Today’s featured plant is native to most of the United States and Canada. In Iowa, it can start blooming as early as July and continues well into October. I took all of the enclosed pictures of Maximilian sunflower (Helianthus maximiliani) in mid-September at the Kuehn Conservation Area in Dallas County. Many plants still had unopened buds.

Sometimes called Maximilian’s sunflower, this plant is named after the naturalist Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian, who described it and many other flora when he explored the American West during the 1830s.

Trigger warning for arachnophobes: this post also includes two pictures of spiders, which had spun their webs across Maximilian sunflower plants. I can’t remember seeing so many spider webs in a patch of native plants before. The coloration and the “bold, zigzag band of silk” running down almost all the webs suggest that these are female black and yellow garden spiders.

This post is also a mid-week open thread: all topics welcome.

After six years as U.S. attorney for Iowa’s Southern District, Nick Klinefeldt will leave that position next month to go back to private law practice. I enclose below the full press release on his departure. Among other things, the former defense attorney highlighted his work on national committees “to update and expand discovery policies to ensure defendants [in federal courts] receive all of the information they need to adequately defend themselves, and revamp sentencing practices to ensure the end result of a prosecution is fair.” He also

developed a comprehensive discovery policy for the Southern District of Iowa that ensures criminal defendants receive even more information about the case against them than is required by the rules and that they receive it quickly. This policy included the development of a Stipulated Discovery and Protective Order that is now universally used in all criminal cases across the district. United States Attorney Klinefeldt also changed the way the office utilized mandatory minimum sentences, to ensure that they were only used when absolutely necessary.

U.S. House race-watchers had their eye on Klinefeldt earlier this year as a possible Democratic candidate in Iowa’s third Congressional district, but I have never heard of Klinefeldt signaling any intention to run. In recent weeks, the local Democratic establishment has been consolidating around Jim Mowrer, one of two declared challengers to first-term Representative David Young. Today Klinefeldt confirmed that he is not planning to run for Congress, Grant Rodgers reported for the Des Moines Register.

UPDATE: Michael Gartner wrote an excellent commentary on Klinefeldt’s record for the Des Moines-based weekly Cityview. Scroll to the end of this post for excerpts.

Official portrait of Vice President Joe Biden in his West Wing Office at the White House, Jan. 10, 2013. (Official White House Photo by David Lienemann)
This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

Vice President Joe Biden announced earlier today that he will not run for president in 2016, because while his family has “worked through the grieving process” for his son Beau Biden, the window for “mounting a realistic campaign […] has closed.” Click through to watch Biden’s full statement from the White House Rose Garden. He vowed to stay involved in political discourse: “But while I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent. I intend to speak out clearly and forcefully, to influence as much as I can where we stand as a party, and where we need to go as a nation.”

Biden also urged other Democratic candidates not to run away from President Barack Obama as they seek office in 2016: “I believe that President Obama has led this nation from crisis to recovery, and we’re now on the cusp of resurgence, and I’m proud to have played a part in that. This party–our nation–will be making a tragic mistake if we walk away or attempt to undo the Obama legacy. […] Democrats should not only defend this record, and protect this record, they should run on the record.”

Any comments about the vice president’s announcement or the Democratic presidential race generally are welcome in this thread. I think Biden made the right choice. I don’t see the current Democratic field lacking the vision or the experience he would have brought to the table. Conventional wisdom suggests that Hillary Clinton will benefit more than Bernie Sanders from Biden staying out of the race. Martin O’Malley could gain ground too, because Democrats who were hoping the vice president would run again clearly were not satisfied with the current front-runners.

UPDATE: I enclose below reaction to Biden’s decision.

Former U.S. Senator Jim Webb ended his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination today. Warning that “The very nature of our democracy is under siege due to the power structure and the money that finances both political parties,” Webb said he will spend the next few weeks deciding whether to run for president as an independent. He still believes he “can provide the best leadership” to meet the country’s challenges and intends “to remain fully engaged in the debates that are facing us.”

Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who was the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee in 2012, recently estimated that getting on the ballot in all 50 states would cost about $8 million and would require a lot of organizational work. Webb asserted today, “I have no doubt that if I ran as an independent we would have significant financial help.” But his presidential campaign raised less than $700,000 during the entire third quarter. Nor did Webb build much of an organization, even in the early-nominating states.

