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 U.S. Senate successfully voted to override the presidential veto of the new farm bill Thursday. The veto override passed by a vote of 85-13, far exceeding the necessary two-thirds majority.The action would have effectively made the entire $286 billion bill into law, if not for a technical error by the House of Representatives on Wednesday. The House voted Wednesday to override the president’s veto, but just hours later it was revealed that one of the titles of the bill had not been included in the copy sent to President Bush.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said that the technical error is just a minor problem and that it will be solved soon. “I just want to make sure that there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind now, 14 of the 15 titles of this farm bill are now the law of the land. We don’t require anybody else’s signature,” said Harkin on the Senate floor. “We do have one little glitch. I think (it’s) probably an innocent mistake, a clerical error, that Title 3 was not included and we’ll deal with that at some other point.”
Harkin said he has been in contact with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and USAID (Agency for International Development), one of the programs that falls under Title 3 of the farm bill. “They tell me, have told my staff, that basically they could get by [for] two weeks without us having to do anything,” said Harkin.
Congress will be on a two-week recess for the Memorial Day holiday starting next week.
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