A public vote on marriage equality is years away in Iowa, but next Tuesday, Maine residents will vote on Proposition 1, an effort to overturn civil marriage rights for gays and lesbians. Several polls have shown narrow leads for the No on 1 campaign, which is trying to protect marriage equality. However, Stand for Marriage Maine has been well-funded and is running a pretty good closing television ad for the “yes” position.

Meanwhile, Washington state voters are considering Referendum 71, which would “retain the domestic partnership laws that were passed during this year’s legislative session, including using sick leave to care for a partner, adoption rights, insurance rights, and more.”

In addition, next Tuesday voters in Kalamazoo, Michigan will decide next Tuesday whether to overturn a local ordinance for housing, employment, and public accommodation protections for gay and transgender residents.

Phone-bankers are needed in Maine and Washington, and on-the-ground volunteers are needed in Kalamazoo.

If you don’t have the time or inclination to volunteer, please consider donating to any or all of these efforts at this ActBlue page.

After the jump I’ve cross-posted information from the Courage Campaign with more details on the ballot initiatives in Maine, Washington and Kalamazoo.

Iowans who support equality should step up during the next five days. We may need help from groups like the Courage Campaign if Republicans are able to push a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage through the Iowa Legislature.

This afternoon Governor Chet Culver announced the next steps toward cutting $565 million from the 2010 budget. I’ve posted the governor’s statement after the jump, and you can find pdf files with more details about the cuts here. (UPDATE: The Des Moines Register posted this chart showing the cuts Culver approved.) Highlights:

Culver is ordering all of the 3,258 non-contract (that is, non-union) employees in the executive branch “to take seven days without pay between now and the end of the fiscal year. I do not believe it is fair for any state employee to not contribute toward our solution.”

Culver approved spending cut plans submitted by 28 department heads and approved, with minor changes, spending cut plans submitted by 6 other department heads. The Des Moines Register’s Jennifer Jacobs summarized the impact:

Altogether, the 34 approved plans will save the state’s general fund about $520 million, he said.

The approved plans call for a total of 180 layoffs and the elimination of 229 open positions. The total job loss, so far, is 410.

Here’s where there the layoffs will be: 79 from the Department of Human Services, 35 from the Department of Revenue, 10.8 from the Department of Inspections and Appeals,  13 from the Department of Education, eight from Iowa Public Television, eight from the Department of Public Health, seven from the Department of Economic Development, seven from the Department of Cultural Affairs, four from the Department of Administration, four from the Department of Management, two from the Alcoholic Beverages Division, two from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and one from the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board.

Forty-three state employees tentatively set for layoffs in the Department of Commerce will be spared. The 10 percent across-the-board cut will not be applied to the divisions of banking, credit union, insurance and utilities divisions, which are agencies within the commerce department.

Culver rejected the $45 million spending reduction plans offered by the directors of the Department of Corrections and the Department of Public Safety, saying,

I reject these two plans because I am hopeful that we can find an alternative to laying off hundreds of correctional officers, state troopers and law enforcement personnel.

I am rejecting these plans because public safety is essential to our daily lives.

That is why yesterday I sent a letter to the state’s three bargaining units – AFSCME, Iowa United Professionals, and the State Police Officers Council – who represent more than 16,000 state employees – asking them to join me in negotiations for amending their current contract.  This past Saturday, I met with AFSCME’s bargaining unit – which represents more than 13,000 state employees – to discuss ideas for moving forward.  We followed that meeting with a three hour session yesterday morning and the talks have been very productive.  And earlier today, I met with the State Police Officers Council representatives and those talks were productive.  Finally, I will meet with the Iowa United Professionals union leadership as soon as schedules permits, but our staff has been in daily contact with their representatives.

I seek substantive discussions with all three unions on issues that may impact our state budget cuts.  Our goal is to do everything we can to prevent layoffs related to essential public safety.

If we cannot reach agreement with the unions, then I will implement the layoff plans submitted by these two departments.

