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The truth about the Save Our Bacon Act

Columnists

Iowans need to realize they are being misled by the anti-Proposition 12 Save Our Bacon (SOB) bill being hawked by Iowa's US senators, and particularly by Second District Congresswoman Ashley Hinson. (The current US House of Representatives version of the Farm Bill includes the Save Our Bacon Act, which would obstruct state laws regulating animal housing standards -- including those set by California's Prop 12 – but also endangers other state level laws and regulations. The US Senate is currently debating whether to include it in their Farm Bill draft.) A recent op-ed by Iowa Pork ...

What just happened?

Your View

The Monday, August 10 meeting of the City Council certainly didn't work out the way that everyone who spoke thought it would or should!!! Or did it? Without fail those in attendance were there to make sure that a moratorium was in place to have a check and balance for or against a data center coming to town. If I follow the voting chaos correctly, and I would be the only one, there's a moratorium in place but there won't be any opportunity for checks and balances because there won't be a 2nd or 3rd reading with public discussion. Thank you Gary for trying and shame on the ones that won't ...

Don Pardo, what has Hendrik Van Pelt won?

Columnists

Game shows have one virtue Iowa’s open-records enforcement system does not: Winners and losers know on the spot what prizes are theirs to keep. Hendrik Van Pelt learned this firsthand. In February, the Guttenberg man won a case before the Iowa Court of Appeals when the judges affirmed a ...

No price too high for evading back-to-school shopping

Columnists

In the pantheon of parental duties, shopping for school supplies stands alone. At the tripart crossroads of "least enjoyable," "most expensive" and "least negotiable," it is an intrinsic part of life in late summer, and it has been since I was a kid in the Cretaceous era. I remember it much ...

Jeff Schneider changed my mind

Your View

On August 8th, on page 10 of the Times Republican there was a very informative and well written article by Jeff Schneider about a Data Center being considered for Marshalltown and their ramifications. He not only addressed Data Center’s benefits to communities but also water usage by Data Centers. From my sources in the media I was led to be believe that Data Centers used more than copious amounts of water for cooling which led me to being really negative about them. He assuaged my concerns when he writes, “Modern data centers of any size can now be built with closed-loop ...

Protecting Iowa public schools and tax dollars

Columnists

As State Auditor, I’ve been sounding the alarm on the unaccountable private school voucher program for years. Politicians who like to lie say it’s because I’m against private schools. That’s not true at all.  What I am against is waste, fraud, and abuse of Iowa tax dollars, and ...