Flyover Friday, December 15, 2023
Intro: On this episode of The Heartland POD for Friday, December 15th, 2023
A flyover from this weeks top heartland stories including:
Welcome to The Heartland POD for a Flyover Friday, this is Sean Diller in Denver, Colorado. With me as co-host today is Adam Sommer, how you doing Adam?
We’re glad to have you with us. If you’re new to our shows make sure you subscribe and leave a 5 star rating wherever you listen. You can also find Heartland POD content on Youtube and on social media with @ THE heartland pod, and learn more at thehearltandcollective.com
SEAN: Speaking of - the website over at THE HEARTLAND COLLECTIVE DOT COM - if you have not yet checked it out, it is full of not just shows but articles too, including a recent on on abortion laws by Rachel Parker, really sharp stuff.
ADAM: Yeah, hats off to you and the team, shout out my and special thanks to Allyn for all the work, I think folks will like what they find over there at the site, and that article by Rachel goes great with the pod from Wednesday which was Rachel with Jess Piper and Laura Belin was back from Bleeding Heartland, a powerhouse group of women talking about abortion laws, absolutely not to be missed.
SEAN: Plus, we’re back in the saddle this coming week with the LAST CALL shows, which are for members only, we have a lot of fun on those shows and that’s for patreon members, you can sign up today, $5 per month unlocks that feature, go to THE HEARTLAND COLLECTIVE DOT COM and click the button to sign up today to join us for those member only bonus shows.
Alright! Let’s get into the stories
SOURCES: Wisconsin Examiner, Missouri Independent, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Ohio Capital Journal, Colorado Newsline; Indiana Capitol Chronicle
Rep. Sarah Unsicker has pulled out of the Dem AG primary after a two week period in which she appears to have had serious issues pop up
Very odd turn of events, disgusting anti-semetic smears and a final move of a Dark Night jOker like video
Missouri Dem leader and candidate for Governor, Crystal Quade, is taking the charge on the abortion issue in Missouri.
https://x.com/crystal_quade/status/1735330641967759416?s=20
Sen. Josh Hawley (drop) has failed to include funding for nuclear waste cleanup for Missourians.
https://missouriindependent.com/2023/12/12/defense-radioactive-senate-st-lous/
Wisconsin Secretary of State calls for removal of fake elector who was part of 2020 scheme for Donald Trump
https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2023/12/11/wisconsin-secretary-of-state-calls-for-removal-of-election-commissioner-who-served-as-fake-elector/
Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski and the two Democrats on the Senate elections committee are calling for Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) to remove state elections commissioner Robert Spindell from his position.
Democrats are calling for Spindell’s removal because he served as a fake elector following the 2020 presidential election, casting a false Electoral College vote for former President Donald Trump despite Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Last week, Spindell and the nine other Republicans who joined him settled a lawsuit against them for their actions — stating publicly that Biden had won the election and agreeing not to serve as electors for Trump again.
On Monday, Godlewski said Wisconsinites can’t trust Spindell to have a say in how the state’s elections are run.
“Wisconsin Election Commissioner Robert Spindell Jr. admitted that he was not a qualified 2020 presidential elector and co-signed a fraudulent Certificate of Votes and submitted them to my office,” Godlewski said in a statement. “That unlawful certificate was used as part of a larger scheme to overturn the election. The people of Wisconsin cannot trust the integrity and moral compass of Commissioner Spindell to administer our elections. Senator LeMahieu should immediately remove him from Wisconsin’s Election Commission.”
Democrats on the Senate elections committee, Sens. Jeff Smith (D-Eau Claire) and Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) said Monday that Spindell’s admission that he participated in an effort to overturn the election results should be enough for him to resign or for LeMahieu to remove him.
“Bob Spindell has continued to serve without any repercussions for his actions and statements celebrating lower turnout and successful voter suppression,” the two senators said in a statement. “Now, Bob Spindell has admitted his involvement in the scheme to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election, and it is abundantly clear that the Senate Majority Leader’s excuses and deflections must come to an end. Bob Spindell has admitted to signing and sending false documents claiming that he was a presidential elector for the state of Wisconsin. If there were any remaining questions about whether Bob Spindell should go, they were answered when he finally acknowledged that he signed falsified documents submitted to public officials despite President Joe Biden winning the 2020 election in Wisconsin. Bob Spindell should resign. If he doesn’t, Senator LeMahieu must remove him. We understand the Wisconsin Elections Commission is made up of partisan appointees, but surely Senator LeMahieu can find a different Republican who didn’t attempt to illegally overturn a presidential election. The people of Wisconsin deserve better than Bob Spindell.”
