State Reps. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, and Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, sponsored the legislation to remove sexual orientation and gender identity as definitions used for purposes of protecting students in public and nonpublic schools from harassment and bullying.

Schultz told NBC affiliate WHO-TV that the rationale behind the move is to force a vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, since the Iowa Supreme Court pointed to laws like Iowa’s Safe Schools Law in making its April decision to legalize same-sex marriage. Ryan Roemerman, executive director of Iowa Pride Network, said the bill would open up LGBT students to bullying and harassment.

“When our state is facing record budget deficits and unemployment, House Republicans feel their time is best spent picking on Iowa’s LGBT youth,” Roemerman said in a statement. “There is no better example as to why we have this law, so youth in Iowa don’t grow up to be like these bigots.”

After numerous meetings at the Capitol Thursday, Brad Clark, campaign director for One Iowa, told The Iowa Independent that he expects Republican lawmakers in the Iowa House to attempt to bring about a vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage by invoking Rule 60, which allows a majority vote on the floor of the House to pull a bill out of a committee even if the committee has not approved it.

Democratic leadership has repeatedly promised that the legislature would not discuss gay marriage this session. Gay-rights advocates have long believed conservative lawmakers would attempt some procedural move to force a vote on the issue in spite of Democratic opposition.

In the closing days of the 2009 legislative session, Republicans in both the House and Senate made numerous attempts to force a vote on a constitutional ban on gay marriage, including attaching it to a tax proposal and the state’s Health and Human Services budget. Democrats successfully blocked the efforts.

This would mark the first formal attempt to overturn the Court’s ruling of the 2010 legislative session.

“They can attempt to invoke Rule 60 after a bill has been filed for 18 days,” Clark said. House Joint Resolution 2001, which would amend the state’s constitution and define marriage as between one man and one woman, was filed Jan. 12 will reach the 18-day threshold Friday.

Clark said he is optimistic the effort will fail, saying Republicans will have to reach 51 votes in order to bring the bill to the House floor. There are 56 Democrats in the Iowa House and only 44 Republicans, meaning at least seven Democrats would have to support the move for the effort to succeed.

“And in theory, Democrats could just not vote,” Clark said, thus denying the GOP the majority it needs and the symbolic victory of getting Democrats on record as casting a vote on gay marriage.

State Rep. Michael Reasoner, D-Creston, sponsored the legislation banning gay marriage. He did not respond to a request for comment by The Iowa Independent.

As The Iowa Independent reported last week, mental health care advocates were upset that language removing protections for psychiatric medications purchased through Medicaid was included in the state reorganization bill. It was later discovered the language first emerged in a consultant’s report to the governor. They argued that the changes would result in small short-term savings but far greater long-term costs and unnecessary human suffering.

In light of their concerns, the Iowa Senate amended the bill Monday night, grandfathering in current patients receiving state assistance and adding a buffer period where patients can get medications while waiting for a state waiver.

“We are very pleased that the language was amended by the Senate for the consumers that rely on the Medicaid program for their psychiatric medications,” said Margaret Stout, executive director of the Iowa chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

An amendment to the nearly 300-page government reorganization bill was co-sponsored by Sens. Jack Hatch, D-Des Moines, and David Hartsuch, R-Bettendorf, two legislators who are not only from separate political parties but from vastly differing ideological perspectives. Their amendment specifically says that NAMI and other mental health patient organizations should and will have a voice in future policy development.

“Because these drugs have significant impact on disabled individuals, we allowed NAMI to be invited to participate in the rulemaking authority — which they could normally, of course, but we wanted to specifically invite them,” Hatch said while introducing the amendment.

Hartsuch acknowledged to his fellow senators that policy decisions regarding psychiatric medications should be as open as possible due to their impact on society.

“I think we all agree that those individuals with mental health problems be able to get their medications in a very expedited fashion, and I believe this amendment brings input from the mental health community in a manner that it should,” said Hartsuch, a Scott County Republican.

The amendment was approved by voice vote, and no dissenting votes could be heard in the chamber.

