HEATHEN OF THE CORN
I have just updated IAF’s Secular Guide to 2024 Legislation. The new layout is 1000% easier to read and I deleted several columns of irrelevant information.
When it comes to the actual legislation, I have sort of good news, and I have bad news.
I have updated my Lobbyist Declaration List to include links to the bills, brief legislative descriptions, and whether they are alive or dead.
And that lobbyist would be me. I registered on the Iowa Legislature website about a month ago and I have been busy declaring for and against (mostly against) specific bills on behalf of Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers. This is a way for 401c3s (like IAF), businesses, political groups, and governmental agencies to express their approval, dissent, or neutrality to our legislators as they work on the bills that are before them. I signed up because I felt that IAF should have as much say in the process as The Family Leader and Iowa Baptists for Biblical Values.
Here is a link to my declarations list on Google Drive including all of the bills I have addressed as a lobbyist. Unfortunately it didn’t preserve the links to specific bills when I downloaded the page. If you want to read and learn more about a specific bill, you will need to click here and then search for the bill. (i.e. SF123, HF234). When I have time, I will go through them all and fix the links. Until then, you’ll have to use this workaround. Sorry about that,
Instead of reading the entire bill, I recommend scrolling down until you get the the section labeled “Description.” It is a simpler explanation that doesn’t include all of the legalistic details. It will still be hard to read but not as difficult as the actual bill.
It takes a lot of time to stay on top of all these bills and there is definitely a learning curve. (Pay no attention to HF 149. That was clearly done by an idiot who didn’t know what they were doing.)
Okay, fine. I’ll tell you about HF 149 and the lessons I learned from it about how to lobby. This Bill is about corporal punishment in schools. Current law prohibits intentional physical punishment of a student. At the same time it provides certain exceptions and legal protections for teachers and employees of pubic or accredited nonpublic schools. For example, if a student acts up in class and a teacher grabs them by the shoulders and marches them down to the Principle’s office, that teacher can’t be sued for beating the child or arrested for assault and battery.
This bill extends those exceptions and protections to school volunteers and charter school employees.
I totally misread this bill.
On my first read through, I was sure that HF 149 was meant to loosen restrictions on capitol punishment. School employees should not be encouraged to beat your kids. I clicked the box that said, “against.”
Then I read through it again, and it finally sunk in that it was way more ambiguous than I first thought. I clicked on the Lobbyist Declarations link down on the left side to see what other lobbyists thought about it. They were all “undecided.” All of them. And it was a long list.
Okay, so I can just change my declaration to “undecided” like all the rest. But that original “against” was still there like a flashing neon light of embarrassment. How about if I withdraw my declaration. Nope, still there.
Apparently, every declaration you make — including changes and withdrawals — are engraved in the fabric of the universe until the heat death of matter and energy for other lobbyists to laugh at.
I won’t make that mistake again. I’ll probably find some others, but not that one.
Lessons learned: 1) Always read each bill at least twice before making a declaration. 2) Always check the Lobbyist Declarations link to see what other lobbyists have done.
So many horrible bills have been filed in the Iowa Legislature and many of them are guaranteed to pass. Please check out as many of them as you can and don’t be shy about contacting your legislators and letting them know your opinions on these bills.
It is opening day of the 2023 Iowa Legislature. It starts with a flurry of activity. Our legislators have a lot to do and only 110 days to get it all done. One of the first and most important items of business is to resolve that each daily session begins with a magic spell to appease Big Daddy Who Lives In the Sky.
If you don’t cast the magic spell, Big Daddy Who Lives in the Sky gets very, very angry and donors threaten to stop sending money.
And there it is, House Resolution 2, filed by Siegrist:
A Resolution to arrange for opening the sessions with prayer.
BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, That a committee of one be appointed to arrange for opening the sessions with prayer.
