Media Watch

I've asked my Iowa Assembly members Sen. Matt McCoy and Rep. Jo Oldson to help stop Iowa House Study Bill 130 and Senate Study Bill 1228 . If passed and signed by Gov. Branstad these bills would immediately create a brand new law called "Iowa Transportation Network Company Insurance Act" designed to crush taxicab competition by putting draconian burdens on rideshare drivers, ultimately resulting in fewer transportation options for Iowans and prospective Iowans, as well as tourists. We need an environment in Iowa that allows innovation and free market competition to flourish, and this is a step in the wrong direction.

Poverty exists because too many workers aren't paid equitably by corporate American capitalists for the fruits of their labor, limiting consumer spending, which hurts the economy, which kills jobs, creating high unemployment, which creates the need for a compulsory levy on other people's earnings to pay into the welfare system. The business model of corporate America is to keep labor costs as low as possible, but if small businesses on Main Street shared in that kind of greed (essentially pocketing more than their fair share of the profits, which they enjoy thanks in large measure to their labor force), they’d be run out of town. In recent years, corporate America has been able to get away with paying low wages precisely because of the high unemployment they caused in the first place; more workers competing for fewer jobs facilitates a low-wage climate. A lot of the job loss in this country is permanent because U.S. companies have been pushing production offshore, exacerb

If having the more persuasive pitch in a competition between radio and television is considered stealing , then guilty as charged. Many people operate on the full faith and credit of bad information in perpetuity, and the conventional wisdom on Madison Avenue is no exception. Here are my top five reasons radio advertising is better than television advertising: 5) TV advertising is overpriced chiefly because it's easily disrupted by technology and a general collective attention deficit in the real world. 4) One doesn't require a study to prove that images are nearly superfluous in marketing; most people know innately that the most significant, powerful and lasting impressions in our memories are made by audio input to the brain. 3) The best marketing value in radio and social media is derived from the power of a personal recommendation from familiar, credible people; you don't need pictures for that, but sound is our most penetrating cue. 2) Without an intuitive pr

I was in the empty lobby of a police precinct, unwittingly there just to rest a moment, to calm my anxiety and collect my thoughts. There was a faint sound of conversation in an adjacent office. "He was a white, middle-aged man on a bicycle..." were the first words I heard plainly. And it was a familiar female voice. It's true. Minutes earlier it had been me that was flying my bike down a crowded city street, possibly causing alarm and panic, whizzing past a lady that looked a lot like a blonde TV-cop -- who, in a predictably commanding tone, screamed out, "Stop and get back here right now!" She might not have been a cop, I thought. And even if she was who knows who she was screaming at? It felt like I was evading a cop. Things are moving fast. Time to get out of the area. Time to assess the situation, I thought, turning a corner, ditching the bike, and stepping into the first public building I came to. Alarmed myself now, realizing I was the subject o

So Friday SCOTUS nixed states' arbitrary restrictions on marriage, restoring civil rights owed to couples of like gender. And before day's end, the always sensational Rep. Steve King (R-Ia.) predictably argued that decision is oustside the court's purview, calling it "judicial fiat." Apparently they're members of the Grand Old Party, conservatives & libertarians, except when those principles conflict with a certain world view. You may remember '09 when the King scare machine reacted to Iowa's top-court ruling striking down this state's restriction on gay marriage, fearing that decision "turns immediately Iowa into a Mecca for same-sex marriage." He warned of "weekend [travel] packages being planned right now." And the fear language didn't stop there. "We'll be the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage for America if the legislature doesn't act now," King asserted. At the time he called on the Iowa Assembly

We've covered the levels of police encounters before and I don't like to spend too much time on covered ground, but I discovered a very nicely made instructional video with an excellent example of a non-consensual encounter without justification that quickly escalated to an arrest without any cause.

The Woodland Cemetery to the founders of Des Moines was seen as a promise of security for all time. Located at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Woodland Avenue, Woodland Cemetery is an honored and revered resting place for the founders of our city and heroes of our nation. The cemetery advisory board voted last night to strip the barrier between this revered site and vandals, the homeless, dog walkers. There is simply no more historic place that is seeded so deeply the history of Polk County, aptly named for President James K. Polk. But among those interred at our cemetery is a different Polk. Jefferson Scott Polk (1831-1907) as a lawyer well educated, clear headed, deliberate, optimistic, positive, nervous, sanguine temperament, aggressive and plain of speech. In 1859, J.S. Polk formed a partnership with Judge Casady and M.M. Crocker, making one of the strongest law firms in the district. In 1861, when Mr. Crocker entered the military service, and the firm became Casa