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.
Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley sided with his fellow Republican lawmakers Thursday to prevent the Senate from considering a $14 billion emergency bailout passed by the House for U.S. automakers.
Democrats failed to reach the 60 votes necessary to bring the bill to a vote, with the final roll call at 52-35.
Voting “yes” were 40 Democrats, 10 Republicans and 2 independents.
Voting “no” were 4 Democrats and 31 Republicans.
Grassley said the legislation is simply “throwing good taxpayer money after bad to companies that have dwindling assets.”
“There was a serious attempt to find a bipartisan agreement on this matter, but it was unsuccessful and the Democrat leadership decided to push ahead with the flawed House proposal which did not require the unions to renegotiate their contracts by a date certain, deal with a change in leadership, or curb compensation for corporate executives or union leaders,” Grassley said in a statement.
Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin sided with the majority of Demcorats and voted to consider the House bill.
General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC have said they can’t last the year without federal aid. The White House is now considering using funds from the existing $700 billion rescue program for financial firms to aid the automakers, saying it would be “irresponsible” to further weaken the economy by letting the Detroit car companies fail.
Grassley posted a YouTube video explaining his vote:
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