Culver's Approval Rating

I was looking through the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier website trying to find a story, when I found this one. Apparently, last month KCCI did a poll on Culver's approval rating after the end of the session. I had never heard of this, maybe because I don't watch KCCI, maybe because it was never reported--I'm not sure. I'm guessing the later because of the findings. I can't find anything about this on the KCCI website. The only other story I found is by Todd Dorman at the Quad-Cities Times blog, which is much better and not as much of a spin job.

Last November, Culver won by 100,000 votes. Today, only 46% of Iowans approve of the job Culver is doing. Not too good for how much some media outlets has propped him up. 32% disapproved, and 22% were not sure.

Here is another kicker---only 66% of Democrats approve of the job he is doing. While I thought it would be higher, I'm not too surprised though. Talking with a couple Democrat friends of mine who are at least somewhat involved in politics, I've been hearing that Culver was angering many in his base, particularly with the tobacco tax increase. Among independents, Culver has an approval rating of 44%, and among Republicans, only 28%

Reading through the opinion piece in the Courier, you can tell that the author in the, Charlette Eby, is trying to spin this. Such as this:

To be fair, those approval ratings could climb as more Iowans become familiar with Culver as governor and as he grows into the job.

Many of Culver's attributes remain unknowns. We haven't seen how his administration deals with a major scandal or controversy yet, other than relatively minor flaps over some of his appointments to state boards.

We do know he sticks up for teachers, isn't afraid to raise taxes and wants to make Iowa the "Silicon Valley of the Midwest" by developing the renewable energy industry.

And this:

To his credit, Culver kept a number of promises made on the campaign trail.

The former high school government teacher was able to deliver a big pay increase to public school teachers. And he nudged lawmakers from both parties into approving the $100 million Iowa Power Fund to develop renewable energy.

With those accomplishments on his list, it's fair to say the poll numbers likely came as a disappointment to Iowa's new chief executive.

I'm sure the reason why this poll hasn't been seen much is because of the dismal numbers. Dormann goes though how Culver alienated a lot of people with the tobacco tax increase, fair share, the bully bill, the stem-cell bill, and doing nothing on property tax, hog confinement issues or local smoking ordinances. Apparently, Culver also proclaims other cities in Iowa as "Capital for a Day" then is late in showing up (here and here.)

Of course, Culver campaigned on all of this. Nobody who was paying attention can say that they were surprised. Another example of why elections matter.

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The Future and Spending

Two stories in the news today in regards to the Iowa government and what we can expect in the future.

An AP story by Mike Glover covers the priorities that the legislature will have next year. Number one appears to be health care. Citing that steps were already taken with the tobacco tax, it's only natural to broaden coverage "to most, it not all" Iowans. We can't be too surprised at this. Gov. Culver attacked Mitt Romney last week for not presenting a federal health care plan.

Besides health care, Iowa's prison system will be looked at. There is talk about building a new facility to replace Ft. Madison, and moving the 100 beds for Women at Mount Pleasant to Mitchellville, and use the former space for drug offenders. Nothing too surprising here either, as this has been a big point of discussion for several years, especially after those two inmates escaped from Ft. Madison.

Roads will be a big issue too, and this part of the article features our very own Dave Tjepkes. It appears that this will be the toughest issue to deal with. There are many roads out there that need attention, and completion of a 4-lane Highway 20 is a ways off. The highway fund is facing a $200 million shortfall. With gas prices as high as they are, I think you can pretty much toss out any ideas about raising the gas tax (though considering who is in charge down there, maybe you shouldn't.) So we could see discussion about raising fees or transferring funds from other areas.

In another article, Chris Rants goes after Gov. Culver for not vetoing more spending this year. Culver's office says that the low number of vetoes shows how well the Governor and legislator worked together. But that wasn't what Rants was talking about. Spending increased from 9-10% this year, depending on who you talk to. Rants says 10%, the Legislative Services Agency says "only" 9%. Next year, Rants is expecting spending to go up another 10-12%.

Here is the administration's responce:

Culver spokesman Brad Anderson said the governor believed he struck the appropriate balance in approving a fiscally responsible budget because he heard complaints from both sides over the level of fiscal 2008 spending. He noted that much of the increased spending went into areas like raising teacher salaries to the national average, expanding access to preschool, launching a multi-year Power Fund to encourage energy independence, and funding health initiatives.

"There was a lot of pent-up demand for big-ticket items like that," Anderson said. "There were a lot of expensive pieces of legislation this session but they were all critically important to the growth of the state."

Anderson added that the governor - who took office in January when the fiscal 2008 budget process was in mid-stream -- will have the advantage of building a new budget plan from the ground up in the coming months. Culver plans to focus on finding savings and efficiencies within state government to help balance new spending commitments, he added.

