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.
[Commentary] We’ll see how good the Hillary machine is at spinning this one.
The New York Times just published a memo on its Web site from a top Clinton official who makes the case that his candidate should skip our state entirely. To be fair, this is an internal memo (or was), and Mrs. Clinton will be campaigning here this weekend, and the next two, as well.
But in it there are a number of dismissive assessment of Iowa’s role, and we are more than a little protective of our proud history of vetting candidates for the presidency. For all the knocks on Iowa, bear in mind, we are among the most literate states with some of the best education systems, and candidates since the 1970s have come to expect informed questions.
The question now becomes: Is it worse to discuss blowing off Iowa, and then like A.J. Soprano in the middle of his suicide attempt on the HBO show, decide that you’d rather live ? or is better to have never raised the matter at all?
Let’s put it another way: If your husband or boyfriend issued a memo talking about the advantages of getting a divorce so he could sleep with other people, but then he decided against such a move, does that sit better with you than if he remained faithful all along?
When these memos are released it recalls the advice of an old Hollywood movie boss who never put any discussion on paper or on tape. When he died there wasn’t much to work with for a biography, but life is easier without leaks from the snakes in the grass.
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