What the Democrats call progress…………….

……….. reality defines as a special interest extravaganza. The Democrat Majority Leader in the Iowa House recently gave his description of the new Democrat majority’s accomplishments in their first shot at legislative power.

Despite the dissension, House Democrats have been instrumental in several key goals this year, McCarthy pointed out. Those include: increasing the minimum wage, offering preschool to all Iowa children, raising the cigarette tax by a dollar a pack, elevating teacher salaries and lifting some restrictions on stem cell research.

Let’s take a look at who the Democrats REALLY benefited with this orgy of taxing and spending.

MINIMUM WAGE. The overt reason was to increase the cost of doing business in Iowa to benefit a small fraction of the labor force, most of whom are under 18. Since the average Iowan already has an hourly wage far above even the new minimum it didn’t make a lot of difference to the average Iowa. But oh, how it benefits organized labor-and remember, a very small percentage of Iowa’s labor force is in a union-and many current union members are more or less coerced! Think of all those union contracts that are tied to the statutory minimum. Oh, and best of all, more union wages increase union dues which, in turn, increase the Democrat’s political war chest. So Liberal Special Interests 1 - Average Iowan 0.

PRESCHOOL. Again, who does it really benefit? A small number of children who don’t already have access to preschools, in and of itself of questionable value, can now access government run preschools. Who works in government run preschools? AFSCME members, of course. Even more government jobs in a state that already has six percent of the nation’s public employees for one percent of the population. All those new union government employees, predominantly one would think in the Department of Human Services- a department of questionable competence at best-will mean more union jobs, more union dues, more Democrat campaign money and, best of all, more families dependent on the government which means more even taxes and more union government employees. Liberal Special Interests 2 - Average Iowan 0.

TEACHER SALARIES. Money for nothing and your checks for free. Steadfastly rewarding their most reliable union supporters, the ISEA, the Dems provide a union windfall of truly historic dimensions while rejecting requirements that teachers become responsible for actually educating children for their compensation. Democrats view schools as a teacher welfare program with an unlimited claim on the taxpayer dollar. Liberal Special Interest 3 - Average Iowan 0.

STEM CELLS. It’s hard to tell who this Frankensteinien legislation benefits other than the pro-abortion lobby. Virtually no scientific data supports the proposition that embryonic stem cells offer more promising human benefit than other form of stem cell research. Certainly no private laboratories are willing to invest their own money in it but what the hell, why not hit and hope from the rough with someone else’s money, eh? The Democrat’s deepest social interest group, the bizarre pro-abortion feminists who view abortion as a positive development in a woman’s life, are thrilled to see legal commoditization of human life but it won’t do much for anyone else at anytime in the foreseeable future. Liberal Special Interest 4 - Average Iowan 0.

CIGARETTE TAX. This one’s a no brainer. Of course you also make sure to regressively tax Iowa’s lowest income working adults because all those tens of millions of new dollars being poured into liberal special interest groups-that represent less than 10% of Iowans-have to come from somewhere. Liberal Special Interest 5- Average Iowan 0.

The modern Democrat Party exists to empower government in every significant area of every single person’s life. So if you’re ever thinking that Republicans aren’t sufficiently conservative, how do you like grandparent registration?