Unfortunately, we do not have an endless amount of time in which to reach an agreement and to have it ratified by each respective union. I expect to know by Friday, November 6 whether we will move forward in discussions with the unions or implement the layoff plans.

The president of AFSCME Council 61 issued a statement saying his union will negotiate with the governor in the hope of avoiding layoffs. Both sides are promising not to release any details about the discussion until the talks conclude, but no doubt some proposed alternatives to layoffs will leak out before then.

The Des Moines Register’s Tom Beaumont covered Republican gubernatorial candidates’ ideas for cutting the budget here.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

First-term Democratic State Senator Bill Heckroth of Waverly announced yesterday that he will seek re-election in Iowa Senate district 9, which includes Butler and Bremer counties, along with parts of Black Hawk and Fayette counties. After the jump I’ve posted Heckroth’s press release, containing background on his career and his achievements in the legislature.

Senate district 9 is one of the Iowa GOP’s better pickup opportunities next year. Traditionally, Republicans have had a voter registration edge in this district, although I don’t know the current numbers. Republican Bob Brunkhorst represented Senate district 9 before retiring in 2006. Heckroth won the open-seat contest against Tom Hoogestraa by a reasonably comfortable margin of 1,346 votes, or 52.4 percent to 46.5 percent (pdf file). Then again, 2006 was a Democratic wave election.

Heckroth’s opponent next year will be Bill Dix, who announced his candidacy yesterday. Dix spent ten years in the Iowa House representing district 17, which makes up half of Senate district 9 and includes all of Butler plus part of Bremer county. Click here for state legislative district maps.

Dix rose to the level of Iowa House Appropriations Committee chairman. When Jim Nussle ran for governor in 2006, Dix sought the Republican nomination in the first Congressional district. He came up short against Mike Whalen in the GOP primary, but did well in the counties that are in Senate district 9 (pdf file), especially Butler County. Dix has been working at his family farm since 2006, but he told Charlotte Eby that the state’s budget problems “caused me to say we need to fix the mess, and I’m excited about coming and bringing what I can to put Iowa back on the right track.”

Ed Failor of Iowans for Tax Relief attended Dix’s press conference yesterday, which suggests that this statehouse campaign will be a fundraising priority for Republicans and their interest-group allies.

For those in northeast Iowa who want to get involved with Heckroth’s re-election campaign, he has listed contact phone numbers and e-mail addresses in the press release after the jump. That release also has details on Heckroth’s upcoming campaign kick-off events in Oelwein on November 8, in Waverly on November 9, and in Allison on November 12.  

I heard it first from Bleeding Heartland user mirage, and now IowaPolitics.com confirms that State Senator Brad Zaun is thinking about challenging Representative Leonard Boswell in Iowa’s third Congressional district next year. Zaun was mayor of Urbandale, a heavily Republican suburb of Des Moines, before winning a hard-fought race in Iowa Senate district 32 in 2004. He was re-elected to a four-year term in 2008, so he wouldn’t risk losing his seat in the upper chamber by running against Boswell.

According to IowaPolitics.com, Zaun will decide in the next few weeks whether to run:

Zaun said Boswell’s speaking out against cap-and-trade legislation this past summer but then voting for it concerned him and sparked his interest in a run for Congress.

“I’m frustrated because I think Leonard as well as so many other elected officials in Washington, D.C. don’t listen to their constituents and don’t represent where their constituents are on issues,” Zaun said. “Most elected officials in Washington, D.C. are out of touch with people they represent.”

Zaun is vice president of R&R Realty and has not yet formed an exploratory committee for the U.S. House. He said his biggest consideration on whether to run is his family. He and his wife have five kids ages 22, 21, 18, 13 and 11. “I’ve had long, long conversations with my wife,” he said.

Conservative and corporate-funded groups ran advertisements against Boswell this summer after he voted for the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

IowaPolitics.com also quoted Mike Mahaffey, a former chairman of the Iowa GOP, as saying “he’ll decide by next week whether he will run” against Boswell. He’s been thinking about the race for several months. Mahaffey was the Republican candidate in IA-03 the first time Boswell won the district in 1996. However, the district was quite different then and did not include Polk County.

