A Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper
We’ve come full circle. The Storm Lake Times launched in 1990 as a weekly, and now we are back on that printing schedule after iterations as a daily and a twice-weekly. Dramatically rising postage costs and increasing costs of materials for printing, fueled by tariffs, drove our decision to curtail print production back to weekly. When we started, readers liked it and we prospered.
Then we started printing five days a week. Storm Lake had no history with a daily paper. We stopped that after about a year of losing money. Twice-weekly suited us well so long as the advertising support was there. There is not enough support for two print editions per week. There is ample demand from readers and advertisers for a weekly printed product.
We trust you will enjoy receiving a fatter paper with all the news and commentary you have come to expect. That certainly was the case in Cherokee, where the switch from twice-a-week to weekly printing resulted in a 25% increase in subscriptions.
All subscribers to the Times Pilot will have access to our website, www.stormlake.com, where news will be posted every day. You don’t have to wait for the paper. Paid subscribers who want an online password at no additional cost should please email circ@stormlake.com.
We have beefed up our news report with the addition of reporting staff and the introduction of a new website. While readers and advertisers want a print publication, they demand immediate online access to news. We will provide it online and in print. All for a price per week that is cheaper than a cup of coffee. That’s a pretty good deal.
Thanks for reading and for your support.
We should be relieved that the development costs of the new Platinum Crush soy processing plant near Lake Creek will not be shouldered directly by property taxes or existing road revenues. Instead, Buena Vista County intends to issue $15.5 million in bonds based on tax increment financing. This should be of some concern.
The county has proven it does not understand TIF or is incapable of managing it. It is ensnared in court currently on a lawsuit with the City of Storm Lake over several million dollars in TIF revenue that the county directed to the wrong accounts. Confusion over another TIF program has cropped up, this time the city indicating that the county might have paid too much. We do not believe, based on past performance, that the county should be trifling in TIF.
These are property taxes, after all. The soybean facility’s tax assessments are cordoned off by the TIF designation. Those tax revenues are diverted to roads. Schools, the hospital, and the county general fund are deprived of the revenue for the length of the project. That is a cost.
The county agreed to help develop Platinum Crush. It has little choice but to employ TIF. This is a big chunk of money that deserves attention and oversight, by which the county does not recommend itself well.
The city and county should not enter in to things they are not capable of managing. The county supervisors insisted in putting public funds toward a private development. Let’s pray they don’t screw it up again.
A huge Storm Lake shout-out goes to St. Mary’s grad Ben McCollum, the Drake coach in a white shirt and blue tie waving his arms to the most wins in college basketball this season (tied with Auburn at 27). The Bulldogs won the Missouri Valley Conference on Sunday and are the favorites to win the conference tournament championship. If they do not play in the NCAA tourney the Justice Department should launch an investigation.
What a story it is: McCollum came to Drake from NCAA Division II Northwest Missouri State in Maryville, only to find the roster in Des Moines emptied out. He brought four players with him from Maryville, including the brilliant point guard Bennett Stirtz, where they schooled teams like Kansas State and Vanderbilt on the fundamentals of belly-button defense and the pick-and-roll.
Few expected Drake to win the Valley, much less with 27 victories. Especially with a bunch of ex-D2 players. Credit McCollum, son of Mary Timko of Storm Lake, for putting together an unforgettable season on short notice. What a run the Bulldogs have made.
Gov. Kim Reynolds tried to hide Iowa’s shame by signing into law a bill that excises transgender people from protections under the Iowa Civil Rights Act. We have not understood why legislators over the past several years have been so obsessed by gay and transgender people, and continue heaping on laws to flog them. It’s just old-fashioned gay bashing driven by our own insecurities.
The point of the law is to set back rights for other classes of people. The legislature in this law has said it is permissible to discriminate against an entire class of people. This was the basis of the Iowa Supreme Court’s Varnum decision that legalized gay marriage: You cannot discriminate against gays as a class, the court ruled more than a decade ago. Since then, three justices were unseated precisely because of the Varnum case. Gov. Reynolds has reshaped the court to upend the Varnum decision.
There will be a challenge to the constitutionality of the anti-trans law that will make it to the supreme court, which can decide that the legislature does have the authority to discriminate against a class of people. That could be used to void gay marriage.
The court has been set up to do exactly that.
Then you could say that it is alright for local police to detain Brown people to determine if they are undocumented. The Iowa and US courts could lead us there by reversing rulings that protect civil rights.
Then the courts could say that you can discriminate against Catholics or Muslims. Once you are allowed that, you can pen them up for being anything. When the expense of penning them up becomes too great, a final solution presents itself.
This is the road we are on, now that we say we can discriminate against people because they are trans, or Catholic, or Latino, or autistic, or atheist. We saw this in Germany, where it was unthinkable. This is where it starts, no matter what you think of drag queens.
It took a lot of arrogance and ignorance to fire hundreds of USDA workers in Ames and elsewhere whose responsibilities involve bird flu. It’s invigorating to fire up the chain saw until you start bleeding to death. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced on Feb. 19 that the workers had been offered their jobs back. Eight days later, it was not clear how many workers were hired back, or how many were offered their jobs.
“I don’t know if people are going to want to come back,” said one USDA employee to Politico last Thursday.. “Now there’s this perception that federal jobs are not secure. I think they permanently damaged these services.”
Late last week, officials in Ames continued to sound alarms about firing people at the National Animal Disease Center. We did not hear much from Rep. Randy Feenstra, whose district includes Ames, or either of our two US senators, on this critical matter.
The stupidity of it is astounding.
Avian flu has spread from waterfowl to domestic flocks to mammals, including humans. Not only has it caused higher food prices, it has the potential to become our next pandemic.
While we understand the political appeal of firing IRS agents, any stooge should know you don’t fire avian flu workers when birds are dying by the millions. This is an immediate threat to the health and economic well-being of Storm Lake. The USDA is eager to throw $31 billion in disaster payments toward farmers. Would that we spend a tenth of that sum on research and workers in Ames who protect us.
The Department of Government Efficiency, with which Sen. Ernst associates herself, should understand that efficiency demands results. All we get are dead birds and higher food costs. This administration is a disaster. Bumbling fools.
Although it was churlish to watch, the Vance-Trump tag team ambush of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy might end up with a good result: Europe stepped up to voice its support for their devastated neighbor. It was the strongest display of European unity seen since the downfall of the Soviet Union. The United States probably should recede, when we are led by someone like Donald Trump, who admires a war criminal like Vladimir Putin. The US has been the most important guarantor of the peace in Europe post-World War II. Others are more enamored with the old artifice of NATO than the American voting public is. There is a strong sentiment that this is Europe’s war. Congress could not muster another aid package now. It will be up to Europe, and not Trump, to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table. The vile display on live TV last week should convince anyone that we have no business negotiating on behalf of Ukraine. We have discarded the franchise of being the defender of freedom.
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