As The Iowa Independent first reported Wednesday, such medications are typically not placed on preferred drug lists. Under current state law, physicians who prescribe the medications for Medicaid patients are free to select the drugs believed to best serve the individual patient. They are also free to switch patients to a different medication if the initial drug was not tolerated well or failed to reduce symptoms.

New language in the reorganization bill, which has been approved by the state government and appropriations committees in the Iowa Senate, removes the exception for psychiatric medications and calls for only the drugs by pharmaceutical companies that have entered into an agreement with the state to be placed on the preferred list.

State officials estimate that the change would save the state $400,000 the first year and $1.3 million over five years.

State Sen. Randy Feenstra, a Hull Republican who serves as the ranking member on the State Government Committee, said he questioned how the language, which has previously been rejected by the Iowa legislature, found its way into the bill. According to mental health advocacy groups, the issue was explored two years ago and, after presenting their case to the legislature, the policy change was dismissed.

“When I asked the question to the majority [party], they stated that the governor’s consultant came up with it and that the governor demands it stays in,” said Feenstra, who has requested the language be removed from the bill.

He described medical treatment of those who have mental illness as “complex.”

“Mental health patients can have the best quality of life by taking specific medications prescribed through their physician,” Feenstra said. “Finding the right set of prescriptions takes time as different mixes might not yield the best results. It has been noted that although one drug should do the same as another, each person reacts differently to each drug. After noting this, I fully believe we should not change peoples’ medications.”

His assessment of the situation is very similar to that of numerous mental health advocates, who also point out that individuals with a mental illness who are unable to obtain prescriptions both tolerated by the body and effective for their symptoms are much more likely to become a larger taxpayer burden due to homelessness, emergency room visits, incarceration or committed medical care.

The language that appeared in the report issued through the governor’s office was brought to the table by the Iowa Department of Human Services. The agency’s spokesman, Roger Munns, readily admits that the change is something that has been viewed favorably by the department for some time.

“We have been advocating the addition of more psychotropic drugs to the preferred drug list for several years, and for good reason,” he said. “The purpose is to save public money without undermining the availability of mental health medications for people receiving Medicaid.”

The agency’s proposal, according to Munns, contains a “grandfathering” clause to exempt current prescription holders, and will only apply to new prescriptions. He also noted that drugs not on the preferred list could still be purchased through Medicaid, provided prior authorization is obtained.

“The process is not cumbersome,” Munns said. “The turnaround time for prior authorization is about two hours.”

Margaret Stout, executive director of the Iowa chapter of National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), isn’t convinced that existing time frames for prior authorization are sustainable.

“That might be the case right now — and I have no reason to believe that it is not,” Stout said. “But what happens when instead of a select few psychiatric drugs, many more are added to the list? And, even if the initial request for prior authorization is answered in two hours, what happens if the request is denied? At that point the prescribing physician — whether a psychiatrist or a family doctor — will need to spend additional time on the appeal process.”

Stout also notes that although the Department of Human Services has indicated that its proposal included language that would “grandfather” existing prescription holders, such language does not appear to be in the bill before legislature, and would not directly or clearly address medication adjustments that are often necessary during the treatment of those with mental illness.

States that use preferred drug lists evaluate pharmaceuticals deemed “equivalent,” and most often select the least costly medications for “preferred” status. For example, a state would likely prefer a generic of a name brand solely on the basis of cost. Medications that can be taken less often are also typically more expensive than the same medication in the original more frequent dosage. So, in that type of situation, which was recently faced by Florida authorities, the state often selects the least expensive option for inclusion on its preferred list.

Mental health advocates, however, are quick to point out that “equivalent” does not mean “same,” and that even inactive ingredients in medications, which often differ from name brand to generic, can digest at different speeds and result in the body absorbing active ingredients more quickly or slowly.

The language that appeared in the report released by the governor’s office:

CHANGE THE WAY MEDICAID PAYS FOR UNIQUE MENTAL HEALTH MEDICATIONS
The Iowa Department of Human Services currently places all chemically unique mental health prescription drugs on its preferred drug list (PDL)
for Medicaid recipients. Some of these medications are very costly and states have used contracting mechanisms to obtain rebates on high‐cost medications from manufacturers. Iowa DHS proposes to require the makers of these medications, who wish to sell drugs to the Iowa Medicaid program, to enter into a contract for supplemental drug rebates to the State. If a drug manufacturer does not enter into a contract, DHS could place the mental health medication on the nonpreferred list of drugs, thus requiring physicians to obtain prior authorization before the Medicaid recipient can obtain the drug.

