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IOWA
DAILY REPORT Holding
the Democrats accountable today, tomorrow...forever.
PAGE 2
Friday,
Aug. 22, 2003
… Although
there are no provisions to recall a president,
some Dems are launching a “bushrecall”
project. Headline from Wednesday evening
on washingtonpost.com: “Dem Start Group to
Try to ‘Recall’ Bush. Excerpt by AP’s
Sharon Theimer: “The latest Democratic
drive to make sure President Bush serves just
one term takes a page from the effort to oust
a Democratic governor in California, calling
its web site ‘bushrecall’ and garnering
support through petitions. A new committee
called the Fair and Balanced PAC plans to
launch its www.bushrecall.org Web site
Thursday. The PAC's founders include Joe
Lockhart, a press secretary to former
President Clinton, and Mike Lux, a Democratic
political consultant. The Constitution
provides no way to recall a president through
a ballot initiative, as California voters
have a chance to do to Democrat Gray Davis in
October. Instead, the PAC will work to
defeat Bush in next year's election, building
lists of supporters through a petition drive
and raising money to run ads against the
Republican, he said. ‘What we hope to do
is to remind people that all of the things
that are being said about Gray Davis as the
reasons for the recall can be applied to
George Bush,’ Lux said Wednesday. ‘For
example, they say Davis turned big surpluses
into deficits in a matter of a couple of
years. That's the same thing that happened
with George Bush.’ The Bush campaign
declined to comment. The PAC currently
plans to raise only limited contributions -
known as hard money - from individuals and
other political committees. It can spend its
money on ads expressly calling for a
candidate's election or defeat, and must
disclose its fund-raising and expenditures to
the Federal Election Commission. The PAC is
one of several Democratic-leaning groups
formed since a campaign finance law took
effect in November and imposed new
restrictions on political party fund-raising
and spending. The new groups are helping
Democrats compensate for the party's loss of
soft money, corporate and union contributions
the new law bans the national parties from
collecting. The GOP raised soft money too, but
so far hasn't been hit as hard financially by
the law because it takes in more hard money -
individual and PAC donations - than the
Democratic Party. Many of the new
Democratic-leaning groups are focused on the
presidential race and are taking on specific
types of spending, such as raising money for
get-out-the-vote activities or ads on
Democratic issues. Lux said his PAC plans
to coordinate its activities with other groups
including America Votes, a new coalition of
environmental, labor, civil rights, abortion
rights and other organizations working
together on voter outreach efforts. The
Fair and Balanced PAC's board members include
Gloria Totten, executive director of another
Democratic-leaning group, the Progressive
Majority, and former political director of the
National Abortion and Reproductive Rights
Action League.”
… Nussle, Harkin
warm up to return to DC after August recess –
tangle over prescription drug bill.
Headline from Wednesday’s Quad-City Times: “Opposition
to drug plan bewilders Nussle” Excerpt
from coverage by Times’ Ed Tibbetts: “U.S.
Rep. Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, called it
‘bewildering’ Tuesday that U.S. Sen. Tom
Harkin, D-Iowa, is attacking a prescription
drug bill loaded with millions of dollars of
help for Iowa’s hospitals and physicians.
Harkin held a series of town meetings
this month ripping the $400 billion
prescription drug bill. The bills, passed
separately by the Republican-controlled House
and Senate, are being melded into a final
version by a conference committee. But some
Democrats, like Harkin, are talking up the
bill’s complexities during the August
congressional recess, hoping to prompt
widespread opposition from the public. Nussle,
who played a key role in attaching language in
the House bill to help rural hospitals and
physicians get more money from Medicare, said
he believes the legislation still is in good
shape. He said Democrats are trying to
derail the proposal to keep Republicans from
getting credit for finally passing a
prescription drug bill. Harkin’s
criticism comes a year after he sought
re-election arguing that he would fight for
higher reimbursement rates for Iowa hospitals.