Some political analysts, like Isaac Wood and Larry Sabato, consider IA-03 potentially competitive but give a strong advantage to the incumbent. CQ Politics is among the odds-makers who consider IA-03 a “safe Democratic” seat. I tend to agree that Boswell is not vulnerable in 2010. Republicans ran hard against him in 2002, 2004 and 2006 but came up short.

If this race did become competitive, I think a challenger with a strong base in Polk County, like Zaun, would stand a better chance than someone from one of the smaller counties in the district. Mahaffey is from Montezuma in Poweshiek County. But if Zaun doesn’t run, Mahaffey has the connections to put together a stronger campaign than the two currently declared candidates, Dave Funk and Pat Bertroche.

Good news, part 1: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced yesterday that the health care bill he’ll bring up on the Senate floor will have a public health insurance option. That means opponents of the public option will have to try to strip out the measure with amendments on the Senate floor. They don’t have 60 votes to do that.

Good news, part 2: at yesterday’s press conference, Reid “definitively stated that a trigger bill wouldn’t get a [Congressional Budget Office] score – effectively taking it off the table as a legislative option.” The insurance industry and its allies in Congress, including Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, have pushed the “trigger” idea because it would virtually guarantee that the public option would never go into effect.

Bad news, part 1: Reid’s compromise would allow states to opt out of the public health insurance option, and limits participation in the public plan in many other ways too.

Bad news, part 2: At crunch time, President Barack Obama did nothing to help progressives fighting to strengthen the health care bill. On the contrary, he urged Reid to drop the public option in favor of a “trigger.”

More thoughts on that betrayal are after the jump.

Infant car seats have saved thousands of babies who otherwise would have died in traffic accidents, but a new study suggests that using the seats too much outside cars can be dangerous.

More than 8,700 infants end up in the emergency room each year because their car seats are used improperly outside the car, according to study presented Monday at the American Academy of Pediatrics’ annual meeting in Washington.[…]

Most of the injuries in [pediatric orthopedist Shital] Parikh’s study occurred when car seats fell off tables, countertops or other high surfaces. In some cases, babies who weren’t securely buckled fell out of the seats. Babies also were injured when car seats flipped over on soft surfaces, such as beds and couches, where infants can suffocate, he says.

Injury isn’t the only risk for babies who spend too much time in their car seats:

Physical therapists are seeing more babies with “container syndrome,” or weak muscles and flat heads caused by too much time spent lying on their backs, says Colleen Coulter-O’Berry of the American Physical Therapy Association.

And a study in Pediatrics in August found that car seats can make it difficult for babies to get enough oxygen, which led the authors to suggest that the seats be used only while infants are in cars.

If your baby falls asleep in your car or van, it’s fine to bring the car seat inside (as long as you place it in a safe place on the floor). But for the most part, car seats belong in motor vehicles. Wearing your baby in a soft carrier “meets a baby’s need for physical contact, comfort, security, stimulation and movement, all of which encourage neurological development.” Babywearing is also more comfortable for parents than lugging around a car seat or holding a baby in your arms for long periods. I wrote about my favorite types of baby carriers here.

A fantastic resource on the connections between touch, motion and brain development is What’s Going On In There?, a book by neurologist Lise Eliot.

Former First Lady Christie Vilsack released a statement today confirming that she will not challenge Senator Chuck Grassley next year. Excerpt:

Commiting to a campaign for the US Senate next year requires more than the confidence that I have the right experience, the necessary support and the resources to be successful. It must come with an understanding that it is the best way for me serve our State and my fellow Iowans in the most effective way possible at this time. I have decided not to run for the United States Senate in 2010. I will continue my work with the Iowa Initiative to Prevent Unintended Pregnancy and will be active in our Party and across the state in issues that affect the quality of life for all Iowans. […]

While I will not be a candidate for office in 2010, never doubt I am committed to a life of service and to Iowa.