Yes, there were a lot of expensive items that were passed this year. But look at the items proposed for next year mentioned in the first story. Do you think that expending health coverage to "most if not all" Iowans will be cheap? Or building a new facility at Fort Madison? The road fund is already $200 Million short. I'm sure that will increase by next year. Where is this money going to come from? Is the state going to cut spending from somewhere, or will they raise taxes? Culver says he "plans to focus on finding savings and efficiencies within state government." But I remember candidate Culver criticizing Jim Nussle for saying the same thing.

Meanwhile, in the past couple of weeks a couple of manufacturing plants around the state have announced they are shutting their doors, and talk about "right to work" is keeping several out-of-state businesses from moving forward with plans, or at least looking at, to move to Iowa. This won't help our tax base, or the people who have been employed at these plants.

Elections have consequences---this is one of them.

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The Real "Two Americas"

The Two Americas is not between rich and poor, but between those who recognize the threat of radical Islam and those who do not. So says Jack Kelly today. It's a good piece that I hope you read. Anyone who saw the Democrat debate on Sunday, and then the Republican debate last night, clearly saw this.

John Edwards claims this as a "bumper sticker" war; there is not such thing as a "war on terror." Barak Obama says that we need to leave Iraq to concentrate on Al-Qaeda, even though Al-Qaeda is in Iraq. Joe Biden says we don't have to worry about Iran because they are 10 years away from launching a nuke on a rocket. The problem though, is that a nuke can be used just as easily from the back of a truck, and some analysts have Iran only a year or two away from a nuclear weapon. (On a similar note, it's almost accepted as fact that North Korea has the bomb, and that they continued to research it after their promise to stop in 1994.) Everyone on that state-- except for Joe Biden-- supports defunding the war without considering the consequences.

The Republican candidates, though, by and large accept the struggle we are in. They accept the danger that radical Islam poses to our country, and to our way of life. They understand the consequences of of our prematurely leaving Iraq without making sure that Iraq can hold up by itself.

This is not even going into other national security issues such as the Patriot Act, terrorist surveillance, and so forth.

As Jack Kelly points out, the struggle we are currently in did not start with our going into Iraq. It did not even start with 9/11. Before then, we had our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania bombed in 1998, the USS Cole was bombed in 2000. The World Trade Center was first attacked way back in 1993. In was in 1983 when our Marine barracks in Beirut was bombed, the operation most likely backed directly by Iran. If Democrats cannot understand this, how can we trust them with our national security?

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We Need Better Communication Control In This War

Ralph Peters is a former military intelligence officer who is now a columnist on military affairs with the New York Post. He has a piece today that is worth reading because it outlines one of the primary hardships we have in the War on Terror: communication and the media. This is something I've been thinking of and talking about for quite a while. Here is the relevant portion:

The advent of military aircraft changed warfare, expanding the battlefield into a third dimension while dramatically deepening the area that could be attacked. Air power alone was rarely decisive (despite the claims of its advocates), but control of the skies became vital.

What's the postmodern equivalent of air power, the new revolutionary development? It's the proliferation of the 24/7 media in all its formats. And the terrorists realize it. They learned to trump air power and all the detritus of the last revolution by refusing to mass together and by submerging themselves in urban seas. Then they went one better by grasping the power of irresistible weapons that came free of charge: the media.

Yes, the media were able to influence a war's outcome back in the Vietnam days. But the Cronkite-era media were the equivalent of World War I biplanes. Today's media are a sky full of B-52s, cruise missiles and stealth fighters - with unlimited ordnance.

The terrorists know they can't beat our forces on the battlefield. Their purpose in engaging our troops is to generate a body count, graphic images and alarmist headlines. They've created a new paradigm of warfare that's cheap, effective and defiantly hard to defeat.

Meanwhile, our own military isn't even allowed to slip stories to the bribe-driven Arab press. And the global media credit every perfunctory claim by the terrorists that the target we just hit was another wedding party.

Communication is important. One of the best weapons we had in the Cold War was Radio Free Europe, which broadcast into the Communist held areas of Eastern Europe. Ayatollah Khomeini smuggled cassette tapes of his speeches into Iran to gain and inspire supporters in Iran before the revolution in 1979. We need to do the same in the War on Terror. Not just radio, but also the internet. Terrorist are already doing it. They effectively use chat rooms and websites to spread anti-western religious speeches and tracts, training manuals, suicide videos and videos of attacks, and so on.

