Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (File photo via Minnesota Governor's Office)

This will mark Pawlenty’s second trip to Iowa in recent months. He spoke at a Republican Party of Iowa fundraiser in Des Moines last November. He has already said he will not seek a third term as governor and has formed a political action committee called Freedom First, a typical first move for presidential aspirants. To run his PAC, Pawlenty hired an Iowa native who was credited with building a winning strategy for George W. Bush in the Hawkeye State back in 2000.

Also speaking at the event will be Republican gubernatorial hopefuls Terry Branstad Rod Roberts and Bob Vander Plaats, as well as independent candidate Jonathan Narcisse. The event is scheduled for Saturday, April 17, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Holiday Inn Hotel and Suites Northwest in Des Moines.

King, a Kiron Republican who represents Iowa’s 5th District, is the voice on the call, which is reportedly being made on behalf of Iowans for Tax Relief, a conservative group led by Ed Failor Jr. Recipients said the call begins with a brief introductory monologue by King that is followed by a keypad response question on federal deductibility, which includes jabs at state Democrats and Gov. Chet Culver.

Following the financial question, however, recipients are then asked for their positions on same-sex marriage and abortion. Those who answer that they support a ban on marriage equality and abortion are then asked to make a donation by phone. If that request is refused, King states that more information will be sent to the recipient by mail.

Recipients report that caller ID shows either “202-461-3661″ or “Washington DC 202-461-3661.” Calls identified by this number were most recently received during the Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election, where recipients reportedly were asked if their preference was to use U.S. taxpayer dollars to help the people of Israel or Africa. Locally the call has been received on both land lines and cellular phones.

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.

The National Taxpayers Union Foundation has released a survey of Iowa voters that says 77.2 percent want federal deductibility to remain part of the Iowa tax code. The poll, conducted by Iowa-based Victory Enterprises Inc., has a margin of error of 3.42 percent.

The poll stands in stark contrast to another survey conducted last month by Selzer and Associates which found 63 percent of those polled favored changes to Iowa’s tax code that included ending federal deductibility.

Democrats proposed a tax plan last year that would have done just that in addition to lowering the overall tax rate for every citizen. But those making more than $125,000 a year would have begun paying slightly more under the new system, up to $1,400 a year for Iowans making $250,000 or more a year.

Republicans vehemently opposed the changes, with conservative group Iowans for Tax Relief calling the legislation a “tax on a tax.”

Ultimately, the proposal was abandoned, and Democrats have made no mention of rekindling the idea this year.

One of Iowa’s top economists has characterized federal deductibility as “an archaic holdover from a long ago time that nobody really knows why it exists anymore.” Iowa is one of only three state’s that allow residents to write off their federal taxes on state returns.

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.

“Iowa taxpayers would save tens of millions of dollars from the sale and operation of private prisons,” Failor said. “The current budget situation requires lawmakers to make real changes to state government, and selling the state prison system is part of the solution to moving Iowa forward.”

Failor points to Arizona, where lawmakers project privatizing prisons could save their state more than $100 million in the corrections budget, and calls on Iowa to consider a similar move.

“Today, there are over 9,000 inmates in Iowa prisons, and the average annual cost per prisoner is approximately $30,000,” Failor said. “Iowa taxpayers spend over $265 million on state prisons, and the average cost per prisoner increases each year.”

Privatizing state functions is an idea getting serious consideration around the country, as state’s grapple with an historic economic downturn that has decimated their budgets. In Iowa, Gov. Chet Culver recently announced a 10-percent cut to the state budget in order to overcome a more than $400 million deficit.

Not everyone is sold on the benefits of privatizing prisons.

A U.S. Department of Justice study found that the cost-savings promised by private prisons “have simply not materialized.”The study concluded that rather than the projected 20-percent savings, the average saving from privatization was only about 1 percent, and most of that was achieved through lower labor costs.

Opponents of privatization also express worry that the quest for higher profits will result in lower staff levels and training at private facilities and could lead to increases in incidences of violence and escapes.