The language that currently appears in SF 2088:

DIVISION XXVII
MEDICAID PRESCRIPTION DRUGS

Sec. 389. Section 249A.20A, subsection 4, Code 2009, is amended to read as follows:

4. With the exception of drugs prescribed for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus or acquire immune deficiency syndrome, transplantation, or cancer with the exception of drugs and drug compounds that do not have a significant variation in a therapeutic provide or side effect profile within a therapeutic class, prescribing and dispensing of prescription drugs not included on the preferred drug list shall be subject to prior authorization.

Sec. 390. MEDICAID NONPREFERRED DRUG LIST PRESCRIBING. The department shall adopt rules pursuant to chapter 17A to restrict physicians and other prescribers to prescribing not more than a 72-hour or three-day supply of a prescription drug not included on the medical assistance preferred drug list while seeking approval to continue prescribing the medication.

Sec. 391. MEDICAID MENTAL HEALTH MEDICATIONS. The department shall adopt rules pursuant to chapter 17A to require that unless the manufacturer of a chemically unique mental health prescription drug enters into a contract to provide the state with a supplemental rebate, the drug shall be placed on the nonpreferred drug list and subject to prior authorization before a medical assistance program recipient is able to obtain the drug.

The department is implementing a new program, the Dairy Economic Loss Assistance Program, which was authorized by the 2010 agriculture appropriations bill and will provide loss assistance payments to eligible dairy farmers.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (file photo)

“I have personally heard from hundreds of struggling dairy farmers from all across the country who have been hit hard by declining prices over the past year, and now, we’ll be able to offer them help,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

Milk prices declined substantially through early-to-mid-2009, with the national price for milk averaging $16.80 per hundredweight (cwt) in the fourth quarter of 2008 and averaging $12.23 cwt in the first quarter of 2009, an overall 27 percent decline. The price U.S. dairy producers received for milk marketed in the summer of 2009 was about half of what it cost them to produce it.

Eligible producers will receive a one-time direct payment based on the amount of milk both produced and commercially marketed by their operation during the months of February through July 2009. Production information from these months will be used to estimate a full year’s production for an operation to calculate payments, using a 6 million pound per dairy operation limit.

Dairy producers who have production records at the USDA Farm Service Agency county office because they participated in another FSA dairy program do not need to apply for the program. The agency will use the existing production records to calculate and issue payments. Those who have not provided records to their local FSA, and have not yet been contacted to do so, will have until Jan. 19, 2010 to apply. Officials estimate, however, that more than 95 percent of eligible producers will receive benefits without having to complete a new agency application.

A national per hundred weight payment rate will be determined by dividing the available funding of $290 million, less a FSA reserve for new applicants and appeals, divided by the total pounds of eligible milk production approved for payment. The FSA is currently estimating that 875 million cwt of milk production will be eligible for payment, and that the expected payment rate is approximately 32 cents per cwt.

U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, a Democrat who represents Iowa’s 3rd District and a senior member of the House Committee on Agriculture, applauded the swift implementation of the new program, noting that “Iowa’s 2,390 dairy farms have been struggling as milk prices have declined substantially this year.”

In order to be eligible for the program, the dairy producer and the dairy operation in which the producers has a share:

• Must have produced milk in the U.S. and marketed milk commercially at any time from February through July 2009
• Must have milk production data for those months, and must certify to all milk production from the dairy operation during the time frame
• Have an annual adjusted gross nonfarm income of less than $500,000 for calendar years 2006 through 2008

Full program information and eligibility requirements can be found on the FSA/USDA Web site.

The DELAP program is one emergency dairy assistance programs that has been implemented by the USDA in response to the producers’ economic crisis. The agency has previously increased the price that they paid dairy farmers for products through the Dairy Product Price Support Program from August through October 2009. The USDA’s Dairy Export Incentive Program was also reactivated to help exporters meet prevailing world food prices and encourage the development of export markets in areas where the U.S. products are not competitive due to subsidized dairy products from other countries. The agency also established a Dairy Industry Advisory Committee.

