U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.com)

While he doubts Democrats can get a deal done before President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, “they’re going to really try to get it done.”

“But I’m telling you, when you look back at how many months the two committees in the Senate worked on it, and it took [Senate Majority Leader Harry] Reid six weeks to put a bill together between those two bills, and he did that in the secrecy of his office, and now they’re doing it in secret between the House and the Senate, I think they’ve got a big job,” he said. “They may do it, and they may not care if they do it right, just ’cause they want to get it done for public relations’ purposes real early.”

Democrats are working to merge very different versions of health care reform legislation passed by the U.S. House and Senate. Congress Daily reported early Thursday that Democrats could have a merged health reform bill to the Congressional Budget Office this weekend, much quicker than originally predicted.

Grassley said because Democrats have decided to shut Republicans out of the negotiation process, “there wouldn’t be much reason for any Republican to vote for it.”

There was certainly no shortage of “untruths” and political tall tales making the rounds during 2009, but none were more flagrant, pervasive or distracting than the five complied by Hannah Dreier of The Washington Independent.

There is no question that 2009 was an historic year for the Hawkeye State. From the Iowa Supreme Court decision in April legalizing same-sex marriage to Iowa’s U.S. senators becoming instrumental in the health care reform debate that raged in the nation’s capital to the Republicans with 2012 dreams looking for some caucus karma, there was no shortage of big stories in 2009.

But this isn’t about those stories. Quite the opposite, actually. This is about the stories that, for one reason or another, fell through the cracks, at least in Iowa. And while it’s far from an exhaustive list, it does show why a wide variety of media voices is important. More eyes on the hunt for the overlooked stories helps ensure they don’t remain overlooked forever.

Here are a few of Iowa’s most overlooked and under reported stories of 2009, as reported by The Iowa Independent.

Iowa’s coal ash rules could pose threat to public health

Over the course of 2009, The Iowa Independent meticulously laid out the problems with Iowa’s rules governing coal ash, eventually leading to the state’s largest public universities deciding to implement groundwater testing at the coal ash disposal site they share.

Can chemical abortions be linked to Midwestern ag?

Driving across a rural Iowa highway, anti-abortion signs are almost as common a sight as farmers spraying crops. Now there is a growing body of evidence linking the substances sprayed on fields to human reproductive health issues, including unintended abortions.

Farmer suicides spotlight lack of mental health care in rural America

The psychological attachment farm families feel for their land and livestock is one of the lessons of the 1980s farm crisis — a time when farmer suicides and rural violence made front page news across the nation. Back then, Iowa and Nebraska, two states severely impacted by the farm crisis, developed crisis hotlines designed specifically to serve the needs of agricultural workers. Today, in the wake of natural disasters and in the midst of economic uncertainty, the hotlines are experiencing a spike in activity, likely helping to prevent more tragedies.

Wells Fargo accused of racial discrimination in Des Moines lending practices

Research shows that minority homeowners in Des Moines are three times as likely to receive high-cost subprime mortgage loans from Wells Fargo & Co. as white homeowners.

U.S. Rep. Tom Latham catches flak for PAC-funded trips

More than 25 percent of funds raised by Rep. Tom Latham’s political action committee during the 2008 election cycle paid for trips to resorts around the country, including golf outings in West Virginia and a weekend getaway to Atlantic City, N.J.

Iowa study finds worrisome arsenic levels in private water wells

A two-year study found that the Hawkeye State’s rural private drinking water wells “have several contaminant problems, some long-standing and some emerging.”And while nitrate and bacteria detections were expected despite efforts to address such contamination, the presence of arsenic was potentially worrisome.

Although rural families facing economic hardship are located throughout the nation, states like Iowa that have a crisis hotline geared to agriculture workers are best prepared to meet the behavioral health needs of this population. (Iowa photo courtesy USDA NCRS)

“I’ve spoken with people from the states of Oklahoma, Utah and Colorado — and that has just been in the last week,” said Dr. Mike Rosmann, executive director of Harlan-based AgriWellness.

