Oh, Cheryl, you've done it again. Your perspective and writing ability give us real insight into some of the wild bills being proposed (and passed) by this legislature!
While it's clear that a threat to the 4-H crowd is far more likely to move the Iowa electorate, the fact is the impact of legislation like SF167 will fall squarely on the backs of the most vulnerable Iowans - poor families, immigrant families, families who aren't white. And this is by design.
The same folks who were making bets on how many meat packing workers would die from covid are now making bets on how many of those workers' children can be sacrificed to the God of Dollars before the rest of us - those with resources, with voices, with choices - decide to do something about it.
Even the kids who manage to survive the industrial landscape that's fattening the purses of Reynolds & co -the meat packing plants, the giant hog confinements, the industrial ag operations - are being lined up in front of that sacrificial altar: no education = no way out. They'll labor to enrich the richest of us until their health fails - which will happen quickly in that landscape - and there will be no pensions, no retirement funds, no health care, no future for them.
In the meantime, a whole lot of wealth will be created on the backs of those workers, but the vast majority of Iowans will never see a dime of it. Unless you're Kim Reynolds or Chuck Grassley or Randy Pflum or a Maschhoff, what you'll end up with is the butcher's bill: disintegrating public education, disappearing rural communities and family farms, a destroyed natural landscape, decimated wildlife habitats, and the waste product of all those used-up lives - hungry kids, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, rising crime and criminal recidivism, homelessness, substance abuse and more.
When will Iowans understand that our communities, small and large, can only ever be as healthy as their weakest members?
When will we stop allowing the vultures to steal our children's futures?
Great column. We have too many elected officials who never learned, or have forgotten, the lessons from farm accidents involving children in the past. I was driving tractors and pickups on the road for my father when it was very difficult for me to reach the pedals to shift gears or stop (starting age 9 or 10). Looking back, I cannot believe my parents allowed that.
often think of Marilyn Adams and meeting her before she really had her organization up and going. She explained she named it as she did because she’d heard so many people say, “Well, they’re just kids.” She was asking a room full of farm women if we thought our kids were disposable.
Oh, Cheryl, you've done it again. Your perspective and writing ability give us real insight into some of the wild bills being proposed (and passed) by this legislature!
While it's clear that a threat to the 4-H crowd is far more likely to move the Iowa electorate, the fact is the impact of legislation like SF167 will fall squarely on the backs of the most vulnerable Iowans - poor families, immigrant families, families who aren't white. And this is by design.
The same folks who were making bets on how many meat packing workers would die from covid are now making bets on how many of those workers' children can be sacrificed to the God of Dollars before the rest of us - those with resources, with voices, with choices - decide to do something about it.
Even the kids who manage to survive the industrial landscape that's fattening the purses of Reynolds & co -the meat packing plants, the giant hog confinements, the industrial ag operations - are being lined up in front of that sacrificial altar: no education = no way out. They'll labor to enrich the richest of us until their health fails - which will happen quickly in that landscape - and there will be no pensions, no retirement funds, no health care, no future for them.
In the meantime, a whole lot of wealth will be created on the backs of those workers, but the vast majority of Iowans will never see a dime of it. Unless you're Kim Reynolds or Chuck Grassley or Randy Pflum or a Maschhoff, what you'll end up with is the butcher's bill: disintegrating public education, disappearing rural communities and family farms, a destroyed natural landscape, decimated wildlife habitats, and the waste product of all those used-up lives - hungry kids, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, rising crime and criminal recidivism, homelessness, substance abuse and more.
When will Iowans understand that our communities, small and large, can only ever be as healthy as their weakest members?
When will we stop allowing the vultures to steal our children's futures?
Great column. We have too many elected officials who never learned, or have forgotten, the lessons from farm accidents involving children in the past. I was driving tractors and pickups on the road for my father when it was very difficult for me to reach the pedals to shift gears or stop (starting age 9 or 10). Looking back, I cannot believe my parents allowed that.
often think of Marilyn Adams and meeting her before she really had her organization up and going. She explained she named it as she did because she’d heard so many people say, “Well, they’re just kids.” She was asking a room full of farm women if we thought our kids were disposable.