Editorials: Waste of time, money

The campaign has begun to turn Iowa community colleges into four-year baccalaureate institutions competing with our highly valued network of private colleges. This ill-considered idea was requested by Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis. The community colleges are more than happy to oblige with a report saying they could do it for about $20 million.

It’s costly buying students out of other public and private schools.

Collins says too many students are too far away from a bachelor’s degree. It’s not true. Buena Vista University long has offered a 2+2 program with community colleges across the state with degrees that are in demand, particularly teaching and business. Making NIACC in Mason City a four-year school will take potential students away from Buena Vista without actually reducing student expense. It will cost taxpayers at least $20 million. Collins must think we taxpayers are made of money. When the legislature cuts funding again to higher education, community colleges could make up for it by jacking up property taxes even higher.

Private colleges are having a tough time, made worse by politicians undermining them when they can least afford it. It is beyond us why legislators want to create state-sponsored direct competition for Dordt and Northwestern, Morningside and Briar Cliff, Buena Vista and Wartburg.

A better investment of $20 million would be to increase the Iowa Tuition Grant to make Buena Vista even more affordable. Quit attacking what Iowa should be selling to its own residents: our tremendous network of private colleges that need help now.

Ag bailouts

U.S. farmers will need a bailout of about $50 billion in large part because of the trade war President Trump started during his first term. We have lost our soybean export market to China, which is now buying soybeans from Argentina (which we are bailing out with about $20 billion).

Trump said on Monday that he was going to help farmers. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins acknowledged during her confirmation hearing that bailing out farmers because of the trade war would be her priority. During the first Trump Administration the subsidy to agribusiness amounted to nearly $100 billion. Farmers called the checks “Trump Bumps.” He got a lot of credit for that here. It helped him trounce Joe Biden in Iowa.

Trump is about to do it again. Companies associated with soy processing will get welfare. So will farmers. They vote for Trump knowing he will destroy soy markets, then they get a check for it.

It would make a lot more sense to pay farmers $50 billion to grow grass instead of corn and soybeans. It would clean up the Mississippi River and save the Gulf of Mexico. We need that Chinese export market because we grow too much corn and beans using too much fertilizer that is poisoning the water. We could cut back if the government would help in a meaningful way. The trade war could be beneficial in that way.

That sort of subsidy would cut out the corporate chemical class. Money would flow to farmland, not Wall Street. Which is why it will not happen. Trump will buy complicity.

The Administration will lard it on in hopes of hanging on to control of Congress. Iowa has a hot senate race and three of our four congressional districts could flip in the 2026 midterm elections. Bailouts help. Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson will be able to point out that Trump help saved Iowa farmers from financial ruin, even though he set it off.

All those good conservatives will be welfare queens in drag bathing in bailouts. The irony is pungent. Those Chinese soy and pork markets are not coming back anytime soon.

Another lie

Republicans claim that Democrats shut down the federal government so we would subsidize health care for undocumented immigrants. It’s not true. Undocumented residents get no direct subsidy for health care or any other direct federal benefit. They pay into Social Security and Medicare but cannot collect. They pay every sort of tax and fee but receive little in return. We hate them for no reason.

The truth is that immigrants do get indirect support for health care. They must be treated at a hospital emergency room, which is the most expensive form of outpatient care. They use community health centers,  which get limited federal assistance. They do not get Medicare or Medicaid. Since they are doing our toughest jobs, like meatpacking and roofing so we can live affordably, we should allow them at least a touch from the doctor’s healing hand. Many of us would prefer to deny the reality that you must keep your indentured servants alive if you want them to serve you.

The fact is that Democrats shut down the government over cancelling subsidies for private health insurance policies. Many people — White people, even — will see their insurance premiums double. Democrats also would like to block cuts to Medicaid funding that will close even more rural hospitals and nursing homes.

We can’t blame the government shutdown on Mexicans.