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President talks with workers at Newton plant

April 22, 2009 By

President Obama talks with workers at Trinity Towers. President Barack Obama’s Earth Day visit to a plant in Newton that makes the towers for wind turbines started with a tour of the facility.

 Thirty-four-year-old Jaison Jackson was one of two plant workers who spoke with Obama during his tour of the plant.

"Just a regular conversation with a regular guy, only he’s the president," Jackson said. Twenty-eight-year-old Andrew Countryman says Obama asked questions and seemed "interested in" the manufacturing process. "It was a great honor, that’s what it was," Countryman said of his brief conversation with the president.

Shortly after the tour, Obama spoke to an invitation-only crowd of about 200. Richard Mulbrook, the plant’s manager, was emotional as he introduced Obama and spoke about the plant’s former life as a Maytag plant where washers and dryers were made.

"I remember when I got let go from Maytag — the plant was closing. It was a tough day for Newton. I worked there for 22 years and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do afterwards," Mulbrook said. "Out of the blue, Trinity showed up…They came in here and made it happen in a very short time."

President Obama is greeted at Trinity Towers by Richard Mulbrook. Barney Brown also worked at Maytag, assembling Neptune washing machines for eight years. Like many others,

Brown was wearing a white hard hat and a blue work shirt with the plant logo for Obama’s visit. "I’ve been here for seven months and the transformation is just unbelievable, turning this dead space into what we have now," Brown says.

 "I love my job and I think a lot of other people will, too, because I think we’re just going to keep growing and growing."

Obama told the crowd it’s time for a "new era of energy exploration in America," to find new sources of energy. Obama also said it was time to further develop this country’s wind energy industry, as many other countries have a head start. Denmark, for example, gets 20 percent of its electricity from wind-power sources. 

Click on the audio link below to listen to Obama’s speech.

AUDIO: Obama Earth Day speech…MP3 34 min

Filed Under: Business, Environment & Conservation, Politics & Government Tagged With: ,

Delong Sportswear in Grinnell shutting down after 150 years

April 22, 2009 By

A Grinnell company has closed its doors after a century-and-a-half of business. Delong Sportswear has closed its doors. The 150 year old company was the largest privately owned maker of school and collegiate award jackets, sports outerwear and team headwear in the United States.

Upwards of 150 employees were affected by the closure. The company has made no announcement as to the reason for the closure…but a notice of lien has been filed with the Poweshiek County Recorder. It is from the Iowa Workforce Development Unemployment Insurance Services tax bureau collection section and concerns an unpaid demand for payment of more than $275,000 and a subsequent lien filed against the company’s property. The document indicates the lien has been claimed in favor of the state of Iowa.

At least one of Delong’s competitors — and a former employee –isn’t celebrating the situation. Lance Dreesman is one of the owners of Rock Creek Athletics, which is also based in Grinnell. Dreesman says when you work at a place for 17 years, you develop very good friendships, and he says they remained over the 13 years since he started his business. Dreesman says he hopes the employees of Delong find new jobs in Grinnell.

Dreesman hopes to give some of those Delong employees a job — but it will depend on how many orders come into his company. Dreesman says they have to decide how many jackets they can make in the busy season, and then determine how many they can take in pre-booking orders. Dreesman says Rock Creek Athletics is keeping its 35 employees busy and now he expects things to get busier.

Dreesman says when you have someone as big as Delong with most of the market share in the award jacket field, a lot of companies will try to pick up that business. Dreesman says Rock Creek Athletics isn’t looking to pick up all of Delong’s customers saying they don’t want to expand too fast. 

Filed Under: Business Tagged With:

Culver to press Obama for power grid upgrade

April 22, 2009 By

Governor Chet Culver says he’ll talk with President Obama today about getting more federal money to boost the wind energy industry in Iowa. Today, just after noon, Obama will visit a plant in Newton that makes the towers for wind turbines and Culver plans to press for improving the power grid.

"Iowa is a natural place to start when we’re talking about investing in our grid given the fact that we’re number two in the nation in wind (power) generation," Culver says. "This whole region of the country obviously could contribute in a very positive way to a more secure energy future if we could start exporting that wind power."

Culver also plans to make a pitch on flood relief. "We need, literally, hundreds of millions more from HUD and the secretary at HUD, Secretary Donovan, will be making a decision in the very near future about how much Iowa is going to receive of the billions that’s not been allocated there," Culver says. "There’s about $3.9 billion that they have to allocate, so I’ll certainly put in a plug for that as well."

The president is scheduled to arrive in Des Moines shortly before noon. He’s scheduled to speak to an invitation-only crowd in Newton at about one o’clock, after he tours a portion of the former Maytag plant where washers and dryers were once made. About 140 people now work at the retooled site, making the enormous towers for wind turbines.

 

Filed Under: Environment & Conservation, Fires/Accidents/Disasters, Politics & Government Tagged With: , , , ,

Iowa prisoners build prison cells

April 22, 2009 By

The economic downturn is even having an impact on the state prison industries program where some 400 inmates work making everything from blue jeans to furniture. But administrators of the program have found an surprising way to create new work in one prison.

Buyers spent a record $20.8 million with prison industries last year, but program director, Roger Baysden, says furniture orders are down by half. Baysden says prison industries operates pretty much like a main street business, so when money is cut to schools, furniture orders go down.

Around 50 to 100 prisoners have been laid off in the current program — but a new operation at the prison is Rockwell City is hiring workers as they start to build metal jail cells.