Update 12/18/2009, 2:50 p.m. — Gov. Chet Culver released the following statement in connection with the implementation of the DELAP program: “2009 has been a tough year for Iowans — especially our dairy producers, and I want to thank President Obama, Secretary Vilsack and the Obama administration for creating this program and providing immediate relief to dairy producers. We know that there is still much work to do, but this announcement is a great holiday present for the thousands of Iowans who make a living producing milk and other dairy products. As Governor, I will continue to do all I can to help not only dairy producers, but all Iowa farmers who have suffered this year from low prices. I look forward to continuing our work with the Obama administration, our federal partners, and all Iowans as together we help this vital industry and build a brighter future for the state.”

The Des Moines Register requested a copy of the consultant’s report under Iowa’s Open Records law. The governor’s legal counsel, Jim Larew, denied the request, saying it is a draft document that would be released after confidential information is redacted, perhaps as soon as mid-September.

From the Register:

Iowa’s Open Records Law does not allow an exemption for “draft” records. In fact, state lawmakers considered adding such an exemption to the law last year, but the proposal was not approved.

Culver and Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller have taken the position that state legislators never intended to require public disclosure of draft documents. Culver and Miller have defined “draft records” as including signed-and-delivered correspondence between public employees.

The war between Culver and the Register over what constitutes public records is nothing new.

In August 2008, Culver’s staff refused to release a draft report that outlined housing recommendations after the summer floods.

In December, the Register was refused access to a list of recommended budget cuts given to the governor from state departments. Culver’s staff called the recommendations “privileged communications” between the governor and executive-branch employees.

In January, the governor refused to turn over e-mails surrounding his office’s response to the unexpected death of a resident at the same state-run home for the disabled that is the subject of the current dispute, saying they were “draft records.”

In March, Culver’s staff told The Register it would be charged $630 for a state lawyer to determine whether e-mails can legally be kept confidential in regards to an investigation of the Atalissa scandal. The Register refused, saying it could end up paying the fee only to be told it would not get access to the e-mails.

During his 2006 campaign for governor, and in the wake of the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium (CIETC) pay scandal, Culver stressed the need for strong open-records laws. His inaugural address in January 2007 hailed open government, saying Iowans “are right to demand ethical, accountable and open government.”

“The price increase announced today will provide immediate relief to dairy farmer around the country and keep many on the farm while they weather one of the worst dairy crisis in decades,” Vilsack said in a prepared statement.

The price paid for nonfat dry milk will increase from roughly 80 cents per pound to 92 cents per pound. Cheddar blocks are expected to rise from $1.13 per pound to $1.31 per pound, while cheddar barrels will move from $1.10 per pound to $1.28 per pound. Temporarily raising the price of these dairy products typically increases the price that dairy farmers receive for the milk they produce.

Under the Dairy Product Price Support Program, the USDA serves as a buyer of last resort to help clear commodity dairy markets during periods of exceptionally low farm-level prices. For instance, if cheddar barrels sell for $1.20 per pound in the private market, the government provides the difference to dairy farmers up to the guaranteed price it has set.

Today’s news is the latest attempt by the USDA to aid struggling dairy farmers who are receiving the lowest payments for raw milk the industry has seen since the 1970s, and a move praised by the National Milk Producers Federation.

“This step by the USDA to raise farm-level milk prices comes at a critical time, and is yet another important effort the agency has made to help dairy farmers survive the worst recession in their lifetimes,” said Jerry Kozak, president and chief executive of NMPF.

Federal action was also praised by U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA) who said that Iowa’s “2,390 dairy farms will benefit directly” from the additional government assistance.

“I applaud Secretary Vilsack for taking action on behalf of the country’s dairy farmers and for responding so immediately to the concerns voiced by myself and other members of Congress,” he said.

The USDA has already boosted purchases through the support program and resurrected a subsidy program that pays to export non-fat dry milk.

Vilsack also indicated that he and other federal officials are reviewing dairy policies to determine what changes are needed to reduce price volatility and enhance farmer profitability. Federal and private banks are being encouraged by Vilsack to be lenient with dairy farmers who have outstanding loans, although the USDA has offered no details as to the extent or tone of the encouragement.

