Appointed state Representative Derrick Smith (D-Chicago) hasn't been in the House very long, but few would've ever picked him as a future legislative star. He stumbles badly during debates, isn't well informed on the issues, and has obviously had a lot of trouble getting his arms around his new job.

In other words, he probably won't be missed.

Smith was arrested last week on federal bribery charges. The feds say a campaign worker told them that Smith was anxious about fundraising problems and was willing to trade favors for checks. After being told a day-care-center owner was willing to pony up big bucks in exchange for an official letter requesting a $50,000 state grant, Smith allegedly pounced on the opportunity.

Do any of us really believe it is a coincidence that Congress and the president are fast-tracking specific legislation and executive orders that, when viewed in their entirety, destroy the Bill of Rights? Three months ago, Congress passed the alarming National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), allowing indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without due process - meaning without probable cause, criminal charge, benefit of counsel, or a trial. This treatment of U.S. citizens was outlawed after the Civil War, only to resurface now in an even more egregious manner, especially since back then, citizens had to at least be charged with a crime.

In the shadow of this shocking legislation, last week Congress almost unanimously passed another horrifying law that criminalizes protesting on or near any federal property, or merely being in the vicinity of either (a) an event of national significance, or (b) a person under the protection of the Secret Service. The Federal Restricted Buildings & Grounds Improvement Act repeals our right to peacefully assemble and petition the government with our grievances. In fact, it is now illegal to assemble in front of Congress if even one member might be inside.

Despite a long Illinois tradition of supporting them, it's not exactly news that Republican members of the General Assembly no longer like voting for taxes of any kind. And that attitude created a couple of somewhat absurd positions last week.

Let's start with the "roll your own" bill. Legislation has been proposed to tax a growing practice of allowing people to use commercial machines to roll their own cigarettes in convenience stores and gas stations.

The stores sell their customers loose, bulk tobacco and then the customers dump the product into special rolling machines, which cost several thousand dollars each. The result is a per-carton sale price that is about half the price of a pre-rolled carton of brand-name cigarettes, mainly because the taxes on loose tobacco are much lower than on commercial cigarettes.

Prospects for bills that would ban red-light cameras and increase Iowa's gas tax are dimming as state lawmakers work to pare down their workload in the final month of session.

March 16 is the Iowa legislature's second "funnel" deadline, when bills must clear one chamber and a committee of the opposite chamber to remain alive. The 2012 legislative session is scheduled to end April 17.

Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen (R-Hiawatha) said March 8 that a bill that would ban red-light and speed cameras in Iowa as of July 1 does not have the 51 votes to pass the Iowa House. Seven Iowa cities use the cameras to issue traffic tickets of up to $200 for speeding or running red lights. "My understanding is it's short of the votes," Paulsen said.

Iowa's influence in choosing presidential nominees generally diminishes after its first-in-the-nation caucuses. But this year could be different because of the lack of finality in choosing who the Republican nominee will be.

"I think we're in a different election cycle than we've ever seen before," said Republican National Committee member Kim Lehman of Johnston. "Historically, the nominee has already been chosen [by this stage in the process]. Clearly, we don't have a chosen nominee yet. That goes back to a trend that's happening where people are not allowing the political gurus to make the decision for the grassroots voters."

People in 10 states are casting their votes today - Super Tuesday, with 419 delegates up for grabs. But with the perceived GOP front-runner changing multiple times so far, political analysts don't expect Super Tuesday to clarify the GOP-nominee contest much.

"The race is far from over nationwide," said Steve Roberts, a former chair of the Republican Party of Iowa and a member of the Republican National Committee.

Four days after Super Tuesday, Iowa Republicans will gather for county conventions. They will vote Saturday on platforms and choose delegates who will go on to the April 21 district conventions and the June 16 state convention.

Last year, the House was able to control the Statehouse budget process by releasing low-ball state-revenue estimates early on and then vowing to stick to those numbers no matter what.

