When my family and I moved to the great state of Iowa in 1967, we were in owe of the excellent public education that the state offered to K-12 students and the outstanding higher education of the three public universities, the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa.

Unfortunately, today and for some time, Iowa public education ranking and quality has dipped significantly from its heyday. There are several reasons behind that decline. One principle reason is the ongoing reduction by the Legislature of necessary funds supporting public education of both K-12 and higher education.

According to the Iowa Department of Education's annual Condition of Education Report, the review of Iowa's budget history shows the state spent more money on education than ever before. It actually rose from $1.9 billion in 2000 to nearly $3.2 billion in 2017-18. That is an increase of $1.3 billion.

The Iowa Legislature passed the state's charter school law in 2002. There is now no cap on the number of charter schools that can operate in the state.

At the organizational level, critics believe that charter schools harm the wider public school district, due to funding and transparency concerns. “I'm opposed to publicly funded charter schools that are run privately,” said Joseph Roy, superintendent of schools at the school district in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 2022. Currently, 45 states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws.

National teacher unions do not support charters because they give parents the option to flee failing schools or look for a better fit for their children. One possible reason may be due to traditional public schools falling short , which is an embarrassment and could be due to unions' failures.

Charter schools have unique freedom and flexibility not found in public school districts, and their freedom from the red tape of public education often allows them to dedicate increased resources and energy and supporting students in excelling at academic standards. On the other hand, charter schools have a higher teacher turnover rate and lose significantly more teachers each year than public schools. In the United States, charter schools lose 24% of their teachers each year, which is double that of traditional public schools.

It may be of interest to readers and IA voters to raise their awareness on the pros and cons of charter schools.

Teachers should be assigned goals, and their pay should be tied in to achieving those goals.

It is about performance of the teacher. Performance is shown when each individual student's progress is connected directly to his or her particular teacher or set of teachers. Based on how much the student learned, as demonstrated by the pre- and post- tests, a teacher will be assigned a value-added score. Teachers won't be able to blame the prior school-year teacher, nor the parents, nor society as some have done. If the score is low, it is either the kids are stupid, or the teacher is ineffective. We know that kids are not stupid, so...

How can a union protect a teacher from remediation, sanctions, or dismissal if the data shows clearly that the teacher is ineffective with the current students? It can't. And the traditional role of the union will have to change if it is to exist, just as the traditional role of the teacher must change.

From 60% in 2020 to 35% today. I blame our relentless (and often stupid) politicization of everything. (owed in large part to our problematic politics-as-entertainment habit)

Sharp decline in confidence in judiciary is among the largest Gallup has ever measured

The Hawkeyes aren't happy about the departures of Kaleb Brown and Leshon Williams, but either way, they're moving forward.

"Not to be callous, but if a player isn't playing, it's not like you lose anything that way," Kirk Ferentz said.

STORY:

A Coralville woman faces up to a decade in prison for encouraging another woman’s suicide in 2021, saying in a private message on social media at the time that “I want to make sure we get everything done right so you can rest easy,” according to authorities.



Jennifer Marie Williams, 48, was charged earlier this month in Jones County with assisting suicide, a Class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Jennifer Williams (Jones County Sheriff’s Office)
The case involved the Dec. 29, 2021, death of a 38-year-old Olin woman who the Jones County Sheriff’s Office said died by hanging. The death was later ruled a suicide.


Williams called 911 to report the death and was outside the woman’s house when law enforcement arrived.


“I walked outside and told Williams I was sorry for the loss of her friend. She just shrugged her shoulders and did not appear to be saddened by the loss,” a deputy noted in a criminal complaint.




During an initial investigation, a deputy examined messages Williams said she had sent the Olin woman on Snapchat just hours before the death. The deputy took photos of the messages and detectives later executed a warrant to get the full conversation.


The messages, according to a criminal complaint, showed that although Williams knew the woman was suicidal, they talked about funeral arrangements and supplies for the suicide, and Williams asked her: “Back to the chair. Have you tested it out yet? Look here woman, tell me if you tested the rope strength too." Williams also told her on Snapchat, "Let me be the one who finds you. No one else can handle it."


Investigators said there were no messages to the woman telling her to not kill herself.