The field of people we can reach is large. Iran is repeatedly taking down satellite dishes to prevent people from watching western TV, but the dishes keep going back up. We can easily use radio and TV stations to reach audiences in such repressive areas, and smuggle in CDs and cassettes, video tapes and DVDs. Though there can be severe restrictions and access to the internet, audio and video files and documents can easily be spread through the region through this medium. New websites can easily be set up as existing ones are blocked by repressive governments. We also need to make sure we are supporting dissidents and other people who are speaking out against their government. Not too long ago, an Egyptian blogger was sentenced to 6 years in jail because he wrote something about the Egyptian government that they didn't like. Practically overnight, the blogging community in Egypt shut itself down because they feared the same thing happening to them.

But we also have to deal with the 24/7 news media, and the effects is has on the US population. This is the biggest problem that the US government has to figure out in order to prosecute wars. Freedom of the press is a wonderful thing, and it serves to keep government and officials honest. However, the question is, who is the media accountable to? Who decides what is news? Look through your newspaper, and a huge majority of the articles you see will be from the AP. Editors have to decide what stories will appear on the front page of the paper, or on the half-hour news broadcast that night.

We hear so often about how the news needs to be objective. Several of the major news organizations will not use US Military press releases or videos in their news reports. However, they will use press releases and videos from terrorists. CNN won't use footage of a US fighter going after a group of terrorists, but they will use footage of terrorist snipers killing US troops in Iraq. Is this objective? This is not to say that the NY Times or CNN or NBC are mouthpieces of Al-Qaeda, but it certainly seems that they question facts they get from the US more than they do the "facts" they get from terrorist groups and apologists.

Every time the news shows the damage from a car bomb or reports how many US troops have been killed, the enemy gets a boost. It doesn't matter how many good things our troops do, if all the public sees in the news are car bombs and how many US troops were killed, the public will loose support. When the public looses support, the enemy wins. In any country, but particularly in a democracy (okay, representative government) like ours, if you don't have support of the public, you don't have anything. It becomes very hard to do what needs to be done.


On a simliar note, here is a piece by Kevin Farris on Gen. Barry McCaffrey's analysis of what is happening in Iraq and what the future will and can hold.

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Prison Ministries and Evangelicals

The Des Moines Register has an article today about how a prison ministries program at the Newton Correctional Facility had it's $310,000 a year funding cut by the legislature. This is the program that came under fire in the past few years by critics claiming that the program is unconstitutional--the whole "separation of church and state" issue.

The program is voluntary, and has 132 participating inmates. Program officials are trying to work with prison officials to find a way to privately fund the program, but I doubt that will please the critics. Rev. Barry Lynn, from Americans United For Separation of Church and State was quoted in the article, "Private funding, though, does not address some of the issues the judge found unconstitutional, including the preferential treatment of prisoners in the program, the delegation of authority to a religious group, the exclusive use of certain prison property by this program."

Never mind that successful programs that help people turn their lives around makes a belief in God as one of the primary steps. You would think that the state would have an interest in programs that keep inmates from coming back for another stay. It was a voluntary program, and prison officials weren't forcing inmates to join.

There is another important part of this article. It was a quote from Iowa House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who said he has had concerns that InnerChange is anti-Catholic and a "right-wing Christian conversion program" that promotes the idea of wives being subservient to their husbands. Two paragraphs later, the paper says McCarthy is open to private funding, which I'll give him credit for. But the above quote is irresponsible, and he should be called to account for it.

Before this post end, one point. The fallacy of the argument from the "separation of church and state" crowd is that the Constitution says no such thing. The Establishment Clause says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This means no national "Church of America" and no forcing people to practice a certain religion or denomination. The founders didn't want to practice religion like in England, where you joined the official church, or else you could be punished. The famous "wall" we hear so much about came from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Church, not the constitution. It wasn't until 1947, and the Supreme Court Decision in Everson v. Board of Education that this "wall" became a part of the Establishment Clause.

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Bloomberg and the 12th Amendment

Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics has a piece up about Michael Bloomberg and the 12th Amendment. That's the amendment which details how the House and Senate picks the President and Vice-President if no-one wins enough electoral votes. It's a great article which outlines and explains why the process is set as it is. I agree with Cost that Bloomberg, if he runs as a third party, would not be capable of throwing the election to the House. Nobody really knows who he is, and he hasn't done anything to make himself stand out. If Ross Perot and Ralph Nader were unable to do it, Bloomberg won't be able to.

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What's New Law---and What Isn't

Several stories in the news lately about Gov. Culver signing bills before the Tuesday 12 midnight deadline,
here, here ,here ,
here
and here

Here is the whole list of bills signed or vetoed by Culver, via his website. I must say, It's nice to see that a page like this exists. It makes things much easier for people to find out what's going on with the bills Culver has been sent.

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