Webb could devote the next year to seeking ballot access and public attention, winning a few percent of the vote in the best-case scenario. Or, he could influence a salient public policy debate that is close to his heart with a much smaller investment of his time and other people’s money.

A new poll is in the field testing numerous statements designed to convince Iowa Democrats to caucus for Bernie Sanders rather than for Hillary Clinton. I received the call last night and enclose my notes below. If you were a respondent for the same survey and can provide additional details, please post a comment in this thread or contact me via e-mail (the address is near the lower right corner of this page).

My best guess is that an outside group wanting to boost Sanders commissioned the poll. The questionnaire did not include any negative statements about the senator from Vermont. If the Sanders campaign were designing a poll like this, I think they would have tested a few arguments against supporting the candidate, to identify his possible weak points. An outside group planning to produce direct mail or paid advertising to influence Iowa Democrats wouldn’t need that information. They would only be interested in the best way to discourage people from caucusing for Clinton and/or encourage them to caucus for Sanders.

Although Sanders doesn’t have a super-PAC promoting his campaign, progressive advocacy groups that want him to become president may make independent expenditures supporting him. Note that the survey asked respondents whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of the environmental group Friends of the Earth; no other non-profit organizations were mentioned in the questionnaire. Friends of the Earth endorsed Sanders this summer and would presumably be interested in knowing how well they are known/liked among early state Democrats.

It’s also possible that a conservative organization would commission a poll like this, hoping to hurt Clinton in the early nominating states.

State Senator Brad Zaun endorsed Donald Trump for president last week.

What will he think of next?

If past experience is any guide, nothing that reflects a coherent political philosophy, and nothing that will help him attain the higher office he covets.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Former State Senator Kent Sorenson testified this week in the trial of two former Ron Paul presidential campaign aides. (A judge dismissed charges against a third man who had been indicted in the same case.) After initially claiming to be the victim of a “straight-up political witch hunt,” Sorenson eventually pled guilty to federal charges related to accepting hidden payments. He had been negotiating with Paul’s operatives for months on a price for changing his allegiance from presidential candidate Michele Bachmann to Paul less than a week before the Iowa caucuses.

Russ Choma wrote up Sorenson’s testimony for Mother Jones, and Grant Rodgers has been covering the trial for the Des Moines Register. On Thursday, Sorenson testified that he was upset when some staffers for Michele Bachmann’s campaign treated him “like a leper,” after he revealed that he had considered switching to Paul and was offered money to do so. Dude, what did you expect? Asking to be paid for a presidential endorsement should get a person shunned from polite society. People with leprosy should take offense at being compared to a guy like you.

Sorenson said in court the next day that going into politics was “a waste of my life, and I wish I had not done it.” I would guess a large number of Iowans in both parties also wish he had never gotten involved with politics.

Ten days ago, Polk County District Court Judge Douglas Staskal heard arguments in a case challenging Governor Terry Branstad’s veto of funding for two in-patient mental health facilities his administration decided to close earlier this year. In one exchange, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Thompson asserted that the governor could theoretically shut down the state’s court system by exercising his veto power to reject all appropriated funds for the judiciary. He noted that the constitution gives state lawmakers power to override a governor’s veto (through a two-thirds majority vote in both the Iowa House and Senate), and courts should not take on that role if legislators decline to do so.

I would like to hear attorneys’ opinions on whether the governor’s veto power extends so far. Can the governor eliminate virtually any part of state government by blocking appropriations for it, as long as at least one-third plus one member of one chamber of the legislature will back up his political agenda?

I’ve posted excerpts from these reports after the jump.

October 15 was the deadline for Congressional candidates to report details on their donations and expenditures between July 1 and September 30 to the Federal Election Commission. Highlights from the FEC filings are after the jump.

I didn’t see any big surprises in this quarter’s fundraising numbers from Iowa, though one challenger raised more money than any of the four U.S. House incumbents, which I don’t ever remember happening before longtime GOP Representative Tom Latham retired in 2014.

None of the incumbents spent lavishly on their campaigns between July and September, but Representative Rod Blum was remarkably thrifty.