Along with Iowa State University Extension, AgriWellness operates the Sowing the Seeds of Hope program, which provides residents in seven states a support hotline and up to five free visits with a counselor that can help with martial and family conflict, financial concerns, general stress and overall crisis situations. The program is geared toward rural patients and is open to families who do not have mental health coverage or are under-insured.

A global economic crisis and significant fluctuations in commodity markets have severely impacted agricultural interests throughout the nation, and crises related to unmet behavioral health needs are affecting farming communities everywhere. But evidence suggests that states like Iowa, where an assistance network is already in place, have avoided the worst of it.

“In the other states, agencies get calls from rural people who don’t know who they can speak with or where they can go to get assistance,” Rosmann explained. “It was difficult for states to provide behavioral health services before, but now, because of financial difficulties, the number of farmers and ranchers who need assistance is growing and, without a hotline and additional services like our Sowing the Seeds of Hope in place, states are scrambling to meet these needs.”

Although other states began contacting Rosmann and AgriWellness about two years ago about providing similar programs, interest has intensified over the past year, coinciding with increased financial strain in several agricultural sectors. While Rosmann can offer advice about operating mental health services for rural residents, the one question he does not know the answer to is how states will find the money to fund the services.

“Although the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network has been authorized as a part of the Farm Bill, Congress has unfortunately not made appropriations for it,” Rosmann said.

With federal appropriations in place, the program would have made competitive grants available through extension services to establish hotline services as well as provide behavioral health care access in the nation’s most geographically rural areas. Without the funding, individual states must use their own resources to begin outreach and assistance to rural areas — a task made more difficult by strained state budgets nationwide.

“We are still hopeful that a federal appropriation will come through. Without it, I just don’t see how these other states are going to be able to get the ball rolling,” Rosmann said.

Although appropriations were not contained in either the U.S. House or Senate versions of the relevant appropriations bill, U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said Thursday morning that he will continue to fight for the program both through the appropriations bill conference and through direct negotiations with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“In Iowa we have things like Sowing the Seeds of Hope, which is a program available to farmers. Farmers in other states might not be so fortunate,” Harkin said by phone. “That’s why I’m going to continue to fight for funding for this as it moves through conference. I recognize the need to provide this, and I’m going to continue to fight for it.

“I’ve got to tell you that getting the funding is going to be an uphill battle, but I’m going to do everything I can because I remember what happened in the 1980s and I don’t want a repeat of that — where farmers were committing suicide and families were breaking up because of the undue stress that happened in the 1980s. And, for a meager amount of money, you can provide a lot of assistance to farmers and ranchers who are in real trouble.”

Specifically, Harkin is hoping to redirect money that is either already included in the farm appropriations bills or at the disposal of the USDA.

“I hope we can be successful,” Harkin added. “As I said, we know it is needed. We learned from the 1980s that some of these things can be very, very helpful in getting people through a rough patch. I just can’t tell you whether or not we will be successful or not, but we’ll do our best and see what happens. … We know we have some hurdles, but we’re going to continue to try.”

As we reported last week:

In April, a Polk County judge ordered the Board of Pharmacy to at least consider whether marijuana has any acceptable medical uses. Last month, the board ruled that it did not have enough evidence to reclassify marijuana.

A state Senate subcommittee held a hearing in March on a bill sponsored by Sen. Joe Bolkcom of Iowa City that would have created the Medical Marijuana Act, allowing the possession and use of marijuana for therapeutic purposes. The bill, Senate File 293, never made it out of subcommittee.

The Register’s Tony Leys has the news from today’s meeting:

Iowa pharmacy regulators will hold a series of public hearings, starting next month, about whether the state should legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

The Iowa Board of Pharmacy, which previously has expressed doubts about the idea, voted unanimously Tuesday to hold hearings on the issue. After the hearings, it will decide whether to make a recommendation to the Legislature next spring.

Barbour took over for Sanford as chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association after Sanford admitted Wednesday that his recent unexplained disappearance was the result of an extramarital affair with a woman in Argentina.

Despite recent polling that shows half of South Carolina residents think Sanford should resign, and 45 percent support impeachment, Barbour said he believes the governor should stay.

“I don’t live in South Carolina, so my opinion doesn’t matter,” he told a group of reporters. “He’s been a good governor for the state. He has served the state well. He made a mistake he’s admitted was wrong. I just don’t see it as a hanging offense.”