The conversation ended about 2 a.m. on the day the woman died, according to the complaint. Video surveillance showed Williams arrived at the woman’s house about 4:27 a.m. but she stayed in her car until almost 9 a.m., when she went inside and then called 911, the complaint states.


A charge of assisting suicide is unusual, several prosecutors said.


Linn County Attorney Nick Maybanks and Johnson County Attorney Rachel Zimmermann Smith both agreed that's not a common charge, and neither was aware of either of their counties filing that charge in the past.


"To the best of my knowledge, this specific charge has not previously been filed in Jones County," Assistant Jones County Attorney Sara Smith said Monday.


Williams was arrested Dec. 3 and was being held in the Jones County Jail on a $10,000 bail, according to a news release from the Jones County Sheriff’s Office.

Americans must have forgotten what it looks like when one of their elected officials fights for their interests.

Fortunately, President-elect Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election has produced regular reminders of how it ought to look.

On Monday, Trump welcomed Japanese CEO Masayoshi Son to the president-elect's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where the billionaire tech investor pledged a $100 billion investment in the United States, double what he pledged on a similar occasion eight years ago but not enough to keep Trump from showing off his legendary negotiating skills.

Son, who founded the tech investing firm Softbank, pledged $50 billion in U.S. investments in 2016, per CNBC.

This time around, Son's investment will create a projected 100,000 U.S. jobs in "artificial intelligence and related infrastructure" by 2029.

Trump, of course, welcomed the news of Son's massive investment.

Moreover, in one of several clips posted to the social media platform X, the president-elect raised expectations by suggesting that the investment would create 100,000 jobs "at a minimum."

Then, in a second clip, Son attributed his optimism to Trump's election.

"My confidence level to the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory," the CEO said.

Finally, in the most remarkable clip of all, Trump publicly asked Son for an additional $100 billion.

"We were discussing, and President Trump said, 'Masa, double that is not enough. Maybe go for more. Right?" the smiling CEO recalled as he turned to the president-elect.

"That's right. I'm gonna ask him right now. Would you make it $200 billion instead of $100 billion?" Trump replied.

Son broke out into laughter, perhaps somewhat nervously, but more likely because he knew that Trump intended a compliment.

"Believe it or not, he can actually afford to do that," the president-elect said.

Trump then never took his eyes off of Son as the investor figured out how to answer.

"I will try to make it happen," Son said.

The billionaire investor then called Trump a "great negotiator" as the latter patted Son on the back and called his Japanese friend "brilliant."

After four years of elected officials prioritizing illegal immigrants and billions of dollars for Ukraine, Americans finally have an advocate.

Indeed, Monday's good-natured exchange with Son provided a perfect illustration of the disposition and skills Trump brings to the presidency -- and not a moment too soon.

Donald Trump has officially revealed when America was last “great”: the 1930s.
Back in that golden era, there was no polio vaccine. The United States instigated a series of debilitating, beggar-thy-neighbor global trade wars. Sympathies for fascism and isolationism were rising (look up the history of the “America First” slogan). And Americans were wading through the remains of our banking system, whose collapse had kicked off the Great Depression.


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Apparently, the president-elect’s transition team sees this period as America’s glory days.
Some of Trump’s 1930s-ish plans have received a fair amount of media coverage, such as his anti-vaccine nominees for senior health jobs, and his thirst for new trade wars. But less attention has been afforded to his threats to the U.S. banking system, which Trump seems intent on making more vulnerable to crises.


Consider the troubling idea to abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported. Congress founded the FDIC in 1933 in response to a series of painful, “It’s a Wonderful Life”-style bank runs. Hordes of panicked customers tried to pull their money out of banks all at once because they worried their cash would not be safe, causing thousands of banks to collapse.

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In the 90 years since, the FDIC has run a national insurance system for deposits, up to certain limits, so that customers can trust that their money would be protected if their bank got into trouble. The independent agency also supervises the banks it insures to prevent them from getting into trouble in the first place. (Knowing you’re backed by insurance can lead to riskier behavior, after all.)
Trump’s transition team is unhappy with this arrangement.


