I about laughed out of my chair when I heard this on locate news, but apparently during a recent ‘address’, Culver [to Iowans affected by the Winter Storm] instructed people without transportation to call 911 to receive assistance from getting to their homes to the shelter. I can understand what he was trying to get at; the fact that people shouldn’t stay at home in the cold without adequate food or try to leave their houses and walk to the nearest shelter. But honestly, how can you accidentally say to call 9/11? 9/11 is for emergency services only; no doubt they receive plenty of urgent calls in this type of weather; transportation isn’t urgent.

After local police departments complained, the Governor’s office updated their stuff and now urges people to call 211 or 1-800-447-1985.

I guess it is easy to see the mistake, but I just had to say something because I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing… Keep your ears open; I’m sure politicians make silly mistakes like this all the time… especially when they don’t know what they are talking about.

The outcome of the SILO tax will be determined in around an hour (as well as the Auditor position). Keep your eyes on the news and hope for a SILO victory!

With any luck it will get passed and the property tax will return to normal levels. The snow potentially hurt the vote today as many people just stayed home – but hopefully the people who managed to leave house, voted for lower property taxes.

Check the right side of the blog for updates as we recieve them!

On Thursday I attended a SILO Informational Meeting, mostly to see if I was really wrong about the whole Tax. Turns out, I actually was. See one thing that got my attention, and in the end makes me support the SILO Tax is that the tax money will largely be used for tax relief! Amazing, they are using more taxes to pay off taxes! But this is good because chances are, if you are paying property tax, you will pay more in Property Tax then in this 1 cent per dollar sales tax (see Exempt Sales).

Also this is a going to be good for our county because visitors from other counties or other states will help pay for our schools.

Exempted Items

• Unprepared Food
• Prescription Drugs
• Motor vehicle sales
• Motor vehicle fuel
• Farm Equipment
• Fertillizer
• Feed Seed
• Non-Profit Hospital Services
• Resale Items
• Hotel or Motel rooms (if hotel tax is assessed)
• Residential Utillites

So really, this tax has a lot of things exempted and struggling familes should be able to work just fine with the tax (1 cent can add up fast though, especially if you were to buy $1000 worth of something, $10 dollars in tax).

So I revoke my previous statement (you can call me a flip-flopper):

Encourage those you know to Vote YES in the Local Option SILO Sales Tax.

Quick check your channel 2 on Mediacom! KGAN has been restored on Mediacom’s cable networks just in time for the Superbowl. Of course Sinclair couldn’t tolerate losing thousands of dollars on game day, so they caved.

No update on the Mediacom website. I wonder how much Medicom had to pay to get this to work out?

Its a question that has confused and dazzled many Republican Strategists, Republicans and general populous (even Democratic Strategists and Democrats themselves!). How do so many stupid Democrats actually get elected to positions of power? With idiots such as Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, Hilliary Clinton, Al Gore and many more so many wonder how these guys actually get elected?

1. If you are not super intelligent surround yourself with people who are – I guarantee that their chiefs of staff and leaders of their campaigns are highly intelligent and well educated in politics. Without their guidance they will make stupid remark after stupid remark that will eventually hurt their political standing (if you need proof check out what Boxer said to Rice about her not having children).

2. Don’t make an alternative plan, wait until the public is fed up enough with the Republicans and then just simply say that that Democrats will do better – This is very much how Democrats grabbed control of both houses. Even though elected Democrats can’t agree on the best course of action in Iraq (and don’t even want to begin to work at it) just bashing President Bush is enough for the American people (at least the swing vote and people who vote for Democrats as default because most are fed up with the Iraq War policy.

3. Lie whenever possible – The best way to get people to vote for you is to spread lies to scare you opponent into voting for you. (Many a Democrat did this, even locally).
4. Take care of the people who funded your campaign, even if it violates ethics Bills that your party has just passed – The new minimum wage bill (raising the minimum wage to $7.20 an hour from $5.15 an hour) has a loophole in it. A few companies (that may have funded Pelosi’s campaign, but are for sure in her district) are excluded from the wage increase. Imagine, why would Democrats allow some companies to not participate in the minimum wage thing unless there is a deal going on between the Democrats and those who have (and give the money).

More to come in upcoming posts – say tuned