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Keep up-to-date with Fox News Radio, Radio Iowa, Brownfield & the Iowa Agribusiness Networks!
(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Senator Joni Ernst spoke out again today (Thursday) against President Biden’s proposal to forgive student loan debt. “Why should countless Americans who made responsible financial planning decisions be forced to take on the debts of others?,” Ernst asked. She calls the plan unfair and unaffordable. “It is fanning the flames of inflation and is a driving factor in our growing federal debt,” she says.. Ernst says the plan won’t accomplish what’s needed.
“This transfer of student loan debt does nothing to address and may actually be contributing to the real issue of rising costs to attend college,” Ernst says. Ernst says her brother entered the workforce right out of college and he is an example of the people who will have to pay for the costs of others who took out loans to go to college. She says it also hurts legitimate programs.
“President Biden’s radical proposal invalidates many other successful loan forgiveness and repayment programs designed to incentivize participation in critical fields including the military, public service, and medicine,” Ernst says. Ernst says she is proud to join Republican colleagues in “working to stop this scheme.”
(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Lottery sales through February are up 16 percent compared to last year and 57 percent above budget projections. Lottery spokesperson, Mary Neubauer says the record sales pace is due to some large lotto jackpots. “Sales in games like Powerball and Mega Millions are almost entirely jackpot driven and so there are huge peaks and valleys in the sales in those games. You never know when the next big one is going to come along,” she says. Neubauer says this is one of the years where things have lined up for the jackpots. “This year we’ve seen a bin buster in terms of both of those games having huge jackpots — not at exactly the same time but really following each other,” Neubauer says.
Sales of scratch ticket sales are another factor in the numbers. Those sales went from a nearly four percent decrease in the last fiscal year to up slightly so far in this fiscal year. Neubauer says high gas prices impact scratch ticket sales. “None of us can control gas prices and inflationary pressures and as I said, I think all of us were feeling that in the last year,” she says. “And so it’s understandable why something like scratch tickets would be impacted. Scratch ticket sales have always been most closely tied to gas prices and I think it’s because notice I said when you’re at the pump and gas prices are high, you just don’t feel like you have those extra dollars to spend.”
Total Iowa Lottery revenue through February are around 36-point-four million dollars. The fiscal year ends on June 30th.
(Harlan, Iowa) [UPDATE12:34-p.m.]- The mother of an Avoca woman missing since Tuesday night, posted on her social media page early this (Thursday) afternoon, Eden Shaeffer was found deceased. Cynthia Shaeffer said “They are doing an autopsy to find out exactly what happened. Right now foul play is not suspected. Please pray for our family we are hurting more than I can describe and please respect our privacy at this time. I am broken, destroyed and crushed by this.”
(Glenwood, Iowa) – The Mills County Sheriff’s Office reports the arrest Wednesday night of 42-year-old Kenneth Wayne Jenkins, of Malvern. He was taken into custody at around 9:07-p.m., following a traffic stop at 280th Street and Highway 34. Jenkins faces charges that include Possession of a Controlled Substance, from 5-grams to 100-kilograms, and a Drug Tax Stamp Violation. His bond was set at $30,000.
A little after 7-p.m. Wednesday, Mills County Deputies arrested 40-year-old Crystal Marie Paroda, of Plattsmouth, NE, for Simple Assault ($300 bond). And, at around 5-p.m., Wednesday, 53-year-old Wilmer Tucker, of Battle Creek, NE, was arrested at the Mills County Sheriff’s Office on a warrant for Simple Assault (Bond $300).
(Creston, Iowa) – Police in Creston, Wednesday afternoon, arrested three women on Theft in the 5th Degree, charges. 33-year-old Natasha Ann Campbell, of Creston, was arrested at her home. 54-year-old Gena Ann Chumbley, of Creston, was arrested at 302 N. Pine Street. And, 36-year-old Amber Marie Buchanan, of Creston, was arrested at the Union County Law Enforcement Center. All three women each posted a $300 bond and was released.
Separately, 35-year-old Wesley Gene Keeler, of Creston, was arrested following a traffic stop. He was charged with Driving while Suspended and later posted a $300 bond before being released.
(Radio Iowa) – A Central College math professor has updated work that figures the lowest amount of the popular vote a candidate would need to win enough electoral college votes to become president. Professor Russ Goodman says the work was first done in 1961 and then updated in 2012. “So we’ve had a few presidential elections since then, and we’ve had a census since then, also, so the number of representatives per state has changed. And so I really familiarize myself with what their model looked like, and it was just interesting and timely, and I just wanted to push it forward a little bit,” Goodman says. His work shows you could theoretically win the presidency with only 20 to 24 percent of the popular vote depending on the year.
The modern day strategy has been to win the states with the most electoral votes — but Goodman says winning with the fewest number of votes goes completely against that plan. “Overall, the mathematical model says the exact opposite. What a candidate should do is actually stock up on all of the small states and not get any votes at all from the big states,” he says. Goodman says a candidate would stay away from states like Texas, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania that have the most electoral votes. “If you stock up on the states, like Maine and Iowa, you know, all the smaller states, if you accumulate those electoral votes, and you get to 270, and you only earn half of those votes, like you just barely win the majority and each of those states, that’ll actually get you more easily to the minimum percentage of the popular vote. Because remember, those big states have lots of people voting,” Goodman says.
