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.
A spokesman for the politically-influential Christian organization Iowa Family Policy Center told The Des Moines Register’s Rekha Basu Wednesday that the group has decided to forgo the last year of federal funding it has been receiving through subsidiaries of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Andy Kopsa reported last week for The Iowa Independent that the group, which has been a leading voice of opposition to same-sex marriage in Iowa, has received more than $3 million in federal grants between 2004 and 2009. It is still set to receive $550,000 through the U.S. Healthy Marriage Demonstration Fund in 2011.
The money IFPC receives apparently goes to a marriage-counseling program called Marriage Matters, which offers couples weekends along with marriage and pre-marital mentoring.
From Basu’s column:
[IFPC] officials announced this week they’ll forgo the final year of funding. “I’ve got to ask myself, is it government’s inherent purpose to hire a guy to help people’s marriages?” says [Marriage Matters Program Director Mike] Hartwig. So what changed? “The organization has grown up,” said spokesman Bryan English. He said the decision was made at a board meeting in September, but just hadn’t been announced yet.
A representative of the U.S. Healthy Marriage program in Washington, D.C., told The Iowa Independent that certain overlap in spending might occur between the grantee (IFPC) and contractor programs (Marriage Matters), although not technically allowed. Marriage Matters is not registered with Iowa Secretary of State as a separate corporation, but rather as a registered trademark of the Iowa Family Policy Center. Mike Hartwig, Bryan English, Marriage Matters, The Iowa Family Policy Center and the IFPC Action PAC all share office space at 1100 N. Hickory Blvd. in Pleasant Hill, and Hartwig is paid a salary as vice president of IFPC.
But Basu concludes that even if IFPC is following the letter of the law, “it doesn’t pass the smell test.”
Whether it’s one or two organizations, the Iowa Family Policy Center has an explicit social and religious agenda that some Iowans find discriminatory at best and hateful at worst. Since the federal government doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, this may not be a federal civil-rights violation. But it’s certainly out of sync with Iowa.
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