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 House of Representatives passed an education appropriations bill by a vote of 55-42 Tuesday which includes cuts to nearly everything education related; such as libraries, preschool, schools for the blind and deaf, community colleges and public universities.
In the bill, H.F. 645, community colleges would lose $9,217,831, or a decrease of 6 percent to their general education budget.
In addition to cuts to various offices and public radio, the Regents universities would lose a more than $40 million to their general education funding, creating a average of 7.5 percent cut to each university. The Board of Regents passed an average increase of tuition of 5 percent in March, however, some programs would face tuition increases of 40 percent–the highest in the nation.
Cuts to the college student aid commission would eliminate the “Teacher Shortage Forgivable Loan” and cut $3.6 million from the tuition grant program. It would create an appropriation for Des Moines University’s health care professional recruitment, amounting to the only increase of $349,699 to the student aid commission.
The statewide voluntary preschool budget of $12.2 million in slashed, and a new preschool program is added at the cost of $33.6 million. Every line item of the Department of Education’s budget is cut, but because of that addition in preschool, the overall budget for the department increases by $414,485.
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