What’s with all the classifications of people?

I liked Civic Skinny’s illustration: “One way to look at it: Branstad is trying to get rid of a workers comp commissioner who was twice overwhelmingly approved by the Senate in bipartisan votes — while hiring a would-be commissioner who was rejected by the Senate.” (April 24.) I liked it right up until the point where Cityview added, “Of course, Godfrey is a Democrat and is gay. Wilson is neither.”

How do we know who is Democrat (certainly not by votes or platforms) and who is gay or heterosexual (regardless of what the individuals may state for any particular reason)? More importantly, why do we care?

The older I get and the more I observe, it seems I better understand the words uttered in 1992 by Vice Presidential Candidate John Stockdale, “Who am I, and why am I here?”

Hiring fix may be Branstad’s smoking gun

The Civic Skinny of April 28,“Who is Bob Wilson?” describes the Branstad regime’s bully tactics to force its hand-picked law judge on the Public Employees Relations Board. PERB chair, Jim Riordan, testified at the Senate Oversight hearing that he felt Branstad’s aides, Jeff Boeyink and Brenna Findley, had put a “gun to his head” over the forced hiring. Riordan told the panel that he protested the Branstad aides’ intimidating tactics and told them, “This isn’t the way we do it.”  However, he interpreted their threats of “consequences to his budget” to mean possible layoffs of staff and his own termination, so he reluctantly accepted their demands. When questioned about Wilson’s job performance once on the job, he described it as disruptive to the board.

The Branstad pattern of ugly manipulations of hiring practices in order to hire cronies has been reported from various agencies, but this incident is the direct smoking gun, and Branstad’s fingerprints are all over it. According to this testimony, Branstad’s immediate aides directly violated a well-established hiring procedure in a blatant scheme to fix a selection.

How many more scandalous stories of hush money, cover-ups, cronyism and fixed appointments must be exposed before this Governor will provide some answers?

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