Turkeys on the right, perks for the rich, but no gloom anywhere
All things considered, it’s a good idea for the attorney general to be actively licensed to practice law in the state where she holds office.
So if Brenna Findley wants to be Attorney General — and she does want to be — she might consider reactivating her license to practice law in Iowa. According to state records, the likely Republican foe of Tom Miller has a “retired/inactive” status in the state bar, which usually means a person is not keeping up with the requirements for continuing legal education. And although she’s registered to vote in Iowa as a resident of Dexter, where she grew up, the bar lists her residence as Washington, D.C., where she was until recently the chief of staff to Steve King.
A lawyer generally can’t practice law in Iowa without being an active member of the bar, and that means, first, being admitted and, second, keeping the license up-to-date by taking 15 hours of continuing education every year. Those 15 hours must include two hours every two years of “legal ethics,” though some cynics consider that an oxymoron.
Findley’s main issue seems to be health care, which is not exactly the province of the state attorney general. If elected — and that’s pretty unlikely against attorney-general-for-life Miller — she would join the suit of 13 other conservative attorneys general who are seeking to block President Obama from launching the health-care plan Congress passed earlier this year. The bill will affect well over 100,000 Iowans, who are not likely to support Findley’s position. ...
This just in: The $12,721,630 in total compensation that Mark Oman got last year from Wells Fargo included $37,052 in perquisites. Among them: fees for financial planning, club dues, a car allowance and a home-security system. Every little bit helps, of course. ...
Back to politics.
A guy with a good memory, and an excellent filing system, sends along a Des Moines Register clip from April 4, 1982. The start of the story, by David Yepsen: “Republican Lt. Gov. Terry Branstad rejected the support of New Right political groups Tuesday in a speech to Iowa educators. In an interview following the speech, Branstad said the New Right groups were ‘a bunch of turkeys’...” In the speech, he said: “I am not a member of the New Right. Nor have I ever been, nor do I ask for any support from that group. There is no involvement, nor will we accept any help from any New Right group or any other group like that.” Yepsen defined 1982’s New Right as “an ultraconservative political coalition of special interest groups and fundamentalist Christian sects.”
Branstad, who was viewed by most Iowans in 1982 as very conservative, made the comments after it was clear he was going to be the GOP nominee and would probably face the liberal Roxanne Conlin in the general election. Moving a bit left, he went on to beat Conlin by six points, the beginning of his 16-year run as governor. In 1982, Branstad also promised he’d create 180,000 jobs over the next five years; it didn’t happen. This year, he is promising to create 200,000 new jobs; it won’t happen.
Did someone say déjà vu? ...
Monday’s news that John Frew has abruptly left as the governor’s chief of staff after less than a year shouldn’t be news to readers of Cityview. Just four weeks ago, Skinny reported that Frew was heading toward the exit and would be gone this month or next. With Jim Larew back as chief, the governor now has two old hands — Larew in the Capitol office and Donn Stanley in the campaign office — running things and that should stabilize an unstable situation, Culver backers say. Then again, Frew was considered an old hand, too.
Cityview and Skinny congratulate the Register’s Mary Chind for winning the Pulitzer Prize in spot-news photography this month. The photo, of a woman being rescued in the Des Moines River, was spectacular. But Cityview and Skinny also send along their sympathies as well as congratulations to Register photographer Andrea Melendez, who was first on the scene and took photos that were similar and just as good. Indeed, the photo the newspaper sent out over the wires to other papers was a Melendez photo, not a Chind one. Why the powers that be chose to nominate one photographer, rather than both, is a mystery. ...
What recession? A single-family home in Des Moines sold for $2,030,000 last month, probably the highest price ever for the resale of a Des Moines house. The home, at 1401 Casady Drive, was built in 1927 and was the longtime residence of the late Jim Hubbell and his wife, Helen. They sold it to their daughter and then son-in-law, Rusty and Charles Edwards, and they sold it to Ben C. Smith in 2000 for $1,312,500. Smith last month sold it to the Nixon E. Lauridsen Trust. The home sits on six acres overlooking downtown and has 7,021 square feet. At the time of the sale, it was assessed at $1,348,100. Nixon Lauridsen is chairman of Proliant, a privately held, Ankeny-based maker of protein products. It used to be known as American Meat Protein Corp. As far as Skinny can determine, the previous record for a home sale in Des Moines was the $1,900,000 that Chuck Johnson got in 2006 when he sold what was known as the Brenton mansion at 10 35th Street to Dan Stanbrough. ...
Quotes of the week:
First, from Bobby Bailey, of the Governor’s office, in a memo to department flacks on how to handle queries about the 10 percent of state employees who chose early retirement, as reported by the Register and confirmed by Cityview: “It is critical that we all read from the same playbook on this transition and here are a few ground rules....Being alarmist about massive drops in personnel or the drop in service/expertise represented by retiring staff is counterproductive. Don’t paint a gloomy picture. Portray this transition period as a positive change.”
Second, from Dick Oshlo, head of the Department of Management, after 2,007 workers signed up for the program: “I don’t think there will be any negative impact to this in terms of services being delivered.”
Bailey was just doing his job, of course, though he might have been smarter to call the flacks rather than e-mail them. But if Oshlo truly believes there will be no impact from the loss of 614 people from the Department of Human Services, 223 from the Department of Corrections, 367 from the Department of Transportation, and the like, well, why didn’t Culver get rid of those folks right when he took office?
At any rate, Bailey’s comment reminds Skinny of an encounter a few years ago with a big-name weatherman.
“How are you?” Skinny asked.
“Eighty-percent gloomy,” the guy responded. CV
