Pubdate: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 Source: Des Moines Register (IA) Copyright: 2011 The Des Moines Register Contact: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/99999999/HELP/40507010 Website: http://desmoinesregister.com Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/123 Author: Richard Doak Note: RICHARD DOAK is a retired Register editor, a lecturer at Iowa State University and an adjunct at Simpson College. A RADICAL AGENDA? WE'LL THROW YOU A FEW IDEAS In his inaugural, Governor Branstad said Iowa needs radical change, but nothing he is proposing is genuinely radical. Trimming government, climbing further into bed with business, getting better teachers - those might be fine ideas, but they are hardly radical. They are off-the-shelf old standbys. Which is probably OK with most Iowans. We like to keep things pretty much the way they are. We don't seek too much excitement. But wouldn't it be fun to really shake up the place for once? Wouldn't it be invigorating to be out in front for a change? Maybe that's what Iowa needs. By golly, let's think radical thoughts. For argument's sake, here's what a truly radical agenda for Iowa might look like: 1. Legalize Drugs It's going to happen nationwide eventually. Why not make Iowa the first to legalize marijuana and maybe other recreational drugs? The main idea would be to stop building ever more prisons and spending ever more money to imprison drug offenders. Iowa has been doing that while at the same time cutting support for higher education. Those priorities couldn't be more wrong-headed. Legalizing drugs should be part of a strategy of saving taxpayers' money by reducing the prison population. Every dollar spent on prisons is a dollar that can't be spent on education, infrastructure or otherwise investing in the fundamental economic strength of the state. A side benefit of legalization would be the revenue from regulating and taxing recreational drugs. And there might be new cash crops for Iowa agriculture. This idea is getting less radical all the time. California voters almost legalized recreational marijuana last November, and the Rev. Pat Robertson (onetime second-place finisher in the Iowa Republican caucuses) has hinted it might be a good idea. If Iowa doesn't get out in front soon, some other state will. 2. Accelerate School K-12 education is the single largest public expenditure in Iowa. There might be a way to reduce, or at least temper, the cost and at the same time make Iowa an undisputed leader among the 50 states. Chop two years off. Make it K-10 education. Accelerate the curriculum so that Iowa young people obtain a high school diploma at age 16 instead of 18. Just because there have always been 12 grades in school doesn't mean there always must be. With more intense instruction and some consolidation of the curriculum, there's no reason a high-school diploma couldn't be earned at age 16. Kids grow up sooner these days; why not graduate them sooner? It would give Iowa kids a leg up over kids in every other state. Iowa kids could enter college at age 16, get into the work force that much quicker and add two years to their productive, working lives compared to kids from other states. Alternatively, kids could hang around until they were 18 if, for instance, they wanted to participate in high school sports. But in those extra two years they would be taking community college classes. At 18, they would have a two-year college degree, not just a high school diploma. Again, they would be ahead of their peers in every other state. The money saved by eliminating two years of public education could be plowed back into the system to finance a 12-month school calendar. 3. Try Capitalism Like most states, Iowa is hooked on the notion that state government can somehow induce the private sector to create jobs and that is it somehow the state's responsibility to do so. No, it isn't. The state government's job is to provide public services, not to try to shape private business decisions. Yet that is what the state tries to do when it spends public dollars on private businesses through an array of favorable tax rates, tax credits, tax forgiveness, subsidies, outright grants, and loans that don't have to be repaid. If you're looking for examples of socialist inroads in America, don't look at President Obama. Look to the states like Iowa that have embraced a sort of quasi-socialism in which the business community turns to the state for financing. Not a session of the Legislature goes by without adding some new publicly financed sweetener for private businesses, despite a lack of evidence that Iowa has any more jobs than it would have had anyway. This might be the most radical of the ideas presented here: Give up the quasi-socialism. Try capitalism. Iowa should send a message to business that goes something like this: "Welcome. We are delighted you are considering Iowa. Please avail yourselves of our public services. We will build roads and utilities to your business. We will provide sensible, stable and predictable taxes and regulations, along with clean, honest government. We will maintain great schools that will supply you with excellent workers and give your own children an excellent education. We will make you a valued part of our community, and we will always strive to lift the quality of life in your home and ours, so that you can stay, prosper and grow. "What we won't do is finance your business. In a capitalist system, that's the private sector's job. We respect the boundary between private and public enterprise. We believe in capitalism. Think of us as the state that celebrates capitalism." It might be worth a try. Quasi-socialism hasn't worked all that well. 4. Make a Megastate Government consolidation in Iowa usually concerns small units of government - school districts, cities, counties. Heck, let's think bigger. Let's merge states. Let's get together with Minnesota and Wisconsin to create an Upper Midwest megastate. Iowa-Minnesota-Wisconsin (Iominnsin?) could be a Northern counterpoint to the political and economic clout of the Southern megastate, Texas. Of course, we wouldn't want to literally merge three states into one. That would entail giving up four seats in the U.S. Senate. But the three states could enter into interstate compacts under which they would agree to govern themselves as one. Minnesota jokes aside, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin are culturally, ethnically and geographically compatible. They could enact economies of scale and have a single Upper Midwest development strategy, or at least a non-aggression pact. Together, the three could be an economic, educational and political powerhouse. The place to begin would be to create a unified system of higher education. Having all the colleges and universities in all three states in a single system would enlarge the college horizons of young people throughout the region. It would allow more synergies of research among the universities that might spin off into an Upper Midwest economic miracle. If all went well with three states, we might think of expanding. Maybe we'd let Nebraska in, too. We could then adopt Nebraska's radical idea - a unicameral, nonpartisan legislature. Come to think of it, that's an old, radical idea Iowa could adopt on its own. This year, when the Legislature has to reapportion itself anyway, might be a good time to set the wheels in motion. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake