Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Abstinence-only funding through Title V, Section 510 has been on life-support since June. Today it seems that Congress is prepared to unplug the equipment.
Officials in the office of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have confirmed that language regarding the reauthorization of the program — previously attached to the Children’s Health Insurance Program bill by the U.S. House — was not included in the final language of the compromise bill issued today. The action leaves Congress a nine-day window to reauthorize this stream of federal funding for abstinence only education.
The Iowa Department of Health receives roughly $318,000 in yearly funding through Title V, Section 510. Nationwide, the program provides more than $40 million a year in matching funds to states. The state hardest hit, if the program expires on Sept. 30, is Texas, which garnered nearly $5 million for state-run and/or state-approved abstinence-only sex education programs. The program allows states to reissue funds to community-based programs that, in turn, provide abstinence-only education to schools, civic groups, churches and parents.
Before a recent $600,000 grant to Bethany Christian Services of Northwest Iowa from the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (Family Youth Services Bureau) was announced, Title V was the only federal funding stream for abstinence only education in the state of Iowa. The grant to Bethany is non-matching and will be used to pay for a project titled “Keyed-In to Abstinence.”
The prospect of Title V, Section 510 language surviving the conference committee of the U.S. House and Senate was dim from the beginning. In addition to reauthorizing the program for another five years, members of the House changed federal guidelines that govern not only that particular funding stream for abstinence education, but also all three streams of funding. The new guidelines were less strict and called for information distributed through the programs to be medically accurate and research-based — something Republican legislators have previously opposed.
As it stands now, however, even if this avenue of funding expires, the original guidelines remain in place for the remaining two streams — Community-Based Abstinence Education, originally known as Special Projects of Regional and National Significance-Community-Based Abstinence Education, and the Adolescent Family Life Act, a part of Title XX. Under Title V funding, states ultimately decided which programs received funding. For both CBAE and AFLA, however, all decisions bypass the state approval process. Between the remaining two programs, the federal government distributes more than $120 million.
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