“This is one of the first times that I’m aware of in Iowa that actually allows for direct consumer/family input into the decision of psychiatric medication formulary for mental illness treatment for the Medicaid population,” Stout said. “It goes without saying that we are very pleased. Quite frankly, the consumer/family voice is missing in most areas of medication formularies for mental health care that is delivered in our state.”

A bill now requires the state to continue to pay for medications of any Medicaid mental health patient that had a drug regiment in place prior to Jan. 1, 2011, the effective date of the changes, regardless of whether the prescribed drug appears on the preferred or non-preferred list. Although previous language was rigid, requiring every manufacturer of psychiatric medications to enter into a rebate program with the state or have its medications automatically placed on the non-preferred list, new language provides greater flexibility in this area.

“The purpose [of adding more mental health drugs to the preferred drug list] is to save public money without undermining the availability of mental health medications for people receiving Medicaid,” said Roger Munns, spokesman for the Iowa Department of Human Services. “We know that some people worry about losing drugs that they believe are working, which is why we support the amendment to grandfather current prescriptions. The change would apply only to new prescriptions.”

Legislators also allowed physicians to prescribe a 7-day supply of mental health medications while awaiting prior authorization from state authorities, and made direct note that if an “approval or disapproval is not received by the physician or other prescriber within 48 hours of the request, the request is deemed approved.”

Munns previously told The Iowa Independent that the process for obtaining prior approval was not cumbersome, and often took less than two hours. Advocates, however, cautioned that the process could become more intense and labor-intensive as more medications lost their existing waiver and were placed on non-preferred status by the state. Due to the direct language of the bill, both mandating that mental health advocates have a seat at the policy table along with state agencies and automatically issuing approval if the process is lengthy, it is much less likely that budget constraints will dictate access to these medications.

State officials have estimated that roughly $400,000 in yearly savings could be obtained by eliminating an existing waiver and subjecting psychiatric medications to preferred and non-preferred drug lists. Medications for the treatment of cancer, organ transplant and HIV/AIDS will continue to be granted a waiver and will not be placed on preferred drug lists by the state.

The amended bill now goes before the Iowa House where it could face additional scrutiny and changes. If so, it will come back before the Senate for re-approval before being sent to the governor’s desk.

The paper points out that Bush, brother of former President George W. Bush, has been elevating his profile of late, headlining fundraisers, staring in online advertisements and helping install his guy as the Sunshine State GOP’s leader.

The capper came Thursday when, at the top of the 7 o’clock hour, right after Vice President Joe Biden, Bush made a rare network television appearance on NBC’s Today Show. The intensely private Bush’s interview with the overly familiar Matt Lauer rattled Florida political circles.

Was this the beginning of a Jeb juggernaut that would culminate in a 2012 presidential bid?

“My wife called me immediately and said he looked presidential,” said Thrasher, who as the former House speaker helped Bush lay down his agenda. “I said, `Who knows? We’ll see.’ I’m ready to go to Iowa any time he’s ready.”

Only 22 months of speculation to go before Iowans head out to caucus.

Mitt Romney’s PAC is burning through money — the PAC reported a 78 percent overall burn rate as of Dec. 31 — but he has plenty of cash to spare. Romney’s PAC reported $1,125,375 cash on hand as of Dec. 31, beating out both Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC and Tim Pawlenty’s Freedom First PAC in cash available, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney

Romney has raised a total of $3,565,311 and spent $2,777,912, since he first formed his PAC months after exiting the presidential race in 2008.

Pawlenty only formed his PAC in October 2009, so his totals were expected to be less robust than the those of Palin and Romney (who recently vied for vice president and president, respectively). Pawlenty’s burn rate was just about 31 percent overall and he reported $884,075 on hand. He raised $1,279,906 and spent $395,831 total through Dec. 31.

Since SarahPAC was first formed in Jan. 2009, the committee has raised $2,132,119, spent $1,203,782 and reported $928,337 on hand as of Dec. 31.

