Harkin to embark on ‘building iowa’s future’ tour
August 5, 2009
http://harkin.senate.gov/pr/p.cfm?i=316796
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) will be traveling across the state this month on the Building Iowa’s Future tour. This future of Iowa includes one where all Iowans will have access to affordable, quality health care and preventive care that can reduce chronic disease and rein in high health care costs; a future where Iowa leads the green economy and where our heroes get the benefits they deserve.
Harkin will post daily entries chronicling his trip on his Senate website at http://harkin.senate.gov/
Details of events from August 8th through August 14th are below.
Saturday, August 8th – Des Moines
2:00 P.M.
Harkin will visit Des Moines Primary Health Care, Inc.
1200 University Avenue
Des Moines
Harkin will visit Des Moines Primary Health Care to discuss progress being made on health reform in Washington and the important role Community Health Centers play in our state.
Sunday, August 9th – Ottumwa
Noon
Harkin will attend the Groundbreaking Ceremony for the new Job Corps Center with Labor Secretary Solis
Industrial Airport Complex
Ottumwa
Senator Tom Harkin will join U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis at a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Job Corps Center in Ottumwa. Harkin worked to secure $25 million in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as the Recovery Act, for the completion of the Ottumwa Center.
Monday, August 10th – Waterloo, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City
9:15 A.M.
Harkin will visit Peoples Community Health Center
905 Franklin Street
Waterloo
Harkin will visit Peoples Community Health Center to discuss progress being made on health reform in Washington and the important role Community Health Centers play in our state.
11:30 A.M.
Harkin will attend the Grand Opening of Linn Community Care Center
1201 3rd Avenue SE
Cedar Rapids
Harkin will attend the grand opening of the Linn Community Care Center. Harkin has been an ardent supporter of Iowa’s 13 federally-funded Community Health Centers, obtaining funds for the facilities’ construction, equipment purchases, and dental expansions through his work on the Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee.
2:00 P.M
Harkin will Present Military Medals to Veterans American Legion Post #17
3016 Muscatine Avenue
Iowa City
Harkin, who is a Navy veteran, has been a leader in the Senate in calling on the Department of Defense to improve the process for issuing military medals. These medals are being presented to the families of Kenneth Hein, Harlan Henely, Richard Donegan and Clarence Davis. In 1999 Harkin added an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that directed the Secretary of Defense to eliminate the backlog in decoration requests. Since then, delays in receiving medals have been greatly reduced.
Tuesday, August 11th – Bettendorf, Davenport
9:00 A.M.
Harkin will visit Eastern Iowa Community College’s Nursing Program
500 Belmont Road
Bettendorf
Harkin will visit Eastern Iowa Community College’s Nursing Program to discuss how the Senate health reform bill will increase the medical workforce with incentives for more doctors and nurses.
2:00 P.M
Harkin will Present Military Medals to Veterans
Center for Active Seniors Inc. Center
1035 W. Kimberly
Davenport
Harkin, who is a Navy veteran, has been a leader in the Senate in calling on the Department of Defense to improve the process for issuing military medals. These medals are being presented to John Bohy, as well as the families of Wayne Simmons and Richard Williamson. In 1999 Harkin added an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill which directed the Secretary of Defense to eliminate the backlog in decoration requests. Since then, delays in receiving medals have been greatly reduced.
Wednesday, August 12th – Storm Lake, Ft. Dodge, Story City
10:30 A.M.
Harkin will Attend Ribbon Cutting Ceremony for United Community Health Center
630 Ontario Street
Storm Lake
Harkin will visit United Community Health Center to discuss progress being made on health reform in Washington and the important role Community Health Centers play in our state.
1:30 P.M.
Harkin will visit Ft. Dodge Community Health Center
126 N 10th Street
Ft. Dodge
Harkin will visit Ft. Dodge Community Health Center to discuss progress being made on health reform in Washington and the important role Community Health Centers play in our state.
3:30 P.M.
Main Street Tour
602 Broad Street
Story City
Harkin has secured a total of $55,000 in federal funds to revitalize the Story City Herald Building and the Charlson Buildings. Built in 1898, the Charlson Building, initially known as the Swan Building, has stood as a cornerstone at the center of Story City’s downtown district for over 100 years. The funds will be used to renovate the commercial and residential spaces, and put an end to the ongoing deterioration of the building, with a new roof, tuck pointing and the addition of a basement floor. To date, Harkin has secured nearly $4 million for the Main Street Iowa program, which preserves the character and vitality of Iowa’s small towns by providing communities with the grants to help revitalize their main streets.
4:00 P.M.
Renewable Energy from the Heartland Event
NextEra Energy Resources
I-35 Business Park (exit 124 off I-35)
Story City
Harkin will tour this facility and visit with company and local elected officials about their collaborative work on this project. Harkin will use the opportunity to see the major components of a gear box that generates the power produced in the wind turbines around the state. NextEra Energy Resources, the largest wind and solar energy producer in North America, broke ground on the Generation Repair and Service (GRS) facility in April.
