Straw Poll kept alive by money, press and religious right
Brace yourself: The Iowa Straw Poll, endorsed by the State GOP, will return this summer in its role as a quadrennial horror story. Given how the maligned Poll was brought [...]
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Posted January 21, 2015in Guest Commentary
Posted January 14, 2015in Guest Commentary
It’s the fear — not the proof — that’s in the pudding!
In time we’ll likely enjoy the orange pudding, a Christmas gift from one of our daughters. Or maybe, we can have it bronzed as a reminder of the terror-filled age [...]
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Posted December 10, 2014in Guest Commentary
Hawkeyes and Cyclones: Good losers, and should stick to it!
A time-honored maxim in business in particular and life in general is “Stick to what you do best” or “Stick to what you know best.” Both are variations on the [...]
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Posted November 26, 2014in Guest Commentary
Des Moines: 37 years of change
It was just a place my car broke down on my way to Colorado. All the city had been to me was a name, the place where the paper I [...]
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Posted November 19, 2014in Guest Commentary
Tales of two atrocities: political ads and language
Tale I: Next to the biblical “In the beginning…,” the best-recalled opening line in literature likely is, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” from [...]
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Posted October 29, 2014in Guest Commentary
‘Safety’ trumps sanity in Ames-East fiasco
By now, just about everyone agrees that the Ames-Des Moines East high school football game should have been played Oct. 17 and not cancelled by Ames and the Iowa High [...]
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Posted October 08, 2014in Guest Commentary
The Branstad regime: most scandalous ever?
Given Iowa’s reputation for clean government, it once was of no particular notoriety for an office holder to rank among Iowa’s “most scandalous ever.” Some Illinois politicians would kill for [...]
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Posted September 24, 2014in Guest Commentary
An in-kind response to campaign ads
Taking the low road, but with thesaurus in hand, here are some thoughts about political advertising these days, with the venting tempered by a thoughtful ending. Still, how many more [...]
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Posted September 10, 2014in Guest Commentary
Real life in Iowa more scary than campaign ads
If you are distressed by political ads and the horror stories and lies about what candidates have done or threaten to do, maybe you should welcome such dismay as a [...]
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A ‘dirty’ deal on those burdensome regulations
By Randy Evans You hear a lot of politicians talking these days about burdensome government regulations. Gov. Terry Branstad is one of them. But a proposed regulation moving through state [...]
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