Earthpork: The Day After The Deadline

Updated below:

I find it interesting that the Des Moines Register has not run a fully-fledged story about how Rainforest con man David Oman submitted his $50 $48 million grant application to the Feds.

Isn't that kind of a big deal?

The best the Register can do is bury a mention of it in a profile on Ted Townsend, the guy who dreamed this nonsense up on his treadmill one morning about 10 years ago.

Here's a Google News snapshot of the word "earthpark" and sorted by date as of this morning:

Big ideas, passion motivate Ape Trust founder
DesMoinesRegister.com, IA - 5 hours ago
-Earthpark is a proposed $150 million project outside of Pella that would be a combination education center, energy-conservation lab and tourist attraction ...

Earthpark submits application Gazette Online, IA - Nov 30, 2007 PELLA — Officials with the Earthpark indoor rain forest submitted an application Friday with the US Department of Energy that they hope frees up $48.3 ...

Earthpark Officials Will File Papers Saturday WHO-TV, IA - Nov 30, 2007 November 30, 2007--It took four years of fundraising, and it appears Earthpark organizers aren't in any hurry to prove they've raised $50 million. ...

Countdown to Earthpark Deadline WHO-TV, IA - Nov 30, 2007 November 30, 2007--The developers of Earthpark, a $150 million enclosed rainforest only have until the end of the business day, to show they've matched a ...

Ideas coming soon for Iowa River Landing attraction Gazette Online, IA - Nov 30, 2007 "A rain forest in a cornfield doesn't make sense," he said, referring to former plans by the Earthpark organization to build an artificial rain forest near ...

Deadline for Earthpark matching funds is Saturday
WCCO, MN - Nov 28, 2007
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) The deadline for organizers of the Earthpark indoor rainforest project to come up with $48.3 million in matching funds is Saturday, ....

I think Iowa's newspaper reporters, editors, and opinion columnists have really dropped the ball on this one - and I believe the Des Moines Register has done so intentionally.

Oh, there has been criticism sprinkled here and there, like at the Iowa City Press-Citizen (whose increasingly questioning editorials essentially drove the project out of next-door suburb Coralville.....), but nobody state-wide has really pounded the drum regularly and warned the general public about what lurks ahead if this project is green-lighted.

Nicholas Johnson has written a lot, but he doesn't have the audience of a David Yepsen, Ed Tibbetts, or even John Skipper.

Yepsen, in particular, has done a remarkably crappy job at informing the public. He's even chastised Iowans for not getting on board the project, calling opponents "mossbacks". Yepsen simply has too big of a conflict of interest since he's so buddy-buddy with all these crooked politicians.

Because you can't talk to Senator Chuck Grassley about it and David Oman is nowhere to be seen, here are a list of questions I have compiled for the media in Iowa, particularly the Des Moines Register:

• Doesn't it disturb you that Senator Grassley wrote up a $50 million pork grant for fellow Republican and Grassley campaign contributor David Oman? Especially when we still have a huge budget deficit?
  
  
• Didn't it bother you when David Oman was caught after spending nearly $3 million of the grant money before his application had been submitted? Why weren't there any questions as to why Oman had access to this money?
  
  
• Who's going to repay that $3 million? Where did it go?
  
  
• Didn't it seem weird that Grassley re-wrote the $50 million pork grant bill to be potentially spent all over Iowa (as opposed to just Johnson County, as it was initially written) after Oman pulled out of Coralville following repeated inquiries by local supporters asking Oman how the project was going to be funded?
  
  
• How does a major construction project cost less, year after year? At first, the Rainforest was going to cost $280 million, then it was scaled back to $225 million, then $180 million, then $160 million, then $150 million, and now it's $140 million. What has changed? Has anybody looked at the plans to evaluate them?
  
  
• To break even on operating costs as an entity, this project would require over a million visitors a year. Pella has a population of about 10,000. It's 40 miles from Des Moines and more than 20 miles off Interstate 80. "If you build it, they will come" only happens in the movies. Doesn't this raise your eyebrows a little?
  
  
• I suspect much of Oman's grant application will likely be supplemented by mostly in-kind donations, something Grassley intentionally wrote into the grant earmark. This is not cash. These are freebees, usually billed at an abnormally high amount to fluff the numbers. This will not get the complex built. Why don't you question this vigorously?
  
  
• Where is the rest of the money to build the complex coming from? Even if the grant is approved with mostly in-kind donations, Oman won't have much cash on hand. Go talk to a banker or venture capitalist or financier about the likelihood of Oman getting a loan for the other $50-$90 million. Can you make a guess as to what that answer would be?
  
  
• We know that Governor Chet Culver and the Democratic-majority Iowa Legislature has no interest whatsoever in funding Grassley and Oman's rainforest. Without regular infusions of state taxpayer money or hooking it up next to a casino, how can it be done?

I could go on and on and on, but that's Being Skeptical 101.

Update: I will go on and on, here's some more obvious ones I missed:

• Not a single private individual or company (other than Ted Townsend) has pledged money. Why is that?
  
  
• How come the Coralville City Council, which mostly was in favor of the project there, could never get in touch with David Oman? Yet whenever there was a story on the rainforest the Des Moines Register always had his number?
  
  
• Senator Grassley seems awfully interested in auditing TV preachers as of late, but has anybody bothered to audit the Earthpark project?
  
  
• When the head guy says money for the project is right around the corner for year after year and year, but then no money materializes except in-kind donations from shifty-looking companies out of the Atlanta area, doesn't that look bad?
  
  
• 1 million visitors a year? Are they on crack? A million people in Iowa is more than the attendance at all the ISU and University of Iowa home football games, combined! A million people is double the annual attendance at Adventureland in Altoona. I heard central Iowa had a bit of an ice storm on Saturday, so many would show up then? Or how many are showing up on the coldest, darkest days of January and February when the ground is covered in snow and the temps sometimes barely get into the single digits above zero? And in the middle of summer, where would the kids rather go? Adventureland or Earthpark? Better yet, ask where the kids would rather go back to the next year.

That's it for now.