A federal study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found Iowa ranked second-lowest nationally in per-capita spending on corrections. The state spent $121 per person, lower than every state but North Dakota, which spends $116 per person. The national average was $210.

According to information first reported Tuesday afternoon by Ed Tibbets of the Quad-City Times, which has since been replaced by a report by James Lynch of The Gazette, Moravek attempted to extort $1 million from Iowans for Tax Relief and David Stanley, a resident of Muscatine and the group’s co-founder. Moravek, according to Lynch’s report, agreed to meet with undercover detectives on Tuesday afternoon that she believed were employees of Iowans for Tax Relief, who were agreeing to a “settlement.” In exchange for the alleged much-reduced $30,000 payment, Moravek was going to sign a statement indicating that she knew of no wrong-doing perpetrated by members of the conservative group.

Moravek told The Gazette on Tuesday morning she was going to file a complaint with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board alleging that Cloyd “Robbie” Robinson of Cedar Rapids, a lobbyist for the taxpayers group, was reimbursed by the group for checks he wrote to state and municipal political candidates. Moravek said she witnessed Robinson writing the checks and then cashing checks from Iowans for Tax Relief for the same amounts.

Robinson, a former Democratic legislator, and Ed Failor Jr. of Muscatine, the president for Iowans for Tax Relief, denied any wrongdoing.

According to state records, Moravek, who is registered as a Democrat, served as a lobbyist during the 2009 session for the Iowa Commission for Persons with Disabilities, a state board on which she has also served as a commissioner.

A search of Iowa electronic court records performed by The Iowa Independent Tuesday night revealed that Moravek had three past criminal convictions on theft charges. She received monetary fines for 5th degree and 4th degree theft convictions in Linn County in 1998 and 2004. She was also given a monetary fine, a suspended 30-day jail sentence and one year of probation following a 4th degree theft and trespass conviction in Linn County in 2005.

An identical search conducted Wednesday morning by The Iowa Independent of the same electronic database revealed several additional convictions. Moravek was convicted of 4th degree theft in Johnson County in 1998, and of 5th degree theft in Linn County in 2003. During 2003 she was also convicted in Linn County of assault and 5th degree theft. In January 2005, she was convicted in two separate cases of harassment by communication in Benton County. All of the convictions resulted in monetary fines ranging from $50 to $300.

Within the electronic records there is also a case against Moravek in Cedar County that was filed this week on Tuesday, Nov. 2. A spokeswoman within the Cedar County Attorney’s Office, however, said that she knew of no such case and couldn’t provide further comment. According to online records, Moravek is scheduled to make an appearance in that case on Nov. 19 at 9 a.m.

Discrepancies within the two electronic records searches were brought to the attention of state’s information technology department that maintains the court database. According to a spokesman from that office, if the cases missing from the initial search had all originated in the same county, the omission could have been due to a lack of communication between state and county information systems. Because that was not the case, the spokesman could offer no explanation as to why the search results from Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning provided differing information.

If found guilty of the extortion charge, which is a Class D felony, Moravek could face up to five years in prison and a $7,500 fine. She is currently released on bond.

“Sure, state employee budgets will feel the pinch of a pay cut; but a salary reduction over the course of nine months is certainly less harmful than outright unemployment,” he said.

After Culver announced his plan to cut the budget earlier this month, Danny Homan, president of AFSCME Council 61, said the resulting layoffs would be devastating. The union, which represents 40,000 state and local government employees, already agreed to implement a pay freeze this year. Homan said the governor’s pledge to not raise taxes means painful, and possibly unnecessary, job losses.

Failor said a 5 percent pay reduction would save taxpayers approximately $140 million, “and should save 1,000 Iowa jobs.”

“State labor unions should agree with this suggestion; this plan would help keep Iowans working,” Failor said. “Instead of driving up wages, unions should focus on protecting those members who are at risk of losing their job this year.”

In a press release shortly after the budget cuts were announced, AFSCME contended that the state could also avoid deep cuts if it were to examine ways to close corporate tax loopholes and re-examine other practices that have not shown evidence that they are growing the Iowa economy.