Chris Bradshaw's show airs from 1 to 4 p.m. weekdays on 98.3 WOW-FM

“I’m so outrageous,” he said. “I actually believe torture is a bad thing. Ooooh.”

Just another day for Des Moines talk radio’s token liberal.

Weekdays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on 98.3 WOW-FM, Bradshaw shares his take on the world with his listeners, and most couldn’t disagree more. His lead-in is Glenn Beck. Sean Hannity is up after he signs off, with Michael Savage after that.

“Des Moines is not exactly a dynamic radio market,” said Bradshaw, 32. “When it comes to liberals on talk radio, I’m pretty much it. I’m a stranger in a strange land.”

It’s not always politics. Sometimes it’s religion. Sometimes it’s pop culture. Once, it was whether intelligent women enjoy sex more than “bimbos.”

Whatever interests him that day is fodder for the show, and it attracts an audience ready to debate.

“The people like a good gladiator bout from time to time,” he said. “But my goal, the Holy Grail that I shoot for every day, is ‘I never agree with you, but…’ If I can get that, my day is made. And I get that more and more often.”

He hates it when people say they’re “independents,” calling it the “wussy way out.” He’s a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union and isn’t afraid of telling people he’s an atheist.

“Who else is going to go on the air with the juevos to say ‘Yeah, I’m an atheist. What about it?’ ” he said. “When you look at the polls of who would you like to see your daughter marry, I think atheists come in behind gay Muslim terrorists. But I assure you, I eat far fewer babies than Dick Cheney does on any given day.”

He insists he’s not putting on a show. For three hours, he’s simply being himself, for better or worse.

“Everyone has different reasons for being in this business,” he said. “You have some guys who really, really like being rich. Some are true believers. Some are just bat-crap insane and believe people are trying to poison their drinking water. I’m just myself.”

‘I don’t know how to do anything else.’

Bradshaw grew up in West Des Moines and became smitten with radio while attending Valley High School.

“I was 15 years old and my buddy at Valley said: ‘Hey, you’d be great on the campus radio station.’ So what did I say? ‘No.’ But he finally got me in there and I was hooked. I was spinning Soundgarden records on KWDM.”

He graduated from the University of Missouri, worked for the local radio station, and eventually ended up doing a morning show in South Bend, Ind.

“I was working at this classic rock station,” he said. “Eddie Money, Foghat, a friend and me.”

It was the 2000 presidential election that first got him interested in politics, but it wasn’t until the U.S. invaded Iraq that he finally let his inner pundit run free.

“The news reports just didn’t pass the sniff test,” he said. “It was all about weapons of mass destruction and Saddam being part of Sept. 11. So I go on the air and ask if this is such a good idea. You weren’t supposed to do that, though. At that point, we were all still supposed to be having parades and be hyper-patriotic.”

He eventually “got asked to leave Indiana,” and he ended up back in Des Moines and at WOW-FM, co-hosting “Mac’s World” with conservative J. Michael McCoy in 2005. The two hosted the afternoon show together until 2008, when McCoy was let go from the station.

“We had a long slog together to make the show into what it was,” he said. “When I started doing the show alone, well, let’s just say it wasn’t an easy transition. I was walking into an immediately hostile crowd.”

While the two haven’t spoken since the split, Bradshaw said he sent a note telling McCoy to “kick ass and have good, but not too good, luck” when he launched his new online talk show earlier this year.

The underdog

For Bradshaw, it’s all about the conversation. Agree with him or not, as long as you’re willing to debate, he’s willing to give you airtime.

“It’s not a soapbox for me to preach down to the unwashed masses,” he said. “As long as callers come in with good intentions. Disagree and intelligently state it and you’ll get to the front of the line.”

He’s always looking for common ground, and a way to get people out of the “I’m right, you’re wrong” mentality, he said. Everyone agrees on the outcome in politics, “we just have different ways of getting there.”

But he’s the first to say his show is the underdog in a market dominated by conservative talkers like the ones on Iowa’s largest radio station, WHO-AM. And it doesn’t help that his competition during the 1 to 4 p.m. shift is conservative icon Rush Limbaugh.

