Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism (https://caucus.iowawatch.org/tag/congress/)
I was a kid from small-town Iowa when I first laid eyes on the United States Capitol. It was 1962. My family squeezed into our Dodge and drove to our nation’s capital for the vacation of a lifetime. It was all about history. We walked through the White House.
The boss told Gus Malzahn on Sunday that he was no longer needed. His employment was ending immediately. With that blunt conversation, Malzahn became another statistic of 2020. He took his place next to the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs this year — a year when unemployment, at times, rivaled those dreadfully dark days of the Great Depression. But Malzahn is not in the same boat as most of the others.
He won’t have to be up before dawn to get into a food line.
Tone-deaf. That’s the dismal state of the political discourse in our nation these days. Regrettably, Iowa has an all-too-prominent role in this bumbling lack of awareness of how our democracy is being eaten away by the people who want to be our leaders. Pour yourself a glass of Maalox. You will need it, because your acid indigestion will flare up before we get far in today’s discussion.
UPDATED: The appropriations bill Congress sent to President Donald Trump Sept. 30 to keep the federal government open through Dec. 11 includes a section giving hospitals one year, instead of the current three months, to start paying back all of the accelerated Medicare payments they received in the spring.
The death of Congressman John Lewis last Friday night accomplished what police officers with their billy clubs and white mobs with their fists and pipes never were able to achieve: Silencing his voice. For 60 years, Lewis expressed his opinions – on segregation, on voting rights, on economic inequality – during sit-ins, picketing and speeches. Not everyone was interested in his views. More than once he was beaten nearly to death, and his head bore scars of a skull fracture and those beatings. Last year, Lewis arose at the Capitol to make his point once again: “Voting access is the key to equality in our democracy.
It’s quiz time. What arm of the federal government has the most contact with ordinary Americans, people like you and me? Is it the Internal Revenue Service? Social Security Administration? The Food and Drug Administration?
Schools across Iowa have been dark for more than a week because of winter vacation. But a Des Moines teacher still managed to teach a very important lesson during that time – but this lesson wasn’t aimed at the kids she normally works with. It was intended for adults. Laura’s lesson is one more people should learn from, because the discussions in Washington, D.C., and at the Capitol in Des Moines would benefit from a wider appreciation and understanding of what she was telling us. Randy Evans
STRAY THOUGHTS
Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council.
Whenever a friend or relative dies, it’s not unusual to find ourselves dwelling on the conversations we wish had occurred or the questions that never got asked. That certainly was true with my parents, Noel and June, who left long before my brothers and I ran out of questions about their memories from growing up during the Great Depression or during those anxiety-filled years of World War II. That was also the case with my friend, Berkley Bedell of Spirit Lake, who died earlier this month at age 98, a few days after suffering a stroke. Randy Evans
STRAY THOUGHTS
Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register.
How many more will it take? How many more mass shootings? How many more bodies of adults and children will need to pile up — in the aisles of retail stores, in churches, in the classrooms and corridors of schools, in offices, in movie theaters, in nightclubs? Randy Evans
STRAY THOUGHTS
Randy Evans is the executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. He is a former editorial page editor and assistant managing editor of The Des Moines Register.
Some Americans may think their country is divided politically more than ever but political acrimony was more serious, and sometimes violent, in other times in U.S. history, former long-time U.S. congressman James Leach, of Iowa, said in an IowaWatch interview. Listen to the interview in this podcast.