Posted October 23, 2023in Stray Thoughts
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 they meet the minimum standard of training and skill necessary to serve consumers safely and effectively. But a state government
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Posted October 09, 2023in Stray Thoughts
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 thinking on world affairs, on government issues, and on politics in Iowa and across the United States. I suspect he
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Posted October 02, 2023in Stray Thoughts
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 is what occurred. After the dog’s sensitive nose checked our car, a man on the front step gave us a
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Posted September 18, 2023in Stray Thoughts
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 how the meaning of some words could take on such importance in government. Take, for example, a much-talked-about word in
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Posted September 11, 2023in Stray Thoughts
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 puff-up-our-chest-with-pride way. One of the reports was a New York Times examination of the Navy’s largest ship-building budget in history,
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Posted August 30, 2023in Stray Thoughts
Campaigning for public office is no picnic. Day after day there are speeches, Q&A’s, interviews and the constant need to think before you speak. Candidates eat enough chicken to have Colonel Sanders clucking approval. But for those who speak before engaging their brains, there other item on the menu often
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Posted August 22, 2023in Stray Thoughts
There were more disclosures in recent days in the ongoing saga involving the ethical standards of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court — or, more accurately, the lack of ethical standards. With each new disclosure about our nation’s highest court, the reputations of justices here on the Iowa Supreme Court
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Posted August 15, 2023in Stray Thoughts
Deanna Mahoney was like countless Iowa women through the years. She nurtured three children. She worked outside the home to supplement the family income. She loved bowling and mushroom hunting. That is how she lived. How she died tells us so much about the way some business owners, and too
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Posted July 31, 2023in Stray Thoughts
Silly me. I thought I had been paying attention to the issues about which Iowans feel strongly. You know, things like inflation, taxes, government spending, the war in Ukraine, a new farm bill, water quality, immigration, the federal debt. Those sorts of issues. But I have spaced off a vital
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Posted July 24, 2023in Stray Thoughts
Around the time the famous movie “The Bridges of Madison County” premiered in 1995, author Robert James Waller was at a book-signing in West Des Moines. Between scribbling his signature for fans on copies of his novel, Waller answered questions from a Des Moines Register reporter. At one point, the
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