Starving our universities?

On Monday the Des Moines Register Opinion page took a look at the issue of funding for our state universities. I have written about this issue a couple times including here.

The Register included letters from all 3 university Presidents and an interesting graph. The graph showed that in 1981 the state universities got 77.4% of their funding from the state and just 20.8% from tuition. In 2006, the state universities got 49.1% of their funding from the state and 44.1% from tuition. This is a massive shift in priorities over the past 25 years. The President's of the 3 state universities argue that it hurts the quality of faculty, the state loses research dollars, and our children lose out on a quality education.

Rockin' the Suburbs

Yesterday, I ran across 2 links online (1 article and 1 song) that just strengthen my desire to never live in Suburbia.

Rockin' the Suburbs by Ben Folds (rewritten for the movie "Over the Hedge"). Here are some of the lyrics...

Let me tell y'all what it's like
Watching idol on a friday night
In a house built safe and sound
On indian burial ground
Sham On

We drive our cars everyday
To and from work both ways
So we make just enough to pay
To drive our cars to work each day

We're rocking the suburbs
Around the block just one more time
We're rocking the suburbs
Cause I can't tell which house is mine
We're rocking the suburbs
We part the shades and face facts
They got better looking Fescue
Right across the cul de sac

Hotwheels take rising stars
Get rich quick seminars
Soap opera magazines
40,000 watt nativity scenes
Don't freak about the smoke alarm
Mom left the TV dinner on

Yet we're rocking the suburbs
From family feud to Chevy Chase
We're rocking the suburbs
We numb the muscles in our face
We're rocking the suburbs
Feed the dog and mow the lawn
Watching mommy balance the checks
While daddy juggles credit cards

The Suburban Fantasy by James Howard Kunstler

Contrary to a faction of wishful thinkers, the earth does not have a creamy nougat center of oil. Oil fields do not replenish themselves. Also contrary to the prevailing wish, no combination of alternative fuels will allow us to keep running the interstate highway system, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney World and the other furnishings of what Dick Cheney called our “non-negotiable way of life.”

People who refuse to negotiate with the circumstances that the world throws at them automatically get assigned a new negotiating partner: reality. Reality then requires you to change your behavior, whether you like it or not. With global oil production peaking, we are now subject to rising oil prices, as markets are forced to contend with allocating a resource heading in the direction of scarcity. Oil prices are only likely to go higher—though there is apt to be a ratcheting effect as high oil prices depress economic activity and thus dampen demand for oil which will depress prices leading to increased consumption which will then kick prices back up, and so on. The prospects for more geopolitical friction over oil also self-evidently increase, as industrial nations desperately maneuver for supplies.

The Primary is just 1 week away and Culver Can't Shake Opponents

The primary is just one week from tomorrow and it seems that it is going to be a close race. Here is a good article from the Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier talking about how Culver, though in the lead in polls, can't seem to pull away.

A poll released last week by KCCI-TV showed him with 38 percent of the vote among likely Democratic voters.

That’s just 3 percent more than the 35 percent he needs to win the primary outright. And with the poll’s 5 percent margin of error, it’s not a comfortable cushion.

Fallon endorsed by the Iowa City Press Citizen

The Iowa City Press Citizen has endorsed Ed Fallon for the Democratic nominee for Governor. They did a really good job outlining the candidates attributes and limitations and explain why Fallon is the best candidate. It is well worth the read.

Fallon has most democratic vision for Iowa

Over the last 13 years as a state legislator from inner city Des Moines, Fallon's message has stayed consistent but has become more polished and more palatable. Recently, when he's spoken out for health care reform, election reform and education reform, he's not sounded like the ideologue rivals describe. Instead, he's sounded ... well ... right.

Fallon to be endorsed by the Sierra Club

State Representative and Gubernatorial Candidate Ed Fallon (D-Des Moines) will hold a press conference Thursday at noon to announce he has been endorsed by the Iowa Sierra Club, the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots environmental group.

“I’ve served on the Environmental Protection Committee in the State Legislature for 14 years, and I’ve worked together with the Sierra Club on a lot of key issues,” Fallon said. “I share the Sierra Club’s concerns for protecting Iowa’s unique natural environments, our soil and our water.”

The Sierra Club has worked for over 100 years on issues involving the protection of public resources.

“We simply need to be willing to stand up to polluters and do the hard work necessary to enact change,” Fallon said. “My campaign is all about hard work, and I’ve been working hard on environmental issues for two decades.”

DETAILS FOR TOMORROW’S EVENT:
Thursday, May 25, noon
Ed Fallon/Sierra Club Press Conference
Thomas Park
343 Marion Blvd
Marion

Drinking Liberally in Iowa City Thursday

Drinking Liberally

Iowa City

When: 7pm
Where: The Mill, 120 E. Burlington St., Iowa City
Why: Why the heck not?
http://drinkingliberally.org/

For more info check out my post about their last meeting here.

Common Iowan Exclusive: Culver's next commercial

I have come across a clip from Chet Culver's next commercial. In the commercial Culver rides around on a horse trying to catch his nemesis invariably without success.

Blouin's campaign is preparing an ad questioning if the horse was provided by IBP.

The Fallon campaign is busy running a grassroots campaign and talking to voters.

