Letters: Dystopian scenarios play out in Iowa

Dystopian scenarios play out in Iowa

I love reading! I’ve loved books since my parents read to me as a young child. Books have opened my world to places I’ve never been, people I’ve never met and ideas that have stimulated and challenged my thinking. When I read “Fahrenheit 451” (named for the temperature at which books burn) as a teenager, I couldn’t envision that in my lifetime in Iowa, teenagers in 2023 would be denied access to many of the books that help shape the person I am today.

— Dorothy Lifka, Des Moines

Protect life insurance plans for Iowans

Like thousands of Iowa families, my family relies on life insurance to protect our financial security if the unthinkable happens. Unfortunately our financial security is now under attack by newly proposed federal regulations. We need our well-respected Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen and Gov. Kim Reynolds to help protect not jut Iowans, but all Americans from these misguided threats.

The U.S. Treasury Department is trying to force the National Association of Insurance Commissioners to adopt new rules and penalties that will hurt companies that offer certain life insurance plans. Ommen is a member of the association’s executive committee and can decide whether Iowa adopts these rules.

Iowans deserve more insurance choices, not fewer. If the federal government gets its way, these new penalties will force some affordable plans out of the market. We will be stuck with higher costs and fewer options. We can't let that happen.

Ommen can make a real difference. We need his leadership. And we need Reynolds’ leadership. Hopefully our governor will work with our commissioner to make it clear that Iowa should not support new federal insurance regulations that threaten our financial security.

— David Creighton Sr., Clive

Let’s train nurses for free

I read another story articulating the dire need for nurses in America. Why not give free training for nurses? Of course, they would have to maintain a high grade point average and finish their program and not drop out ahead of finishing their degree. If so, they would then have to pay the loan back, in full. I just feel this would benefit America greatly. I cannot think of a better use of my tax dollars.

— Linda Nessa, Fort Dodge

Contracting bill actually sets reasonable limits

In a recent essay (“Bill to limit contracts with companies that boycott is misguided,” April 23), Jon Kallen criticizes Senate File 507, as amended by the Iowa House, which bans state contracts and pension funds from benefitting left-wing corporations and financial institutions.

I don’t doubt his sincerity, but he omits crucial facts:

Iowa law already bars state contracts with firms that boycott Israel; over 30 other states have enacted this same provision. This bill simply extends protections to firearm businesses, American energy providers, and agricultural producers.

Senate File 507 differs from the Texas legislation: The House amendment allows Iowa public entities to enter contracts with companies that boycott key Iowa industries if there are no “economically practicable” alternatives. What’s “problematic” about that?

There is nothing anti-free market about the bill. Big corporations that boycott the firearm industry can continue discriminating to their heart’s content. Senate File 507 simply says that if they decide to assail the Second Amendment by boycotting the firearm industry, they can’t profit from public contracts in Iowa.

Senate File 507 is clear that decisions for “reasonable business purpose,” such as creditworthiness, are not considered boycotting, and contracting language would not apply.

Iowans shouldn’t be forced to endorse companies working overtime to diminish their constitutionally protected freedoms. I urge the Iowa Senate to approve Senate 507 as amended by the House.

— Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president for government and public affairs and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, The Firearm Industry Trade Association

Books won’t hurt kids

I thoroughly enjoyed Don Parkhurst’s guest essay in the April 30 Register titled “Demanding books make kids think.” He clearly outlines America’s disturbing shift to the far-right fringes with the banning of books of all kinds.

Parkhurst lists 15 books that have been targeted, and I was amazed that I had read at least 12 of the 15 when I was in high school or college, and enjoyed them all. One was “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors. Parkhurst’s revelation inspired me to pull out my copy of Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle,” which I first read in high school, and I’m pleased to report that I still love it and it hasn’t hurt me the rest of my life. It’s a brilliantly structured satire of science, religion, sex, politics and almost everything else – so I’m curious to know why it wasn’t on Parkhurst’s list.

I’m now 81 and have enjoyed reading books from grade school on, and firmly believe that most books, including those on Parkhurst’s list, are valuable resources and shouldn’t be banned.

— Kenn Johnson, Des Moines

Preserve children’s innocence

The proposed new Iowa law will still allow our children to have access to millions of books in the schools. Critics suggest that perhaps “Canterbury Tales” might be banned. If we must ban it under the new law that is OK with me. This fight isn't really about school books, but about defending our way of life. There are people trying to destroy the America I grew up in.

— Michael Montross, Winterset

It’s like Steve King never left

Former 4th district congressman Steve King was ahead of his time. Some might remember him for encapsulating white replacement theory with his famous line “We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies.” Eventually, King’s rants went too far. Then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy stripped King of his committee assignments. Other Republicans, including Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst and Gov. Kim Reynolds, added their voices of dissent, and it was King who was replaced.

So here we are, just a few years later, and it seems much of the Republican Party, including the governor and her legislative majority, are practicing the same politics of division. Though quick to stoke fears of immigrants as the “others” we should fear, their legislative focus has been on diminishing the rights of others whose gender identity doesn’t quite fit the either/or contrivance of the religious right. The party that once championed the value of individual liberty and local control now makes decisions once left to a woman and her doctor, to parents and their gender-non-conforming child, to schools and the truths they are allowed to teach, to libraries and the books our kids are allowed to read, and to local governments and the services they can provide.

