Iowa Lawmaker Files Dumb Legislation; Proof Emerges The Guy Is Dumb

This Iowa State Senator's "business
degree" is really just a management
certificate from a Sizzler Steakhouse.

Iowa State Senator Mark Chelgren recently filed legislation that would limit the number of Democrats the state university can hire.   

He figured too many liberals were indoctrinating our poor innocent college kids or something.

Figuring Chlegren was so into education standards, reporters started poking around the lawmaker's educational background.

After all, Chelgren said  he had a business degree from something called Forbco Management.

It turns out "Forbco Management" is a company that once operated a Sizzler steak house franchise in Torrance, California.

Yep, he got a certificate for being a fairly competent manager at a Sizzler. "Kind of like Hamburger University at McDonald's," NBC News reports.

Which means this certificate isn't quite as prestigious as say, an MBA from Harvard, but I guess we all do what we can.

For the record, the certificate Chelgren got from Sizzler is not a college degree, but you knew that.

Interestingly, soon after NBC and other news outlets started getting intensily curious about Chalgren's "degree" from Sizzler, it disappeared from the Iowa State Republicans web site.

The response from Chelgren to NBC News to this issue seems dicey to me:

"'This was not an attempt to inflate anything,' he said, adding he was not aware of the error on the web site until a reporter asked about it. 'I didn't concern myself about this, honesty.'

In a telephone interview last week, Chelgren was vague about Forbco. He said was located outside of Los Angeles and that he got his business degree 'around '88 or '89. It's going a ways back so I don't remember.'

"I don't know if they are still in business or not.....The school was created by Forbco Management, and I got a degree in hotel restaurant management."

Or not.

Especially since Chelgren did not respond to NBC News' request for a copy of his diploma or degree.

We did find out Chelgren was in college for a year in the early 1990s at the University of California Riverside majoring in physics, but he only lasted one year

Of course, we knew Chelgren is not an expert in education to begin with. As noted, he filed his Senate File 228 bill to impose a hiring freeze in the Iowa university system until registered Republicans are nearly on par with Democrats on faculties.

Chelgren's reasoning for the bill is rich. He says he had a lot of negative experiences with "liberal professors" while in college.

Yeah, I'm sure those physics professors for that one unsuccessful year in school really tried to indoctrinate Chelgren with radical left wing socialism. You know, the kind of leftist propaganda like E=MC squared.

In other words, Chelgren is like a lot of (but not all!)  extreme right wingers: They're not that bright, and want to ensure the rest of the world is as dumb as them.

At least Chelgren has additonal things in his resume, like these fun fact about him from Slate:

"Before entering politics, Chelgren was best known as 'Chickenman,' a fun-loving character who wore a chicken hat, wielded a supersoaker full of beer and biked naked in Iowa's famous RAGBRA! bike race."

Well, that's something to put on your resume!