So, the mystery challenger Iowa Democratic Party chair Michael Kiernan promised for Grassley is almost certainly Roxanne Conlin, who has said she’s leaning toward running.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see former Governor Tom Vilsack run for the U.S. Senate in the future. I expect Christie Vilsack to run for Congress when Leonard Boswell’s seat (IA-03) becomes open.

Speaking of Boswell’s district, I saw at Iowa Independent that CQ Politics is calling it a “safe Democratic” seat in the House.

According to Bleeding Heartland user mirage, State Senator Brad Zaun is planning to run against Boswell next year. (I am trying to confirm that rumor.) Zaun was mayor of Urbandale, a heavily Republican suburb of Des Moines, before getting elected to represent Iowa Senate district 32 in 2004. He was re-elected to a four-year term in 2008, so he wouldn’t risk losing his seat in the upper chamber by running against Boswell.

UPDATE: Kiernan approached Conlin way back in January about running against Grassley.

Between now and the end of the 2010 legislative session, self-styled “defenders of marriage” will urge Democrats in the Iowa House and Senate to approve a constitutional amendment banning same-sex couples from marrying. Bryan English, director of public relations and outreach for the Iowa Family Policy Center, wrote a guest post for The Iowa Republican blog about his recent efforts to convince Democratic State Senator Dennis Black (district 21).

English and I disagree on most political issues, including the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling in Varnum v Brien, but in this piece he shines a light on talking points Democrats should avoid when confronted by opponents of marriage equality.

This thread is for any topic that’s on your mind this weekend.

After the jump I’ve posted a bunch of links on the big story of the week in Iowa: the preliminary plans for implementing the 10 percent across-the-board cut in current-year spending that Governor Chet Culver recently ordered.

Prominent attorney Roxanne Conlin spoke to the Des Moines Register on Thursday about a possible Senate bid next year:

“I never thought I’d run again,” Conlin said at her home in Des Moines. “But in my lifetime, I don’t ever want to say, ‘If only I had followed my dream or followed my heart.’ ”

“What has changed for me is Grassley.”

Conlin said she is “more likely than not” running, but first needs to iron out how she would staff a campaign and handle her law practice before making a final decision, which she expects to announce by next month.

She said she talked about running at length with state party chairman Michael Kiernan, who said last month a well-known Democrat was planning to enter the race. “I don’t know how this is going to come together, but I have reached the point where I would like to do it,” she said. […]

Conlin said Grassley’s tone on health care reform at public appearances in Iowa last summer pushed her toward running. […]

Conlin accused Grassley of being disingenuous, noting that he circulated a fundraising brochure stating he was working to defeat “Obama-care,” while continuing to participate in bipartisan negotiations.

“That’s not the Chuck Grassley I thought this state elected, and it really was a watershed moment for me,” Conlin said.

Conlin was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1982, the first year Terry Branstad was elected. Before that, she ran the civil rights division of the Iowa Attorney General’s Office and was the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Iowa.

She’s been a highly successful plaintiff’s attorney since 1983 and was the first woman president of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. In addition,

She founded and was the first chair of the Iowa Women’s Political caucus, and was president and general counsel of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund. Most recently, she has been named by the National Law Journal as one of the fifty most influential women lawyers in America, one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America and one of the top 10 litigators.

If Conlin runs, she will be a lightning rod for attacks from Republicans and corporate-funded political organizations. On the plus side, she is a powerful public speaker and may be able to drive up turnout, especially among women voters. She will also be able to raise more than enough money to run a serious campaign against Grassley. Earlier this month, Research 2000 found Grassley leading Conlin by 51 percent to 39 percent among Iowa voters.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers?

UPDATE: Declared candidates Tom Fiegen and Bob Krause don’t think Conlin will play well outside Polk County:

Krause called the speculation about Conlin being the mystery candidate promised by Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan as political theater.

“It’s easy to play political games in Des Moines that might not play as well around the state,” he said.

