Winners

MTA just got a sexy new makeover. Civic bigwigs on Tuesday unveiled a new look for the city’s public transportation system, including a new name. MTA is now DART — or the Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority, since it encompasses several entities within Polk County. With the new, urbanized image come promises from the likes of DART manager Brad Miller and DART Commission chair/city council member Christine Hensley of expanded routes and other transit services. We’d be fools to believe gas prices will stay low forever (in fact, we predict a Nov. 8 price spike), which means more and more people will likely consider some form of mass transit in the near future. Here’s hoping that Des Moines’ public transportation system — whatever you want to call it — walks its new talk and provides a truly comprehensive service for an increasingly spread-out Metro population.

Losers

Iowa was named one of the two worst offenders in the nation for its use of attack dogs to pry reluctant prisoners from their cells in state penitentiaries. (The other state was Connecticut.) The international watchdog group Human Rights Watch completed a study indicating that dogs (often German Shepherds or Belgian Malinois) were “frequently” set loose on Iowa prisoners who refused to voluntarily leave their cells. In five cases, the dogs bit the inmates. Human Rights Watch cites a December 2005 telephone interview with an Iowa Department of Corrections warden who allegedly said, “[The dogs are] taught a deep — a full-mouth bite. The dog opens his mouth real wide and gets as much as [he can], whether it’s a thigh or whatever in his mouth.” Within days of the study’s release, Iowa corrections officials announced that they were putting a halt to the practice. “The entire world has seen the photo of an Abu Ghraib detainee crouched in terror before a snarling dog, but the use of attack dogs against prisoners here in the U.S. has been a well-kept secret,” said Jamie Fellner, of Human Rights Watch, in a recent statement. “Longtime corrections professionals were appalled when we told them that guards in some states use dogs on prisoners.”

Pork is pork, and it seems that some people are simply addicted to bacon. Last week, Congressman Tom Latham thumbed his nose at a group of Madison County residents who visited his Ames office and asked him not to earmark any more federal money for the lake that would turn Doug Gross’ country retreat into valuable lakefront property. The citizens have worked with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement to present Latham with more than 425 petition postcards so far showing where residents stand on the issue. Undeterred, Latham informed them that he’s already working on the next $300,000 congressional earmark for Madison County, which keeps this project high on the Natural Resource Conservation Service’s to-do list. Residents explained to Latham that the lake would put farms and rare ecosystems underwater while costing taxpayers a pile of cash — $95 million by some estimates, when it would cost just $6 million to hook into the Des Moines water supply. But Latham didn’t care to hear about cheaper, less invasive options. He told the citizens that Madison County has a lake commission, not a water commission. After all, there are developers who want to profit from private developments built around a publicly funded lake. And who is Latham to stand in the way of the American dream?

Some people are delusional. Exhibit A: Mary Gilchrist, the former head of the University of Iowa’s Hygienic Lab who was fired but who refuses to go away. Last week, she announced her plan to raise $2.5 million in an attempt to force the university to build a bigger new lab than it intends to — offering a clue about why the university brass may have canned her in the first place. CV

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