The Senate Democrats wanted to spend more money but were eventually stymied by the House's revenue estimates. There was just no way around the problem. Some Senate Democrats thought about forcing the spring session into overtime, but that would've been stupid because then the budget would've required a three-fifths majority to pass - and that would've given the Republicans a seat at the table. And the Republicans wouldn't want to spend more money.

It's too early to tell, but this year might be different. Last week, the House kicked off the budget process by locking in the chamber's new revenue estimates. The estimates are $221 million below the governor's revenue projections and $271 million below the projections released by the General Assembly's Commission on Government Forecasting & Accountability.

Faced with the temptation of handling thousands of dollars, an increasing number of city clerks in small-town Iowa have used taxpayer money to buy items including alcohol, laptop computers, gas grills, pumpkin pies, cat litter, and self-improvement books.

"To me, it's just very frustrating," said Carrie Kirchhoff, city clerk of the 433-resident town of Lewis in southwest Iowa. "It makes the rest of us clerks look bad that really try to do a good job for our cities. And then it gets the citizens all worked up, too. How do they go on in the same community and hold their head up? It's unreal."

The number of fraud cases in Iowa cities with populations of fewer than 700 has grown from seven cases from 2000 through 2005 to 32 cases from 2006 through 2011, said State Auditor David Vaudt.

When the public and private sector are combined, Iowa was fourth in the nation last year in a ranking of states most likely to have losses from major embezzlement cases, according to a study by Massachusetts-based risk-management company Marquet International.

A bill expected to be taken up the legislature's Government Oversight Committee aims to clamp down on the fraud through increased audits and oversight.

The new meme cheerfully propagated by the mainstream media (MSM) is the 1-percent-versus-the-99-percent conflict, which fits perfectly into its strategy for maintaining strict political divisions of Left versus Right. This bipartisan strategy is absolutely critical for advancing the agenda of the "1 percent," which, simply stated, is to own and/or control the world's natural and economic resources, including land and mineral rights, water sources, food and energy production, transportation, money supply, and most important of all labor.

Glaringly absent from this current meme is a proper definition by the MSM of exactly who composes the 1 percent. This, too, is absolutely essential, because if the 1 percent is actually identified, broad-based consensus is achievable and solutions can begin. Instead, the 1 percent is left to the imaginations of the 99 percent, allowing for a wide variety of culprits responsible for society's woes, and no possible consensus - hence no solutions, either.

If you pay attention, you'll find that solutions are never proffered in any of the MSM's endless dialogue permeating the broadcasts, and rarely in print. The very last thing the 1 percent wants are viable solutions emerging to upset the status quo.

So who is the 1 percent?

Back when Jim Edgar was governor, reporters covering his annual budget speech would always approach Senate President Pate Philip as he descended from the House Speaker's podium after the address to ask about his fellow Republican's proposals. Eventually, or even right away, we'd hear an emphatic "No!" from Pate and then we'd pronounce a good chunk of the budget dead on arrival.

Times were simpler back then than they were last week after Governor Pat Quinn finished his latest budget address. Quinn's proposal "benefited" from the lack of any major specifics on the big issues of the day: the exploding costs of Medicaid and pensions. The only things left to attack were program cuts and facility closures - and Republicans who did so risked being labeled as false budget hawks. Then there's the phony complaint that spending was actually rising. (Overall operating expenditures are falling, but total state spending is going up mainly because pension payments are rising by about a billion dollars next fiscal year.)

A six-year battle in the legislature to create an Iowa Public Information Board has renewed life because of a new floor manager for the bill with a "strong desire" to move it forward.

"I think the time's come for this bill to move forward. Six years is long enough," state Representative Walt Rogers (R-Cedar Falls) said February 22. "Iowans that I've talked to talk about transparency in their government. ... I think the common, everyday Iowan needs one place to go to find out some of their answers."

The board would add teeth to the state's open-records law.

Under Senate File 430, the state would create a seven-member board that would address people's questions and problems about access to government records and meetings, and seek enforcement of the state's open-records and public-meetings laws.

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