Serving O'Brien & Clay Counties
Serving O'Brien & Clay Counties
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I was asked to speak recently at the annual conference of the National Freedom of Information Coalition. My remarks boiled down to a simple message: The public needs more information about their governments, not more secrecy from their governments. I explained a troubling trend I see worming its way through local governments in Iowa. This trend cuts at the heart of the public meeting law that has served our state and its citizens well for 50 years. Open meetings of government boards, councils...
I have fielded a bunch of emails, text messages and phone calls in the days since the school shooting in Winder, Georgia. Each one is from Perry, Iowa. Each one had the same question for me and the Iowa Freedom of Information Council. Each one came from a parent, teacher or other concerned person asking, why isn’t the public allowed to read the official findings by state agents about the shooting at Perry High School and Middle School last Jan. 4? High School Principal Dan Marburger and Ahmir J...
During the 40 years I was a newspaper editor/manager, I strived to ensure the staff incorporated context into their articles. Sometimes, in a journalistic shorthand, that was described “the Iowa angle.” If there was a mass murder in Iowa, I would dip into my stash of clippings and find the list of the worst mass killings in Iowa history. That allowed us to give context to the magnitude of the tragedy. The same with tornadoes and floods. How does the number of deaths compare with the worst of...
The events of the past six months in Israel and Gaza have me wishing it were possible to have just one more lunch with a friend who died four years ago. My friend was Jewish. In today’s vocabulary, he would be called an ardent Zionist. He had little patience for people who disparaged Israel. But he also was a proponent of dialogue and diplomacy. He never hesitated to call me for lunch after The Des Moines Register’s opinion pages published something he disliked. Our lunchtime conversations and...
“Unsustainable” is a fascinating word, especially when it is used in government and politics. Merriam-Webster, the dictionary folks, tell us unsustainable means something cannot be continued or supported. But in governmental affairs, that definition sometimes gets changed. Instead of something truly being incapable of continuing, the word often means the person using the term simply does not want that “something” to go forward. Understanding this distinction can help us better parse the stateme...
No problem is so big that we can’t run from it – or at least avoid thinking about it. That’s human nature. There are many concerns that should command our attention but do not. Too often, we hope or assume a serious problem will go away or will spare us. In the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, too many of us discount whatever the scientists tell us – as if the anonymous pundit on social media knows more than the people who have devoted their lives to studying a particular problem. But there is s...
Voters have busy lives – families to care for, jobs demanding their attention, bills to worry about. So, they can be forgiven if they do not closely track their government leaders’ statements and actions. Sometimes voters may find discrepancies between what politicians say and what they do. Here is one example: Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird was in the news last week with a statement about the need for Congress to replenish a federal program, the Victims of Crime Act, that assists these peo...
One of the fallacies of politics these days is the notion of simple solutions. Regardless of whether the problem is immigration, the homeless, gun ownership or transgender people, too many leaders or would-be leaders want us believe government can take simple actions to make a complex problem go away. Rarely do those simple solutions address the underlying problem. Often, those solutions are not simple, nor are they really solving anything. Often, these simple solutions are little more than guss...
A few months ago, I bumped into a former aide to Gov. Robert Ray. As we reminisced about the governor, our conversation turned to his nearly daily meetings with journalists. The aide said yes, those press conferences provided reporters with access to the governor and his comments on issues the state was handling and hearing about from Iowans. But Ray believed the daily press gatherings had another important benefit, too: Ray could do his job more effectively by listening to the journalists’ q...
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 re...
There were more disclosures in recent days in the ongoing saga involving the ethical standards of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court – or, more accurately, the lack of ethical standards. With each new disclosure about our nation’s highest court, the reputations of justices here on the Iowa Supreme Court take on more luster – and deservedly so. The nonprofit news outlet ProPublica reported that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has received millions of dollars’ worth of luxury travel...
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. While Joe and Jane Iowan were fretting last week about dr...
These are challenging times for Iowa’s 327 public school districts. They are being watched closely by state officials and lawmakers, by parents and by others in the community. These eyes are looking for signs schools are treading lightly on topics like racial history and sexual orientation or that schools are being distracted from dealing with unruly kids who disrupt other students’ learning. With this heightened scrutiny, some districts are doing themselves a disservice when they try to kee...
The Iowa Legislature and Gov. Kim Reynolds cannot seem to make up their minds whether they support parental rights or are against Mom and Dad being the decision-makers when it comes to their children’s well-being. Trying to analyze Republican officials’ views on parental rights is challenging. Baseball’s infield fly rule is simpler. In 2021, the Republican majorities in the Iowa House and Iowa Senate passed legislation to prohibit schools from requiring students to wear facial masks in the c...
