River Cities Reader Podcast
May 24, 2024 Bermas & McGreevy Talk $1.6MM Nothing Burger + Fractional Vote Counting in Iowa
On today’s show, originally broadcast live on TNTRadio.live, Todd McGreevy & Jason Bermas discuss the recent cover story in the June 2024 River Cities’ Reader: What We Know Now a Year After the 324 Main Street Disaster. Excerpt: Former Davenport City Administrator (who was paid more than $338,000 annually by taxpayers in 2023) Corrine Spiegel, hired the department heads that mismanaged two of the city’s biggest disasters in modern history – the 2019 flood wall failure and the 324 Main St. building collapse – secured a $1.6MM payment for emotional damages and lost wages in secret without a city council vote until after the 2023 municipal elections. This secret pay-off was after two of Spiegel’s staffers secured their own payoffs of $200,00 each citing similar emotional damages. After much obfuscation, delaying tactics and law fare to keep Spiegel’s demand letter undisclosed (including at one point attorneys for the City who filed a lawsuit to ask the courts to determine if the demand letter can remain confidential stating in a court hearing that they can’t find a copy of said letter) plaintiff Dr. Allen L. Diercks prevailed and the hush-hush demand letter has been disclosed, by his attorney Mike Meloy. Readers can read the letter for themselves and determine if Spiegel’s recounting of her eight years as City Administrator warranted a secret $1.6MM settlement so that she would not sue the City. Given the gravitas of what had transpired in 2019 with the flood wall disaster and in 2023 with 324 Main St. disaster – both of which occurred on Spiegel’s watch as the top paid city official – compared to the school-age-girl-thin-skinned complaints in the demand letter, one could say Spiegel’s demand letter is a “nothing burger.” Read the entire letter at RCReader.com/y/spiegel2. Read the entire timeline with further receipts at The Decline and Fall of Davenport, Iowa? A Timeline.
In addition the two reviewed Black Box Voting’s historical coverage of election software fraud and the Reader’s coverage of one such company ES&S’ usage in Iowa back in 2016 with the GEMS system: Vote “Weighting” Option Calls Election Integrity Into Question
Watch the full Jason Bermas first hour broadcast at https://tntvideo.podbean.com/e/todd-mcgreevy-on-the-jason-bermas-show-25-may-2024/