Stories

Iowa should privatize its prison system in order to alleviate budget problems, a conservative watchdog group said Monday.
Ed Failor Jr., president of Iowans for Tax Relief, said the privatization of Iowa’s prisons would result in many positive benefits, from making communities safer to minimizing inefficiencies. But the biggest benefit would be cost savings, he said.

Officials in Muscatine County have taken a 51-year-old Mechanicsville woman into custody on charges that she attempted to extort funds from a conservative anti-tax group. The woman, Mary Kathryn Moravek, has served as a state lobbyist and well as a commissioner on a state board for people with disabilities.

Instead of resorting to layoffs to meet Gov. Chet Culver’s 10 percent across-the-board budget cuts, state government should implement an employee pay reduction, Iowa Tax Relief President Ed Failor Jr. said Monday.

The Iowa Family Policy Center has begun to intervene in the special election in House District 90, and Iowans for Tax Relief has upped its ante with a new television ad. Both groups are supporting Republican candidate Stephen Burgmeier.

In my earlier post I overlooked one prominent example of an outside interest group already involved in the Iowa House District 90 special election.
On Republican candidate Stephen Burgmeier’s Web page for volunteers, the two names listed as contacts are Katie Koberg and Mary Earnhardt, who were announced last November as members of Iowans for Tax [...]

Ed Failor, Jr., who heads the conservative group Iowans for Tax Relief, made headlines during this year’s legislative session when he compared Democratic legislative leaders to ‘jack-booted Nazis’ after an unruly crowd of conservatives was ejected from the Iowa House during a public hearing on proposed changes to the state income tax code.
Now he has [...]

With an end to the 2009 legislative session in sight, Republicans are warning supporters that several contentious bills involving labor protections and tax code changes are not as dead as it once seemed.

With legislators working to adjourn the 2009 session as quickly as possible, conservative groups with a long list of grievances will gather all week trying to make their voices heard.

Supporters of a Democratic tax reform bill in the state Legislature have begun efforts to push back against the bill’s detractors.

The boisterous crowd, a large majority of which opposed the proposed changes to Iowa’s tax code, gave each of the speakers who voiced support for the proposal the same treatment – boos and hisses. Those who opposed it, such as Iowans for Tax Relief President Ed Failor Jr., received energetic applause.