In politics, having a “trifecta” in government is a good thing for a political party – until the trifecta’s inaction on some popular issue starts to haunt the party. Iowa Republicans served up an example of the consequences of such inaction in the days leading up to Christmas. The example involves military veterans, a highly sought-after constituency that is part of any solid political movement. In political lingo, the Republicans have had a trifecta in Iowa’s state government since 2017. Tha...
Few people like being told what they must do. Lorie Smith is one of them. The suburban Denver, Colo., business owner, a devout Christian, builds websites for customers. She wants to expand her business and begin building websites for couples who are planning weddings. But she is adamant that she does not want to be forced to build websites for same-sex couples. Doing so, she says, would violate her faith, which does not allow her to celebrate same-sex marriages. For more than an hour last week,...
It won’t be long before empty parking spaces near the Iowa Capitol will be as hard to find as a compromise between Democrats and Republicans. The Legislature returns to Des Moines on Jan. 9, more firmly in Republican control than it was on May 24, when this year’s session ended. With their strong showing in the election this month, Republicans can be expected to pick up where they left off six months ago. For people living in rural Iowa, one issue of deep concern on Gov. Kim Reynolds’ to-do...
I try to stay atop the day’s news. But I must have dozed off last week, because I missed the response from Iowa Republican leaders to the Biden administration’s announcement of $1.3 billion in debt relief to 36,000 farmers who have fallen behind on their farm loan payments. In making the announcement, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “Through no fault of their own, our nation’s farmers and ranchers have faced incredibly tough circumstances over the last few years. The funding...
President Joe Biden’s decision to cancel up to $10,000 in federal student loans for many borrowers is fair game for vigorous debate – and disagreement. Americans have been debating and disagreeing for 246 years. What jumps out in this latest dispute is how some politicians are blind to the inconsistencies in their arguments against this economic shot in the arm when, through the years, they have supported other government incentives to various groups. To hear the comments of Iowans in Was...
People in the health care field have worked their tails off since the COVID pandemic hit Iowa with a vengeance in 2020. Doctors, nurses and all manner of technicians and support staff have performed heroically under circumstances that often were trying. But the death this year of a patient at a Centerville care center has struck a chord with many Iowans – and not just because COVID claimed another life. The reaction has ranged from sadness to anger because the person’s treatment was unprofession...
What is happening to us? What passes for public discussion these days certainly is not civil or thoughtful. Nor is it really much of a discussion. If you read the comments from some supposed leaders, you find references to the members of the other political party being our enemies. It’s not just Republicans doing this. It’s Democrats, too. Enemies are those people on the other side of the guns in a war. Our enemies are not the people in our own state, or around the nation, who disagree with us...
Many years ago, I sat at the kitchen table of a pots-n-pans salesman from Pleasant Valley. We didn’t talk about cookware. He was laying out with lots of precision why the United States government had no legal basis for prosecuting him for willfully refusing to file federal income tax returns. It was a lengthy conversation that day in the late 1970s. I will spare you many of the details. It is enough for you to know two things about his salesmanship: First, it was his assertion that the 16th Amen...
Des Moines Superintendent Thomas Ahart has been a lightning rod during the past three years over the way Iowa’s public schools have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ahart announced last week that he is leaving, effective June 30. But the Des Moines school board ensured that Ahart will continue to carry that lightning rod for a little longer. His contract runs for another year, until June 30, 2023. So, you might think he is forgoing his $306,193 salary, his $7,200 annual allowance for a car an...
I stumbled across a statistical tidbit the other day that probably will surprise many people. U.S. Census Bureau figures show that between 1900 and 2000, the state that grew the least in population, on a percentage basis, was Iowa. Read that again. No state had smaller population growth between 1900 and 2000, as a percentage, than Iowa. Not North Dakota. Not Montana. Not Wyoming. Not any other state. The census statistics show Iowa's population increased 31 percent during that span of time. Whil...
The news out of Afghanistan last month about the terrorist bombing at the airport in Kabul brought fresh heartache – and old memories – to Iowa. A native of Red Oak, Marine Cpl. Daegan Page, 23, was among 13 members of the U.S. military who died in the blast. Page and the others were screening U.S. citizens and Afghanistan civilians heading to evacuation flights – among 120,000 people the United States and its allies have airlifted out of Afghanistan after its government collapsed following more...