A key to defeating Grassley, who has rolled up more than 60 percent of the vote in winning re-election four times, is a candidate who appeals to voters outside Polk County, Iowa State University political scientist Steffen Schmidt said.

“Polk County is a nice place, but you have to have someone who can connect other places,” he said.

The folks in “other places” aren’t all that excited about her, Fiegen said late Thursday while driving home from meeting with Winneshiek County Democrats. A Clarence bankruptcy attorney, he said he’s logged 7,000 miles in the past month meeting with Iowans. Those discussions included rumors either Conlin or former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack might join the race.

“Frankly, they’re not that interested,” he said. While her campaign activity is impressive, “it’s yesterday’s news to many Democrats. People look at her and say, ‘been there, done that,’” a reference to her failed 1982 bid for governor.

“One analogy I heard is that she’s our party’s Doug Gross – rich, intelligent, well-connected, but can’t talk to rural Iowans,” Fiegen said. “People say she’s already proved that.”

In all fairness, Conlin didn’t lose by that much in 1982 (53 percent to 47 percent). During the Senate primary, Krause and Fiegen will need to show their road map for giving Grassley a competitive race. Iowa Democrats will decide who is the best candidate.

The House of Representatives will soon bring a health care reform bill up for a floor vote. All three relevant committees have approved bills containing a public health insurance option. In August, Jacob Hacker explained one of the key differences between those bills (pdf file):

The versions of the House bill approved by the House Ways and Means Committee and  House Education and Labor Committee contain a Medicare tie-in that has two crucial  characteristics:

    1.  Providers participating in Medicare would automatically be considered participating  providers in the new public plan, although they would have the right to opt out.

    2.  Initial payments to providers would be set at Medicare rates plus 5 percent. After  three years, the Secretary of Health and Human Services could adjust rates. But  during the crucial start-up period, the public plan would be able to piggyback on  Medicare’s payment methodology. 17    

     These are good provisions. They would be even better if they included an explicit  protection of providers’ rights to join the public plan. Private plans (at least those that  participate in the exchange) should be prohibited from setting as a condition of participation  in their networks that providers not join the public plan.

     By contrast, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the House bill  with amendments that preserve only the first of these two elements. 18 Providers participating  in Medicare would be presumed to participate in the new public plan (but, again, allowed to  opt out). 19 However, rather than setting the rates the public plan would pay providers on the  basis of Medicare rates, the Secretary of Health and Human Services would have to  “negotiate” rates directly with providers. 20 These rates in the aggregate would have to be  between Medicare rates and private rates, but no other details are given. 21 This is a not-so-good provision that could drive up individual premiums and federal costs, burdening  Americans as health care consumers and taxpayers alike. It threatens the viability of the  public plan because it may require the government to pay providers higher rates than they would otherwise accept if the rates were set.

Click here to download Hacker’s full report, which includes analysis of the Senate HELP Committee’s bill.

When the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed a watered-down bill to placate Blue Dog Democrats, most people assumed that this compromise would be the health care reform bill sent to the House floor. However, House Progressives have been rounding up votes for the stronger public option provisions, and yesterday Progressive Caucus co-chair Raul Grijalva claimed to have 210 votes supporting or leaning toward supporting the stronger bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t bring that bill to the floor unless she is sure she has the 218 votes needed to pass, however. As many as 19 House Democrats have not decided whether they would support the “Medicare plus 5 percent” public option.

Chris Bowers published a pdf file listing 36 House Democrats who are either undecided, “lean yes” or “lean no” on the stronger public option. Representative Leonard Boswell (IA-03) is on that list. It’s not clear whether he is undecided or leaning one way or the other. I have sought clarification from his office and will update this post when I hear back.

