January 27, 2012

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Campaign Countdown: 12.27.11

December 27, 2011 By

AUDIO

There’s just a week left until the January 3rd Caucuses. Five candidates plan to campaign in Iowa today.

Rick Santorum had Iowa all to himself Monday. He went hunting at a private lodge near Adel. Santorum says he bagged four birds and he told reporters the candidates are competing for support in the three wings of the party.

“There’s the libertarian primary, which Ron Paul’s going to win, then you’ve got the moderate primary which Gingrich and Romney are scrumming for and then you’ve got three folks who are running as strong conservatives,” Santorum said Monday afternoon, “and I think if we win that primary, we’re in pretty good shape.”

Congressman Steve King was in Santorum’s hunting party, but King still hasn’t decided if he’ll endorse a candidate before the Caucuses.

“I want my head and my heart to come together and when that happens and if that happens, I’ll jump in with both feet and I hope it’s not after the ship’s already left,” King said, a reference to the January 3rd Caucuses, “but it could be.”

It’s unclear how many out-of-staters will show up for the “Occupy the Caucus” events this week. Stephen Toothman of Des Moines, a local organizer, says there’ll be a variety of meetings throughout today in an office building a few blocks east of the capitol, with a “People’s Caucus” tonight at 7 p.m.

“People are going to speak out, what we call ‘Soapboxing’ on the issues that are important for them,” Toothman says. “…This is a chance for the 99 percent to be heard.”

A different group of Iowans had a chance to hear directly from Mitt Romney last night during a town  hall meeting conducted over the phone.

“I am going to be going across the state in a bus, so we may get a chance to see you in the neighborhood,” Romney said.

Romney gets to Iowa late this afternoon and will speak in Davenport tonight. Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry are touring the state by bus today, too.

Filed Under: 2012 Campaign Countdown Reports

Fans tout a reluctant Des Moines public works director

December 27, 2011 By

Shirt featuring likeness of the Des Moines public works director.

A man who often speaks to the media when there’s a snow storm or flooding in Des Moines is becoming an even bigger celebrity thanks to Facebook and a local t-shirt shop. Des Moines Public Works Director Bill Stowe is a striking figure.

The 51-year-old has long, silver hair and usually sports a beard. Some followers of the “Bill Stowe Fan Page” on Facebook believe he resembles movie star Russell Crowe.

There are more than 1,600 fans of the Facebook group, but Stowe claims he’s never checked it out.

“Honestly, I’m not a social media person and I do not look at the Facebook page,” Stowe told Radio Iowa. “In my business, we’re public figures by voice or by face. Certainly, there are some folks out there who have an interest in what we do…not necessarily the kind of interest we would share or agree with, but nonetheless, we’re public figures and that happens.”

The downtown Des Moines business Raygun is struggling to keep up with demand for a t-shirt featuring the likeness of Stowe surrounded by snow flakes. The shirt reads “It’s Stowe Season!” It’s unlikely you’ll find Stowe wearing his own shirt.

“I have a lot of respect for the folks at Raygun, but having a shirt with my picture on it is zero appeal to me, believe me,” Stowe said. A portion of the proceeds from the shirt sales are being donated to the Des Moines City Employees Holiday Food Basket, a charity chosen by Stowe. He’s been the Des Moines Public Works Director for 12 years.

Stowe grew up in Nevada and attended college in Grinnell. He later secured a law degree and master’s degrees in engineering and labor relations.

Filed Under: Human Interest, News

Romney pledges to highlight Obama’s “inaccurate perceptions” (audio)

December 26, 2011 By

Republican candidate Mitt Romney held a town hall meeting with Iowans Monday night by telephone, assuring one caller that if he’s the GOP’s nominee in 2012, he’ll go toe-to-toe with the president in next fall’s debates.

“I’m very confident that I will be able to stand up to Barack Obama’s — how shall I say it? — his inaccurate perceptions,” Romney said, laughing, “because President Obama really doesn’t understand the economy and these debates are going to overwhelmingly focus on the fact that his economic record has failed.”

The caller, identified by the tele-town hall’s moderator as “Jane” from western Iowa, told Romney she was a “major supporter” of his candidacy, but she asked Romney how strongly he would be able to combat “all the lies and the other things” Obama might throw Romney’s way during televised debates.  (Listen to the AUDIO of the last 10 minutes of the call.) 

Romney suggested he had faced “all sorts of challenge” in the 13 debates this year which have featured the Republican candidates.

