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Posted December 11, 2023in Stray Thoughts

Secret gov’t settlements are wrong — period

City leaders in Davenport have forgotten that city government there belongs to the people. It does not belong to the folks who were elected to city offices. This reminder is [...]

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Posted November 28, 2023in Stray Thoughts

Government should face up to care center concerns

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. [...]

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Posted November 20, 2023in Stray Thoughts

Kindness is medicine that helps all of us

This is my favorite time of the year. There is no late-night bombardment from infernal fireworks like there is with the Fourth of July. There is not the pressure of [...]

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Posted November 13, 2023in Stray Thoughts

Uneasy times as a librarian shuts out other ideas

The word for today is optics — but not the kind where your eye doctor is an expert. Instead of eyeglasses, I am thinking about the kind of optics that [...]

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Posted October 30, 2023in Stray Thoughts

Inconvenience loses to ‘the right thing to do’

Veterans Day is around the corner. For John and Bob, the day will be for remembering the men and women who serve in the United States military — and for [...]

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Posted October 23, 2023in Stray Thoughts

License change won’t protect Iowa consumers

The rationale behind Iowa’s professional licensing laws is simple: People in certain professions and skilled occupations are required to hold state licenses to work in Iowa. This is to ensure [...]

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Posted October 09, 2023in Stray Thoughts

There’s little agreement on what is ‘wasteful’

  For many years, an Iowa State University political science professor and I met several times a year for coffee and conversation. During our coffee klatches, I probed my friend’s [...]

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Posted October 02, 2023in Stray Thoughts

There is more to serving than winning elections

Back where I came from, you do not expect to have a bomb-sniffing dog circle your car when you pull into the parking lot for Sunday church services. But that [...]

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Posted September 18, 2023in Stray Thoughts

Misguided gov’t proposal targets ‘vexatious’ people

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 [...]

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Posted September 11, 2023in Stray Thoughts

Pentagon lesson on waste sails into Iowa

Iowa is about as far removed from an ocean as you can get. But this state figures in recent news reports about the U.S. Navy — and not in a [...]

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