An article in the Register today has people asking about whether to rebuild New Orleans and how we should do it. I know you’re thinking that you’re tired of all this talk of New Orleans in Iowa.
I mean, who cares?
Well the folks at Stratfor do. Read this if you want to understand the importance [...]
I mentioned last week about Vilsack creating the Heartland PAC and it’s prototype website. Now a reporter at the Mason City Globe Gazette is writing about the Heartland PAC’s fund raising activities so far (thanks to State 29 for the original link). But the reporter isn’t helping readers to make decisions for themselves, they are [...]
As mentioned yesterday on Polictical Wire, it looks like Vilsack is about to launch a new web site for his Heartland PAC.
It turns out the site is currently owned by BJ Thornberry, who is the Executive Director of the Democratic Governors Association. It’ll be interesting to watch as Vilsack tries to make a national name [...]
Thanks to State 29 for pointing out this editorial in the Daily Iowan about perceptions of Iowans.
Unfortunately, this drivel is all too common in Iowa. Often in Des Moines, the political discussion turns to questions of what will make Des Moines a “real city”. A new arena? A new hockey team? How about an upscale [...]
Slashdot is now covering a topic that was first reported by Nature about 3 weeks ago. Ethanol is not without its own environmental problems. This new scrutiny of Ethanol comes from its own increased popularity as a fuel.
Nonetheless, Ethanol is not doomed. Ethanol is about shifting to problems you can manage. Any shift to Ethanol [...]
I was watching Iowa Press last night which had Mike Glover and David Yepsen chatting with Gov. Vilsack and I realized the show was more about the reporters making a name for themselves than Vilsack. After watching Yepsen ask 3 times about independent oversight for the DHS, I thought he was putting on a nice [...]
This is sad. The APTA (a Washington D.C. trade association for transportation) is calling for an increase in spending on transit security (read Big Brother) from current levels of $100M to $2B.
I’m glad they at least waited until the trains were running again in London before calling for more money. This puts the APTA just [...]
The Register has a great excerpt from an interview with outgoing Des Moines city manager Eric Anderson. It’s a must-read for residents of the city. (Couldn’t the Register have posted the full transcript of the interview online? They’ll never learn that bandwidth is cheaper than paper.)
Since the Register was an avid supporter of the city-county [...]
As many already know, tomorrow (July 1) is the day many new Iowa state laws go into effect. I’m sure most are aware that the speed limit on rural interstates will go up to 70 MPH. But take a look at the list of passed laws for 2005. Here are few that stand out to [...]
The Register notes this morning about the decling population in the city of Des Moines.
Let’s remember that this is part of a trend in the U.S. of people moving out of cities to surrounding areas (especially in the midwest and western U.S. where there is ample land around cities for development). This puts Des Moines [...]
I love demographic trends and this one is an interesting one.
While pundits across the board tried to figure out the origins of a more conservative public for the past 30 years, I haven’t seen any real compelling reasons yet. But in the most recent newsletter from market research company New Strategist, they argue that [...]
Erin Crawford writes today about her surprise in not being able to buy multiple boxes of cold medicine.
I dug up an old Register article reporting that Iowans are limited to purchasing however many milligrams or tablets of some substance a day and . . . well, I can’t even pronounce pseudoephedrine, and I have no [...]
I’ve written about this in the past, but now the WSJ has a great artcile about real results in reducing medical malpractice insurance premiums – stop injuring patients. From the article:
Anesthesiologists pay less for malpractice insurance today, in constant dollars, than they did 20 years ago. That’s mainly because some anesthesiologists chose a path many [...]
As mentioned yesterday, here is Rob Borsellino’s own words about testifying in D.C. And he got to experience some normal Washington excitement with the threat of a plane in restricted airspace. Then he was asked:
Why Iowa?
I told him it’s a great place to raise kids, it’s easy to park and it’s very welcoming.
Rarely do you [...]
Rob Borsellino, one of the better writers for the Des Moines Register, went to Washington to testify about having ALS (known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). This Register column talks a little about the Senate hearing where he pitched his book to Senators and made other jokes. Hopefully, Rob will write his own wry piece about [...]
The Washington Post yesterday had a well written column titled When Columnists Cry ‘Jihad’. In it, John McCandlish Phillips explains that he’s seen a lot of inflammatory language from columnists lately used against evangelicals and conservative Catholics. The article is subtle in its explanation of the problem and critiques the language used – not the [...]
Usually State 29 does better research than this. But for some reason he seems to think that HF 861 (previously HSB 182) is about preventing Clark McLeod from getting taxpayer money. He refers to a letter from a Mediacom representative about Clark McCleod siphoning taxpayer dollars. I’m not sure someone from Mediacom is a reliable [...]
Since Social Security is the hot-blog-topic-of-the-day, I figure I would finally put my thoughts down on this one. And then never discuss Social Security again here on this blog.
Social Security is a tax
This means you can’t expect to track the same way you track deposits in your 401k. As with all taxes, they just go [...]
Two recent pieces of legislation highlight a shady thing corporations do to ensure monopoly.
First, Iowa HF 861, a bill to make it harder for cities and municipalities to build telecommunications networks is eligible for debate on the Iowa House floor. While the last thing we need is every city to build their own telecommunications [...]
I’m not usually a fan of MLP as they call in on Kuro5hin, but this
is a great story about a woman crossing the border between the U.S. and Canada to speak at a Cannabis conference.