Today Governor Terry Branstad scheduled a special election in Iowa House district 21 for Tuesday, December 8. Voters will elect a successor to longtime State Representative Jack Drake, who passed away last weekend.

Iowa House district 21 covers all of Union and Adams counties, most of Cass County, and some rural areas of Pottawattamie County. A detailed map is after the jump. Like most of southwest Iowa, it leans heavily Republican. The latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office indicate that House district 21 contains 3,720 active registered Democrats, 8,256 Republicans, and 7,401 no-party voters. Mitt Romney carried 53.64 percent of the vote here in the 2012 presidential election, and Joni Ernst (who is from nearby Montgomery County) won 63.75 percent of the votes in House district 21 in last year’s U.S. Senate race.

A U.S. District Court ruling in August inspired today’s edition of Throwback Thursday. That ruling struck down an Idaho law making it a crime to lie to obtain employment at an agricultural facility, among other things. Iowa was the first state to adopt what critics call an “ag gag” law, aimed at making it harder for animal rights or food safety activists to obtain undercover recordings at farms or slaughterhouses. Idaho’s law went further than the bill Governor Terry Branstad signed in 2012; for instance, the Idaho statute also banned unauthorized audio or video recordings at a livestock farm or processing facility. Still, to this non-lawyer, some passages of federal Judge Lyn Winmill’s ruling (pdf) suggested that Iowa’s prohibition on “agricultural production facility fraud” might also violate the U.S. Constitution, specifically the First Amendment’s free speech clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Bleeding Heartland posted relevant excerpts from the Idaho ruling here, along with a brief legislative history of House File 589.

I sought Governor Terry Branstad’s comment on the court ruling and whether Iowa lawmakers should amend or rescind the language in Iowa Code about “agricultural production facility fraud.” In response, the governor’s communications director Jimmy Centers provided this statement on August 6:

House File 589 passed with bipartisan support and under the advice and counsel of the Attorney General’s office. The governor has not had the opportunity to review the ruling from the federal court in Idaho and, as such, does not have a comment on the case.

“Under the advice and counsel of the Attorney General’s office” didn’t sound right to me. When I looked further into the story, I learned that the Iowa Attorney General’s office neither recommended passage of this law nor signed off on its contents.

Iowa’s social conservatives have suffered several setbacks lately in their crusade against Planned Parenthood. The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously struck down an administrative rule that would have banned the use of telemedicine for medical abortions in several Planned Parenthood clinics. Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller informed a large group of Republican lawmakers that his office has neither “jurisdiction over transfers of fetal tissue” nor the “authority to investigate or demand information about the transfer of fetal tissue.” (Not that it mattered, since Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa have never participated in fetal tissue donation programs.)

Governor Terry Branstad, who has always opposed abortion rights, acknowledged two weeks ago that “we cannot defund Planned Parenthood,” because a review of Planned Parenthood’s contracts with the state revealed that the health care provider has not “violated their responsibilities under the grants that they have received” for family planning services. An official review also confirmed no taxpayer money goes toward abortion services at Planned Parenthood clinics in Iowa.

During this year’s legislative session, Republicans successfully pushed for ultrasound requirements for women seeking abortions, but the final adopted language on ultrasounds did not add any new roadblocks or delays to the process of getting an abortion in Iowa.

Advocacy groups like Bob Vander Plaats’ FAMiLY Leader organization continue to pressure Branstad to keep his 2010 campaign promise to end Planned Parenthood’s state funding. Last week, Iowa House Republicans indicated that they plan to continue their “deliberate and unwavering battle” for the “pro-life” agenda.

Here’s how efforts to defund Planned Parenthood are likely to play out during next year’s Iowa legislative session. What happens after that depends mostly on whether the 2016 general election changes the balance of power at the statehouse.

Among the many examples of corporate cronyism Governor Terry Branstad’s administration has provided these past five years, getting the Iowa Department of Revenue and Finance to rewrite tax code without legislative approval “on behalf of the Iowa Taxpayers Association” is among the most brazen.

Not only does this unprecedented use of the rule making process usurp legislative authority, it may end up being more expensive than “the worst economic development deal in state history.” At least tax incentives benefiting Orascom (for a fertilizer plant the company would have built anyway) have an end point. The Iowa Department of Revenue’s proposed sales tax cut for manufacturers will cost the state of Iowa tens of millions of dollars in revenue every year, indefinitely.