You know the drill. Boswell needs to hear from as many constituents as possible. The “Medicare plus 5 percent” version of the public option is better policy, and if the House approves it, our negotiating position in the Senate will be stronger. I would call Boswell’s office rather than e-mail, because phone calls are harder for staffers to ignore. Office contact information:

Washington DC Office

Phone: (202) 225-3806

Fax: (202) 225-5608

Iowa District Office

Phone: (515) 282-1909

Fax: (515) 282-1785

Toll Free Phone: (888) 432-1984

In related news, Boswell joined Representatives Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) today in announcing final legislative language to change “the way Medicare pays healthcare providers for services, from its current fee-for-service system into a quality and value-based system.” After the jump I’ve posted a joint press release explaining how this deal will affect Medicare reimbursement rates.

UPDATE: Supposedly there are at least 218 votes in the House for the “robust” public option. The deal on Medicare reimbursement rates helped secure some extra votes for the public option. Also, the House bill will strip the insurance industry of its anti-trust exemption.

CORRECTION: Apparently we don’t have 218 votes for the stronger public option after all.

An oil refinery proposed for a South Dakota site near Sioux City poses a threat to air quality in northwest Iowa, I recently learned from Dr. Jim Redmond, chair of the Sierra Club’s Northwest Iowa Group. The Hyperion Energy Center would be the sixth-largest oil refinery in the country. It would emit large quantities of several pollutants, including particulate matter 2.5, which is hazardous to human health.

The South Dakota Department of Natural Resources (DENR) and the South Dakota Board of Minerals and Environment have issued a preconstruction air permit to the Hyperion Energy Center. Unfortunately, the permit omits relevant information. For instance, instead of using five years of data on ambient air conditions in Sioux Falls and Sioux City, only one year of information for Sioux Falls was used. The environmental impact on Sioux City (25 miles downwind from the proposed facility) will certainly be greater than on Sioux Falls (50 miles upwind).

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criticized the draft air permit for the Hyperion project, but South Dakota’s DENR did not incorporate their suggestions.

Because the Hyperion project will adversely affect air quality in and around Sioux City, Iowans should contact the EPA administrator in Region 7 (containing Iowa). South Dakota lies in the EPA’s Region 8.

Redmond sent me extensive background information on this matter and sample letters to the EPA, which I’ve posted after the jump.

The last time I handicapped the Republican presidential field for 2012, the buzz was about Senator John Ensign’s Iowa visit. A lot has changed since June. Let’s take another look at likely GOP presidential candidates after the jump.

Bob Vander Plaats was the clear front-runner in the Republican field of gubernatorial candidates a few months ago. He’s been campaigning for the job longer and more actively than anyone else. He had contacts statewide from his 2006 campaign for lieutenant governor, and from Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign. He also had several endorsements from state legislators and a big lead in a Republican poll taken in July.

During the past six months, various potential Republican candidates have ruled out a campaign for governor, including Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey and State Auditor David Vaudt. Efforts to recruit a business leader (like Mary Andringa) failed too. Some Iowa politicos believe that these people backed off not because they thought Governor Chet Culver was unbeatable, but because they couldn’t see a way to defeat Vander Plaats in the Republican primary.

Most people would now agree that Vander Plaats is an underdog. Branstad will have more money, more media coverage and more support from Republican power-brokers. He’ll be able to cite last week’s Research 2000 poll, showing Branstad narrowly ahead of Culver, but Vander Plaats way behind the incumbent.

Vander Plaats won’t give up without a fight, though. He has promised to stay in this race through the June primary, and he has some strong cards to play, as I’ll discuss after the jump.  

Are you going to be the GOP’s hopeful, inclusive-talking guy, or are you going to do stuff like this?

Chinese communists swept to power in the last century without mentioning plans to nationalize businesses or institute forced abortions, Republican gubernatorial candidate Christian Fong told supporters of the Iowa Minuteman Civil Defense Corps on Saturday.

“They came in promising hope and change,” Fong said. “Sound familiar?”

The Minutemen are hardly a significant movement in Iowa, but that doesn’t make it ok for mainstream Republicans to fuel paranoid fantasies about the Obama administration. Fong did tell the Minutemen that

tighter borders and the need to learn English must be tempered with open arms for those [immigrants] who use proper channels, he said.

Fong added in a later interview that it is good politics for Republicans to sound more welcoming for the growing number of “new Iowans.”

