The senior outfielder batted .600 on the week and in three games drove in five runs and scored four times. Pedersen had a pair of hits and drove in two runs in a victory over Corwith-Wesley-Luverne. He also had four hits,including a triple and drove in three runs in a victory over Clear Lake.
Class 2A: Joe Goodman, Gilbert
June 15, 2010 By
The junior pitcher earned a victory and a save last week and in eight innings of work allowed no earned runs, four hits and struck out 14. Goodman pitched a complete game four hitter and struck out 11 in a win over Collins/Maxwell-Baxter. He also struck out the side in one inning of work in earning a save in a victory over Bondurant-Farrar. He was also two-of-four at the plate and scored a run.
Class 3A: Lance Daugherty, Knoxville
June 15, 2010 By
The junior first baseman drove in nine runs in four games for the Panthers. Daugherty doubled, tripled and drove in six runs in a victory over South Tama. He also homered and drove in two runs in a loss to Newton.
Class 4A: Jon Keller, Cedar Rapids Xavier
June 15, 2010 By
The senior batted .454 in four games with a home run, six RBI and also scored six runs. He also pitched six and a third innings and gave up only four hits while striking out 10 batters. Keller pitched five and a third innings and struck out seven in earning a victory over Cedar Rapids Washington. He also homered and drove in four runs in a loss to Iowa City West.
Grassley says ad on Gulf spill is misleading
June 15, 2010 By
An ad running in two Iowa television markets claims Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley voted last week to ease regulations on the polluters in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Grassley, a Republican, says the ad is “very misinformed and very misleading” about the resolution which he says had nothing to do with big oil.
Grassley says the legislation was designed to stop the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Grassley says such a move would bring great harm to the Midwest. Grassley says, “If EPA goes ahead, it’s going to devastate our economy at the very same time that the states along the coasts are being helped as a result of what the EPA’s trying to do.”
The ad is running in the Cedar Rapids and Des Moines markets, but the same ad is also being broadcast in Massachusetts and North Carolina, just with different senators’ names and photos. The ad is being paid for by Americans United For Change, a non-profit group that was formed in 2005 to fight then-President Bush’s policies on Social Security.
“Isn’t it funny that some fancy San Francisco lawyer that’s putting a lot of money into these ads would have any care whatsoever about Iowa?” Grassley says. “That’s just what we need is some San Francisco liberal telling us what we need in Iowa.” The ad shows video of the Gulf Coast oil disaster and claims Grassley’s vote would help those corporations who caused it. Grassley says that’s just not the case.
“Of course, it implies that the vote that the ad is talking about had to do with oil pollution, but it didn’t have anything to do with oil pollution,” Grassley says. “The vote had to do with the EPA regulations on carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases or C-O-2, and they’re all three the same thing.”
The resolution was defeated. Grassley says if the EPA is allowed to continue with its efforts on greenhouse gases, it could cost Midwestern consumers significantly more money to power their homes. He quotes one study that estimates energy costs could bound $1,800 to $3,000 a year for the average Midwest consumer by putting more restrictions on our region’s utilities, but not those on the East and West Coasts.
YouTube link to ad: www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3bSna5tubA
Casey’s reports record earnings despite takeover attempt
June 15, 2010 By
The Ankeny-based Casey’s convenience store chain reported record earnings for the fourth quarter in the face of a hostile takeover attempt. The Canada-based Couche-Tard has made on offer to buy Casey’s stock from shareholders for 36-dollars a share. The company’s board of directors has told shareholders to not sell.
Casey’s chief financial officer, Bill Walljasper, says the company is reporting earnings of 43-cents a share in the fourth quarter compared to 31 cents for the same quarter one year ago.
Walljasper says the results include approximately $6.9-million in legal and advisory fees related to the unsolicited takeover attempt by Couche-Tard. He says without the fees, the earnings would have been about 51 cents a share. Basic earnings were $2.30 a share, a 36% increase from a year ago, driven by a strong gasoline margin and increased sales in the stores compared to one year ago.
Walljasper says the company made more money on gas sales than expected. “The strong gasoline market that we have been experiencing the last several years, continued in the fourth quarter, resulting in a margin of about 13.1 cents a gallon. We believe there has been a shift in the competitive landscape throughout our marketing area, as a result we have increased our gasoline margin goal for 2011 to 13.5 cents a gallon, which is in line with our three year gasoline margin average,” Walljasper said. Walljasper says the company’s gross profit was up 11.5% to $178.2 million.
Walljasper says, “Despite a more challenging economic environment throughout the year, sales continue to be solid inside our stores. In the grocery and other merchandise category, total sales were up 7.6% to $257.4-million in the fourth quarter. In store sales in the quarter rose, with an average margin of nearly 33.1%. This was the company’s 26th consecutive quarter of positive same-store sales growth.”
Walljasper says sales of food prepared in the store increased 4.2% during fiscal 2010, with an average margin of 63.8%. He says the company had acquired 37 stores and completed 18 new-store constructions in the fiscal year. Walljasper spoke with reporters in a conference call and said he would not take questions about the on-going legal action against Couche-Tard regarding the takeover attempt.
Culver says state won’t repay “Help America Vote” funds
June 15, 2010 By
Governor Chet Culver says the state will continue to challenge a federal commission’s demand that the state repay $576,000 in “Help America Vote Act” funding. The federal money was forwarded to Iowa in 2002 when Culver was Iowa’s secretary of state, overseeing the conduct of elections in Iowa and making the decisions about how that federal money was to be spent.
“We’re now talking about less than two percent of the overall funds. At one point they had questions about more than $2.5 million,” Culver says. “Working cooperatively, we’ve now gotten that number down to about $500,000 and we’re confident at the end of the day all of these questions will be answered.”