Democratic state lawmakers weren’t happy that the Branstad administration unilaterally decided to let private insurance companies manage the state’s Medicaid program, especially since some corporate representatives were briefed on that managed care plan long before state officials informed lawmakers or the general public. But state lawmakers didn’t have a way to block the Medicaid privatization.

In contrast, the Iowa House and Senate could stop the Iowa Department of Revenue’s proposed rule and thereby assert the authority of the legislative branch to approve tax code changes. Alas, signs from Tuesday’s meeting of the legislature’s Administrative Rules Review Committee (ARRC) point to House Republicans going along with the Branstad administration’s ”serious overreach of executive power.”

Today’s featured wildflower, Blue vervain (Verbena hastata), is native to most of the United States and Canada. Also known as Blue verbena, Swamp verbena, or Simpler’s joy, this plant is a survivor. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s fact sheet, blue vervain “can grow in disturbed sites and is commonly found in moist meadows, thickets, and pastures, as well as riversides, marshes, ditches, and river-bottom prairies.” I took all of the photographs enclosed below in late August in the patch of native plants along the Windsor Heights bike trail, behind the Iowa Department of Natural Resources building on Hickman Road.

This plant resembles its close relative hoary vervain, which Bleeding Heartland featured last summer. I see hoary vervain more often along roadsides. Blue vervain typically has more branches with flowers, which can give the plant the appearance of a candelabra. The Minnesota Wildflowers website says that compared to hoary vervain, blue vervain “has smaller flowers, stalked leaves that are longer and proportionately much narrower, and prefers moist habitats.”

Blue vervain has various uses in herbal medicine but “can interfere with blood pressure medication and hormone therapy” and may “induce vomiting and diarrhea” if taken to excess. I’ll stick to enjoying the purple flowers.

In a few moments, five Democratic presidential candidates will take the stage in Las Vegas for their first televised debate. I wish the Democratic National Committee hadn’t stood in the way of scheduling more debates, starting this summer. Listening to DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz try to defend her stance in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer today, all I could think was, thank heaven for the “Big Blue Wall.” We aren’t going to win elections on Wasserman-Schultz’s strategic skills, that’s for sure.

All of the candidates are under pressure tonight. Hillary Clinton wants to change the dominant media narrative, which has been relentlessly negative about her candidacy for months. Bernie Sanders has his first substantial block of tv time to talk about his policies. In recent months, network news coverage has devoted far more air time to Joe Biden’s possible presidential bid than to Sanders’ actual campaign, which is drawing record crowds.

As the loudest voice for more debates, who has received relatively little media attention so far, Martin O’Malley needs a strong showing tonight, especially since the other debates scheduled before the Iowa caucuses are all happening on weekends, when viewership will likely be low. Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee will also want to break through to a national audience, but they are not building real campaign organizations the way O’Malley has done. Twitter user dcg1114, who posted this guest piece at Bleeding Heartland last month, noted today that the first debate of the 1984 election cycle gave Gary Hart his “first real sign of life.” In particular, that debate helped Hart improve his standing for the Iowa caucuses.

Incidentally, former Iowan and Democratic activist Tommi Makila wrote a blistering commentary contrasting O’Malley’s criticism of the DNC’s “rigged” process with the “rigged” Democratic primaries Makila has observed since moving to Maryland years ago.

Please share any relevant comments in this thread. I’ll update this post later with first thoughts on the debate. UPDATE: My impressions are below.

After the jump I’ve posted videos of the latest commercials Clinton has been running, as well as the debut tv ad the Generation Forward PAC put on the air in Iowa supporting O’Malley.  

State Senator Brad Zaun confirmed earlier this month that he will run for re-election in Iowa Senate district 20 rather than challenging U.S. Representative David Young in the third Congressional district GOP primary. Zaun cited “unfinished business that I want to see accomplished in the Legislature” and expressed optimism that Republicans will gain control of the Iowa Senate in next year’s elections. Democrats have had a 26 to 24 state Senate majority since 2011.  

