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.
The general manager of La Prensa, a western Iowa Spanish-language newspaper with a growing voice, says he believes U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, has a pattern of “taking rhetorical shots” at Hispanics.
“I don’t think he justifies his reasons,” says Carlos A. Arguello, the general manager of the newspaper, tells Iowa Independent.
Arguello’s comments come as the immigration issue is again moving the forefront in Congress.
A native of Nicaragua who moved to the United States at age 7, Arguello now holds a degree from the University of Northern Iowa.
Western Iowa Hispanics, who helped Iowa with workforce issues in the years after the Farm Crisis, but don’t have legal status, should be recognized for their contributions to the economy, Arguello said.
“I think people who have been here for that long are as American as you and I,” Arguello said.
In an infamous PR stunt, King went to the House floor last year to display the model of a wall the Kiron Republican said he personally designed for the U.S. border with Mexico.
King said the same tactic employed to manage livestock could be used with his border plan – and he made two livestock references in talking about the wall.
“That was degrading,” Arguello said.
King had to more say on the matter during his show-and-tell time on the House floor.
“We need to do a few other things on top of that wall, and one of them being to put a little bit of wire on top here to provide a disincentive for people to climb over the top or put a ladder there.” King said in displaying his design. “We could also electrify this wire with the kind of current that would not kill somebody, but it would be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it. We do that with livestock all the time.”
Speaking at a Republican fund-raiser in Crawford County last year King compared illegal immigrants to stray cats, say Republican sources in that county.
At the event, King joked that his wife recently had taken in a stray cat.
King reportedly then compared illegal immigrants to the stray cats that wind up on people’s porches, say the Crawford County Republican sources who were outraged at the statement.
According to the sources who were at the King event, the congressman said that at first stray cats help you by chasing mice, so you feed them. Then King added that the stray cats have kittens and of course you like them because they are cute but eventually the strays, who are being fed by you, get lazy, just like illegal immigrants.
According to CongressDaily, immigration subcommittee ranking member King staged a mini-revolt this month when House Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., would not allow him to seat a non-government witness on a government panel. In a fit of defiance, he listed himself as the witness instead. “I had said to my staff that I want [NumbersUSA Executive Director] Roy Beck sitting there, and if they order him out of that chair, then I’ll go testify,” King told CongressDaily.
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