But he’s not afraid of a little competition.

“Hey, I’m up against the most successful radio personality in history,” he said. “What do I have to lose?”

In addition to hosting his show, Bradshaw also serves as program director for WOW-FM and its sport’s talk sister station, 1700 The Champ. The last Arbitron ratings show his station in 10th place overall, but second behind WHO for talk-only stations.

“I’m programming two stations, doing technical support, working through the weekend. It’s a 24/7 job,” he said. “I can usually get Christmas off.”

So will he be booking some fellow liberals any time soon?

“I don’t know if any of us will live long enough, even with stem cell treatment, to see liberals all across the dial,” he said. “I certainly think there’s a market for it, but radio is slow to change. The model has been working for so long, stations are hesitant to change. Nobody is going to lose their job putting a conservative on the air.”

So for the time being at least, Bradshaw carries the liberal flag on Des Moines’ airwaves all alone, and gets back to debating the virtues of torture with his callers.

“Hey, I had a conversation about torture that didn’t make me want to waterboard myself,” he said. “It was a good day.”

U.S. Border Patrol agent Gabriel Pacheco walks back to his vehicle along the border fence with its concertino wire topping it Monday Nov. 17, 2008 in San Diego. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)

The idea of deporting illegal immigrants who are also hardened criminals wouldn’t seem like a controversial idea. So when David Venturella, Executive Director of the Secure Communities Program at Immigration and Customs Enforcement testified to Congress in April, he proudly announced the expansion of his program as part of a “comprehensive effort to increase national security and community safety by identifying, processing, and removing deportable criminal aliens.”

But while there’s strong support for deporting dangerous criminals, federal programs such as this one are extending far beyond that goal and detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants for such minor infractions as running a stop sign or carrying an open container of alcohol.

The Secure Communities program, highlighted in a Washington Post story this week, started as a pilot program by President Bush last year. It requires local police to check the immigration status of everyone booked into a local jail. When suspects are fingerprinted, their identifying information is immediately sent to ICE to determine the suspect’s immigration status. (ICE maintains fingerprint data on all individuals who’ve had contact with immigration authorities.) Undocumented immigrants (and even some immigrants who are legal residents) can eventually be deported after their criminal cases are resolved and any sentence is served. If fingerprints from all 14 million suspects booked into local jails each year were screened this way, DHS estimates, about 1.4 million immigrants would be deemed “criminal aliens” and deportable. By contrast, only 117,000 “criminal immigrants” were deported last year.

But the large numbers of immigrants that could be swept up in the program’s snare is causing serious concern among immigrants’ advocates. Although ICE says its goal is to deport the most serious offenders, under the program, identifying information on all suspects arrested for any sort of alleged crimes will be immediately sent to ICE. If the person shows up in an ICE database as an undocumented immigrant, ICE can place a retainer on the individual — meaning they could begin deportation proceedings against him. So an undocumented immigrant wrongly arrested for a traffic violation could be deported under the Secure Communities initiative as easily as could a convicted felon.

Few statistics are available on who is being targeted and deported under the program so far, since it only began in a few communities last October. But since then, the program has been operating in local facilities that have booked 288,000 people, said Richard Rocha, a spokesman for ICE. Of those, almost 3,000 have been “aliens arrested for or convicted of Level 1 offenses,” said Rocha. A Level 1 offense is a crime that carries a sentence of more than a year in prison, such as murder, robbery, rape or drug crimes. “But we’ve lodged detainers on more than 6000,” said Rocha. So about half of the offenders to be deported were either charged with or found guilty of relatively minor offenses. (Rocha said he did not know how many of the 6000 were categorized as Level 2, and how many were Level 3.)

“It’s deceptively benign,” said Joan Friedland, Immigration Policy Director at the National Immigration Law Center, talking about the Secure Communities program. Friedland and others are particularly concerned because other federal programs aimed at seizing and deporting criminal aliens, such as the 287(g) program, which deputizes local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws, have led to charges of racial profiling and, according to the General Accountability Office, deportation of undocumented immigrants picked up for such minor infractions as speeding, carrying an open container of alcohol, and urinating in public. Local police also worry, as a report released this week from the Police Foundation points out, that the program deters undocumented immigrants from reporting crimes and cooperating with local investigations.

