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Mar 22, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Joe Bolkcom |Dave Busiek |Kurt Meyer |David P. Tilly
Former State Senator Joe Bolkcom served on the Senate Ways and Means Committee for 24 years, including ten years as chair. For the past eight years, Iowa taxpayers have been victims of a political scheme to collect our hard-earned taxes for services we never received.
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Mar 22, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Dave Busiek |Kurt Meyer |David P. Tilly |Randy Evans
Associated Press teletype image, via Wikimedia CommonsDave Busiek spent 43 years in Iowa radio and TV newsrooms, the last 30 years as news director at KCCI-TV in Des Moines. He writes the Substack newsletter Dave Busiek on Media, where this essay first appeared. Another brick fell out of the wall of traditional newspaper coverage when Gannett announced it will drop Associated Press coverage next week.
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Mar 21, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Kurt Meyer |David P. Tilly |Randy Evans |AJ Jones
Donald Trump speaks at an Ohio rally on March 16. Screenshot from C-SPAN videoKurt Meyer writes a weekly column for the Nora Springs – Rockford Register and the Substack newsletter Showing Up, where this essay first appeared. He serves as chair of the executive committee (the equivalent of board chair) of Americans for Democratic Action, America’s most experienced liberal organization. “Words matter.” It’s a simple message, one I’ve cited before, short enough to be printed on a lapel button.
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Mar 20, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | David P. Tilly |Randy Evans |AJ Jones |Scott Syroka
State Senator Lynn Evans speaks in the Iowa Senate on March 18. David Tilly is a former deputy director of the Iowa Department of Education. He emailed this message to all 150 Iowa legislators on March 20. His previous messages to lawmakers about proposed changes to Area Education Agencies are available here, here, and here. Open letter to Iowa Legislators:I am David Tilly. I was Deputy Director at the Iowa Department of Education between 2012 and 2020.
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Feb 21, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Heather Sievers |Kurt Meyer |David P. Tilly |Randy Evans
A mother's perspective: How AEA reform will hurt Iowa's children Wednesday, Feb 21 2024 2 Comments 0 New! Heather Sievers is the founder of Advocates for Iowa’s Children and an Altoona mother of a child of rare disabilities. Photo of Heather with her daughter Rowan was provided by the author and published with permission.
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Feb 17, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Laura Belin |Dave Leshtz |Bill Bumgarner |David P. Tilly
Interactive School Nutrition Dashboard created by the Iowa Hunger Coalition At least three bills that would have helped needy Iowa families feed their children didn’t make it through the state legislature’s first “funnel.” Most bills not related to taxes or spending are considered dead for the 2024 session if not approved by at least one Iowa House or Senate committee by February 16.
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Feb 16, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Laura Belin |Dave Leshtz |Bill Bumgarner |David P. Tilly
Left: State Representative Ako Abdul-Samad in February 2024. Right: Rob Johnson (photos cropped from their Facebook pages)The longest-serving Black legislator in Iowa history will retire at the end of this year. State Representative Ako Abdul-Samad announced on February 15 that he will not seek another term in the Iowa House, Stephen Gruber-Miller reported for the Des Moines Register. Abdul-Samad has represented part of the city of Des Moines since 2007.
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Feb 16, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Laura Belin |Dave Leshtz |Bill Bumgarner |David P. Tilly
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley did his best last year to promote what he called “very significant allegations from a trusted FBI informant implicating then-Vice President Biden in a criminal bribery scheme.”On February 15, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging that informant, Alexander Smirnov, with two felonies: making a false statement to a government agent, and creating a false and fictitious record.
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Feb 2, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Randy Richardson |Rick Morain |David P. Tilly |Nick Covington
Randy Richardson is a former educator and retired associate executive director of the Iowa State Education Association. On January 26, a month later than planned, the Iowa Department of Education released a summary of the annual certified enrollment numbers for Iowa’s public and private K-12 schools. The agency’s news release also provided our first look at the impact “education savings accounts” (also known as school vouchers) have had on public school enrollment across Iowa.
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Feb 2, 2024 | 
bleedingheartland.com | Rick Morain |David P. Tilly |Nick Covington |Laura Belin
Left: John Quincy Adams, depicted by painter Thomas Sully. Right: Andrew Jackson, also painted by Thomas Sully. Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column. The 2024 presidential election will in all probability be decided in the usual fashion, with a candidate receiving a majority of the electoral votes declared the winner. That’s the way it’s been done in almost all 109 presidential elections since the nation’s founding.