Democratic Rep. Keri Ingle of Lee’s Summit calls for removal of STL area Shrewsberry Rep. Unsicker from Democratic caucus in Missouri
https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/government-politics/missouri-house-democrat-calls-for-ouster-of-shrewsbury-state-rep-from-caucus/article_8b475036-9945-11ee-b25d-e3f3e17972df.html
Rep. Keri Ingle, D-Lee’s Summit, said in a news release that state Rep. Sarah Unsicker of Shrewsbury “failed to denounce” antisemitic attacks, as well as accusations that members of their caucus worked for the Israeli government, in a recent livestreamed conversation with conspiracy theorists.
Her press release said Democratic caucus leadership should “begin the process” of removing her.
“As long as she persists in enabling and spreading this kind of rhetoric, I believe my Democratic colleagues must take swift action to uphold our caucus’ commitment to fight and confront hate and intolerance by ousting her from our ranks,” Ingle said.
Her press release added that Unsicker had helped “propagate hateful, antisemitic, and conspiratorial and racist rhetoric which has hurt people and sparked online harassment campaigns.”
Ohio Legislation for so called “Parent’s Bill Of Rights” gets push back
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/12/13/counselors-psychologists-and-school-officials-speak-out-against-parents-bill-of-rights/
Dozens, including school counselors and psychiatrists, testified Tuesday against a bill in the Ohio Senate that would force schools to notify parents on “sexuality” content, and possibly on a student’s sexuality, calling it “censorship” and potentially risky for students.
“Young people are people who are entitled to their own privacy,” said Mallory Golski, of the Kaleidoscope Youth Center. “Young people are people who should have the freedom to read stories that reflect their own lives and experiences.”
Ohio House Bill 8 could be up for a vote this week, as the bill seeks to put the control of education more into parent’s hands, by allowing them to opt out of certain curricula based on the “sexuality” content. According to one of the bill’s sponsors, state Rep. D.J. Swearingen, R-Huron, school districts would also be “prohibited from keeping changes in the health of the student from their parent, and the school district is also prohibited from encouraging the student to hide these issues from their parents.”
Amanda Erickson, also of the Kaleidoscope Youth Center, worried about the impact the bill will have on teachers, who may not only be required to speak with parents about information they were told by a student, but could also be impacted themselves, based on their own life choices.
Erickson herself trained as a teacher, before she moved on to the nonprofit sector after graduation. A career in a classroom did not appeal to her after the efforts of the Ohio legislature, now and in the past.
“Why would I want to be a teacher in Ohio when my legislators are so obsessed with gender and sexuality that they do not have time to pass legislation that would actually improve our schools,” Erickson asked of the Senate Education Committee.
Erickson also argued that the law might ban her and others from putting family pictures on her desk, as it might suggest a discussion she’s not allowed to have.
“Since this bill does not define ‘sexual concepts’ or ‘gender ideology,’ there are those who would argue that my wedding photo or the questions it could prompt would qualify as one or the other,” Erickson said.
The committee heard from some that currently are in the education field with members of the Ohio School Psychologists Association and the Ohio School Counselor Association both submitting in opposition to the bill, saying the bill is “not workable,” and ignores parents as an already “key tenet” in a student’s education.
The Missouri and Kansas border war went from civil war to friendly sports rivalry, and is reemerging as a political battle about health care
https://missouriindependent.com/2023/12/11/university-of-kansas-deal-with-missouri-hospital-feels-terribly-wrong-to-lawmakers/
The proposed takeover of Liberty Hospital in Missouri by the University of Kansas Health System is being greeted with scorn by lawmakers from both sides of the state line and both political parties.
Leading the charge against the takeover in Missouri is Kansas City Democratic state Sen. Greg Razer, who said the idea of KU owning a hospital in suburban Missouri is “terribly wrong.”
“There are boundaries for a reason, and they’ve crossed one,” said Razer, a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia.
The Republican leader of the Kansas Senate also has expressed concern about the takeover, along with at least one member of Liberty Hospital’s board of trustees.