Zaun was the GOP nominee in IA-03 in 2010 and won a plurality in last year’s six-way Congressional primary, only to lose to Young on the final ballot at the district nominating convention. Although Zaun made noise about a possible challenge to Young, it always sounded like a far-fetched scenario. In both absolute and relative terms, Zaun gained fewer votes in the 2014 IA-03 primary than he had in the 2010 primary, even though the district’s population increased after Iowa dropped down from five to four Congressional districts. Amazingly, Zaun also raised less money for his 2014 Congressional campaign than he had before the 2010 primary, even though he had higher name recognition as a former GOP nominee.

An enduring mystery: how can a Republican who has represented some of Iowa’s wealthiest precincts as Urbandale mayor and state senator be such a consistently poor fundraiser?

In any event, Zaun will be heavily favored as he seeks a fourth term in the legislature. Iowa Senate district 20 contains 11,967 active registered Democrats, 16,551 Republicans, and 14,276 no-party voters, according to the latest figures from the Iowa Secretary of State’s office. Mitt Romney carried about 52.75 percent of the vote in the Senate district 20 precincts in 2012, and Joni Ernst won 55.15 percent of the vote here in last year’s U.S. Senate race.

Democrats failed to field a challenger to Zaun in 2008 and 2012, but Iraq War veteran Miyoko Hikiji has stepped up and appears poised to run a serious campaign in 2016. Iowa Starting Line profiled Hikiji recently, discussing among other things her efforts to lobby for a military sexual assault bill the legislature adopted last year (Senate File 2321). Hikiji’s on Twitter, Facebook, and has a website at Alliowacanbe.com.

No Democrat currently represents an Iowa Senate district with as large a GOP voter registration advantage as Senate district 20, but Hikiji’s supporters feel her military background will help attract crossover votes. A Republican vouches for her in her first campaign video, “New Mission.” For now, it’s only up on YouTube, but the spot looks tv-ready for next year, assuming the candidate can raise enough funds for paid advertising on Des Moines stations. After the jump I’ve posted that video, along with more background on Hikiji and a detailed map of Senate district 20. Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.

Anyone who listened to what Blum told journalists and Republican audiences when he was seeking the GOP nomination for Congress in 2012 and 2014.

But apparently not the Cedar Rapids Gazette editors, who engaged in some wishful thinking before endorsing Blum for Iowa’s first Congressional district last year.

The Iowa Department of Revenue and Finance (IDORF) has proposed new administrative rules, effectively providing a tax cut worth tens of millions of dollars for Iowa manufacturers.  Absent a legislative response, the rule goes into effect January 1, 2016.

https://rules.iowa.gov/Notice/…

This is a serious overreach of executive power. The complexity of the issue, coupled with the unquenchable desire by the party in power to reduce taxes on business, provide the perfect climate to give a tax cut to manufacturers of some amount between $35 million to $80 million, perhaps more. This is an ongoing tax cut of increasing value. This action should be weighed against the Governor’s veto of $55.6 million of education funding….one-time education funding….because the State of Iowa ostensibly could not afford it.

And what is the stated purpose of this rule change? According to the notice, the rules are the “subject of a substantial confusion and controversy.” Furthermore, the change will eliminate “administratively burdensome distinctions…”

Periodically, a taxpayer will contest a ruling and win in court. When that happens, the Department provides a rule change that brings its practices in harmony with current law. That is not what is happening here. The Department is not losing cases in defense of the law. It simply finds the effort administratively burdensome.

How burdensome? The Department has identified 1,500 hours costing $85,000 that is required to enforce the Code of Iowa. That represents 0.24% of the revenue the Department claims to collect from this tax, and probably a lower percentage than that, for reasons discussed below. Interestingly, the Department’s budget is $17.8 million. They collect $8.4 billion in taxes. Their entire budget is 0.21% of each dollar collected. The Department should be commended for the efficiency with which it collects these complicated sales taxes owed by businesses to the State of Iowa.

A little historical context is in order. Generally speaking, manufacturers do not pay sales tax on machinery and equipment, supplies, and replacement parts that are part of the “value-added” process. Machinery and equipment was removed from the property tax roles in the late 1990s, a tax benefit of over $200 million, primarily to manufacturers. Most of this equipment is already exempt from sales tax. This latest administrative action continues the drip drip drip of the erosion of the tax base.

