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.