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 beginning of the end for U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., was when he left his home state and took up residence in the Hawkeye State, at least according to Hartford Courant columnist Jim Shea.
U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and his family (file photo)
Dodd held a press conference at his home Wednesday making his retirement from the Senate official. He will not seek a sixth term in office, and recent polling indicates even if he didn’t retire he’d likely be out of a job by November.
But back in 2007, with his home-state popularity still high, Dodd entered the Democratic presidential primary. And while Connecticut voters initially had no problem with Dodd seeking the country’s highest office, his campaign, and the subsequent move his family made to Iowa in October 2007, marked the beginning of his constituency souring on him.
From the Courant:
Dodd’s problem was that he became the guest who wouldn’t leave after the party was over. Things were turning sour in Connecticut, and the folks wanted him back home, not taking up residence half a country away.
Iowa was the first white cap in a brewing perfect storm.
As The Washington Independent’s Mike Lillis points out, the presidential campaign was quickly overshadowed in Connecticut by a number of other issues.
Then the money started pouring in from Wall Street — and it didn’t help that, as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Dodd was on the campaign trail through much of 2008 as the economy was toppling under the weight of Wall Street’s collapse.
Then came more revelations of Dodd’s connections to the banking industry. In summer of 2008, Portfolio magazine reported that Dodd had been given preferential rates when he refinanced two mortgages through Countrywide Financial. In February of last year, the Hartford Courant uncovered that another industry connection had yielded Dodd a sweetheart deal on a vacation cottage in Ireland. One month later, he was embroiled in the AIG bonus scandal — and it didn’t matter that it was the White House, not Dodd, that was culpable for allowing those bonuses to be paid. The populist champion was morphing into a baron of industry.
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