‘There’s a few people scratching their
heads, saying the rhetoric doesn’t match the
record,’ Nussle said. He made his comments
after speaking to members of the American
Society of Military Comptrollers, a 120-member
group consisting of employees and retirees
from the Rock Island Arsenal that met Tuesday
in Moline. The House’s Medicare bill includes
about $400 million for Iowa health care over
10 years while the Senate version contains a
bit less. Harkin spokesperson Allison
Dobson dismissed Nussle’s criticism,
saying Harkin said the drug plan does
not provide adequate coverage, is hopelessly
complicated and requires means testing for
seniors. It also relies on private companies,
which he said will shortchange seniors. The
money for Iowa is something he supports, she
said. But Dobson said it could be attached to
any number of legislative vehicles. ‘This is
not worth it,’ she said. ‘It’s like trying to
put chocolate on a stink bomb.’”
… It
appears most Democrats have never seen a
judicial filibuster they didn’t like.
Under the subhead “Democrats' glass houses,”
John McCaslin wrote in his “Inside the
Beltway” column that 95% of the 40 senators
who have never voted for a judicial filibuster
are Republicans. Excerpt from Wednesday’s
Washington Times’ column: “Democrats like
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont who
constantly blame Republicans for partisan
filibustering on judicial nominations should
be ashamed of themselves. A just-released
study, commissioned by the Center for
Individual Freedom Foundation, finds that
more than 88 percent of the votes for
judicial-nomination filibusters come from
Democrats; Democrats pursue nearly five
times as many filibusters, with three times
the support, as Republicans; and more than
98 percent of the votes to filibuster
Republican nominations come from
Democrats. Comparably, 55 percent of the votes
to filibuster Democrat nominations come from
Republicans. Also of interest, 95 percent
of the 40 senators who have never voted for a
judicial- nomination filibuster are
Republicans, while only 5 percent are
Democrats. And the 10 current senators who
backed filibuster reform in 1995 now support
judicial-nomination filibusters almost 66
percent of the time. Finally, Democrats
vote for judicial-nomination filibusters an
average of 65 percent of the time, compared to
Republicans nearly 3 percent of the time. The
eye-opening study, ‘Counting the Cloture
Votes: Analyzing Senators' Support for
Judicial Nomination Filibusters,’ by Thomas L.
Jipping, analyzes the voting record of current
U.S. senators on all motions to invoke
cloture, or end debate, on judicial
nominations.” This morning’s headlines:
Des Moines
Register, top front-page headline: “Killing
brings end to fragile cease-fire…The
demise of the Middle East truce likely will
trigger new attacks and could put the road map
in jeopardy.”
Quad-City
Times, main online stories: “10,000 French
dead in the heat” & “Judge rejects
media request to see details of Bryant case”
Nation/world
heads, Omaha World-Herald online: “Notorious
‘Chemical Ali’ is captured in Iraq” & “Powell
gets cool reception at U. N. as he seeks aid
in Iraq”
New York
Times, featured online reports: “Draft of
Air Rule Is Said to Exempt Many Old Plants”
Report says a new Bush administration
regulation would allow thousands of older oil
and power facilities to make extensive
upgrades without having to install new
antipollution devices. & “Powell Is Now
Pressing Arafat to Combat Hamas”
Top online
stories, Sioux City Journal: “U. S.
launches effort to broaden U. S.-led coalition
force in Iraq” & “U. N. says will not
increase Iraq security after bomb attack,
death toll rises to 23”
Chicago
Tribune online, featured headlines: “Powell:
U. S. Seeks U. N. Help With Troops” & “Israel
Warns It Will Kill More Militants”
Iowa Briefs/Updates:
WHO Radio (Des
Moines) reported that a former Mason
City woman – Martha Teas Meiklejohn, 47 –
was among those who died of injuries
suffered in the bombing of the U.N.
headquarters in Baghdad. Meiklejohn, who
worked with UNICEF and the World Food Program,
had been in Baghdad for about six weeks –
after working on U.N. projects in Afghanistan
The Quad-City
Times reported that five men – three from
Bettendorf and two from Davenport –
have been charged with felony third-degree
sexual assault for allegedly having sex with a
15-year-old Moline (Ill.) girl that police say
they met over the Internet. The men were
between the ages of 23 and 30 when the alleged
incident occurred in late 200
Radio Iowa’s
Matt Kelley reported that a species of fish
– the silver carp – never seen in Iowa before
has been confirmed in the Ottumwa area.
State officials warn that the silver carp, a
non-native species, eats plankton depriving
the young of “desirable species” such as
walleyes and smallmouth bass of a food
source.
