Join us!

“Justice What’s the Right Thing to Do?”
by Michael J. Sandel-chapter 7 & 8.

Alternative Discussion Group
Thursday, 7pm, May 13, 2010
Wendy’s Restaurant
1316 1st Ave NE, Cedar Rapids
(Just north of Coe College

While helpful, it is not essential to read the chapters.

For more information,
#319-360-5119

http:www.womenforpeace-iowa.org

Background Information
On March 10, 2010, Alliant/IPL filed a petition seeking a permanent annual revenue increase of approximately $163 million (14 percent).
Alliant/IPL has indicated it intends to implement a temporary revenue increase of about 10 percent ($119 million), which is permitted by Iowa law and does not require pre-approval from the IUB, on March 20, 2010. If the permanent rates granted are less than the temporary rates, customers will receive a refund plus interest for any over-collection. The impact on customer rates will vary according to customer class and rate zone.
At public comment meetings, verbal questions and comments may be directed to representatives of the IUB, the Office of Consumer Advocate, which represents the general interests of customers in IUB proceedings, and Alliant/IPL. All comments provided will become part of the permanent record in this rate case. The Board’s decision on permanent rates in this case is anticipated by January 2011.
The IUB is also accepting written comments in this rate case, with the most effective comments being concise and making specific points supporting or objecting to the rate request. These may be provided by going to the IUB Website, www.state.ia.us/iub, and using an electronic comment form or may be mailed to the Iowa Utilities Board, Executive Secretary, Docket No. RPU-2010-0001, 350 Maple Street, Des Moines, Iowa 50319-0069.

Alliant/IPL electric customers may comment on proposed rate increase
The Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) encourages customers of Alliant Energy/Interstate Power and Light Company (Alliant/IPL) to attend any in a series of public comment meetings scheduled regarding the utility’s request to increase its electric rates. Customer comment meetings are the best opportunity to provide verbal comments directly to the Board and other parties in a rate case, and are one of the ways the IUB receives information on customer impacts and concerns.
Customer comment meetings currently scheduled across the state are:
• Peosta: Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 1:30 p.m. – Peosta Community Center, 7896 Burds Road
• Marion: Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 6:30 p.m. – Kirkwood Training and Outreach Service Center (KTOS), 3375 Armar Drive
• Spirit Lake: Wednesday, April 14, 2010, 1:30 p.m. – Community Room, Dickinson County Courthouse, 1802 Hill Street
• Mason City: Thursday, April 15, 2010, 6:30 p.m. – NIACC Campus, Muse-Norris Conference Center, Room 180A, 500 College Drive
• Newton: Tuesday, April 20, 2010, 6:30 p.m. – Newton High School Auditorium, 800 East 4th Street South
• Osceola: Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 6:30 p.m. – Clarke High School Auditorium, 800 North Jackson
• Fort Madison: Tuesday, April 27, 2010, 1:30 p.m. – St. Mary’s Parish Center, 415 -11th Street
• Ottumwa: Tuesday, April 27, 2010, 6:30 p.m. – Ottumwa High School Auditorium, 501 East Second Street
Additional comment meetings may be scheduled at a later date if public interest warrants. In Iowa, Alliant/IPL serves more than 483,000 customers.

RPU-2010-0001: Alliant Energy/Interstate Power and Light Company – On March 10, 2010, Alliant/IPL filed a petition seeking a permanent annual revenue increase of approximately $163 million (14 percent). As permitted by Iowa law, a temporary increase of about 10 percent ($119 million), not requiring pre-approval of the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB), will be implemented on March 20, 2010. If the permanent rates granted are less than the temporary rates, customers will receive a refund plus interest for any over-collection. The impact on customer rates will vary according to customer class and rate zone. Currently, 8 customer comment meetings are scheduled to allow verbal questions and comments to be directed to representatives of the utility, the IUB, and the Office of Consumer Advocate, which represents the general interests of customers in IUB proceedings. The IUB is also accepting written comments in this rate case, with the most effective comments being concise and making specific points supporting or objecting to the rate request. They may be provided using an electronic comment form or be mailed to the Iowa Utilities Board, Executive Secretary, Docket No. RPU-2010-0001, 350 Maple Street, Des Moines, Iowa 50319-0069. The IUB’s decision on permanent rates is expected by January 2011. For more information about this rate proceeding, please visit the Docket No. RPU-2010-0001 information page.

http://www.investigationofaflame.com/

“Investigation of a Flame”
Friday, April 23, 2010
Paul Engle Center
6:30pm Potluck
8:00pm Film & Discussion
Free & Open to the Public

Catonsville 9 Statement
written by Dan Berrigan, S.J.

Some 10 or 12 of us (the number is still uncertain) will, if all goes well
(ill?) take our religious bodies during this week to a draft center in or near
Baltimore. There we shall, of purpose and forethought, remove the 1-A files,
sprinkle them in the public street with homemade napalm, and set them afire. For
which act we shall, beyond doubt, be placed behind bars for some portion of our
natural lives, in consequence of our inability to live and die content in the
plagued city, to say “peace peace” when there is no peace, to keep the poor
poor, the home- less, the thirsty and hungry homeless, thirsty and hungry.

Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of
paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of
the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.

For we are sick at heart, our hearts give us no rest for thinking of the Land of
Burning Children. And for thinking of that other Child, of whom the poet Luke
speaks. The infant was taken up in the arms of an old man, whose tongue grew
resonant and vatic at the touch of that beauty.

And the old man spoke; this child is set for the fall and rise of many in
Israel, a sign that is spoken against. Small consolation; a child born to make
trouble, and to die for it, the First Jew (not the last) to be subject of a
“definitive solution.” He sets up the cross and dies on it; in the Rose Garden
of the executive mansion, on the D.C. Mall, in the courtyard of the Pentagon.

We see the sign, we read the direction: you must bear with us, for his sake. Or
if you will not, the consequences are our own. For it will be easy, after all,
to discredit us. Our record is bad; trouble makers in church and state, a priest
married despite his vows, two convicted felons.

We have jail records, we have been turbulent, uncharitable, we have failed in
love for the brethren, have yielded to fear and despair and pride, often in our
lives. Forgive us. We are no more, when the truth is told, than ignorant beset
men, jockeying against all chance, at the hour of death, for a place at the
right hand of the dying one.

We act against the law at a time of the Poor People’s March, at a time moreover
when the government is announcing ever more massive paramilitary means to
confront disorder in the cities. It is announced that a computerized center is
being built in the Pentagon at a cost of some seven millions of dollars, to
offer instant response to outbreaks anywhere in the land; that moreover, the
government takes so serious a view of civil disorder, that federal troops, with
war experience in Vietnam, will have first responsibility to quell civil
disorder. The implications of all this must strike horror in the mind of any
thinking man.

The war in Vietnam is more and more literally brought home to us. Its inmost
meaning strikes the American ghettos; in servitude to the affluent. We must
resist and protest this crime.

Finally, we stretch out our hands to our brothers throughout the world. We who
are priests, to our fellow priests. All of us who act against the law, turn to
the poor of the world, to the Vietnamese, to the victims, to the soldiers who
kill and die, for the wrong reasons, for no reason at all, because they were so
ordered—by the authorities of that public order which is in effect a massive
institutionalized disorder.

We say: killing is disorder, life and gentleness and community and unselfishness
is the only order we recog- nize. For the sake of that order, we risk our
liberty, our good name.

The time is past when good men can remain silent, when obedience can segregate
men from public risk, when the poor can die without defense. We ask our fellow
Christians to consider in their hearts a question which has tortured us, night
and day, since the war began. How many must die before our voices are heard, how
many must be tortured, dislocated, starved, maddened? How long must the world’s
resources be raped in the service of legalized murder? When, at what point, will
you say no to this war? We have chosen to say, with the gift of our liberty, if
necessary our lives: the violence stops here, the death stops here, the
suppression of the truth stops here, this war stops here.

We wish also to place in question, by this act, all suppositions about normal
times, about longings for an untroubled life in a somnolent church, about a neat
time-table of ecclesiastical renewal which in respect to the needs of men,
amounts to another form of time serving.

Redeem the times! The times are inexpressibly evil. Christians pay conscious,
indeed religious tribute, to Caesar and Mars; by the approval of overkill
tactics, by brinkmanship, by nuclear liturgies, by racism, by support of
genocide. They embrace their society with all their heart, and abandon the
cross. They pay lip service to Christ and military service to the powers of
death. And yet, and yet, the times are inexhaustibly good, solaced by the
courage and hope of many. The truth rules, Christ is not forsaken.

In a time of death, some men —the resisters, those who work hardily for social
change, those who preach and embrace the unpalatable truth— such men overcome
death, their lives are bathed in the light of the resurrection, the truth has
set them free. In the jaws of death, of contumely, of good and ill report, they
proclaim their love of the brethren. We think of such men, in the world, in our
nation, in the churches; and the stone in our breast is dissolved; we take heart
once more.

The movie will follow the War Tax Day Protest at the
Cedar Rapids Post Office.

7:30pm, April 15, 2010
Hiawatha Library

An Act of Conscience is a 1997 documentary film by Robbie Leppzer about war tax
resistance. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival. It is narrated by
Martin Sheen. 90 minutes.

Film and Discussion sponsored by:

Linn County Green Party
PO Box 2151
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52402
#360-5119

“Justice What’s the Right Thing to Do?”
by Michael J. Sandel

Chapter 6

Alternative Book Discussion Group
Thursday, April 22
7pm

Wendy’s
1316 1st Ave NE, Cedar Rapids
(One block north of Coe College)

The Alternative Discussion Group will be discussing Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel.

While helpful, it is not essential to read the chapters. Our discussion will also cover the real world outside the pages of this book. As a famous activist once said, our duty is not to discuss philosophy, but to change the world.

For more information, email: dr_pac-man@mchsi.com