While most of SarahPAC’s money was spent on consulting, fundraising and other typical campaign expenditures, the committee reported spending tens of thousands on photographs, books and trinkets in the last half of the year. SarahPAC spent $13,668 on photos, $63,498 on books, $6,455 on t-shirt design and printing and nearly $3,000 on pens and rubber bracelets in the latter six months of 2009. These and other items contributed to SarahPAC’s overall burn rate of 56 percent.

Julissa Treviño contributed research to this post. ]]> http://iowaindependent.com/26860/romney-pac-has-highest-burn-rate-but-leads-palin-and-pawlenty-in-cash/feed 0 http://iowaindependent.com/26785/iowa-gop-leader-criticizes-pillow-biters-for-protesting-in-britain http://iowaindependent.com/26785/iowa-gop-leader-criticizes-pillow-biters-for-protesting-in-britain#comments Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:00:43 +0000 Jason Hancock http://iowaindependent.com/?p=26785 Ted Sporer, a Des Moines attorney and veteran GOP strategist, was so upset by a group of British protesters who last week criticized former prime minister Tony Blair that he used a derogatory slur against homosexuals to attack them.

However, Sporer says he was unaware that the term he used was considered an anti-gay slur.

On his Twitter account, Sporer called the protesters “pillow biters” who don’t live up to the legacy of British leadership.

The pillowbiters protesting the great Tony Blair aren’t fit to cumber the streets walked by either of the Churchills (John or Winston).

According to Urban Dictionary, the phrase “pillow biter” is “a slang and highly derogatory term for gay males. It was likely inspired by the notion that a male engaged in anal sex would be face-down into a pillow, biting into it.”

Sporer said he was not familiar with that definition of the phrase. He said he used the term to mean “one who cowers in their bed, chewing their pillow in the grip of mortal terror, rather than confront the intruder at the door. Put another way, it describes those who cannot choose fight over flight no matter how dire the threat or noble the cause.”

Those who take exception to his use of the term are further examples of “the thought police’s latest application of ‘Rules for Radicals’ and the suppression of competing thought,” he said.

Sporer served as chairman of the Polk County Republican Party from 2001 to 2009 and on the Republican Party of Iowa State Central Committee from 2002 to 2008. He is a regular guest on Steve Deace’s drive-time radio program and is occasionally still active in political campaigns, most recently as a public supporter of 3rd District Republican Congressional candidate Brad Zaun. He ran an unsuccessful campaign to become chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa in late 2008.

“Thank you for the opportunity to exercise my First Amendment rights so as to prevent an erroneous mis-attribution of poor motives or taste to my earlier description of the cowardly British anti-war movement,” Sporer said.

Jim Gibbons out raises U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell in 4th quarter.

U.S. Rep. Steve King calls presidential remarks “offensive.”

GOP 2nd District candidates to face off at issues forum sponsored by anti-abortion group.

Terry Branstad continues his “Comeback Tour.”

State 29 returns to the Iowa political blogosphere.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (WDCpix)

“There was no way, financial, legal, or otherwise, we could have imposed haircuts, selectively default on any of those institutions, without the risk of downgrade and default,” Geithner told lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week.

Don’t tell that to Rep. Dennis Kucinich. The Ohio Democrat — who heads the committee’s domestic policy subpanel — says that federal officials had plenty of leverage to push Goldman for a lesser payout, but simply chose not to use it. Indeed, an investigation by his office, Kucinich said, found that Goldman was already preparing to take less than 100 cents on the dollar for the complex, AIG-backed securities it held at the time. He’s charging that Geithner — who headed the New York Federal Reserve when it funneled billions of dollars through AIG to other firms — simply put Goldman’s interests above those of taxpayers.

“There was only one way for Goldman Sachs to get all of the billions they claimed from AIG, and that was if the New York Fed voluntarily agreed to give it to them,” Kucinich, the populist former mayor of Cleveland, said in a little-noticed exchange with Geithner last week. “If the Fed had fought for taxpayers, Goldman would have had to take some losses and the cost to the people could have been minimized.”