It has reportedly been asking potential nominees whether it’s possible to kill the FDIC altogether, as well as potentially shrinking, eliminating and consolidating other bank regulators and supervisors. Under such proposals, the FDIC’s deposit insurance function might be absorbed into the Treasury Department, the Journal reported; it’s not clear which other government agency, if any, would take over the FDIC’s other responsibilities, such as supervision and resolving bank failures. (Similar consolidation proposals were laid out in the Project 2025 playbook, which Trump repeatedly swore he had nothing to do with.)
It’s certainly true that our patchwork financial regulatory system could use streamlining. “Even Rube Goldberg could not have imagined our current regulatory framework, so making the system more effective (and less costly) could be a bipartisan thing,” said Kermit Schoenholtz, an emeritus professor who taught money and banking at New York University. “The question is whether the purpose here is to make it more or even less effective.”




If the goal of consolidation is to help regulators spot and address risks in the financial system wherever they occur — in traditional banks, nonbanks, markets, infrastructure, etc. — that would be fantastic. But there’s a difference between making government more effective and making it disappear, and Trump appears to be aiming for the latter.


How do we know? Financial deregulation was one of his major priorities during his first term. He rolled back parts of the Dodd-Frank Act, a law created in response to the 2008 financial crisis. The big banks also took on more leverage while he was in office, suggesting his appointees tolerated more risk-taking.
Since then, President Joe Biden’s appointees have proposed a series of regulations to reduce risk and make the financial system more resilient, including by requiring large banks to have a bigger capital cushion. Wall Street has fought these efforts ferociously, even running ads about them during “Sunday Night Football.”
The banks might soon get their way. Shortly after the November election, financial regulators announced they were pausing any major rulemaking, including on capital requirements, until Trump takes office. Wall Street firms and lobbyists have drafted wish lists of (de)regulatory changes they want the transition team to commit to, Reuters has reported. And more of Dodd-Frank appears to be in the crosshairs, especially if Project 2025 is implemented.


It’s no surprise then that bank stocks surged after the election. They’re expected to soon be “unshackled” by regulation, freeing them to take on a lot more risk. But taxpayers will still presumably be on the hook if the banks’ risk-taking goes awry.
Right now seems like a peculiar time for any pre-FDIC-era nostalgia. After all, last year was the biggest year for bank failures in modern history, thanks to a crisis that took down Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic. Runs on these regional banks threatened contagion across the rest of the financial system — at least until federal regulators (including the FDIC) stepped in to stem the panic and protect depositors.
MAGA World appears unchastened by either this experience or that of the early 1930s. Or maybe they take it as a challenge: You’ve heard of the Great Depression? Just wait until Trump delivers the greatest one of all.

Why do they not disclose these conflicts of interest?

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She’s going to put it on its head this year. Her arms are way bigger, she has a big vein starting to pop out coming down the middle of her bicep. I can’t tell you how jacked I am about her up coming season already.

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Oy.

AOC finds out her fate in race for top Democrat leadership spot​

Democrats recommended that Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) be appointed to the party's top role in the powerful House Oversight Committee.

It is a snub to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) who also wanted the influential position.

During a House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee closed-door meeting on Monday, the panel voted 34 to 27 for Connolly over Oasio-Cortez.

All 215 House Democrats are expected Tuesday morning to take a full caucus vote by secret ballot following the recommendations, which usually leads how the party will lean.

There have, however, been instances where the Party overrules the panels' vote.

It's unlikely they would break with the will of the group closely aligned with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in favor of a progressive member of the so-called 'squad.'

The position for top Democrat on the Oversight Committee opened after Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) challenged and ultimately ousted Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) for the top post in the Judiciary Committee.

Choosing Connolly, 74, shows a preference for a more establishment and much more senior member of the Democratic Caucus to take leadership in the highly influential panel. Connolly has served in the House since 2009.

The Democratic Party will hold no power in any branch of government starting in January 2025.

The decision from the Steering Committee came after former Speaker Nancy Pelosi worked behind the scenes to put the kibosh on Ocasio-Cortez's dream of taking a powerful House position in the 119th Congress.

The 35-year-old previously served as vice ranking member.

Pelosi may no longer be in House leadership but she still wields immense power and publicly backed Connolly for the position.