Earlier this month, Razer pre-filed a bill in the Missouri General Assembly that would put a stop to a proposed partnership between the University of Kansas Health System and Liberty Hospital by prohibiting hospital boards to partner with an out-of-state health system “operated by an institution of higher education” without voter approval.
“I can’t imagine the outrage of Missouri taxpayers if we opened up (University of Missouri) Health in Olathe, Kansas,” Razer said, calling the proposed arrangement “mind boggling.”
Liberty Hospital announced in May it was looking to partner with another health system to help it expand to meet growing demand in the Kansas City suburbs north of the Missouri River. In October, it announced it had chosen KU.
The two health systems have signed a letter of intent but are still in negotiations, and the terms of the deal are not yet available. But Liberty Hospital CEO Dr. Raghu Adiga said in an interview Friday that KU had pledged to continue the services the hospital provides, including cardiothoracic surgery and a level-two trauma center.
Adiga said those are rare for a hospital Liberty’s size.
“They put the patients first just like us,” Adiga said, “ensuring high-quality health care that we can provide right here in town.”
In a video announcing the deal in October, he said the partnership “will bring world class clinical excellence across the river to every Northlander’s doorstep.”
Razer said the arrangement would take health care dollars from Missouri to “prop up Kansas,” and feared it would be a recruiting tool for the University of Kansas.
“Liberty has a lot of high school students. … They get great grades. It’s a great school district up there. They’re all going to be driving by a Jayhawk every day in the state of Missouri,” Razer said.
Razer’s primary objection centered on the idea of having a Kansas state institution plant its flag in Missouri.
The University of Kansas Health System is governed by the University of Kansas Hospital Authority, a board established in Kansas statute, primarily appointed by the Kansas governor and affiliated with the University of Kansas School of Medicine. But the health system hasn’t been owned by the state in 25 years. It receives no state or local tax dollars.
Indiana, one of the most “red” states in the union, is struggling to keep up economically speaking
https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2023/12/13/hoosier-economic-policy-improving-slower-than-competitors-report-says/
Indiana has improved on key economic development criteria in recent years, but has still fallen in national rankings, the influential Indiana Chamber of Commerce found in a report card Tuesday.
The chamber in August released a vision for Indiana in 2035, with 31 goals for the state’s education, entrepreneurship, economic growth, energy and infrastructure, health, quality of place and workforce.
The report cards — expected to be biannual — log progress on 59 metrics related to those goals.
Compared to previous years, the state scored better on about 67% of the metrics — but its national rankings on those metrics improved just 41% of the time.
“What that tells us is that we’re improving overall — but the progress isn’t happening fast enough, because other states are improving at a faster pace,” outgoing President and CEO Kevin Brinegar told reporters Tuesday. “We need to pick up the pace.”
Indiana’s strongest performance was a third-place ranking for the 11% of Hoosiers working in knowledge- and technology-intensive industries, like manufacturing or software development.
It came in fourth for the 63% of foreign-born Hoosiers with science or engineering bachelor’s degrees, as well as for the 10% of non-white workers who are self-employed.
More Rail Service In Colorado… coming soon?
https://coloradonewsline.com/briefs/front-range-rail-development/
Front Range Passenger Rail District will get a $500,000 planning grant as part of the federal Corridor ID program, which aims to help development of intercity passenger rail projects. The idea, Bose said, is to get projects into the pipeline for implementation, eventually connecting an entire corridor of cities to rail service.
The Front Range Passenger Rail District, which was created through 2021 legislation, is planning a rail line that would connect cities between Fort Collins and Pueblo.
“Colorado is very, very well positioned in the Corridor ID program,” Bose said, partly because the district has already defined the scope of its service development program and can move forward to the second step of the program. There are “tens of millions of dollars” for project planning now that the scope is set.
The Colorado project is one of 70 that the Federal Railroad Administration selected to get money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“The fact that we have a federal administration that’s committed to helping us dream up and execute a project like this is not an opportunity that we can take for granted. I think it shows us what kind of a moment we have,” Lew said.
Polis is pushing a housing agenda that encourages development along transit corridors, and he is likely to champion related legislation next year. Though the state is years away from putting Front Range residents onto passenger rail cars, the agenda represents a goal for people to live near their primary mode of transportation and commute more easily without adding traffic congestion.
“Coupled with bus rapid transit and transit oriented neighborhoods, passenger rail is a huge lynchpin in this vision we have for smarter growth, for improving affordability, livability and sustainability as Colorado grows,” Polis said.
