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There’s little agreement on what is ‘wasteful’

For many years, an Iowa State University political science professor and I met several times a year for coffee and conversation.

During our coffee klatches, I probed my friend’s thinking on world affairs, on government issues, and on politics in Iowa and across the United States. I suspect he tried to use these get-togethers to give me a something of a graduate-level seminar in American government, absent any lectures.

Educators these days are frequently accused of trying to indoctrinate their students with a particular point of view. But what I came to realize during those sessions at the Stomping Grounds coffee shop in Ames was fundamental to excellence in teaching: The professor did not tell me what to think. He tried to get me to think more clearly and to analyze with more sophistication and depth. He helped me spot weaknesses in my own opinions and develop a better understanding of factors that may lead other people to see things differently than I did.

There is more to serving than winning elections

Back where I came from, you do not expect to have a bomb-sniffing dog circle your car when you pull into the parking lot for Sunday church services.

But that is what occurred. After the dog’s sensitive nose checked our car, a man on the front step gave us a quick once-over with his hand-held metal detector. Then an usher directed my wife, our youngest daughter and me into a pew in the second row of the sanctuary of the simple brick building with a thin spire.

Of course, until that day in April 2011 I had never been to church when a former president of the United States was teaching the Sunday School lesson. It is easy to become flummoxed — even for an editor who has conversed with presidents and quizzed many wanna-be’s — when Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter slide into the pew beside you.

Misguided gov’t proposal targets ‘vexatious’ people

Many decades ago, Mrs. Gentry and Mr. Halferty put up with an inquisitive kid’s classroom questions about American democracy and the workings of government.

I did not imagine back then how the meaning of some words could take on such importance in government. Take, for example, a much-talked-about word in Iowa last week, vexatious. It means abrasive, aggravating, annoying, irritating or nettlesome.

Whether you vote for Democrats, Republicans or Whigs, everyone should have access to government records that are not confidential. That is a way for you to understand what your state and local government is doing.

Iowa’s open records law says succinctly: “Every person shall have the right to examine and copy a public record and to publish or otherwise disseminate a public record or the information contained in a public record.”

Facts disprove claim Iowa school choice a success

by Rob Sand, Auditor, State of Iowa

Common sense says we can’t judge an outcome before a program begins, but I wasn’t surprised to read a guest essay in the Sept. 3 Des Moines Register proclaiming that “it’s safe to say we were wrong” if we thought Iowa’s new vouchers program would harm our public schools.

I wasn’t surprised because common sense has never been part of the push for vouchers in Iowa.

Here, instead of political talking points, are actual facts about the program’s rules and structure.

Des Moines Register caucus poll shows ‘hands off’ approach to Trump isn’t working for rival candidates

by Iowa Capital Dispatch
August 21, 2023

The latest Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll of the Iowa caucus race, published Monday, was a blowout. Former President Donald Trump holds more than a 2-to-1 lead over his closest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

It appears not every life in Iowa truly is sacred

Deanna Mahoney was like countless Iowa women through the years. She nurtured three children. She worked outside the home to supplement the family income. She loved bowling and mushroom hunting.

That is how she lived.

How she died tells us so much about the way some business owners, and too many government leaders in Iowa, have pushed aside their legal, moral and humanitarian obligations, especially to vulnerable Iowans.

The death of the 83-year-old Newton woman was tragic. Two photographs made that so horribly clear.

In spite of the statements and pledges about the sanctity of every human life, Mahoney’s death illustrates that too many members of the Iowa Legislature, and our governor, too, show too little concern for the sanctity of the lives of people in Iowa’s nursing homes.

The issue we didn’t know was an issue

Silly me. I thought I had been paying attention to the issues about which Iowans feel strongly.

You know, things like inflation, taxes, government spending, the war in Ukraine, a new farm bill, water quality, immigration, the federal debt. Those sorts of issues.

But I have spaced off a vital issue in the minds of some in Congress — an issue that apparently has been flying under the radar of Iowans: That issue is aliens from another world.

Good luck, governor – Questioning presidential candidates will be harder than she seems to think

by Iowa Capital Dispatch
July 24, 2023

Gov. Kim Reynolds, who rarely speaks to Iowa journalists, now wants to try her hand at their job.

Reynolds announced last week that she plans to personally interview all of the GOP presidential candidates at the Iowa State Fair. And not only that, but she plans to “go beyond just the issues of a presidential campaign and allow fairgoers to see who the candidates really are.”

That is an ambitious goal. Presidential candidates, like most politicians, tend to be extremely invested in making sure nobody can pin down “who they really are.” It gets in the way of their aim to be all things to all people.

When ‘governing’ loses track of its purpose

One of the photographs of my father that I clearly remember appeared on the pages of the Bloomfield Democrat about 60 years ago.

Pop was standing chest-deep in a hole that had been hastily dug in the street on the Bloomfield city square. His face was grim. There was urgent work to be done, because much of Bloomfield was without water.

An underground main had broken a block from the city’s water tower. Water was gushing into the street and flooding basements of nearby businesses.

There, in that hole with water pooled at his ankles, Pop shoveled muck and mud to expose the leaking pipe so it could be repaired.

In contrast with my dad, I had a soft working life. I spent much of my career in an air-conditioned office. The old photo shows Pop was not so lucky. He was a working stiff for the City of Bloomfield water department, wielding a shovel or hanging onto a jackhammer, before later moving up to operate the city’s water treatment plant.

His work days ranged from freezing, to sweltering, to all manner of conditions in between. He usually could take time for a few gulps of water from a jug during scorchers or for some hot coffee from a Thermos when he needed to thaw out.

But in Texas, not all working stiffs are not as fortunate as Pop was. We have the Texas Legislature and Gov. Greg Abbott to thank for that.

Iowa Republicans can’t go back to 2018 to dodge fallout of their abortion ban

by Iowa Capital Dispatch
July 10, 2023

What Iowa GOP lawmakers and Gov. Kim Reynolds are planning to do in Tuesday’s special session may have started out as the most politically expedient course of action on abortion – but it could backfire in a spectacular way.

Here’s why.

Reynolds and the GOP majority under the golden dome are coming back into session at the cost of tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to try again to pass a law banning most abortions after roughly six weeks of gestation.

No matter what they pass, this law is going straight back to court, at the cost of potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars for litigation, again at the expense of taxpayers. Its ultimate fate will not be decided before the Legislature’s regular session in January. In fact, it probably won’t be decided before the 2024 elections.

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