Across the country, hearts went out this week to the people of Parkersburg who lost a community leader, hero and friend.
Our hearts go out to Ed Thomas’ family, and to the Aplington-Parkersburg students who learned too early in life that good guys don’t always win.
Thomas wasn’t only a great football coach. He was a great [...]
Archive for June, 2009
6/27 column: Town still looking to Thomas for guidance
Posted in Gazette Columns, tagged Aplington-Parkersburg, Ed Thomas, Parkersburg on June 29, 2009 | Comments Off
Local help on the payday loan front
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Citizens for Community Improvement, debt, Horizons, payday loans, Scott Shook on June 25, 2009 | Comments Off
In Wednesday’s column, I wrote about developing a better product to meet the local demand for payday loans.
Those short-term, high-interest loans are widely used in Iowa, but they can send cash strapped families into a financial tailspin.
In Des Moines, Citizens for Community Improvement and Bankers Trust partnered this spring to offer small dollar loans to low- and mid-income [...]
6/24 column: Payday loan alternative needed here
Posted in Gazette Columns, tagged Bankers Trust, Citizens for Community Improvement, debt, payday loans on June 24, 2009 | Comments Off
Payday lenders promise a quick fix for a cash emergency.
But those short-term, high-interest loans are the rope that hangs many already-strapped households with unmanageable debt.
In 2007, Iowans took out more than 900,000 in payday loans. Almost half the borrowers took out these “emergency” loans at least a dozen times.
Industry advocates say the loans’ popularity is [...]
6/20 column: Country takes good with bad
Posted in Gazette Columns, tagged Freedom Festival, Independence Day, Juneteenth, Patriotism on June 23, 2009 | Comments Off
Not to put down other towns, whose Fourth of July fireworks are really very nice. Whose cookouts and parades are lovely ways to celebrate our national birthday.
But compared with most, the 17-day-long Cedar Rapids Freedom Festival is a massive celebration. A diverse, sprawling hulk of a patriotic good time.
It’s a festival that asks: Who says [...]
6/13 column: Hate speech matters
Posted in Gazette Columns, tagged abortion, Ann Coulter, George Tiller, hate speech, Holocaust Museum, James von Brunn on June 17, 2009 | Comments Off
James von Brunn’s apparent murder of Stephen Tyrone Johns, a guard at U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on the National Mall, was this country’s third act of domestic terrorism in less than two weeks.
The murder of abortion doctor George Tiller, the murder of one soldier and injury of a second at a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting [...]
6/10 column: Fading memories of flood
Posted in Gazette Columns, tagged flood, The History Center, University of Iowa on June 10, 2009 | Comments Off
A year later, it seems impossible we ever might forget the relentless water. The fear and uncertainty. The smell.
Last summer’s flooding is still fresh in our minds during this anniversary week as we continue along a sometimes agonizingly slow road to recovery and renewal.
But time has a way of dulling even those memories etched during [...]
6/6 Column: System for dependent adults still needs care
Posted in Gazette Columns, tagged Atalissa, dependent adults, disibility issues, Henry's Turkey Service on June 10, 2009 | Comments Off
Late last month, Gov. Chet Culver signed into law legislation to help protect Iowa’s vulnerable adults.
The laws should make it harder to run an unlicensed care facility and easier to report dependent adult abuse.
They require state agencies to coordinate their response to allegations of abuse and require records of those allegations to be kept longer.
They [...]
6/3 column: Neighborhood offers more than crime
Posted in Crime and Punishment, Gazette Columns, tagged Crime, media, public safety, Terry Bilsland, Wellington Heights, Zuiko Redding on June 3, 2009 | 2 Comments »
“Aren’t you scared?” people ask Terry Bilsland when they learn he lives in Wellington Heights.
They’ve got a mental image of his central Cedar Rapids neighborhood as a bullet-riddled war zone — not this tree-lined street where historic homes offer front porches like so many open arms.
“This is the majority of Wellington Heights,” Bilsland told me [...]
5/30 column: Health care reform can’t wait
Posted in Gazette Columns, tagged health care reform, Iowa City Free Medical Clinic, public option on June 3, 2009 | Comments Off
It’s hard enough to make sense of your statement of benefits, let alone the tangle of inefficiencies and inequities crippling this country’s health care system.
So you can’t blame a person for pausing when some pot-stirrer says a public insurance option will make us a country of socialists who’ll wait agonizing years for some bureaucrat to [...]