Governor's Forum on Radio on Tuesday at noon

KUNI Candidates Forum

Tuesday, May 23, 2006 - 12:00 PM
Ed Fallon, Mike Blouin and Sal Mohamed will take
part in this one-hour gubernatorial forum, which
will be broadcast live on KUNI across Iowa.
KUNI Studios  Cedar Falls,  IA

FM 90.9 in eastern Iowa

www.kuniradio.org
Not sure where Chet is at.  If you can't listen to the forum,
I am pretty sure it will be on the KUNI's website later on.

What do you get when there is an oil man in the White House?

I saw this on The Daily Show and had to look it up. It is from a August 2001, White House Press briefing.

Q : Is one of the problems with this, and the entire energy field, American lifestyles? Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?

MR. FLEISCHER: That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do is make certain that we're able to get those resources in an efficient way, in a way that also emphasizes protecting the environment and conservation, into the hands of consumers so they can make the choices that they want to make as they live their lives day to day.

Fleischer then goes to add...

MR. FLEISCHER: But the President also believes that the American people's use of energy is a reflection of the strength of our economy, of the way of life that the American people have come to enjoy.

What do you get when there is an oil man in the White House? Yep, high gas prices.

Al Franken thinks Jim Leach is a "good guy"

Over the past year that we have been able to get AAR in Eastern Iowa, I have heard Al Franken repeatedly refer to Jim Leach by many positive terms. Like many people Al Franken has been fooled by the Jim Leach mystique. Just last month Franken posts this nice blog about how he wants to beat Republicans. Then last week I heard Franken refer to Leach yet again as a "good legislator."

Can you help me get through to Al Franken that JIM LEACH IS NO DAMN MODERATE!?!

And here is the proof on Leach:

• supported DeLay nearly 75% of the time
• supported the odorous Roy Blount for majority leader.
• supported lightening the ethics rules specifically for Tom DeLay
• supported the horrible medicare part D
• voted for the Patriot Act
• voted for NCLB

Ask that Franken give Dave Loebsack at least an opportunity to show that he (Dave) is the kind of congressman we need in from Iowa's 2nd district.

To contact Franken, click here.

Thanks to ruralib over at DU for this information.

Framing Immigration

I will admit that I don't know quite what to think about the immigration issue. I know that we need to protect our borders, but I also want to do it in a compassionate and intelligent manner. The immigration issue is definitely one that isn't divided down the political lines.

Yesterday, I found this article written by George Lakoff, author of "Don't Think of An Elephant." Lakoff provides a great look into the language used in the discussion about immigration.

Framing is at the center of the recent immigration debate. Simply framing it as about "immigration" has shaped its politics, defining what count as "problems" and constraining the debate to a narrow set of issues. The language is telling. The linguistic framing is remarkable: frames for illegal immigrant, illegal alien, illegals, undocumented workers, undocumented immigrants, guest workers, temporary workers, amnesty, and border security.

All the talk is about how it is a immigration problem when it could really be viewed as a foreign policy issue.

Such a framing of the problem would lead to a solution involving the Secretary of State, conversations with Mexico and other Central American countries, and a close examination of the promises of NAFTA, CAFTA, the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank to raise standards of living around the globe. It would inject into the globalization debate a concern for the migration and displacement of people, not simply globalization's promise for profits. This is not addressed when the issue is defined as the “immigration problem.” Bush's “comprehensive solution” does not address any of these concerns. The immigration problem, in this light, is actually a globalization problem.

Or it could be viewed as a humanitarian issue.

Perhaps the problem might be better understood as a humanitarian crisis. Can the mass migration and displacement of people from their homelands at a rate of 800,000 people a year be understood as anything else? Unknown numbers of people have died trekking through the extreme conditions of the Arizona and New Mexico desert. Towns are being depopulated and ways of life lost in rural Mexico. Fathers feel forced to leave their families in their best attempt to provide for their kids. Everyday, boatloads of people arrive on our shores after miserable journeys at sea in deplorable conditions.

Or it could be viewed as a civil rights issue.

The current situation can also be seen as a civil rights problem. The millions of people living here who crossed illegally are for most intents and purposes Americans. They work here. They pay taxes here. Their kids are in school here. They plan to raise their families here. For the most part, they are assimilated into the American system, but are forced to live underground and in the shadows because of their legal status. They are denied ordinary civil rights. The “immigration problem” framing overlooks their basic human dignity.

Why is this issue framed as an immigration problem? (Emphasis added is mine)

Perhaps most pointedly, the “immigration problem” frame blocks an understanding of this issue as a cheap labor issue. The undocumented immigrants allow employers to pay low wages, which in turn provide the cheap consumer goods we find at WalMart and McDonalds. They are part of a move towards the cheap lifestyle, where employers and consumers find any way they can to save a dollar, regardless of the human cost.

A solution to the “immigration problem” will not address these concerns because they are absent from the “immigration frame.”

This article really opened my eyes. If real progress is to be made on immigration, we must talk about the issue in a different manner.

Governor Candidates Fundraising Reports

The fundraising numbers from the Governor's Race were released this week. Chris at Political Forecast does a nice job looking into the here. Over at John Deeth Blog, he has a great post about what the money and TV ads mean during a primary election.

Whomever the Democratic candidate is, they will not have as much money as Nussle. Luckily, I have never seen a check for $5,000 walk out of a voting booth.