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.
After serving Iowans for 30 years in Congress, Jim Leach’s professional life outside the beltway doesn’t appear to be slowing down. Leach, a Republican who lost his Second District congressional seat to Democratic rival Dave Loebsack of Mount Vernon last November, was unanimously voted chairman of Common Cause’s National Governing Board on Monday.
Leach replaced Denver lawyer Martha Tierney, who has been serving as interim chairwoman. Leach is currently the interim director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is on leave from Princeton University, where he is the John L. Weinberg Visiting Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. Leach serves on the board of several public companies and three nonprofit organizations – the Century Foundation, the Kettering Foundation, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and formerly served as a trustee of Princeton University.
Leach’s tenure in Congress was also marked by concern for the democratic process issues that are the hallmark of Common Cause. He championed campaign reform and pressed for a system of public financing of elections. In his own campaigns, Leach refused to accept political action committee contributions or donations from outside of Iowa.
Common Cause recently stepped up its efforts in Iowa leading up to the presidential caucuses Jan. 3 with a newsprint media ad campaign, “It’s Time to Take the Money Out of Circulation,” geared toward raising voter awareness on the issue of campaign finance reform and encouraging voters to ask presidential candidates stumping in Iowa where they stand on the issue.
The ad pictures all of the candidates and says whether they have submitted written promises to work in support of public financing of elections. On the Democrat side, all of the presidential hopefuls, except Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, had made this commitment in writing before the ads first appeared in print Sunday.
Since then, Richardson has released written statement indicating he supports public financing of campaigns, including the Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections (VOICE) Act (HF 805), which died in a House Appropriations subcommittee during the 2007 session.
“As Governor of New Mexico, as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President of the Untied States and, most importantly, as an American citizen, I fully endorse the Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections Act, HF 805, and I applaud the efforts of Rep. Pam Jochum and Sen. Mike Connolly in moving this legislation forward,” Richardson wrote in the letter to the Dubuque County Democratic Central Committee.
None of the Republican candidates has made a written commitment to public financing of elections, and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is the only candidate who has stated his opposition to public financing.
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