47 – 53

21 – 29

Girls basketball scores? Ha! I wish.

Today, the Iowa Legislature decided to take a page out of the Scott Walker Handbook and gut the collective bargaining code in Iowa known as Chapter 20.

I’ve got very little I can even type right now I’m just so entirely disgusted with the process. The bill was dropped on Febuary 7, and voted on in the full House and Senate today, basically fast-tracked through (though Republicans say that’s not the case). There was an all night session in the Senate, with no Republicans attempting to speak in favor of the bill they were going vote for. The debate was cut off, a highly unusual procedure for Iowa. There were 754 calls against this bill, or 98.8 percent of the called that were taken. That’s not counting last night, the night before, the emails, the visits, and the weekend forums where Republicans were told in no uncertain terms this Wisconsin style attack was NOT good for Iowa.

Six House Republicans listened and voted no. Every single other Republican turned a blind eye to those who said “slow down”. Typically, we see the last days of the session this battling going on. Now, they will soon start in with vouchers and an attempt to change how we work with our retirement. I’m not a fan of blaming it all on outside money, but NOT ONE of these Republicans made any part of their campaign platform about how collective bargaining would be ruined or how we can continue to starve our schools with low funding (1.1% this year) and vouchers. Yet, when the bill dropped, “Jill” and her non-Iowa friends from Priorities for Iowa were there telling us to call our legislators and tell them to support “collective bargaining reform”. They knew it was coming.

You see the “we’ll remember in 2018″ and ” we’ll remember”, but will we?  This is what the Koch Brothers, American for Prosperity, Priorities for Iowa will count on, that we will be Iowa nice. And all too often, we are. We’ll go back to our rooms and try to figure how in the world we are supposed to teach, grade, gather data, and do all we do in this new world. We don’t get mad. We don’t get organized. And we don’t ever seem to remember.

I understand why people don’t vote now. I understand that student who feels like they are invisible. That feeling of utter and total helplessness is overwhelming right now.

But, I’ll go home, hug my wife and daughter, and somehow, we’ll keep going (she’s a professional development specialist for Head Start, so she worried about Trump’s educational plan). We’ll be in Decorah or Arlington this Saturday, and ask, “how was this bill crafted” and “how many calls for and against did you get” and “why did you vote the way you did”, but it won’t make a hill of beans difference unless we finally get mad enough to do something about it.

Time will tell.

As for now, my favorite Irish band, Gaelic Storm in playing in the background, and somehow, I’m in the middle of an Irish drinking song (if you know Matching Sweaters, you’ll understand). 🙂