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No new data centers!

Your View

Dear editor, Data centers are a huge concern for thousands of Iowans. That’s what Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement has learned from a statewide member survey we did, along with meetings, phone calls and other conversations we’ve done over the past five months. We know data centers gobble up our water, energy and farmland. And we also know they gobble up our tax dollars to the tune of billions each year through property tax abatements, sales tax exemptions and other subsidies. The technology that data centers use may be new, but their underlying story has been around a ...

EMPTY NEST

Columnists

Pushing Cows With “Kill-Pen” Horses Yee Haw! I've never seen anything like it in Iowa. Ginnie and I and Ginnie's granddaughter, Aria, were invited to the Suzanne and Adam Lange farm (or ranch) north of Burlington to watch them move 200 head of Angus cattle from one pasture to another, riding kill-pen horses (horses that were headed for slaughter). Yep, not by ATV, or on foot (like we used to do it), but by rescue horses, cowboy style, the cattle were pushed or herded to fresh grazing ground. The old horses loved it as did the riders. The Lange farm is some of the most beautiful ...

Bible Truth or Tradition: Who is “the Lord” God in the Old Testament?

Columnists

In a previous article, we looked at the personal name of God in the Hebrew Old Testament “YHWH” or “Yahweh.” According to learnhebrewforchristians.com website, when the Hebrew Bible was read aloud in ancient Israel, every time readers encountered the four-letter name “YHWH” they would say “Adonai”— out of reverence so deep that the divine name “YHWH” was considered too holy to pronounce. The word “Adonai” means “My Lord” or “My Master,” using a special plural form that intensifies the concept of lordship beyond any human authority. It comes from the ...

Brass tacks from rural Iowa: Bayer goes to the Supreme Court

Columnists

Iowans are struggling through a mounting public health crisis, and the U.S. Supreme Court just took one of our tools to seek redress off the table. Bayer, the manufacturer of Roundup, couldn’t get their way at the Iowa statehouse or in Congress, so they went to our nation’s highest court ...

Spoiled socialists

Columnists

More young people vote for socialists. They believe socialism is good for the poor, and "pro-working class." But is it? In my new video, Leyla Taghiyeva, my latest Stossel Fellow, interviews psychologist Rob Henderson, who points out that few poor people want socialism: "When you ...

Are you chasing false Gods?

Columnists

My sadly departed friend, Frank, was a unicorn. He lived 89 years in the town he grew up in, a village on the Connecticut shore. A reporter at his local newspaper for over half a century, he had turned down offers to work for more glamorous publications, among them Sports Illustrated and The ...