Iowa has been a national leader in renewable energy and green collar jobs. The state currently ranks second in wind energy generation with nearly 3,043 megawatts from 2,136 turbines across the state. Iowa also leads the nation in wind generation as percentage of its total power output at 15 percent.
Thursday, August 13th – Des Moines, Mason City
9:00 A.M.
Harkin will attend the Iowa State Fair
State Fairgrounds
Des Moines
Harkin will participate in a number of events at the Iowa State Fair, including serving as a guest chef at the Iowa Pork Producers tent on Grand Avenue at 11 A.M.
5:45 P.M.
Main Street Tour
7 North Federal Avenue
Mason City
Harkin will take a walking tour of Mason City and visit the Parker Opera House, Park Inn Hotel and the Lundberg Building. Harkin has been able to secure a total of $110,000 in federal funds to revitalize the Parker Opera House Building and convert the old Lundberg Building into four residential apartments. Each unit of the Lundberg Building will be equipped with energy efficient equipment, using “green” practices wherever possible for long-term sustainability. To date, Harkin has secured nearly $4 million for the Main Street Iowa program, which preserves the character and vitality of Iowa’s small towns by providing communities with the grants to help revitalize their main streets.
In addition to the two Main Street stops, Harkin will visit the Park Inn Hotel and City National Bank site. Harkin secured $393,760 for the rehabilitation of the building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is next to the Park Inn Hotel, the only remaining hotel in America designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Friday, August 14th – Mason City
9:00 A.M.
Harkin will visit North Iowa Area Community College
500 College Drive
104 H McAllister Hall
Mason City
Harkin will visit North Iowa Area Community College’s Nursing Program to discuss how the Senate health reform bill will increase the medical workforce with incentives for more doctors and nurses.
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Alasdair MacIntyre sez
“What matters now is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is out lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another–no doubt quite different–St. Benedict.”
Alasdair MacIntyre
University of Notre Dame
When offered a choice between two politically intolerable alternatives, it is important to choose neither. And when that choice is presented in rival arguments and debates that exclude from public consideration any other set of possibilities, it becomes a duty to withdraw from those arguments and debates, so as to resist the imposition of this false choice by those who have arrogated to themselves the power of framing the alternatives. These are propositions which in the abstract may seem to invite easy agreement. But, when they find application to the coming presidential election, they are likely to be rejected out of hand. For it has become an ingrained piece of received wisdom that voting is one mark of a good citizen, not voting a sign of irresponsibility. But the only vote worth casting in November is a vote that no one will be able to cast, a vote against a system that presents one with a choice between Bush’s conservatism and Kerry’s liberalism, those two partners in ideological debate, both of whom need the other as a target.
Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions. What then are the right political questions? One of them is: What do we owe our children? And the answer is that we owe them the best chance that we can give them of protection and fostering from the moment of conception onwards. And we can only achieve that if we give them the best chance that we can both of a flourishing family life, in which the work of their parents is fairly and adequately rewarded, and of an education which will enable them to flourish. These two sentences, if fully spelled out, amount to a politics. It is a politics that requires us to be pro-life, not only in doing whatever is most effective in reducing the number of abortions, but also in providing healthcare for expectant mothers, in facilitating adoptions, in providing aid for single-parent families and for grandparents who have taken parental responsibility for their grandchildren. And it is a politics that requires us to make as a minimal economic demand the provision of meaningful work that provides a fair and adequate wage for every working parent, a wage sufficient to keep a family well above the poverty line.
The basic economic injustice of our society is that the costs of economic growth are generally borne by those least able to afford them and that the majority of the benefits of economic growth go to those who need them least. Compare the rise in wages of ordinary working people over the last thirty years to the rise in the incomes and wealth of the top twenty percent. Compare the value of minimum wage now to its value then and next compare the value of the remuneration of CEOs to its value then. What is needed to secure family life is a sufficient minimum income for every family and that can perhaps best be secured by some version of the negative income tax, proposed long ago by Milton Friedman, a tax that could be used to secure a large and just redistribution of income and so of property.
We note at this point that we have already broken with both parties and both candidates. Try to promote the pro-life case that we have described within the Democratic Party and you will at best go unheard and at worst be shouted down. Try to advance the case for economic justice as we have described it within the Republican Party and you will be laughed out of court. Above all, insist, as we are doing, that these two cases are inseparable, that each requires the other as its complement, and you will be met with blank incomprehension. For the recognition of this is precluded by the ideological assumptions in terms of which the political alternatives are framed. Yet at the same time neither party is wholeheartedly committed to the cause of which it is the ostensible defender. Republicans happily endorse pro-choice candidates, when it is to their advantage to do so. Democrats draw back from the demands of economic justice with alacrity, when it is to their advantage to do so. And in both cases rhetorical exaggeration disguises what is lacking in political commitment.
In this situation a vote cast is not only a vote for a particular candidate, it is also a vote case for a system that presents us only with unacceptable alternatives. The way to vote against the system is not to vote.
Probably posted these comments in the wrong place . Is there a general place . The subject matter does apply but is somewhat out of context other than commenting on Government…
Sorry,
Stella