In the Iowa statehouse, there is a hostage situation going on. You know, like when an armed robber goes into a bank with a ski mask over his face and a gun in his hand and the teller secretly hits the button that announces to the cops that a robbery is going on. The cops show up and the bad guy bars the doors shut and takes all of the innocent civilians hostage. Now, hear me out, there isn’t a literal man with a ski mask over his face and gun in hand at the state house, but many are really feeling the threat of losing their livelihood and right to privacy as Iowa republican leadership holds HF 2545 hostage in the state house.
HF 2545 passed sub-committee February 10th with both republican representatives on the committee voting in favor of it and with the democrat on the committee walking out in a huff before the all of those who came to testify could be heard (someone must have got Rep. Hunter’s goat). February 16th the same bill passed committee with every republican on the committee voting in favor of it. This bill would acknowledge your right to medical privacy and freedom and make it so your employer can’t ask invasive questions about things like your vaccination status. This bill also would make it so your employer can’t discriminate against you because of your medical beliefs or willingness to get a medical treatment.
As you can imagine, after the years we had in 2020 and 2021 and all of the rights that were violated and all of the jobs that have been lost or threatened due to differing opinions on the COVID Vaccines, this bill had a lot of grassroots support. You could even argue it has had the greatest grassroots support due to perhaps the largest sub-committee in the history of Iowa politics where well over 100 people showed up to testify in favor of the bill! If 100 people showed up to testify in favor of the bill you would think that it would draw a decent number of dissenters, but if my memory serves me correct, I can’t recall a single testimony against the bill. Yet with all of this support and with it passing with flying colors through sub-committee and committee here we are waiting. Waiting for it to be brought to the floor to be debated and voted. Republican House leadership so far has refused to touch it with a ten-foot pole, they are holding it hostage.
When someone grabs a hostage, they generally understand two principles 1. Who or what they are holding hostage must have value or it won’t be an effective hostage and 2. They care more about getting what they want than the life of their hostage. Clearly, Republican House leadership has considered these two principles as they know the right to medical freedom and privacy is important to the people of Iowa. After all, our state motto is “Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.” The rights of the people of Iowa are a most precious thing! What concerns me is that they are placing something above the rights of the people in value, as they hold the proverbial gun to the head of HF 2545 and demanding that they get something in return for passing this bill.
I wish I could tell you what the demands were of this hostage situation, but I can’t — not because I am unwilling — but because it is all being done behind closed doors, only the politicians really know what the demands are. The question I have is, what could possibly be more valuable to Republican leadership than the rights of the people? The term “Republican” after all, clearly references the republic. You know, a bottom up style of representative government not a tyrannical top down leadership that cares more about the interests of leadership than the rights of the people. Irony would not be lost if Republican leadership is holding the people’s right to medical privacy and freedom hostage to get something like tort reform; holding citizens jobs in the balance so their donors can pay less in litigation. If something like that is the case, then perhaps the Republican House leadership is much less Republican than we thought.
It is time Speaker Grassley and Majority Leader Windschitl to stop holding the right to medical privacy and freedom hostage. Let HF 2545go free!
Author: Sam Jones
Pastor Sam completed an intense pastoral internship at Hagerman Baptist Church and served as a chaplain at Heritage Care Center in Iowa Falls, Iowa before accepting the call to pastor at Faith Baptist Church in Hudson, Iowa. He loves people and his goal is to make disciples of Christ by personally, prayerfully, and persistently investing the Word of God into others.
Amen.
That Grassley and Windschitl can’t or won’t articulate the higher Constitutional principles that they’re upholding leaves us no choice but to conclude that they would rather uphold their secret oaths to the lobbyists rather than their oath to the Supreme Law of the Land.
Anyone reading this, it’s not too late for anyone in their district to challenge them in the primaries.
To take on Windschitl, all you need is 100 signatures from your district. To take on Grassley, you need just 50 signatures.
This will get their attention quicker than 100s of Iowans pleading with them to do the right thing. It’s obvious by now, they only care about power and accumulating more of it. You can “Be Like Ed Durr” and win for just a few hundred dollars! If not you, then who.
And don’t believe the tripe that experience matters. The signers of the Declaration of Independence was drafted by a group of men whose average age was 44 in 1776. More than a dozen were younger than 35. At the time of the revolution, they were all young. It was a young man’s and woman’s cause. With the experience gained in war and the suffering endured by the tyranny of King George’s Redcoats, the little bit older Band proceeded to write the most important document in history after the Bible. A “fanciful” notion that a government can only derive its power with the consent of We the People.
So, patriot. If you’re thinking about it, you have just 2 weeks to get the necessary signatures. And you can easily get the bulk of it at the County Convention on Saturday, 12 March. It’s easier than you think. At this point you don’t even need an ad or website. You just need enough signatures. Be sure to get more than you need, as someone is bound to challenge them in an effort to disqualify the signatures.
Godspeed.
More at https://ajfoster4iowa.com/2021/12/14/be-like-ed-durr/
Thank you for calling a spade a spade. The hypocrisy of our Republican leaders is being flaunted over Iowans’ lives and careers and medical privacy and religious freedom. My son had been threatened with firing because his college will not accept and honors his religious exemption. They are about to prevent him from graduating from 15 years of medical school, because they will not honor his beliefs that using fetal cell lines to develop a “vaccine” by murdering a child goes against an oath he and every other physician takes when they promise to do no harm. Pat Grassley, who is paying you off? Does it make you feel powerful to destroy Iowans’ lives’ and careers and families and years of education? How many more people do you have to destroy to get where you want to go politically?
Yes, I’m really ticked off about this! My daughter was coerced into getting the experiment to continue her RN job. She really really didn’t want it! She had Covid in 2020. So much for natural immunity.
These nurses pay a lot of money to go to nursing school and have student loans!! I’m very concerned about her health..
PLEASE HELP US!!