Marek said same-sex marriage is a highly emotional issue on both sides of the debate. The best way he says he can represent all of his constitutions is to see that the issue goes before the citizens of Iowa on a ballot.

“There are a lot of tough decisions to be made,” Marek noted, “and emotional feelings involved. I try to do what’s best for the area, with some people happy and some unhappy.”

If his position was characterized accurately, it would mark another disagreement between Marek and his party’s leaders in the House.  During the 2009 session, Marek helped kill union-backed legislation that would have required state-funded public works projects to pay a “prevailing wage” to workers.  House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, felt the bill was so important that he kept the voting machine open for an entire weekend, hoping Marek or another “no” vote might switch.

Marek lives in Washington County, where Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly 2,000 registered voters. Among Democratic state representatives, his district is arguably one of the most conservative.

(h/t John Deeth)

U.S. Rep. Steve King

But all that could vanish with a single sentence: “I’m Congressman Steve King and I want to be Iowa’s next governor.”

The Democratic salivating began in February when King, a Republican from Kiron, refused to rule out a gubernatorial run on Iowa Public Television. It’s escalated to full-frontal lip smacking with news that King, whose congressional district covers western Iowa, plans to headline an anti-abortion event in eastern Iowa next week.

Residents of eastern Iowa, who have never had an opportunity to cast a ballot based on their displeasure of King’s extreme social conservative viewpoints, are especially relishing the idea of being able to vote against “the state’s cancer,” as King has been referred to on more than one occasion.

“It’s never enough to just limit cancer,” explained Allan Hale, a resident of Ely. “You have to eradicate it. You have to destroy it. If you don’t, it will fester and spread. Even if I’ve never had a chance to vote against him, his policies and his stupidity impact me.”

Those that believe such statements to be too inflammatory for proper political discourse need look no further than King’s own statements.

“What kind of a nation are we if we can’t have open dialog?” King asked members of the Sioux City Rotary Club last year while defending his own controversial rhetoric.

Mike Carberry, a Johnson County Democrat, likens the Democratic want of a persona like King on the 2010 gubernatorial ballot with the same push Republican pundits gave to then-New York Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

“They saw her candidacy as an opportunity to motivate their base because of all the negative bias against her,” Carberry said. “This is the same principle.

“Steve King never misses an opportunity to embarrass himself or Iowa. While our state used to be known as the place of corn and hogs, now we are nationally associated with ignorance and intolerance because of King. The bottom line is that Iowans will line up to vote against him.”

Even within the predominantly conservative counties that make up Iowa’s 5th Congressional District, some residents have not only voted against King, but created a Web site declaring that King does not represent Iowa values. The group points to King’s continued quest to raise his congressional pay, his inability to pass a major federal bill, and even his possible quest at a gubernatorial run as reasons King should be known as an ineffective lawmaker and an embarrassment to the entire state.

When King described military service members who married foreign spouses as drunks on binge — in addition to saying that foreign widows of fallen U.S. soldiers exploit the U.S. immigration system — the former president of the Reserve Officers Association of Iowa said that King “wraps himself in the flag at every opportunity, and yet has chosen to malign the loved ones of deceased service members.”

Such statements, which King himself has described as calculated, have drawn to his side a negative national following as well. When he declared in March 2005 that “Congress created all of the courts” and that “whatever Congress gives, they can take away,” he came under intense scrutiny.

Nearly every feminist in the world tied King to a verbal whipping post in June 2006 when he said that deceased terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi probably wouldn’t have “72 virgins in the hell he’s at,” but, “if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas,” referring to the legendary White House correspondent of more than five decades.

From describing the events at Abu Ghraib as “hazing,” to describing war-torn Iraq as safer than Washington, D.C., to equating immigrant people with livestock, to proclaiming that terrorists and their sympathizers would be “dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11,” 2001 if Barack Obama was elected president, King has touched nearly every public interest group with a sharp tongue.

Although the eastern Iowa event featuring King is an anti-abortion “educational” meeting hosted by Linn Area Pro Life United at the Crowne Plaza in Cedar Rapids on April 6, King even has his dissenters within that community.

