Today’s names: Dave Funk, Chet Culver, Fred Hoiberg, Tom Kollings
Comes now a tale of woe and politics: What do you do if you’re bright and articulate, but you bumped your head one too many times, you see stars, you take Vicodin, you can’t sleep, your ability to concentrate is diminished, you’ve lost your $150,000-a-year job, your left thumb is numb and heavy lifting is out of the question?
You run for office.
What do you do if you’re a Tea Party kind of guy, a guy who thinks government is too big, a guy who thinks government spending is unsustainable, a guy who doesn’t have much use for people “who want to drink at the public trough?” But, still, you’re seeing stars and you can’t sleep and you’re taking Vicodin and you can’t concentrate and your left thumb is numb and you’ve lost your $150,000-a-year job and heavy lifting is out of the question?
You ask the government for help.
That, at least, is the case of David Funk, the onetime Northwest Airlines pilot from Runnells who failed in his bid to get the Republican nomination to run against Leonard Boswell and who now is running against incumbent Democrat Tom Hockensmith for Polk County supervisor.
Funk, now 51, was making $220,000 a year as a pilot, then $150,000 a year after Northwest went through bankruptcy proceedings. But on Oct. 23, 2003, he hit his head on the ceiling of the cockpit when he attempted to stand up, and that hurt. But after an operation, he was back in the cockpit the following April. Then, in late 2005, he took another bump on the head when he hit the fuselage as he was trying to boost himself into a plane from steps that stopped about three feet short. Another operation followed, but afterward Funk could no longer qualify for the medical certificate needed to continue in the cockpit. Northwest then put him on a $6,000-a-month disability pension.
Then he did what any $150,000-plus-a-year conservative, anti-government Tea Party guy on a disability pension would do: He applied for workers’ compensation.
And, with a little help from big government, he got it.
Northwest Air and its insurer apparently contested Funk’s claim, so he filed a “petition in arbitration” with the Iowa Workers’ Compensation Commissioner. On Sept. 28, 2007, the agency ruled that Funk is “permanently and totally disabled.” Besides being told not to lift more than 20 pounds over his shoulders, Funk “has trouble sleeping and has not slept through the night in two years. [He] has lost range of motion in his neck. He sees stars in his left eye which is attributed to scar tissue impinging on an artery. He still has numbness in his left thumb,” the agency ruled....He “is bright and articulate.
However, the medication he is taking for pain, the inability to sleep, the loss of range of motion all combine to deprive him of the ability to use those abilities.” It added that the trouble sleeping “is likely to diminish his ability to concentrate (already diminished by the Vicodin) and his stamina” and the seeing of stars “is also likely to interfere with his ability to concentrate.”
The agency awarded him $1,226 a week “for the period that he is permanently and totally disabled,” which was modified upon appeal by the airline to be for 350 weeks from July 17, 2006 — until sometime in 2013 — even though he now is an aviation security consultant for Laird & Associates and is a volunteer reserve police officer in Pleasant Hill.
So, apparently, the question is this: Can you be a good supervisor, keeping your good thumb on things and keeping people away from the public trough, if you can’t sleep, if you see stars, if you can’t concentrate and if heavy lifting is out of the question?
And do you have to be retrained to be a supervisor? If so, that’s a problem. For in deciding in favor of Funk, deputy workers’ compensation commissioner Ron Pohlman ruled, “retraining is unlikely given the effects of the medication.”...
Skinny blew it last week when talking about absentee ballots. For Polk County, there have been about 2,000 requests from Democrats for absentee ballots for the November election and about 850 from the Republicans. This bodes well for Leonard Boswell, especially, and also for the three Democratic supervisors who are running for re-election. ...
Yet another reason athletic directors should be chosen from the English department: The contract for new ISU basketball coach Fred Hoiberg — obtained the other day by Des Moines Register reporter Randy Peterson — says: “Hoiberg shall receive $25,000 each time the University’s men’s basketball team is selected to or earns a birth in the NCAA tournament.” Which would, presumably, lead to cheering from those in the C-section of the stands. ...
HD or not HD? Channel 8 still dominates the TV news ratings, according to the latest Nielsen figures for the Des Moines/Ames market, but Channel 13 made some big gains, and that has some at KCCI at least moderately concerned. WHO ascribes its ratings gains to its “crystal-clear high-definition” newscasts. KCCI doesn’t have local hi-def news yet, and that’s what is worrying some on the staff there, a guy in the know says. ...
And now to Chet Culver: “Have you seen the Culver campaign offer of tickets to the Iowa/Iowa State game as part of a $1,000 per person fundraiser?” asks a Skinny reader. He goes on: “Today’s mail included an invitation from the Culver/Judge campaign touting tickets to the September 11 game [in Iowa City] between the Cyclones and the Hawkeyes.’
“It’s the biggest game of the year ... And it’s SOLD OUT!!” the flyer for the “Gold and Red Package” says.
Use of ISU’s colors to promote the package raises the question if the university’s lawyers will dust off their cease and desist letter sent to the Iowa winery that named its product “Red and Gold.” Before shelling out $2,000 for two tickets at Kinnick Stadium, we’ll have our crack legal team check into that and into the fine print on the game ticket to see if its terms prohibit resale at higher than face value or other promotional use. And maybe a newspaper reporter or two will check out just how the Governor got all those tickets to the sold-out game. And surely the Department of Revenue will want to check to see precisely what percentage of that $1,000 the state collects sales tax on. If it’s only on the price of the ticket, then we wonder if the Culver people will send us a couple of tickets for face value. If not, then it seems the $1,000 is the price of the ticket and should be taxed. (In fact, we queried the Department of Revenue the other day, but there’s no answer yet.) ...
Skinny joins those mourning Tom Kollings, the former Register outdoor writer who as a teen-ager always let the little kids in the neighborhood play with the big kids. He had the greatest, heartiest and most infectious laugh in the state. He was 78 when he died the other day of cancer. CV