Some legal experts agreed. “This ‘legally obligated’ stuff is a lot of nonsense,” said an expert on the Wall Street bailout who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record. “They [Fed officials] are only as legally obligated as they want to be.”

That Goldman is such a powerful player in Washington politics (then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson once headed of the firm) could only have contributed to the decision to pay on par, the expert noted. “The idea of imposing a haircut [on Goldman] just kind of wasn’t in the bloodstream of the people involved.”

The controversy stems from the $27 billion the Fed paid in late 2008 to settle roughly $62 billion in insurance contracts that AIG held with a number of large firms. As the mortgage market tanked, AIG had paid out billions to those companies — collateral based on the falling value of the securities. But the banks were all scrambling to cash out on the balance because they were allowed to make more collateral calls as AIG’s credit rating was being downgraded — and because the value of those mortgage bundles was still sinking fast. Effectively, the Fed scrapped the insurance contracts and bought the securities outright. “We paid the fair market value at that time for the assets,” Geithner said last week.

Critics of that arrangement have long wondered why the Fed agreed to pay the full amount, rather than negotiate a better deal for the taxpayers footing the bill. More recently, the scandal has surrounded news that the Fed, at the time, tried to hide those full payments from the public.

The gist of Kucinich’s beef, which focuses just on Goldman’s contract, is more nuanced: Because of a months-long disagreement with AIG over the value of the underlying securities, Goldman took out supplemental insurance policies on $2.5 billion it feared it would lose if AIG failed — much like seniors take out supplemental health policies to cover services that Medicare doesn’t. Goldman executives have said repeatedly that, aided by those policies, the firm was fully protected in the event that AIG went under.

“If AIG had defaulted on its obligations, our shareholders would have been protected against loss because we were fully hedged,” Goldman spokesman Michael DuVally said in an e-mail Friday. “But, because AIG could meet its obligations, it avoided default.”

Left unmentioned, Kucinich said, is that Goldman’s supplementary policies were invalid in the case of a government takeover of AIG — which was the only way the insurance giant was ultimately able to meet its obligations. Translation: After the government stepped in to rescue AIG, Goldman was in a position to lose $2.5 billion, leaving the Fed with a good deal of leverage to negotiate lower payments on behalf of taxpayers.

“The New York Fed had a lot of leverage — a lot of leverage — to negotiate a reduction which would have saved taxpayers billions,” Kucinich told Geithner.

He wasn’t the only lawmaker making a stink about the deal. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) blasted Geithner over the Goldman payments, arguing that Fed officials had “every opportunity” to negotiate a better arrangement for taxpayers.

“The commitment to Goldman Sachs trumped the responsibility that our officials had to the American people,” Lynch said.

Geithner, for his part, fought back against all the critics. The Treasury secretary argued that — because current law doesn’t allow regulators to unwind troubled investment houses the way they can unwind failing commercial banks — officials were left will little choice but to prop up AIG and make good on all of its financial obligations.

“We faced a very simple choice: Let AIG default or prevent it,” Geithner said. Allowing the former, he maintained, would have led to an economic collapse much worse than the one that occurred.

“Thousands of more factories would have closed their doors,” he testified. “Millions more Americans would have lost their jobs. The value of Americans’ houses and savings would have fallen even further than they did at that time. People would have rushed to take their money out of banks. It would have brought about utter collapse.”

A March 2009 report from the special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program indicates that AIG’s trading parties were well justified to fight for full payment on behalf of their shareholders. “[F]rom the counterparties perspective, offering a concession would mean giving away value and voluntarily taking a loss, in contravention of their fiduciary duty to their shareholders,” the report states. “They were contractually entitled to the par value of the [securities].”

But some critics of the Goldman payments have argued that, shareholders or none, the giants of Wall Street should have shown more willingness to absorb the consequences of a financial meltdown caused largely by them.

“Workers around the country are being asked to take pay cuts and accept shorter work weeks so that colleagues won’t be laid off,” former New York governor Eliot Spitzer wrote last year. “Why can’t Wall Street royalty shoulder some of the burden?”

