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.
Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller is urging the U.S. Senate to support and pass legislation that would create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Miller made his views known on a media conference call along with the attorneys general from the states of Connecticut, Illinois and Ohio to press for Senate passage of legislation that has already cleared the U.S. House.
Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller
“The senators have to ask themselves: What side are you on? The side of the public, or the side of the big banks?” Miller said Tuesday.
Insisting that a federal-level failure led to the subprime mortgage crisis, which, in turn, led to the nation’s worst financial crisis of 75 years, Miller said that future oversight and enforcement must be completed by an independent agency, the federal consumer protection agency.
Lisa Madigan, attorney general for neighboring Illinois, noted that in the past nine years federal authorities have only generated 11 enforcement cases against predatory lenders. During the same time frame state prosecutors have dealt with more than 8,000 such cases against the lenders.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve have treated consumer protection as a “step-child,” according to Miller, who said that the agencies focused on protecting banks and lenders instead of the public.
All the state law enforcement officials called for members of the U.S. Senate to see through the “millions of dollars” being spent by banks to kill progress toward the new oversight agency. Without such independent oversight, they warned, the nation is poised to once again place its trust in federal agencies that failed the public previously and will do so again.
Congressional Republicans, who have argued that the new agency would be too costly, have threatened to filibuster the legislation. Indicating that the cost of doing nothing would be far greater than the cost of creating and maintaining the new consumer protection agency, Miller indicated that leadership should call the minority party’s bluff.
“Let these senators be seen by the people, where they stand,” he said. “Why are they against this common sense bill? They only way we are going to win is if the people rise up.”
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