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.
In his book “Fed Up!,” Texas Gov. Rick Perry called Social Security a Ponzi scheme and said it was unconstitutional, but now that he’s got his eye on the White House, Perry and his campaign are distancing from those statements.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Perry’s communications director, Ray Sullivan, had “never heard” of Perry’s views on Social Security and said that the book, which was released last November, was written “as a review and critique of 50 years of federal excesses, not in any way as a 2012 campaign blueprint or manifesto.”
In fact, when the book premiered in late fall of 2010, Perry went on the NBC Today Show in promotion of it, saying that the book, more than anything else and due to the controversial views he expresses in it, should be proof that he was not contemplating a run for the presidency.
“If there is a better signal of my plans for the future of not running for the Presidency of the United States, it’s this book,” Perry told Meredith Vieira in 2010. “Anyone running for the Presidency is not gonna go take on these issues with the power that I do.”
When asked if he saw a scenario in which his party came to him and asked him to run and he accepted, Perry again declined the concept, saying “I’m not running for the presidency of the United States. I’ve got the greatest job in the world.”
Yet, Perry has been telling audiences in Iowa and New Hampshire as part of his 2012 presidential campaign to read the book.
Video of the NBC interview is embedded below with the exchange about the book and his possible 2012 bid happening just after the two minute mark:
In the book, he calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” that was enacted by President Roosevelt “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”
He despises the New Deal, noting that the “era represents the second big step in the march of socialism and was the key to releasing the remaining constraints on the national government’s power grab in American history … FDR tried to change the way that citizens interacted with their government.”
The Supreme Court has ruled the program constitutional, and Perry now says he wants benefits for current beneficiaries and those about to retire “strongly protected,” and he said his aim is to make seek a program that is “fiscally responsible and actuarially sound.”
Lynda Waddington contributed to this report.
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