The 84-year-old California Democrat reportedly made calls on behalf of Connolly.

Last month Connolly revealed days after the 2024 election that he was diagnosed with esophagus cancer.

The congressman said he will undergo chemotherapy treatment.

AOC first signaled she was 'interested' in mounting a bid for ranking member earlier this month and said she was speaking with colleagues before formalizing her bid.

While Democrats are in the minority again in the new year, whoever serves as ranking member on the committee could hold massive power should Democrats retake the majority in the midterms.

Retaking the House would give them the ability to subpoena Trump administration officials as they carry out investigations.

Pelosi and AOC have been doing a delicate dance since the New York progressive Congresswoman came to Washington after a surprise upset ousting a powerful Democratic incumbent in the 2018 primary.

Ocasio-Cortez was among a group of protesters who stormed Pelosi's office urging action on climate change in October 2018.

But Pelosi has also publicly praised the high-profile young congresswoman and downplayed reports of their feud in the past.

Earlier this year, AOC offered praise to the former speaker for 'passing the torch' to Minority Leader Jeffries.

As you know, I made the trip to Ida Grove over the weekend, mostly to connect with Jaxx DeJean and watch him play on Friday night.

I spoke with Jaxx and his head coach about his recruitment, how he's developed as a football player thus far, the Cooper comparison, and more.

STORY:

And there you have it -- the debut of our 2026 recruiting board.

Every position except running back, where they've only offered one RB, who is a national recruit and probably not going to Iowa.

I just think it’s gross. Lots of cheeseheads swear by them though/

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This would be one of the most epic trolls of all time and also allow kamala to pay off her outstanding debts (how did she manage this with 1.3 billion in big donor donations btw?). Imagine this as the lead of the deportation caravan..

I tried to find the original thread this got discussed in but this is new today.


What a buttfuc.k

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A willful president claiming expansive executive power clashes with the Senate, including over his unorthodox appointments. The president’s clever allies point to a constitutional clause he might invoke to unburden himself of the recalcitrant upper chamber. Language tucked away in Article II, Section 3 says that if the House of Representatives and the Senate disagree “with Respect to the Time of Adjournment,” the president “may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.”


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Voilà, say proponents: If the Senate goes too far in defying the president, he can summon the more pliant House to call for Congress to adjourn. When the Senate disagrees, the president can send them both packing. The president’s opponents, of course, warn of a constitutional crisis: “What principle of morality — what code of laws — what provision of the constitution,” one newspaper asks, would this president “not sweep away like a cobweb?”


This state of affairs could, of course, describe Washington in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2024 election. It actually describes Washington in 1834, during President Andrew Jackson’s second term, as his battle with the Senate over the Bank of the United States reached a crescendo.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...?itid=mc_magnet-cartoons_inline_collection_20

The 1834 debate over the scope of the president’s power to adjourn Congress has been largely forgotten. But it can shed light on a troubling constitutional clause that a bold or desperate president might try to exploit. The history also contains broader lessons for America’s current era of populist politics and constitutional hardball: that fears of a dictatorial presidency extend far back in the country’s history, and that any quasi-monarchical powers the Constitution does afford American presidents are best left untested at their limits.

Unlike Trump, who in 2020 explicitly threatened to adjourn Congress, Jackson never did so. But early in 1834, newspapers began to circulate rumors of a purported plot to bring the Senate to heel. “The Kitchen Cabinet” — a derisive term invented for Jackson’s band of partisan political advisers — “have a scheme for shortening the session,” claimed a dispatch in the Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer.


“It has been the talk here for some days past that the President intends to prorogue Congress about the first of April, provided the House will agree to adjourn, and the Senate prove refractory,” said a letter in the Columbian Centinel. But the writer added that this was unlikely: Jackson “would not dare to play the part of a Cromwell and Napoleon.”
Some Jackson opponents weren’t so sure. Congressional records show that on March 12, 1834, John Quincy Adams — the former president and Jackson foe who was then a representative from Massachusetts — warned in a speech of “whispers within this Hall” that “a disagreement is to be gotten up between the two Houses of Congress” so that the House could serve Jackson’s “royal prerogative.”
He expressed alarm that “a question of presidential power, which, until this memorable day, has slept undisturbed in the constitution” was now up for debate. Another representative, George McDuffie of South Carolina, said in April: “We are not, indeed, without some very significant indications that this royal mandate will be executed.”