There is a meanness in their actions. Attorney General Brenna Bird’s decision to deny free emergency contraception to a rape victim is a case in point. Making it harder for food-insecure Iowans (1 of every 11 children) to access federal food assistance is another. And Reynolds has sunk to a new low, by mocking transgender people with her image on a “real woman” beer koozie. She gives new meaning to the term bully pulpit.

— Bob Haug, Ames

Get Iowans cleaner air to breathe

The air quality in parts of Iowa needs work, according to the new “State of the Air” report from the American Lung Association. Despite Des Moines being named one of the cleanest cities in the nation for ozone pollution, the Davenport-Moline metro area ranked 65th in the nation for ozone and has gotten worse from last year’s report. Nationally, the report found that nearly 120 million people in the U.S. live in counties that had unhealthy levels of air pollution.

This air pollution impacts our communities. Even one poor air quality day is one too many for people at higher risk, such as children, older adults, individuals who are pregnant and those living with chronic disease. That’s why we are calling on lawmakers to take action to clean up our air.

As a pulmonologist, this is personal to me because I work with patients who struggle to breathe every day due to the impact of air pollution.

I’m joining the American Lung Association and our partners to call on Iowa decision makers to commit to transition away from coal and other fossil fuels so that Iowans have cleaner air to breath.

We are calling on President Joe Biden to urgently move forward on several measures to clean up air pollution nationwide, including new pollution limits on ozone and particle pollution, plus new measures to clean up power plants and vehicles. Sign the petition at Lung.org/SOTA.

— Dr. Alicia Gerke, Iowa City, chair, Iowa Local Leadership Board for the American Lung Association

Should we have an asset limit for ag subsidies?

One of Gov. Kim Reynolds’ frequent quotes is “The safety net has become a hammock.” This year, the Iowa Republican-controlled Legislature followed her lead and set a $15,000 maximum asset limit for Iowans who receive SNAP benefits. Should they slip over this limit, low-income working families with children, the disabled and some elderly folks, will no longer qualify to receive federal government food assistance.

What could happen next? Will the legislators act just as quickly and set the same limit on the ag community’s ability to receive federal assistance/subsidies? Disqualify any farmer with assets over $15,000?

It’s so easy to target the weak and helpless when they have no voice. But can you imagine the ag lobbyist firestorm if the “hammock” guidelines were applied to them?

— Bob Gertsen, Oxford Junction

Republicans shouldn’t govern solely based on personal beliefs

As the former head of the Polk County Department of Community and Family Services and a former counselor for what is now the Polk County Crisis and Intervention Center, I am appalled and completely disgusted by Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird’s decision to pause allowing state Victim Compensation Fund money to pay for emergency contraception (“morning after pills”) or abortions (which, so far anyway, are still legal in this state) for rape victims. This type of narrow-minded, heavy-handed, self-centered policy would never have been enacted by any previous attorney general, Democrat or Republican.

In ignoring the trauma and unbelievably painful personal decisions and consequences faced by these victims, Bird follows in the footsteps of other Iowa Republican elected officials, from the governor on down, who repeatedly abuse their political power by implementing policies and laws that cater to their personal beliefs and agendas, and/or those of a favored group of constituents, rather than do the will of the majority of both Iowa’s citizens and voters. How much longer can we tolerate this?

I'd offer a new motto for the Iowa Republican Party: “Putting the Con in Conservative.”

— Gordon Miller, Waukee

A person cannot be they

Using personal pronouns of "they/them" for transgender nonbinary athlete Nikki Hiltz is the first time I've encountered the Register's deference to this modern trend. As such, I want to object to your abiding with this corruption of the English language.

The whole purpose of using "they" and "them" is to provide reference to more than one person. To use these pronouns to describe a single person makes use of them for plural persons less than clear, not to mention failing the singular person's misguided quest to stand out. Seeking exceptional treatment from the English language is not an appropriate "right" for anyone.

While some persons might want to describe themselves as "gender fluid," a term whose meaning strikes me as another language corruption, they are, at any moment in time, categorizable as either male or female. They have no more right than I do to insist upon special pronouns based upon their sexual orientation or any other personal quality, and there should be no social force (like the Register) reinforcing such specious specialty, another manifestation (I fear) of rampant egocentrism in our culture.

As a moderate Democrat, I am open to many forms of tolerance about transgender people and to the "Q" in LGBTQ. But when it comes to transgender "rights," those in this community would get more respect for them if they didn't include corruptions of the English language.

— Thomas Booker, Des Moines

Pappajohn helped set Des Moines apart

John Pappajohn recently died. He stands with a very few people who have made the greatest difference here in Des Moines.

Although his vision leading to contributions are many and well beyond our city, his sculpture park is foremost in my mind. This two-block area in downtown, filled with very significant sculptures, helps, in no small measure, set Des Moines apart, and places the city among just a handful.

It is the symbolism and underlying meaning of the park which says so much, not to mention its high visitation. Thank you, John.

— J.C. (Buz) Brenton, Des Moines

More: What to know about John Pappajohn, the Des Moines business titan and philanthropist

America collapsing under Biden

Another national retailer is closing its stores in San Francisco. Several retailers and other companies have closed in our major cities because of crime. Our borders are a mess. We are begging our adversaries for oil. Our fiscal house is in shambles. Our foreign policy is an embarrassment. Who could possibly vote for four more years of this? Where am I going wrong?

— Doug Gulling, Urbandale

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Letters: Dystopian scenarios play out in Iowa