“He takes every opportunity he can to put down the poor and the oppressed and expresses only what we consider contempt for the people whom Jesus said ‘are the least of these,’” Frank Cordaro, a former Catholic priest and human rights activist, said in February when King spoke at the statehouse on behalf of a Catholic-backed gathering of anti-abortion activists. “It humiliates Catholics who work among and struggle for the poor and disenfranchised in this state.”

When looking at King’s motivations for wanting to headline an event on the opposite side of the state from his congressional district, there is no denying the possible longer term impact of reapportionment and redistricting, which will almost certainly include the loss of one of Iowa’s federal representatives in 2012. While it is much more likely that Democrats Bruce Braley, who represents the 1st District, and Dave Loebsack, who represents the 2nd, will be placed in the same congressional district, there remains a possibility, depending on how the new four districts are drawn, that King and fellow Republican Tom Latham could reside in a newly drawn district.

It would be close to impossible, however, to draw a district that would include King’s home in Kiron with Cedar Rapids, the site of King’s upcoming appearance. Given that, there is no reason to place King’s visit in connection with redistricting concerns.

“The chances of seeing a district slice across the center of the state like that are extremely slim,” said David Redlawsk, a political science professor at the University of Iowa. “The code charges that districts should be compact, and although the exact meaning of ‘compact’ has been debated, I think that a district spanning from one side of the state to the other would clearly not meet that goal.”

Any political capital King might garner from his upcoming eastern Iowa visit could only be spent on a statewide race — which can only be described as music to the ears of Iowa Democrats.

The newspaper received an e-mail from “a friend under the Golden Dome” detailing a testy exchange between Culver and U.S Sen. Tom Harkin. Apparently Culver was upset at Harkin’s comments at last week’s hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wondering how state inspectors had allowed the Atalissa situation “to go on year after year after year.” The two Democrats had some less than cordial words, and eventually Culver apologized, several sources said.

But that is just the tip of the iceberg, according to Cityview –

The e-mail goes on: “Culver’s blow-up with Harkin is one in a series of recent eruptions that have some of us in the Statehouse wondering if he’ll make it through November of 2010, or self-destruct. While his overly defensive shouting at [Register columnist David] Yepsen when he released his budget in January is one public example, what is going on behind closed doors, over the phone and via e-mail is said to be worse. He’s desperately looking for a pound of flesh over Atalissa….Morale in his own office seems to be at an all-time low because…there is no collegiality between him and his staff, just the barking of orders and threats. And while he has some good veterans around him, he all but ignores people who might have advice based on experience for people who simply respond ‘how much?’ when he yells “shit.’”

In February, Culver issued an executive order creating the Dependent Adult Task Force. Its mission is to investigate Henry’s Turkey Service, a company that for the 34 years brought dozens of men with mental retardation from Texas to work for West Liberty Foods. The company acted as landlord, caregiver and employer, with the men living in a “bunkhouse” with no heating system and boarded-up windows, and paid them as little as 44 cents an hour. State and federal officials are investigating for possible labor law violations.

The group has launched a Web site, Watchin’ Reid, with the goal of ousting the senator from his seat in 2010.

AFF’s spokesman, Tim Albrecht, told The Washington, D.C., Examiner that the site will highlight Reid’s public gaffes and “demonstrate that he’s taking the Senate down a much more liberal path that does not line up with the rest of the country.”

American Future Fund spent about $10 million targeting Democratic Senate candidates across the country during the 2008 election cycle, with limited success. Because it is organized as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, it does not have to disclose its donors and is not subject to oversight by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC).

Its political action committee (PAC), which is officially operating the Reid Web site since nonprofits are barred from directly advocating for or against a candidate, had a little more than $1,000 cash on hand and $2,000 in debts as of Jan. 1, according to documents filed with the FEC. During the 2008 cycle, the PAC never raised more than a few thousand dollars.

An Iowa Independent investigation last year found that the group is led by a cadre of of influential Iowa Republicans as well as media consultants who played key roles in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads in 2004 and the Willie Horton ad in 1988. The group is also mainly comprised of former aides to Mitt Romney’s failed presidential campaign.