“Sometimes it’s been a time where we’ve been relatively quiet and then respectful to one another,” Romney said. “Other times have been some more energized moments, I’ll call them, and I think you’ll find if you look at the folks who’ve looked at the different debates and rated the different debates that I’ve done pretty darned well. Some would say that I’ve won the great majority. Others, maybe, would disagree.”

A bit later, Romney told the Iowans on the call he might be in their “neighborhood” in the days leading up to the Caucuses, then Romney closed with this: ”Thank you for the participation that exists in Iowa, on your part, to be involved in this Caucus process. You get things started in selecting our nominee. I think it was Jane that asked the question, you know, ‘Are you going to be able to go up and debate this guy, Barack Obama?’ I’m looking forward to that.”

Romney is due to arrive in Iowa late Tuesday afternoon and he’ll speak at a rally in Davenport early tomorrow evening before embarking on a bus tour of the state.

Filed Under: News, Politics & Government Tagged With: ,

Santorum says the GOP has “three primaries” underway (audio)

December 26, 2011 By

Rick Santorum

Five GOP presidential hopefuls will be in Iowa Tuesday, but Rick Santorum had Iowa all to himself  today. He went hunting at a private hunting lodge near Adel and bagged four birds.

“There’s only one thing better than getting a bird, and that’s watching your son — in his first hunt — get a bird and he had a lot of good shots today,” Santorum said of his son, John. “We had a lot of fun.”

Santorum’s campaign invited the media to Don’s Hunt Club, private property where hunters like Santorum can pay to shoot pheasants, quail and chukar partridges on the property.  Santorum told reporters he and his fellow candidates are competing for support in the three wings of the party.

“There’s the libertarian primary, which Ron Paul’s going to win, then you’ve got the moderate primary which Gingrich and Romney are scrumming for and then you’ve got three folks who are running as strong conservatives,” Santorum said, “and I think if we win that primary, we’re in pretty good shape.” 

Santorum describes himself as a “steady” campaigner who has now held nearly 350 town hall meetings in Iowa.

“I think we’ll see, in the end, that a lot of folks respect that,” Santorum said.

Congressman Steve King was in Santorum’s hunting party, but King still hasn’t decided if he’ll endorse a candidate before the Caucuses. 

“I want my head and my heart to come together and when that happens and if that happens, I’ll jump in with both feet and I hope it’s not after the ship’s already left,” King said, a reference to the January 3rd Caucuses, “but it could be.”

Last week three-time Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats endorsed Santorum. Santorum this afternoon dismissed the idea he or Vander Plaats may have violated campaign finance rules by discussing the need to raise money to promote the endorsement.

“Some people who didn’t get the endorsement are trying to stir the pot to make it, you know, what it isn’t,” Santorum told reporters. “…I don’t know what he said to anybody else, but what he said to me was about as benign a statement as, you know, ‘This is what we would do with the endorsement and this is what we want to accomplish,’ in a sense trying to tell us how significant that endorsement is in the sense that he would not only endorsement but he would try to do some things to make that endorsement have a bigger effect than just going and doing a press release.”

Santorum bought himself and his two sons new guns — Weatherbys — for Christmas and his son shot his first bird with the first shot out of his new gun.

Here’s AUDIO of the first half of Santorum’s remarks to reporters. Here’s the AUDIO of the second half.

Filed Under: News, Politics & Government Tagged With: , , ,

Six new Chinooks headed to Iowa Guard in ’12 or ’13

December 26, 2011 By

Chinook landing at Camp Dodge.

The Iowa National Guard is getting six new helicopters, to replace the six Vietnam-era Chinooks Iowa troops left behind in Iraq.

 Colonel Greg Hapgood, a spokesman for the Iowa National Guard, says the Iowa Guard’s old helicopters will be used by soldiers in another state’s National Guard.

“The particular helicopters that our unit from the Iowa National Guard took over to Iraq, those helicopters are staying there and they will go to some other state,” Hapgood says. “We are going to receive new helicopters sometime next year, the newest models, so we’re pretty excited about that.”

Pilots and maintainence crews from a Guard unit in the Quad Cities returned in November after a year in Iraq.

“Because of the versatility of this aircraft, this unit flew five times the amount of hours that they would fly in a typical year over in the Iraq theater simply because we’re pulling all kind of stuff out. They move heavy pieces of equipment. They move a lot of people. They move a lot of supplies,” Hapgood says. “It’s a very critical piece of transportation in that place.”