Instead, champagne-sipping Goldman employees are celebrating their bonuses this month.

Kucinich, representing a part of the country decimated by foreclosures in recent years, preferred to focus his criticisms not on the firms, but on the federal officials charged with protecting the public.

“The government gave Goldman Sachs more than Goldman Sachs had any right to expect while at the same time giving no financial relief whatever to millions of Americans facing a foreclosure crisis,” he told Geithner. “If that doesn’t illustrate what the New York Fed thought it was working for — or who it was working for — I don’t know what does.”

Bill Salier, who ran unsuccessfully for the right to challenge U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin in 2002 and who remains an influential voice in conservative politics, said Vander Plaats had all the momentum he needed after last April’s Iowa Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. But his inability to articulate positions on other issues of importance to Iowans has surrendered that momentum to Branstad.

Bill Salier

“It’s Branstad’s race to win,” he said, adding: “You’re on the 10 yard line. Just don’t fumble the ball.”

Vander Plaats’ focus on the marriage issue has caused many voters, as well as the media, to pigeon hole him as a one-issue candidate, Salier said. It has also allowed Branstad to avoid talking about his record and instead campaign “based on nostalgia and ‘things were better back then.’”

“If he continues to do that he will be successful, but he can only do that if the other campaigns allow him to do it,” Salier said.

If Vander Plaats is going to be a threat to Branstad he is going to have to understand that the other half of the campaign still exists, Salier said, and he will have to demonstrate he has ideas about taxes, the budget and other key interests to Republican primary voters, such as “the Second Amendment and illegal immigration.”

“If he understands these issues I think he really makes a run at Branstad,” he said. “If he doesn’t, well, whether [state Rep.] Rod Roberts is in the race and they split a small percentage of the vote is inconsequential.”

Deace pointed to the Republican Party of Iowa’s fundraiser last November as another example of an opportunity lost for the Vander Plaats campaign. At the fundraiser, Branstad delivered a speech that was not well received. He read his remarks from note cards and at times stumbled over his words.

Vander Plaats spoke after the former governor but did not take the opportunity to attack him, Deace said.

“He should have put him down like a horse with a broken leg,” he said. When your opponent is down you should “drive a stake through the heart, cut the head off and stuff it with garlic.”

If Branstad’s record as governor does not come under attack in the primary it will be ammunition for Democrats in the fall. Conservatives will have to chose between the lesser of two evils, Deace said.

“The Democrats win and… the first people they’re going to blame for the loss won’t be there sell out candidate, it will be people like you and I ,” he said, adding: “Nero will blame us for the fire he started yet again.”

The Cedar Rapids Gazette reports that House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Shomshor, D-Council Bluffs, re-assigned the bill, House File 807, to a subcommittee Wednesday. While Democratic leadership has said the legislation is probably not going anywhere this session, the move to assign the bill to committee has rattled those opposed to the changes, including Ed Failor Jr. of the Iowans for Tax Relief.

From the Gazette:

Assigning the bill, which was approved by Ways and Means last year, to a subcommittee might be procedural, he said, “but that’s the first thing that has to happen to take away Iowans’ right to deduct their federal taxes.”A year ago, Failor added, leaders said ending federal deductibility wasn’t on their agenda, but they made a run at it.

“So we have to be on guard and assume that’s what’s going to happen this year,” he said.

Failor’s group led an all out assault on the legislation during the 2009 session. The Muscatine-based tax watchdog organization aired television and radio ads attacking the plan. Their opposition culminated during a public hearing on the bill, when anyone speaking in support of the legislation was greeted with boos and hisses from the rowdy crowd, organized by Iowans for Tax Relief. The situation got so disruptive that House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, ordered state troopers to clear the public from the chamber.

In addition to ending federal deductibility, which has been described by at least one economist as “an archaic holdover from a long ago time that nobody really knows why it exists anymore,” the Democratic plan would also reduce overall tax rates across the board, increase the tax credits for elderly and blind individuals, increase the amount of the earned income tax credit, and adjusting the eligibility for the child and dependent care tax credit and early childhood development tax credit.