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The Globe, a paper close to Jackson’s administration, published a forceful defense of presidential adjournment power two days after Adams’s speech. It accused senators of threatening to stay in session until the Bank of the United States — which Jackson had vowed to destroy — was rechartered. Jackson could preempt this supposed senatorial extortion: The Constitution, the Globe insisted, empowers “the Executive, whenever the two Houses, on any occasion, cannot agree as to the time of their adjournment, to interpose and untie for them the Gordian knot.”




Though the Senate infuriated Jackson by censuring him in March 1834, the two houses of Congress ended their session voluntarily without rechartering the bank. Jackson didn’t need to act against the Senate, but he probably thought the Globe was right that he had the constitutional power to do so. A veto message on unrelated legislation in the last year of his presidency asserted “the contingent power of the Executive” to intervene in Congress’s adjournment decisions in the future. No president has ever exercised that power, and its scope remains unknown.
Jackson’s political opponents, the Whigs, advanced two interpretations that would limit the president’s adjournment prerogative. The first was that the prerogative applied only during extraordinary sessions of Congress called into being by the president. After all, as Maryland Sen. Robert Henry Goldsborough noted in an 1836 rebuttal to Jackson’s veto, the Constitution mentions adjournment “in the same breath” as it mentions the ability to convene special sessions. The president, says Article II, Section 3:

may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.

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That context arguably limits the president’s power, as one writer argued in May 1834 in the Richmond Whig & Public Advertiser. The adjournment prerogative, he observed, is triggered “‘in case of disagreement between them’ — between whom? The two Houses — what two Houses? The two Houses extraordinarily assembled — the only two Houses alluded to in the section.”
This narrower view of the clause made pragmatic as well as linguistic sense. Extraordinary sessions of Congress were common during the first half of American history, when the national legislature was a part-time body. As an article in the National Gazette and Literary Register observed, “no great injury can result from permitting the President” to dismiss a Congress he himself convened.
But allowing a president to combine with one house of Congress to suppress the other in a regular session would undermine the legislative branch’s ability to check the executive. The Gazette piece claimed that if the president’s power applied even to ordinary sessions of Congress without limitation, “it would virtually establish a Dictatorship.”


The Globe insisted that the president’s adjournment prerogative applied to all congressional sessions, no ifs, ands or buts. The pro-Jackson editorialists even appealed to the Constitution’s drafting history to support their point. They noted that in an early draft of the Constitution, the president’s power to call special sessions and his power to adjourn Congress “were written separately, in distinct sentences.” It was only in a later draft that they were “condensed into one sentence.” That suggested that the president’s adjournment prerogative existed independently of his power to convene Congress, the Globe argued. The Framers ultimately linked the two powers together “from mere taste as to punctuation and euphony in the structure of the section.”

Only a matter of time and the same injury logic applies as bowl games and even later regular season games. Once a player has achieved nfl orbit - shut it down$$. Gonna enjoy the implosion.

It is great to be an Iowa Wrestling fan.

Go Hawks!

A 37-year-old Iowa man who yelled "God is real" and began attempting to open a cabin door on a flight from Omaha to New York City was sentenced to three years of probation Friday in federal court.

Wesley Orban, of Ireton, in northwest Iowa, was sentenced in the U.S. District Court for Nebraska for assault in a special aircraft jurisdiction. Orban was a passenger Nov. 9, 2023 on a Delta Airlines flight from Eppley Airfield to LaGuardia International Airport.
Shortly after the plane had pushed back from the jetway and began to taxi to the runway, Orban began yelling and speaking about demons. He then left his seat and ran to the front of the plane.

Orban began "pounding on the cabin door" and attempted to open the door. He physically struggled with a flight attendant, who got between Orban and the cockpit door.




Orban was then subdued by passengers and crew. He was removed from the airplane before takeoff and taken into custody by police officers from the Omaha Airport Authority.

Ireton is a town of about 590 residents located 36 miles north of Sioux City, Iowa.