Normally, when the Governor wants to provide a tax cut to businesses or individuals, he makes a recommendation to the Legislature. The Senate and the House work out the details, and send a bill to the Governor to sign. That’s how it worked when they cut property taxes for commercial property owners by $200 million two years ago. That’s how it worked when they cut $200 million in property taxes for business in the late 1990s. That’s how it worked when they cut the sales tax on bailing twine, computers purchased by insurance companies with more than 50 employees, supplies purchased by greenhouses, or my personal favorite, the tax on sales of “tangible personal property sold to a nonprofit organization which was organized for the purpose of lending the tangible personal property to the general public for use by them for nonprofit purpose.”

The issues related to the tax itself are complicated. And the roles of the three branches of government in the execution of the sales tax are complicated as well. This combination makes it difficult to engage in a widespread public policy debate with anything beyond the soundbites. Soundbites, which in this case, are true. Namely, the Governor’s actions demonstrate that the State has enough money to give business a $365 million tax cut over the next ten years, but doesn’t have $55.6 million for schools, one time.

For those requiring a little more Inside Baseball, three factors need to be explored. First, do we really know how much this exemption will cost? Second, an explanation of why this rule is beyond the scope of the Department’s administrative authority. Third, a discussion of the process by which this rule will be implemented or overturned.

State Representative Jack Drake passed away this weekend at the age of 81. He had been the longest-serving Iowa House Republican, representing parts of southwest Iowa since his first election in 1992. His current district (House district 21) covers all of Union and Adams Counties and parts of Cass and Pottawattamie Counties. Since the Republicans regained the Iowa House majority in the 2010 elections, Drake had chaired the Agriculture and Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee. Iowa House Speaker-Select Linda Upmeyer said in a statement today, “Iowa lost a dedicated public servant with the passing of Rep. Jack Drake. […] During his time in the Iowa House, Jack was a leader and trusted resource on agricultural issues which are so important to the State of Iowa. As the most senior member of the House Republican Caucus, his expertise and guidance will be sorely missed.”

I have never met Drake, but by all accounts he was a wonderful person to work with. The word “kind” came up again and again today in my conversations with people who interacted with him, either as fellow lawmakers or as advocates.

Former State Representative Frank Wood, who was the ranking Democrat on Drake’s appropriations subcommittee in 2013 and 2014, told me he was “shocked” by the news and said Drake would be “sorely missed.” Wood “thought very highly of him when I worked with him. He always kept me in the know of what was going on and what his limitations were” in terms of the budget targets. Democrats often requested additional funding for various programs, and according to Wood, Drake “understood and flat-out told me, if I had more money, I would definitely put it in those areas.” During the 2014 legislative session, when environmental advocates and a bipartisan group of lawmakers fought for extra funds for the Resource Enhancement and Protection (REAP) program, Drake was generally supportive. (The legislature approved record funding for REAP that year, but Governor Terry Branstad vetoed part of the money.) Wood also described Drake as “a gentle giant” and “a very non-partisan individual.” He toted the Republican line, but was “very pleasant to work with. I don’t think he had a mean bone in his body.”

State Representative Scott Ourth, the ranking Democrat on the Agriculture and Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee during this year’s legislative session, told me, “What a sad day it is. Jack and I struck up a fast friendship right from the get go. He was very fair, an honest guy to work with, willing to compromise where his leadership would allow him to.” He “never stood in the way” of Ourth advocating for REAP funding or other Democratic priorities. Echoing Wood’s sentiments, Ourth described Drake as “a loving, kind, and generous man” and an elected official out of “the old school” with “no partisan divisiveness.” He was willing to work “with anyone and everyone” at the statehouse. Ourth summed up that he had “nothing but good things to say about that man” and would “miss him terribly.”  

Ourth also mentioned that since June, he has been working long hours in Drake’s district for a subcontractor on a large MidAmerican Energy wind farm project. (64 wind turbines are going up between Corning and Lennox in Adams County.) During these months, Ourth has talked with many of Drake’s constituents, who invariably said “what a great guy they thought he was” and how well he represented their district.

State Representative Chuck Isenhart, who also served on Drake’s subcommittee and is the ranking Democrat on the House Environmental Protection Committee, told me today, “Jack Drake was a kind and soft-spoken man.” He added that Drake “offered crucial, public bipartisan leadership to the establishment of Iowa’s local farms and food initiative in 2010, and has been a reliable supporter of the program ever since.”