Research conducted by the nonpartisan group Iowa Fiscal Partnership found tax credits to business have grown from $180 million to $421 million in just three years. The group also found more than $80 million in uncollected tax revenue from multi-state corporations due to tax loopholes.

Iowa should take the opportunity to turn the fiscal crisis it is currently facing into an opportunity to make lasting change, Failor said.

“An economic crisis such as this is the time to make major changes in the way state government operates,” he said. “Our state leaders should take this opportunity to make responsible changes, not increase the number of out of work Iowans.”

The Iowa Family Policy Center’s political outreach arm has sent a vitriolic, four-page letter to voters on Burgmeier’s behalf, mostly focusing on accusations that Democrat Curt Hanson’s campaign is being funded by “out-of-state pro-homosexual groups” who are “clamoring” to impose their “radical agenda” on Iowans. Because neither candidate has had to file a campaign finance disclosure report, this claim cannot be verified. (Even after a report is filed, it’s not like it will display donors’ sexual orientations next to their names.)

The Burgmeier campaign’s Web site also now lists a political operative who has been connected to the Iowa Family Policy Center as one of its volunteer contacts.

Mark Doland, who is also pastor of a church in Mahaska County, was a 2008 campaign staffer for former state Rep. Danny Carroll (R-Grinnell), who wrote the pro-Burgmeier letter on IFPC’s behalf. Doland’s email address, as listed on the Burgmeier site, is an acronym for “Let Us Vote,” the slogan of opponents of the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage last year. Because campaign finance reports haven’t been filed, it is unclear whether the conservative operative is being paid (and who is paying him). On his own site, Doland says he is IFPC’s “Field Coordinator.”

For Iowans for Tax Relief’s part, the group had already supplied two staffers to the Burgmeier campaign, and now they have released a new television ad attacking Hanson.

The ITR ad is striking not for its message, which is fairly conventional, but for its inexplicably over-the-top yonic imagery. If you don’t know what yonic means, watch the ad below and take a guess:

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 Relief’s “new leadership team.”

Koberg is listed as a vice president of the conservative group, and Earnhardt is listed as its policy director.

Notably, Kay Henderson reports that ITR’s political action committee (PAC) has not had a very good fundraising year so far. ITR President Ed Failor, Jr., told Henderson that the big money he claimed his group raised earlier in the year was mostly going into the group’s 501(c)(4) account, not its PAC account (a claim that cannot be independently verified). That means ITR may not be able to offer its support in cash, but it can make up for that with manpower.

Any outside supporters Democrat Curt Hanson might have are doing a better job of covering their tracks so far. All we know for sure is that the press release announcing Hanson’s candidacy was sent out by Kevin Boyd, who oversees campaigns for the House Democrats’ Truman Fund, and that wasn’t much of a surprise.

Now he has taken the analogy a step further, comparing the Democrats’ strategy for handling the global economic recession to the way Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany.

From the Boone News-Republican’s report of a Republican Flag Day event in Boone County:

Failor, while making sure to clarify that he was not referring to the democrats as Nazis, did draw the comparison between the two. He said that the Nazi party, which started as just another political party in Germany, began their massive rise to power by taking control of private business and means of production – which is exactly what Failor said the democrats are attempting to do.

Failor continued, telling the crowd that if they do not work to elect more Republicans, they could be victims of Nazi-style repression at the hands of Democrats.

Arguing that conservatives must “be willing to be harsh,” he said, “If we don’t engage, 25 years from now, one of two things will occur: There will be a meeting of the Boone County Republicans on Flag Day and we will be in room like this, with 50 to 75 people, all enjoying ourselves…or, we will be in a basement with the lights off and blinds drawn – whispering our history. I challenge you to not let that be the case.”

The Iowa Democratic Party released a statement today calling Failor’s language ‘hate speech’:

“Those thoughts are hateful — to veterans of the Second World War who fought on D-Day, to people of the Jewish faith, and in fact to any decent person,” said Michael Kiernan, Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party. “I am asking the newest candidate for Governor, Chris Rants, and all the prospective Republican candidates’ two questions: First, do you agree with Ed Failor’s hateful words? And second, if not, why didn’t you speak up?”