Rick Bertrand Archives » Lynda Waddington

14Mar 2018 by Lynda Waddington

Bill Dix should have been long gone

Gazette Column

What does it say about our state when an illicit kiss is considered more professionally disgraceful than failed leadership? Please, don’t get me wrong. I’m not sad about the decision by Senate Majority Bill Dix, a Shell Rock Republican, to resign from his leadership post and the Iowa General Assembly. I’m just wondering why his ouster took this long, and why his other expensive failures weren’t considered horrendous enough to force his resignation. Senate Majority Leader Bill Dix, R-Shell Rock, (left) and Senate President Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny, (right) confer on the Senate floor during the 2017 legislative session. (Rod Boshart/The Gazette) Last fall the state settled a wrongful termination lawsuit with former Senate Republican staff member Kirsten Anderson to the tune of $1.75 million. That settlement came out of the…

21-only ordinances should remain local issue

Gazette Column

Ask people in Iowa City whether or not the 21-only ordinance is working, and the answers will be a mixed bag. Nearly five years and two ballot referendums later, the issue of whether adults under the age of 21 should be allowed in most drinking establishments after 10 p.m. remains hotly contested. Those who support the ordinance point to statistics comparing the three years before and after the ordinance went into effect. There were drops in the number of citations for underage people caught in possession of alcohol and arrests for driving under the influence. But there also has been a significant increase in disorderly house citations, which skeptics hold as evidence that the root problem (underage drinking) still is thriving behind closed doors. Medical calls related to heavy alcohol consumption have…

Bertrand defamation case changes nothing

Gazette Column

Transparency makes attack ads palatable In September 1895, Woodrow Wilson was more than two decades away from his move into the White House and spent a great deal of time studying government via the lens of history. It was at this time, well before history and political science were distinct disciplines, the scholarly Wilson wrote a magazine essay establishing his thoughts on how historians should present their work, summarizing why it is often difficult to see into the past as well as into the future. “The truth of history is a very complex and very occult matter. It consists of things which are invisible as well of things which are visible. It is full of secret motives, and of a chance interplay of trivial and yet determining circumstances; it is…