The Pentagon decided the Davenport-based unit will be getting the newest generation of Chinooks due to the Iowa Guard’s “mission requirements” according to Hapgood.

Chinook in flight over Camp Dodge.

“Because of the kinds of operations that we do, the Department of the Army’s determined we’d be a better fit for this new model of helicopter,” Hapgood says.

“Our helicopters were quite old also. I mean, they were several decades old, from the Vietnam era. None of them had been in Vietnam, but they had served from the Vietnam era.”

Thousands and thousands of pieces of American military equipment in Iraq are being shipped to Kuwait where troops are either fixing it and shipping it off to Afghanistan, sending it back to the U.S. — or junking it.

The Iowa National Guard’s spokesman says given the federal budget situation, Guard units have been in “wait and see” mode as to getting new equipment stateside.

“We feel awfully fortunate to get some new Chinook helicopters in 2012 or 2013,” Hapgood says.

Chinook helicopters have two engines — and two sets of rotor blades, giving the aircraft the capacity to haul huge loads. Chinooks are made by Boeing and the newest models can reach top speeds of nearly 200 miles an hour.

Filed Under: Featured Story, Military, News Tagged With:

Norovirus outbreaks lead to warning about food safety

December 26, 2011 By

The Iowa Department of Public Health has received reports of several medium to large outbreaks of probable norovirus  in at least five Iowa counties. Deputy state epidemiologist Ann Garvey says the virus causes flu-like symptoms.

“Really what it is, is a couple of days of vomiting and diarrhea, it usually resolves on its own, and there really aren’t any long term health effects, but it does make you real miserable,” Garvey says. The I.D.P.H. says three groups of people became ill after eating at a restaurant where several food handlers had also been sick.

Outbreaks were also associated with events like holiday parties and holiday potlucks. She says it’s important to remember the illness is quickly spread from person to person.

“If you are ill or if you’ve ill in the last two days we do not recommend that you cook the meal for others. So if you been sick, let someone else cook the meal for your friends and family,” Garvey says.

The health department recommends if you had any stomach illness, you should not prepare food of any kind for others until 48 hours have passed. Garvey also recommends frequent hand washing to prevent spreading the illness.

Filed Under: Health & Medicine, News

New Homeland Security administrator adjusting to switch in jobs

December 26, 2011 By

The new head of the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division is wrapping up his first few weeks on the job. Mark Schouten moved from the Office of Drug Control Policy after Governor Branstad appointed former Homeland Security administrator, Derek Hill, as a Deputy Adjutant General of the Iowa National Guard.

Schouten was a prosecutor for 20 years, five as an assistant Iowa Attorney General, before taking over the Office of Drug control Policy. “The job of director of the Office of Drug Control Policy was a good one, one where I had experience, I liked it and certainly was comfortable there,” Schouten says. “But when the governor’s office asked me about this position, I felt obligated to say yes, and certainly am glad I did.”

Schouten moved to his new office on December 9th and says the top issue he sees is dealing with the ongoing disaster work. “We have 14 presidentially declared disasters that are open in Iowa, in fact since 2008, we had three presidential declarations for disasters that exceeded the floods back in 1993. I think the division is busier now than it has ever been,” according to Schouten.

Training and preparing to deal with new issues makes up the other side of his job. Iowa has an excellent program for preparedness according to  Schouten, that he thinks is superior to other states, because he says the state works with local entities so everyone is prepared should a disaster strike.

He says the disaster response of the state has improved since the major flooding of 1993. “And I think that in part is the result of better training, better exercises, better operations, the ability to coordinate the myriad of resources we have in the state to bring them to bare at the request of local authorities in their time of need,” Schouten says. “I think we’re getting better at it, and I think we’ll continue getting better at it, because we’ll need to. Because we haven’t sen the last disaster.”

The homeland security duties were added to the emergency management division following the attacks of September 11th. Those attacks happened 10 years ago, and it could be easy to relax, but Schouten says Iowans should continue to be alert.

“I think we need to be aware, and we need to be observant and we need to be willing to tell authorities, be it local law enforcement or anyone else, when we see something that is suspicious, that concerns us. Because in most instances, perhaps it may not be anything, but in some instances it may be something significant,” Schouten explains.

Schouten says his new job has a lot of similarities with the old one, as he worked closely with county and local officials in the battle against illegal drugs, and will continue that role now during disaster response, recovery and preparedness training.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters, News, Politics & Government
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