"Over time you can pick through a concrete wall, as we seen on some of the old escape movies, but it’s virtually impossible to pick through a gauge steel wall," Baysden explains. The standard eight-by-ten steel cells that are then stacked together and surrounded by steel to build the prison.

The steel cells will cost about $15,000 each, and up to 30 prisoners will be trained to weld, assemble and paint the cells. Inmate Brian Davis of Sioux City is serving time for second-degree murder and is learning to welding to add to his training as a woodworker.

Davis says they are working on becoming certified welders and he says it will be beneficial. Baysden says welding is a skill the prisoners can use to get a job once they serve their time.

"We don’t turn out bankers, we aren’t turning out insurance sales people," Baysden says, "we are turning out people who will get their jumpstart back into the community by the sweat of their brow, and welding is a wonderful skill to transition back to the community. Inmates that work in prison industries do not come back to prison." Union welders can make as much as $25 an hour. Inmate Davis does admit that building jail cells within a prison is a little strange.

He laughs and says they do catch a little flack from other prisoners, "but I always tell ‘em, everyone has got to be somewhere." The first order of 50 jail cells will be shipped off from Rockwell City to Oklahoma by the end of the summer. 

Filed Under: Crime & Courts Tagged With:

AmeriCorps volunteers in Iowa expected to triple

April 22, 2009 By

Under federal legislation signed by President Obama Tuesday, the number of volunteers in Iowa’s AmeriCorps program is expected to more than triple. Iowa currently has about 1,000 AmeriCorps volunteers.

They build homes, restore wildlife preserves and help with disaster recovery efforts, among other things. In exchange for volunteering, participants receive a living stipend and education grant.

Adam Lounsbury is executive director of the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service. He says the law will give middle and high school students an opportunity to volunteer.

"There’s a Summer of Service program, which creates a summer program for middle school and high school youth that will be able to participate and receive a $500 education award for doing 150 hours of service over the summer," Lounsbury said.

The new law is designed to not only increase the number of volunteers, but also help retain them. "Teaching nonprofits how to better utilize volunteers became much more important…and that’s really what the volunteer generation fund really does is creates those infrastructure organizations that work with local nonprofits to do a better job of retaining and keeping volunteers," Lounsbury said.

Retaining volunteers is AmeriCorps’ biggest challenge because about one-third quit during their service. 

Filed Under: Human Interest, Politics & Government

Obama visits Iowa for first time as President

April 22, 2009 By

Barack Obama's last visit to Iowa as a candidate before the election. President Obama is due in Iowa today  to mark Earth Day with a visit to a plant in Newton that makes the towers for wind turbines.

Van Jones, an advisor to the president, is a member of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

"It’s really in some ways an Earth Day like no other. It’s the first Earth Day of the Obama era," Jones said Tuesday afternoon during a conference call with reporters. "…The debate about whether you could do right by the environment and right by the economy at the same time is over. We have a president who has a commitment to restoring our economy by restoring our environment through a serious effort to create millions of ‘green jobs’ across the country."

Jones is the author of a best-selling book titled "The Green Collar Economy" and he is the founder of a group called "Green for All."

"Under the Obama era, Earth Day is for everybody," Jones said. "Earth Day is certainly for those of us who are concerned about the natural world and the environment in the traditional sense, but Earth Day is also for the laid off workers who are going to be reemployed in manufacturing wind turbines and smart batteries and solar panels."

Trinity Structural Towers occupies part of the former Maytag plant in Newton where washers and dryers were once made. Maytag, at its peak, employed 3,900 workers in Newton. About 300 now work at a new plant in Newton, making the huge blades for wind turbines, while about 140 people are working at the renovated facility Obama will tour, building the towers for wind turbines.

According to Jones, there’s money in the federal economic stimulus package for renewable energy companies."The president has, you know, made a commitment that he wants to turn the corner and make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in the United States," Jones said.

Obama will tour the plant in Newton early in the afternoon, then he’ll speak at an invitation-only event in Newton. None of Obama’s stops in Iowa today are open to the public. It is Obama’s first trip to Iowa since he was elected president.

 

Filed Under: Environment & Conservation, Politics & Government Tagged With: ,

Former New York governor to headline lecture series in Iowa

April 22, 2009 By

Former New York Governor George Pataki will speak in Des Moines tonight, the first of three Republicans to speak in a lecture series sponsored by a group that’s trying to lure more conservatives into politics.

"President Obama is obviously a bright, articulate, charasmatic, likeable figure, but I hoped that he would look to govern from the center once he won the election," Pataki says, "and we just don’t see this."

While Pataki is critical of the current governor of New York for pushing a bill that would make gay marriage legal in that state, Pataki says that’s the way to enact such a change.

"You want to have the elected representatives of the people vote when you’re making important policy decisions. You don’t want — in most cases — unelected judges, unaccountable judges declare by dictate what they believe policy should be," Pataki says. "When that happens, we have removed the elected representatives of the people from their primary role which is to determine policy and pass legislation."

Earlier this month, the Iowa Supreme Court issued a ruling which legalizes gay marriage in Iowa, starting April 27.

During a conference call with Iowa political reporters, Pataki brushed aside a question about whether he’ll run for president in 2012.

"I think part of the problem we have today is that the day after one election people are thinking about the election four years later," Pataki said. "…I’m not looking at all at 2012 bnow as we’re in the spring of 2009. I’m more concerned about having the candidates, having the ideas and having the resources so that those who share our belief in limited government can win this year and next."

Pataki’s trip and speech tonight at Drake University’s law school have been bankrolled by the American Future Fund. Pataki’s speech is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: , ,
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