The last weekend before Monday night’s Iowa Caucuses is marked by frenzied campaigning, and some changing strategies. Polls show this race is down to the wire, with four candidates in the hunt, yet polls can’t pinpoint just which Iowa Democrats will attend Monday’s Caucuses, and that’s the wildcard. Undecided and wavering voters are still a concern. And the candidates who’ve stuck to positive television ads — John Kerry and John Edwards — have been rising significantly in the polls and attracting ever-larger crowds. The other two democratic presidential candidates who’ve run negative t-v commercials are backing off that strategy now. Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt will stick to positive t-v messages in the closing hours of this contest. In another development, the Dean campaign unearthed a 1996 statement from John Kerry in which Kerry said the Departments of Energy and Agriculture should be eliminated; the Dean camp suggesting Iowa farmers should be worried about Kerry. Kerry’s campaign dismissed the criticism as another negative attack from Dean, and trotted out a statement from Iowa Ag Secretary Patty Judge, who has endorsed Kerry. Judge said she’d never support a candidate who would harm Iowa’s family farmers, and she said the attack’s a signal Dean is worried about Kerry’s momentum in Iowa.
Dean "stock" slips; Kerry’s rising in U of I "market"
A stock market run by the University of Iowa shows democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean’s “stock” is slipping. Janet Berg, a University of Iowa accounting professor, helps manage the market which lets investors buy “stock” in a candidate. Berg says investors in the markets are putting their money on the candidate they believe will win the party’s presidential nomination. Dean’s stock price was as high as 76 cents in early December. It’s fallen to 20 cents. Berg says that’s an indication traders in the market now believe there’s only an even chance Dean will get his party’s nomination in August. Berg says the two “stocks” that are rising are those of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry’s and retired General Wesley Clark. Clark’s price has risen to 21 cents; Kerry’s stock price is 14 cents. Berg says that means traders believe there’s a 21 percent chance Clark will be the party nominee and a 14 percent chace Kerry will. Berg says the market is a good indicator because people are spending money on their hunches. Berg says they’ve found the market to be a better indicator of the outcome of the general election than public opinion polls. The market started in 1988 as a teaching tool. Berg says they use it in class to try to get students interested in the way markets work. It’s also used as a research tool to learn how markets function. To find out more on-line, go to www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem.
Iowa Rated Among "Least Corrupt" States
Iowa’s one of the least corrupt states in the nation according to the editor of the “Corporate Crime Reporter.” Russell Mokhiber says for a long time, the U-S Justice Department sat on a lot of the reports about public officials convicted for corruption in office. Once Mokhiber got a copy, he found statistics, including convictions of public officials by state, with graphs showing convictions from 1993 to 2002, and he had the idea of ranking them by “corruption rate.” Nebraska’s ranked as the cleanest state in the nation, but just fired its state treasurer this year after she was charged with misconduct in office. Mokhiber says not only are there changes due to current events, he says corruption may be a matter of opinion. He says one caller told him Connecticut is the most corrupt state, and called it “Louisiana with foliage,” and the editor says with its recent convictions of three mayors, Connecticut would be moving up in the rankings. Least corrupt states on the scale are Nebraska, Oregon, New Hampshire and Iowa, followed by Colorado, Utah, Minnesota , Arizona, Arkansas and Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, a number of legislators are facing indictment in what Mokhiber calls a “mini-scandal” there are some who want to bring back strict old rules that you could go to jail for buying a lawmaker a ten-cent cup of coffee…if there were such a thing. The crime reporter says it’s not a bad thing to get an accurate look at how much corruption there is. He says one way to fight corruption is to talk about it and see that prosecutors have the money to root it out. The caveat of this report is that it only counts convictions, and Mokhiber says in some states that are crooked right through to the prosecutor’s office, you’re not going to have investigations OR convictions — and he says there are states like that. The ten MOST corrupt states according to the report were Mississippi, North Dakota, Louisiana, Alaska, Illinois, Montana, South Dakota, Kentucky, Florida, and New York.
