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 Iowa man who filed a lawsuit last week against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over this year’s federal health care reform is one of just a handful across the country, according to a libertarian legal scholar.
In Missouri, the lieutenant governor and three other citizens have filed suit against the federal law, specifically challenging the mandate requiring citizens to purchase insurance. The Thomas More Law Center filed a suit challenging the same mandate on behalf of four Michigan residents. And in Arizona, the Goldwater Institute plans to file a suit against the law.
In addition to those cases and a couple other citizens’ challenges, attorney generals in 21 states have signed on to lawsuits against the law. Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller says he wont’ join the effort, while his Republican opponent has promised to.
Ilya Shapiro, who studies constitutional law at the libertarian think-tank Cato Institute, says cases filed on behalf of individuals differ from those filed by state governments. Individuals have a better standing to challenge the individual mandate, an oft-criticized measure of the legislation.
“If you haven’t been harmed, you can’t bring suit because you don’t like things,” Shapiro told The Iowa Independent. “Individuals have stronger power to challenge the individual mandate because they’re being affected. States have strong standing to challenge other aspects of the health care law such as how it effects their agencies or budgets or otherwise infringes on prerogatives that are left to the state under the 10th amendment.”
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