On the
Korean Front:
Headline from
VOANews (Voice of America) – “N. Korea
Irate Over Russia’s Military Cooperation with
US, S. Korea” Excerpt from report by VOA’s
Kurt Achin: “Just days before six-nation
talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis,
Pyongyang is reacting angrily to Russia's
plans to hold military exercises with South
Korea and the United States. Russia's
Itar-Tass news agency reports that North Korea
has denounced Russia's naval exercises this
weekend in the north Pacific. Russia said
about 70,000 military personnel aboard more
than 90 ships will begin the exercises Friday.
The Russian forces will link up with
smaller deployments from the United States,
Japan, and South Korea for joint exercises.
Itar-Tass said Pyongyang has refused an
invitation to send observers. According to
the report, North Korea said the exercises
will lead to a ‘sharpening of the atmosphere
on the Korean Peninsula.’ Next week, Pyongyang
is to participate in six-nation talks in
Beijing on North Korea's nuclear weapons
program. Those talks, beginning August 27,
include Russia, the United States, Japan,
China, and South Korea.”
“Oversexed already” – subhead from
John McCaslin’s “Inside the Beltway” column in
Wednesday’s Washington Times. The column item:
“One week after federally funded ‘flirting
classes’ were held in San Francisco comes word
of Uncle Sam's ‘hot sex’ workshop.
According to the San Francisco Department of
Public Health, the city's AIDS Health Project
received $985,572 from the federal government
this year to provide AIDS programs,
including this Friday's federally funded ‘Hot
& Healthy Summer Sex Workshop,’ with the goal
of ‘getting what we want.’ We called on
our San Francisco stringer — AIDS/gay activist
Michael Petrelis — and asked for his
perspective on the competing federal
workshops. ‘As if the federally funded
flirting class put on last week by the Stop
AIDS Project weren't enough to help the male
homosexual find sexual partners, this week
there's a federally funded workshop on how to
have hot sex in the summer,’ says Mr.
Petrelis, who once went to jail after shouting
down President Clinton. ‘Just how many such
workshops and classes does the male homosexual
in San Francisco need?’ For those tracking
their taxpayer dollars, the flirting classes
were funded by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, while the hot summer sex
workshop is being funded by the Health
Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA.”
Today’s editorials, Des Moines Register:
“Patriot
Act: The jury’s still out…Americans can’t
know if abuses have occurred, because
oversight is done in secret” & “Tuition
reciprocity? Not yet” Excerpt: “For
financial reasons, Iowa should continue to
avoid blanket discount-tuition agreements with
other states.”
Thursday’s editorials, Des Moines
Register:
“Make high
school tougher…More math, English and
science would help every student…Stiffer
graduation requirements outweigh the
drawbacks. They are the way to assure that all
students are well-prepared.” & “Relieve
states’ drug burden…The federal government
should finance prescription for the poor
elderly.” Shirley
Muldowney – first women to win an NHRA world
championship, ranked as fifth-greatest drag
racer of all time
– and No. 1-rated “Big Daddy” Don Garlits will
participate in the featured match race of the
50th annual World Series of Drag
Racing at Cordova (Ill.) tomorrow night. The
Quad-City Times’ Craig DeVrieze reported that
Muldowney, 63, is retiring from racing at
the end of this year.
DSM 7 a. m.
64, fair/clear. After several mornings with
lows in the upper 60s and lower 70s, it’s
cooler in Iowa this morning – temperatures at
7 a.m. ranged from 48 in Sheldon, 51 in
Spencer and 52 in Estherville to
66 in Iowa City and Keokuk and
68 in the Quad-Cities. Today’s high 83,
sunny. Tonight’s low 63, clear. Saturday’s
high 86, mostly sunny. Saturday night’s low
66, mostly clear. Sunday’s high 89, mostly
sunny.
Keeping Iowa Beautiful.
The Sioux City Journal reported that Keep
Iowa Beautiful has announced a new
fund-raising project with Diamond Vogel Paint
Company of Orange City.
The partnership
with Diamond Vogel paint will financially
assist Keep Iowa Beautiful and support
beautification projects in many of Iowa's
communities.
For every gallon of
Diamond Vogel PermAcryl paint sold at an
advertised sale price between Aug. 27 and
Sept. 3, Diamond Vogel will make a donation in
support of Keep Iowa Beautiful.
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