former Gov. Terry Branstad's clone), and the Republican majority in the Iowa state legislature.

Some of the damage will be hard to undo, like the confidence Americans have in the media, the Fourth Estate that protects our republic, and our institutions of government, like the FBI and our intelligence agencies, maligned by Pres. Trump, his supporters, and Faux News.

I'm not saying I've always had confidence in our intelligence agencies. Certainly I didn't when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI at the time, was weird and sinister. He knew things that gave him leverage over his enemies. I know that even though he's gone, we'll never know what we should know about JFK's assassination (everything, not just a few things) or his brother Bobby Kennedy's, or, for that matter, Martin Luther King's assassination.

But I have more faith in the FBI as it's currently constituted than I do in Pres. Trump and his Republican supporters. They're doing nothing more than enriching themselves and enriching their donors.

American workers and families need to protect themselves. They need to vote Democratic and hope that Democrats remember their FDR roots and run on a broad, inclusive economic message. If not, we'll need to resort to pitchforks and torches.

Iowa Democrats should run on:

1. Raising the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.

2. Put Medicaid back under state management; get rid of privatized Medicaid.

3. Restore collective bargaining rights for all public employees.

4. Stop making it difficult for unions to form, certify, and continue to certify unions. Why are non-voters considered "no" voters in union certification votes?

5. Allow unions to deduct union dues from employee paychecks.

6. Making government transparent. Gov. Kim Reynolds and her fellow Republicans keep saying that privatizing Medicaid "saves money" but won't release figures to prove it. I seriously doubt that the state is saving money by privatizing Medicaid. I'm absolutely positive privatized Medicaid costs more money for less service to fewer patients. If not, why don't they release the costs? Late paid and unpaid health care providers are going out of business and patients are suffering. How is this sensible or humane?

7. Stop giving big tax breaks to rich corporations who locate in Iowa when you can't find the money to teach the necessary skills to the workers those corporations need to fill empty skill positions? Iowa has a shortage of highly skilled workers, and poor funding for education and skills training is the reason.

8. Stop underfunding education, road construction, and other infrastructure spending in order to give huge tax breaks to rich corporations that don't need tax breaks. You're breaking the budget and borrowing from the emergency fund illegally, Gov. Reynolds, to cover your tracks. That's why you're being sued.