Particularly brazen sheriffs in communities with high anti-immigrant sentiment — such as Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the Arizona sheriff known for marching illegal immigrants past news cameras in leg irons and prison underwear — appear to be taking advantage of the law to try to rid their counties of as many immigrants as possible. Arpaio is now under federal investigation for racial profiling and other potential civil rights violations.

Immigrant advocates worry that the Secure Communities program could cause even more problems because 287(g) at least trains local officials on using the immigration laws and targeting dangerous criminals. The Secure Communities initiative, by contrast, has no safeguards to prevent its abuse by local authorities or to ensure that ICE focuses on deporting felons or other serious or repeat offenders rather than those arrested for minor infractions or as a pretense.

“Because of how other programs have operated you’d think you’d want something in place when this one starts to prevent its abuse,” said Friedland. Yet, as Rocha confirmed, the program has no regulations that govern how ICE or local authorities are supposed to implement it.
“The problem with Secure Communities,” said Marty Rosenbluth, an immigration lawyer with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice in Durham, North Carolina, “is there’s no way that we know of to be able to track it. There’s no accountability, there’s no reporting procedures, there’s no way to document in any systematic fashion who’s getting into deportation proceedings because of Secure Communities.” Secure Communities is now operating in 12 communities in North Carolina, and 48 nationwide. DHS plans to expand it to all local law enforcement agencies by the end of 2012.

“Under 287(g) in North Carolina, most people deported have been picked up for driving-related offenses. With Secure Communities, since the identification process is when people are booked, not when they’re convicted, our fear is that the same pattern will duplicate itself,” said Rosenbluth.

Indeed, Ivan Ortiz, an ICE spokesman, told the North Carolina News & Observer when asked about the program: “If the person ran a light, then we need to prioritize our work, and we may not be able to send an agent to the local jail to get them,” Ortiz said. “But I guarantee you, we will catch up to them later.”

Rocha, the ICE spokesman in Washington, confirmed that. “The goal of this plan is to identify and remove all criminal aliens in jails and prisons.” he said. Although the focus will first be “on those who present the greatest risk to public safety and national security,” ICE will also deport other lower-level criminals “as resources permit.”

Immigration lawyers worry that in fact, the low-level criminals will be the bulk of the program’s victims. “Based on my personal experience with 287(g),” says Rosenbluth, “I find it very unlikely that if someone is arrested on a driving-related offense, that if ICE has the capacity to pick that person up, that ICE will just leave them.”

The other problem is that due to flawed databases, the program can ensnare people who are in the United States legally, including U.S. citizens. “I had a client who was in a local jail for three months on an immigration detainer,” said Rosenbluth. “It took me three months to prove he was a U.S. citizen and couldn’t be deported,” he said.

Unlike in criminal court, immigrants don’t have the right to have an attorney represent them in immigration proceedings. So if someone is acquitted of a crime but shows up in a database as being in the United States illegally, he can be deported even if he’s here legally, simply because he can’t prove his legal status and doesn’t have the right to a lawyer who can help him.

“Once Secure Communities hits, particularly in rural areas where there there are very few lawyers, it’s going to be devastating,” said Rosenbluth, who said he’s one of only two immigration lawyers in North Carolina devoted full-time to representing immigrants in deportation proceedings. “People are going to get picked up at a traffic stop, fingerprinted and identified as undocumented even though they have a right to be here.”

What’s more, the program can target people who are innocent, too. “It applies when anyone is fingerprinted by a cooperating law enforcement agent,” said Tom Barry, who directs the TransBorder Project of the Americas at the Center for International Policy. “So if someone is booked for driving without a license and indeed they had a license,” if they’re undocumented, it applies to them, too.

Even people who are legal residents in the United States can be eligible for deportation under the program if they’re arrested and in the past had been convicted of a crime. “It may have been two decades ago,” said Barry. “So people who are longstanding members of a community and legal residents can be deported.”

Ultimately, the determination is made by the ICE officer and whether ICE has room to detain the person. “It depends if they have enough beds, rather than if the person is a dangerous criminal,” said Barry.

