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] U.S. Rep. Steve King is behaving like Rodney Dangerfield's character in “Caddyshack.”
He so desperately wants to be in the country club crowd that he’s willing to say anything, do the bidding of the cocktail-and-croquet crowd, just to get into the front doors of the aptly named Bushwood (the name of the club in the 1980 movie).
King will even turn on his own just-folks working-class roots and make excuses for the oil industry, the Texas Tea Boys, over Iowa’s ethanol producers — the people he’s supposed to champion.
His bootlicking for Big Oil is so bad that King is now making excuses for the high price of gasoline, excuses that not even top oil officials used in a recent BusinessWeek story.
Record oil-company profits, opportunistic station owners and greedy Middle Easterners are widely viewed as the collective culprits behind higher prices at the gas pumps.
King, an Iowa Republican who frequently dismisses conventional wisdom in favor of fantasy, says consumers searching for villains behind soaring gas prices should look to “liberal environmentalists."
“Every day we are held hostage by environmental regulations that lead to high gas prices,” King says in an editorial published in some Iowa newspapers. “America is held hostage by environmental regulations that lead to high gas prices.”
Specifically, King believes liberals are preventing oil companies from building new refineries that would boost gas supply and reduce demand.
This is laughable. Big OIl has figured out a smarter way to use its profits to make more money.
In an in-depth piece in BusinessWeek, Exxon Mobile Chairman and CEO Rex W. Tillerson says flatly that his company won’t build a new refinery in the United States. The CEO doesn’t rip the green movement at all. He says the company has internal research showing that domestic gasoline consumption will level off as renewable fuels play a greater role.
In 2006 Exxon generated $49 billion in operating cash flow, money that could go into refineries.
“With gas prices hitting record heights, Exxon Mobile Corp. ought to be drilling like mad and refining more of that black gold, right?” reports BusinessWeek. “As it turns out the world’s largest oil producer thinks it is smarter to use more of its resources to buy back stock. The indirect result: increased pain at the pump for consumers.”
The buybacks jack up profits and benefit from higher commodity prices.
Exxon is building a $3.5 billion refinery in China with partners because the company believes demand for gasoline is more stable there, according to BusinessWeek.
We could put King's theory to a test: We can have a corporate exec in a suit stand next to a sandal-wearing environmentalist at a gas station. When someone has to pay more than $50 to fill his tank he gets one free punch. He can slug either the greenie or the Big Oil fat cat.
Who do you think is going to need more ice for his face at the end of the day?
We know where the blame lies, and King's tired arguments about "liberals" and the easy fix of drilling in Alaska are fooling no one.
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