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Posted June 26, 2013in Civic Skinny

Branstad, TV stations play with the numbers.

Before Terry Branstad got to the real news on Iowa Press the other day — the sigh-of-relief-news that Floppy won’t be in the Historical Building’s doghouse for too long — he said: “We’ve created over 100,000 jobs” since retaking Terrace Hill in January of 2011. The Des Moines Register’s Kathy

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Posted June 26, 2013in Joe's Neighborhood

A revolutionary father

What would the Founding Fathers do? There seems to be a wistful longing these days for when men were men and the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were the talk of the town. But don’t you wonder how all those revolutionary heroes navigated their home

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Posted June 26, 2013in Duffy

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Posted June 24, 2013in Iowa Watchdog

Branstad vetoes pension contributions, prolongs steps towards solvency

DES MOINES – Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad vetoed a bill that would pump an additional $91.3 million of taxpayer dollars into an insolvent pension system for retired peace officers. The appropriation expedited a pledge from the state to provide a two percent increase in funding to the Peace Officers’ Retirement,

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Posted June 24, 2013in Iowa Watchdog

Iowa maintains Washington, D.C. office for $270,000

DES MOINES – Iowa taxpayers spend more than $270,000 for Gov. Terry Branstad to maintain an office in Washington D.C., according to the Iowa Department of Management. The office, established just more than a decade ago by the Branstad administration and lawmakers, is aimed at improving federal and state relations

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Posted June 21, 2013in Iowa Watchdog

Iowa welfare dollars continue to go unmonitored

DES MOINES – Officials at the Iowa Department of Human Services told a state senator Wednesday they have sufficient safeguards in place to prevent fraud among food stamp recipients, but that lawmaker is still concerned about the lack of monitoring in the welfare program. Republican Sen. Brad Zaun requested a

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Posted June 21, 2013in Iowa Watchdog

Davenport principal at school involved in cheating changes jobs

DES MOINES – The principal of a Davenport elementary school being investigated for cheating on state tests will move to a different building next school year, according to district officials. Sara Gott, now former principal of Madison Elementary School, will take the reins at Hayes Elementary School, while Steve Mielenhausen,

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Posted June 19, 2013in Locker Room

National Handball Championships come to Des Moines

Something that could have easily been started by a bored teenager grounded to his room has evolved into an intense competition. Handball is a simple game that requires only a ball and a wall, but once inside the court, players compete in a high-intensity game that never lets up until

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Posted June 19, 2013in Film Review

Primer for serial killers

“Maniac” 2 stars Not Rated 89 minutes Horror Starring: Elijah Wood, America Olivo, Liane Balaban An irredeemable exploitation horror movie that overplays its subjective point-of-view conceit, “Maniac” will leave viewers cold. A by-committee screenplay, contributed to by Alexandre Aja (“High Tension”), updates William Lustig’s ’80s cult horror classic by the

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Posted June 19, 2013in Book Review

“Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941”

Courtesy of Beaverdale Books Review by Harriet Leitch Random House March 26, 2013 $30 576 pp. Listening to the audio book of “Volume 3 of the Last Lion,” the biography of Winston Churchill during the war years, I was contemplating the reasons the United States didn’t enter the war when

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