According to David Venturella, the Secure Communities program director, between October 2008 and the end of February of this year, ICE has processed “more than 117,000 fingerprint submissions under the program, which resulted in the identification of over 12,000 criminal aliens.” Of those, 862 “have been identified as dangerous criminals,” or Level 1 offenders — which includes nonviolent drug crimes. Even if 862 is a significant number of criminals who can now potentially be deported, that’s only seven percent of the total number of immigrants the program has identified as eligible for deportation. What will happen to the 93 percent of aliens — both legal and illegal — who were arrested for minor infractions remains to be seen.

Daphne Eviatar covers legal affairs for the Washington Independent, a Center for Independent Media site.

Data current as of Dec. 15, 2008, unless otherwise indicated

Flood Magnitude

31.12 feet — Crest (11.12 feet over previous record of 20 feet) covering more than 10 square miles (14 percent) of the city. More than 80,000 tons of debris have been collected and removed to landfills. There were, however, no flood-related deaths.

People

• 18,623 estimated people in flood-impacted area
• 120 families in flood areas receiving Section 8 housing assistance
• 1,360 estimated job losses as a result of the flood
• 45 registered day-care providers damaged, displacing 1,547 children
• 1,800 school children displaced

Property

• 7,198 affected parcels (5,390 residential)
• $2.4 billion estimated cost in damage to public infrastructure and future flood management options
• As many as 1,500 properties to be demolished — 71 were demolished before Jan. 1.
• Preliminary estimate is of a residential tax loss of $81.7 million by the city

Services

• City Hall, two jails, municipal court facilities, central fire station, central library facility and police headquarters were completely flooded and displaced
• Cedar Rapids Community School District central offices were flooded and displaced
• 45 registered day-care providers were damaged, displacing as many as 1,547 children
• 8 cultural assets (museums, theaters, cultural centers) were displaced and/or destroyed
• Ground transportation and municipal city transportation hub was completely displaced
• 3 of 4 city collector wells and 46 vertical wells were disabled
• More than 57,218 flood recovery-related volunteer hours donated
• 486 property tax exempt facilities (government, schools, churches, Red Cross, etc.) were displaced or damaged
• 136 other public service providers were impacted (utilities, railroads, etc.)

Needs

• $87.2 million in estimated lost property tax valuation
• 888 new replacement housing units ($36.9 million estimated funding gap)
• 1,049 total rehabilitated units needed ($36.7 million estimated funding gap)
• 1,001 citizens expressed interest in buy-out options ($133 million estimated funding gap)
• More than 700 businesses with estimated flood-recovery need for as much as $1.5 billion
• Flood mitigation/remedy funding gap $478.5 million
• $5 million for required U.S. Army Corps of Engineers environmental study
• $54 million for steam heat rehabilitation/rebuild
• $120 million for waste-to-energy, co-generation and long-term sustainability initiatives

Linn County

• Total flood-related damages for the county as a whole are estimated to be $5.7 billion.
• As of Dec. 22, 2008, $655 million had been received from federal, state, local and insurance sources, leaving a gap of more than $5 billion.

Early election results showed incumbent Democratic state Reps. Wes Whitead, Roger Wendt and Elesha Gayman losing their seats as the returns rolled in. A buzz of panic rippled through an Iowa City victory party: “Did we lose the House? Did we lose the House?”

Iowa absentee ballot with outer envelope and secrecy envelope.

But the three incumbents had won re-election (assuming Whitead holds his six-vote lead) before the polls even opened. When the absentee results were added in, their early vote totals overcame the Election Day leads of their Republican challengers. It was like watching the second half of a ball game before seeing the score of the first half, making an early lead look like a come-from-behind win.

“We won on election night, and we lost when they opened the mailbox,” House Republican Leader Christopher Rants told the Des Moines Register. “Election Day is no longer 24 hours, it’s 24 days.” 40 days, to be exact, as state law allowed any Iowa to vote early beginning Sept. 25.

Democrats carried a 92,000 voter lead into Election Day out of the record 533,000 absentee and early ballots. In places where absentees were reported first, rather than last, Democrats jumped out to a big lead fast and saw the margin narrow.

The early vote margin was less than Barack Obama’s 160,000 vote margin in Iowa. But fast reporting of early ballots, including Johnson County’s 23,000 vote absentee lead for Obama, may have contributed to the network’s fast call of the state, almost as soon as polls closed at 9 p.m.