With Drake’s passing, the most senior members of the Iowa House Republican caucus are Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Dave Heaton and Transportation, Infrastructure and Capitals Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Dan Huseman, both of whom were first elected in 1994.

The Des Moines metro area has made plenty of “best places” lists during the last five years, but Chamber of Commerce types won’t be bragging about the top ten ranking that appeared last week. After examining “the disparities between white and black Americans in several economic and social measures” across the country, Thomas C. Frohlich and Sam Stebbins of the 24/7 Wall St. website “identified the 10 worst cities for black Americans.” The authors noted, “Four of the cities with the worst racial inequality are in Illinois, two are in Iowa, and all are in the Midwest.”

Follow me after the jump to learn why the Des Moines metro area ranked ninth and the Waterloo/Cedar Falls metro area tenth on this list.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Even knowing how infrequently police officers are held accountable for shooting unarmed black people, I’m stunned two outside reviews determined it was “reasonable” for a Cleveland police officer to use deadly force against twelve-year-old Tamir Rice last year. You don’t have to study that case thoroughly to recognize that “officers rushed Tamir and shot him immediately without assessing the situation in the least.” Police fired twice at short range within seconds, then didn’t offer first aid to the boy who had been holding a pellet gun.

The Washington Post maintains the most complete database on fatal shootings by on-duty police officers, tracking such cases more thoroughly than the federal government. This week Kimberly Kindy published an outstanding investigative report for the Post about how often police departments refuse to release videos of fatal incidents, even though “officers investigated in fatal shootings are routinely given access to body camera footage.” I’ve posted excerpts below, but you should click through to read the whole article.

Kindy discussed at length the accidental shooting of Autumn Steele by a Burlington, Iowa police officer in January of this year, and the fight to gain access to video of the tragedy. Kindy found that of 760 fatal shootings by police across the country so far in 2015, 49 incidents were “captured by body camera,” but “Just 21 of those videos – less than half – have been publicly released. And in several of those cases, the footage, as in Burlington, was severely cut or otherwise edited.” State officials released only a 12-second excerpt from the body cam video of the Steele shooting. I’ve also posted below clips containing background on Steele’s death and her family’s battle with authorities trying to keep relevant information secret.

Public pressure to equip more on-duty police officers with body cams has mounted over the past year, but such programs incur much greater costs than simply purchasing the cameras, Brian Bakst and Ryan Foley reported for the Associated Press in February. Departments must pay ongoing software and data storage fees.

“Everybody is screaming, ‘We need body cameras.’ But nobody is saying, where is the money coming from? What are you going to do with all the data? Who is going to manage it?” said Sgt. Jason Halifax of the Des Moines Police Department, which is struggling to identify a funding source for $300,000 to start a program. “Are we going to cut personnel? Are we going to increase taxes?”

One of the most shocking Iowa news stories I read this week appeared on the Ottumwa Evening Post website October 8. Pam Credille recounted how one night in June, a misread license plate led to a police pursuit that “should have never happened” under the Fairfield Police Department’s policy. Officers continued to pursue the car far beyond city limits (again violating department policy), and one officer was tempted to try to “box in” the fleeing vehicle (which would have been another violation). After the car spun into a ditch, Fairfield police officers ran toward it and fired several shots each. It’s just dumb luck neither of the unarmed teenagers inside were injured or killed. Credille’s story contains eight YouTube videos taken from police car dashboard camera footage before, during, and after the shooting incident. The officers involved were not disciplined; Fairfield Police Chief Dave Thomas told Credille, “I believe they responded appropriately and were safe and did a good job in defending themselves.” From what?

The Ottumwa Evening Post report reminded me of Tyler Comstock’s shooting death at the hands of an Ames police officer in November 2013. But in that incident, Comstock’s father initiated the police pursuit of his son by reporting his truck stolen after the 19-year-old took it without permission. As in the case of Autumn Steele, the county attorney determined the officer’s actions to be justified. Comstock’s family has since filed a wrongful death claim. UPDATE: Bleeding Heartland user rockm noted in the comments that the city of Ames settled with Comstock’s family “to avoid litigation.”