Iowa is home to some very large trees. One Des Moines man equipped with precision instruments and a selfless passion painstakingly documents these giants.

World Health Organization (WHO) Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland

The political fallout from COVID mismanagement has also resulted in politiopaths wishing to offload the responsibilities for health emergencies to the World Health Organization (WHO) in an all-too-familiar cowardly dodge, not unlike our Ukraine engagement (and many more conflicts before it) with no congressional “Declaration of War” as dictated in the U.S. Constitution.

Governor JB Pritzker told reporters a few weeks ago that he was concerned about some local school and library board races. “There are organizations that are anti-LGBTQ, that are racist, they’re anti Muslim, that are supporting candidates for these local boards. And they’re trying to take over at a local level and build up candidates at the local level that they can then run for the state legislature and for other offices.”

After taking a pandemic-induced hiatus from proposing large, permanent base spending-increases and instead using most revenue increases for one-time expenditures, Governor JB Pritzker’s recently-proposed Fiscal Year 2024 state budget appears to increase base operational-spending by at least $2.75 billion, or 7.9 percent. Annual pension payments will also rise by a relatively modest $201 million, which ups the total base spending-increase to $2.95 billion.

The legislature’s Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability released its latest monthly fiscal report last week. The report claimed the state is still on track to match the commission’s revised November estimate of a $4.1 billion revenue increase for the current fiscal year. Revenue had originally been projected to fall from the previous fiscal year. And much of the recently-projected increase is believed to be a one-time event and has so far been treated as such.

State records show that Dan Proft’s People Who Play by the Rules PAC spent almost $36 million during the second half of 2022, mostly on advertising boosting Senator Darren Bailey’s gubernatorial bid and opposing Governor JB Pritzker. Of that, $2.4 million was spent on consulting. Former ABC7 political reporter Charles Thomas was paid $100,000 in two $50,000 installments. Thomas appeared in some of Proft’s ads praising Bailey.

My sincere apologies! In last month's article “Noble Lies Are No Excuse For Ignoble Acts," I carelessly, erroneously reported, “In nearly 100 percent of the cases to date, the punishment is far worse than the crime and severely disproportionate to rulings for far worse bad acts by BLM and Antifa rioters during their rampages just a year prior, where hundreds of police officers died with billions in damages.”

Uncle Scam Cartoon by Ed Newmann Feb 2023 River Cities Reader.png

Publisher Todd McGreevy recounts the highlights and content of the River Cities' Reader's February 2023 printed edtion, as well as links to the same stories online herein. Illustration of "Uncle Scam" is by Ed Newmann. 

6th Annual Fake News Awards - The DINOs by CorebettReport.com

And now, from an undisclosed location deep beneath the Earth's surface, it's the 6th Annual Fake News Awards! Shining the spotlight of ridicule on the dumbest disinformation, the silliest smears and the most ludicrous lies of the mainstream-media dinosaurs of the past year! Which press-titutes will walk away with a DINO of shame? What mendacious government mouthpiece will commit seppuku after being exposed as a deceiving sack of excrement ? And who will walk away with the greatest dishonor of them all: the Fake News Story of the Year? Find out in this year's exciting Award Show Extravaganza ... .

Something really stinks about Operation Warp Speed

[Publisher's note: This article was originally published at the Web site The Last American Vagabond on October 6, 2020, and is more relevant than ever today.] $6 billion in COVID-19 vaccine contracts awarded by Operation Warp Speed have been doled out by a secretive government contractor with deep ties to the CIA and DHS, escaping regulatory scrutiny and beyond the reach of FOIA requests.

Pages