Goodman says the proposal is based solely on the mathematics of winning one particular way and doesn’t figure in politics. “So if a candidate wanted to look at this, and think of it as a particular strategy, I don’t know that our current national politics would work all that well,” Goodman says. “Because a state like Maine is very different from a state like Iowa, politically.” He says it’s fun to figure out the mathematics of the problem — but he says the odds are stacked against it ever happening. “Virtually zero. I mean, in reality, it’s virtually zero,” he says.
Goodman says anyone who’s campaigning, probably is using data to help them make good decisions, and using this strategy is not one they would use to give themselves the best chance to win.
(Radio Iowa) – Former Dickinson County Attorney Amy Zenor has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of public intoxication — and court documents are suggesting it was carbs, not alcohol, that caused her to appear drunk. On November 10th, the Dickinson County Sheriff’s office was notified someone in the county courthouse was drunk. Zenor was arrested and the county board of supervisors accepted her resignation as county attorney a few weeks later. According to the Iowa Capital Dispatch, Zenor is claiming she has a rare medical condition that causes someone to become intoxicated without drinking alcohol.
It’s called A-B-S or Gut Fermentation Syndrome and the Iowa Capital Dispatch reports an Ohio doctor says Zenor has it. Medical studies indicate when patients with A-B-S eat carbohydrates, the carbs can interact with yeast in the intestines and produce ethanol.
Gut Fermentation Syndrome was first diagnosed in a five year old child in 1947. Fewer than 100 cases have been diagnosed worldwide, over half of them in Japan.
(Radio Iowa)- Business owners in Mount Pleasant say the closure of Iowa Wesleyan University announced Tuesday is going to be felt around the entire community. Roger Beckman and his brother Dale have owned Main Street Pizza in downtown Mount Pleasant for 32 years. Beckman tells K-C-R-G TV about 20 percent of his business comes from the students. “We have some students that come once or twice a week,” School leaders say there are around 800 students enrolled at the university and 110 staff.
Beckman hopes if any good news was to come out of Wesleyan shutting down, that the building could be repurposed for the community. “Hopefully, they won’t want to hold onto it and let the cobwebs grow,” said Beckman. “Hopefully, something good will come out of it.”
The U-S-D-A helped the school refinance to try to turn things around, but they continued to face financial issues. The U-S-D-A ill take ownership of the campus at the end of the school year in June.
(Radio Iowa) – A bill that would have set a few new ground rules for carbon pipelines has stalled in the Senate. Representative Steven Holt, a Republican from Denison, led debate of the bill in the House, where it passed on a 73-to-20 vote. “The legislation’s one of the most important things we could have done this session,” Holt says.
The bill would have required that 90 percent of a carbon pipeline’s route be secured through voluntary agreements before eminent domain authority from the state could be used to compel other landowners to sign easements. “A lot of concerned citizens across the state of Iowa do not want their property taken for this project — an economic development project and I’m disappointed,” Holt says.
Today (Thursday) is the last day of the legislature’s work week and also the deadline for policy bills from the House to have cleared a Senate committee. Senate Democratic Leader Zach Wahls of Coralville says Republicans who control the senate’s debate agenda could have at least scheduled a subcommittee hearing on the bill. “I think that if the bill would have come to the floor, it would have had strong majority support,” Wahls says, “so I was surprised.”
It’s possible some of the elements of the bill could be tacked onto a budget bill next month. There’s also a chance state regulators’ review of the pipeline projects might extend into early 2024. Holt says that means it might be possible for next year’s legislature to revisit the issue. “Dynamics can change around here very quickly around here when it’s an election year and people begin to hear a lot from their constituents, so we’ll see where it goes.” Holt says, “My concern about waiting a year, obviously, is that eminent domain could already be in process for some of our land owners, but maybe the process will not be that far along, so we’ll see.”
The proposed Wolf pipeline to capture carbon from A-D-M plants is about 300 miles long and the developer says it’s getting voluntary access to the route and will not need to seek eminent domain authority. The other pipeline developers are expected to ask the Iowa Utilities Board for eminent domain authority to secure easements from landowners who haven’t voluntarily granted access to their properties. Navigator’s pipeline would stretch about 800 miles through 33 Iowa counties.
The Summit Carbon Solutions pipeline would be about 680 miles long and pass through 29 counties. Advocates say the pipelines will make ethanol a low-carbon fuel by capturing and shipping carbon from Iowa ethanol plants to underground storage sites in Illinois and North Dakota.
(March 29, 2023) – Officials with Diamond Vogel and Keep Iowa Beautiful, Wednesday, announced the grant awards for the 2023 Paint Iowa Beautiful program. The program provides free paint to a wide variety of public service projects throughout Iowa. In the 20-year partnership with Keep Iowa Beautiful, Diamond Vogel has awarded over 13,270 gallons of paint for 1,438 community projects in Iowa.
In addition to paint projects, join over 30 communities participating in Keep Iowa Beautiful’s Pick Up Iowa annual program by cleaning up litter and trash along Iowa’s roadsides, neighborhoods, streets, school grounds, parks, and streams. Encourage your community mayor, city council or county supervisors to announce several days or a week as PICK-UP YOUR COMMUNITY. Pick-Up Iowa is being held through July 31st, 2023 on any dates that work for your community. To participate you must register your group/organization at https://keepiowabeautiful.org/get-involved/community-outreach-opportunities/pick-up-iowa/. The first 35 communities who sign up will be awarded a $50 reimbursement that can be utilized to purchase supplies for the pick-up event.
2023 Paint Awards (local list):
(By Community; Organization name; Areas to be painted; Name of person submitting)
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