Spreading wealth across the realm

The last I heard it cost only twenty or thirty bucks to send a wire transfer from Washington to the Heartland. Sending a cabinet critter with check in hand kicks that up to something in the four figures.

Neverttheless, let the record show that the Peoples' Republic of Iowa City yesterday welcomed a a high emissary from His Obamaness of Washington.

Now, you guys probably thought the secretary of commerce was supposed to stick around the White House and Capitol Hill, handing out xeroxed copies of the Interstate Commerce Clause in case anyone had forgotten it and thereby missed a chance to regulate something else from Pennsylvania Avenue and K Street.

Wrong. Secretary Locke had a check for us, so he flew in to personally hand most of the $30 million to Iowa City politicians for a new sewer plant.

(Attention. Smith, Winston: I know what you're crimetinking, and this is your final warning. Stop it.)

The trip had nothing to do with politics in the city which gave his Obamaness his earliest caucus momentum, in a state where Obama pal Gov. Culver is poised to lose his job to a mediocre Republican, and where some newly elected congress critters who just love Obamaism are worried about their seats.

No, Gary came to town instead of sending a wire transfer just because he likes to be close to sewer projects.

I know. It happens all the time. So what? It's still a cynical theft of your money to buy someone's vote.

Fretting and fussing shall-issue

I can't shake a dismal feeling about Iowa shall-issue which still needs the signature of Gov. Chester "Ya Big Lug" Culver. This is a politician of parts.

One part is the governor as a man who needs the salary and the show of presumptive respect. No one has ever suggested he's anything other than a lucky spermer, son of a former senator who got that way by kissing considerable Kennedy butt.

Another part is the practical campaigner who knows signing the bill is, on the face of it, a net vote getter which will, on the other hand, irritate his aging backers among what is left of the heavy-money New York/Washington/Hollywood bed-wetting axis. If he wants to veto, and he does, he needs a scheme to offset the lost pro-gun votes with extra and offsetting nods from the dripping diapers in our larger cities and in the three university SSRs (Ames, Cedar Falls, Iowa City.)

The bill, passed overwhelmingly, is a two-parter -- a rather straight-forward shall issue policy and CCW reciprocity language.

If I were a statist bungstopper of a political operative and getting paid to create a sure-fire anti-gun demagoguery package for Chet, I'd concentrate on the reciprocity section. Aside from pandering to our general rural xenophobia, it wouldn't be hard to play the race card. There's all kinds of available code for stirring up fear that the bill will open our gates to a bunch gun-slinging minorities from the ghettos.

Don't flame me for giving the Chet crowd the idea. They've thought of it since the bill passed, and they're morally capable of doing it. Will they? I don't know. They're probably still commissioning polls.

Every well-connected pol and cop I know tells me I'm fruitcakey to worry about a veto. May Providence prove them correct.

Travis McGee and the Unstructured Life

As he advances through his middle years, McGee sometimes misses the comforts and shared illusions of the regimented life demanded of all solid American citizens. On the other hand, he understands the gain:

"...nothing can slow the reflexes like the weight of mortgages, withholding, connubial contentment, estate program, regular checkups and puttering around your own lawn."

Travis would be the first to tell you that you pays your money and you takes your choice. He would also be the first to advise that every choice generates regrets and that you should strive to ignore them.

Kafka's Cops live

A friend points me to a New York Times piece detailing some of the horrors of the anti-terrorist bureaucracy. In his note my pal mentions Kafka, leading me to wonder if that genius's name cracks the consciousness of enough modern skulls to make a difference.

(Kafka wrote of accused persons who might be guilty, or might not. The prisoner himself had no idea because the charges against him were secret. It was permissible because the bureaucracy said it was permissible.)

The Times report pegs itself on the case of a woman who, five years ago, was found to be on the no-fly list, questioned, detained, and turned loose without explanation. She sued, and a portion of her case against the secret government which compiles such lists has survived in the courts, despite the best efforts of the government.

The point is not that bureaucrats sometimes err. It is that any human is owed the minimum civility of a statement of why he is under suspicion and, if the accusation is found baseless, an apology for the bureaucrats' bumbling.