Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller ranks second in the nation for receiving campaign money from lawyers in the past five years and is among the friendliest to trial lawyers’ agenda, according to a report released October 25 by a conservative think tank.

But Miller denounced the report as inaccurate and called it a “cheap shot” from a corporate interest group. He said that campaign-finance data citing $338,223 in contributions in three weeks came from a discredited report, that claims about him keeping a low profile are “ridiculous,” and that more-favorable data about Iowa’s business climate are “conveniently omitted.”

“If the Center for Legal Policy were subject to Iowa’s Consumer Fraud Act, we’d probably bust them because of their outright misrepresentations,” Miller told IowaPolitics.com. “This report is riddled with misrepresentations and omissions of important facts.”

The “occupy” protest movement is thriving off the claim that the 99 percent are being exploited by the 1 percent, and there is truth in what they say. But they have the identities of the groups wrong. They imagine that it is the 1 percent of highest wealth-holders who are the problem. In fact, that 1 percent includes some of the smartest, most innovative people in the country – the people who invent, market, and distribute material blessings to the whole population. They also own the capital that sustains productivity and growth.

But there is another 1 percent out there, those who do live parasitically off the population and exploit the 99 percent. Moreover, there is a long intellectual tradition, dating back to the late Middle Ages, that draws attention to the strange reality that a tiny minority lives off the productive labor of the overwhelming majority.

I’m speaking of the State, which even today is made up of a tiny sliver of the population but is the direct cause of all the impoverishing wars, inflation, taxes, regimentation, and social conflict. This 1 percent is the direct cause of the violence, the censorship, the unemployment, and vast amounts of poverty, too.

It’s long been a tenet of public opinion that voters want the government to cut its budget and don’t want new revenues, but also don’t want any actual programs slashed.

However, the latest Paul Simon Public Policy Institute poll shows a slow but sure trend in favor of specific state budget cuts and revenue increases.

A large majority of Illinoisans do still believe in magic. According to the poll, 58 percent say the state budget can be balanced by cutting waste and inefficiency. And because of this belief in an utter fantasy world where fairies reign and pixie dust solves all our problems, too few want to actually cut state spending programs.

Texas Governor Rick Perry touts his immigration record as a strength, but his opponents for the GOP presidential nomination accuse him of creating a magnet to draw illegal immigrants across the border.

His state’s decision to offer in-state tuition rates to undocumented students through the Texas DREAM Act has drawn a barrage of questions from Iowans on recent visits, and a stream of attacks from fellow conservatives.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney threw the most recent elbow during a Sioux City stop on October 20, saying he had nixed a similar proposal in the Bay State.