The paper told its employees Friday that it would eliminate 12 full-time and three part-time positions by today after word came down from the paper’s corporate parent, Gannett Co. Inc., that 600 jobs would have to be cut company wide.

Our friend at the Gannett Blog has a running total of where the job cuts are coming, and the numbers are depressing to say the least (as of today):

• Alexandria, La.: 3 of 214 total employees (story link)
• Appleton, Wisc.: 8 of 581
• Asbury Park, N.J.: 50 of 1,492
• Asheville, N.C.: 6 of 250
• Binghamton, N.Y.: 1 of 390
• Brevard, Fla.: 11 of 600
• Bridgewater and East Brunswick, N.J.: 12 of a combined ??? employees
• Bucyrus, Mansfield and Marion — all in Ohio: 9 of a combined 254 employees at the three papers (story link)
• Burlington, Vt.: 6 of 272
• Cherry Hill, N.J.: 35 of ???
• Chillicothe and Lancaster, Ohio; plus other, smaller Ohio publications: 3 of ??? employees (story link)
• Cincinnati: to be determined for 1,143
• Des Moines: 15 of 1,000
• Elmira, N.Y.: 1 of 115 (story link)
• Fond du Lac, Wisc.: 5 of 120
• Fort Collins, Colo.: 4 of 250
• Green Bay, Wisc.: 8 of 376 (story link)
• Greenville, S.C.: 14 of 610
• Hattiesburg, Miss.: 1-2 of 175
• Honolulu: 54 of 697 (announced July 16; story link)
• Indianapolis: 23 of 1,441
• Ithaca, N.Y.: 3 of 130
• Jackson, Miss.: 20 of 490
• Lafayette, Ind.: 2 of 238 (story link)
• Lafayette, La.: 6 of 277
• Lansing, Mich.: 8 of 380 (story link)
• Louisville, Ky.: 15 of 1,100 (story link)
• Montgomery, Ala.: 10 of 375 (story link)
• Morristown, N.J.: 10 of 315
• Mountain Home, Ark.: 3 of 66
• Muncie, Ind.: 2 of 169
• Nashville: 10 of 1,182
• Oshkosh, Wisc.: 2 of 129
• Palm Springs, Calif.: 3 of 350
• Pensacola, Fla.: 4 of 420
• Phoenix: to be determined for 2,650
• Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: 3 of 250
• Rochester, N.Y.: 11??? of 975 (story link)
• St. Cloud, Minn.: 8 of 222 (story link)
• Sheboygan, Wisc.: 1 of 114 (story link)
• Shreveport, La.: 0 of 402
• Sioux Falls, S.D.: 1 of 300
• Springfield, Mo.: 5 of 380
• Tallahassee, Fla.: 8 of ??? (story link)
• Tucson, Ariz.: 2-4 (at the Citizen) of 776 (at the Citizen and the JOA) (story link)
• Visalia, Calif.: 3 of 140
• Westchester, N.Y.: 12 of ??? (story link)
• Wilmington, Del.: 16 of 619

The blog’s author, Jim Hopkins, said the figure for each paper’s total employment is most likely too high, as he culled that information from Gannett’s corporate Web site.

According to Editor and Publisher, Gannett Vice President of Corporate Communications Tara Connell confirmed the reductions, adding that decisions on staff cuts would be made at each property based on financial targets and performances.

The Gannett Blog, run by former Gannett editor and reporter Jim Hopkins from Ibiza, Spain reported Wednesday that he obtained a memo from a staffer at The Daily Times in Salisbury, Md., about the move.

Daily Times Publisher Rick Jensen wrote in a memo: “Across Gannett’s Community Publishing division, about 1,000 positions will be eliminated — about 3% of the workforce. Of the 1,000 positions, about 600 employees will be laid off.”

The Iowa Independent reported Aug. 1 that Carolyn Washburn, editor of The Des Moines Register, announced that the paper would begin reducing its editorial staff over the coming months. Details of the move, such as how many positions will be eliminated and whether they will offer buy outs or lay offs, were not yet finalized.

The company-wide cuts will affect Gannett’s 84 daily newspapers as well as nearly 900 non-daily publications.