“It’s important for the Republican Party to not sound so angry,” Fong said. “Otherwise, we lose that whole bunch.”

If Fong’s main rivals for the gubernatorial nomination were still Bob Vander Plaats and Chris Rants, I would understand his warning against angry rhetoric. But the bigfoot in the Republican field is Terry Branstad. He can be a vicious political brawler, but you won’t catch him sounding angry. Kathie Obradovich put it well in her column about Branstad today:

He’ll try to take the high road to avoid engaging with his opponents when it suits him, and then rabbit-punch them under the table.

Fong launched his gubernatorial campaign soon after Branstad insisted he wasn’t going to run for governor. With Branstad in the race, who’s going to support Fong as a vehicle for restoring traditional Iowa values? Fong raised some big money in July, but I can’t imagine checks are rolling in now that Branstad’s people are making the big money calls.

Fong doesn’t have good options now, but if he can’t make a case for himself as a superior alternative to Branstad, he should bow out of this race sooner rather than later. Maybe he’s auditioning for a role as Branstad’s running mate, but I would guess that pandering to fringe groups isn’t going to help his cause there either.

For uninsured homo sapiens, not so much.

Meteor Blades brought to my attention a surreal editorial from the Colorado Springs Gazette about a silverback lowland gorilla who needed medical care.

When a bunch of national blogs write about Representative Steve King, you know it’s not for anything that will make Iowans proud. This week was no exception, as King led a group of more than 50 House Republicans demanding that Kevin Jennings resign as the White House official focusing on “safe schools.”

As you might expect, the basis for King’s campaign against Jennings is a canard, but he didn’t stop even after his office was informed that the allegations were false.

Steve Benen, Greg Sargent and Jed Lewison have more on King’s latest embarrassing crusade.

Council Bluffs resident Mike Denklau announced on October 15 that he is running against King in 2010. His official campaign website is here. Although this district leans strongly Republican, it’s important not to leave people like King unchallenged.

Former Governor Terry Branstad is coming to a venue near you. In the course of announcing his retirement as president of Des Moines University today, Branstad said he will “fully explore” whether to run for governor again. Somehow I doubt he would ditch a job that pays half a million dollars a year without being absolutely committed to running for governor.

Branstad plans to visit all 99 counties, but he didn’t say when he will make a final decision or whether he will attend events featuring other Republican candidates. Branstad avoided answering a question about same-sex marriage today. He’ll need an answer ready soon if he’s going to tour the state.

Branstad didn’t criticize other Republican candidates today, but noted that he has more experience and name recognition than they do. He had harsh words for Governor Chet Culver’s handling of the budget, which he called a “fiscal debacle” (he would know). During his four terms as governor, Iowa’s sales tax and gas taxes went up, but Branstad said today that he cut taxes as well and will be happy to debate his record on taxes. My memory is that when times were tough, Branstad raised regressive taxes, but when times were good, he preferred to cut income taxes, especially for the wealthiest Iowans.

Bret Hayworth of the Sioux City Journal interviewed Doug Gross this week about Branstad as a potential candidate. Gross was one of Branstad’s top aides and has remained close to the former governor. He told Hayworth that as a friend, he hasn’t encouraged Branstad to get back into politics, but that seems disingenuous. The Branstad recruitment efforts might never have happened if not for polls on the governor’s race that Gross’s Iowa First Foundation commissioned in March and July.

Meanwhile, Culver launched the first television commercial of his re-election campaign today:

It’s risky to make a virtue out of budget cuts that may turn out to be unpopular. On the other hand, this ad pre-empts Republican charges that Culver didn’t act quickly and decisively to balance the budget.

The line about choosing to rebuild after the floods refers to the I-JOBS state bonding initiative, which includes $165 million for disaster recovery and prevention, along with $100 million to reconstruct flood-damaged buildings at the University of Iowa. Republicans have unanimously denounced the bonding program.

The line about investing in new industries alludes to the Iowa Power Fund, which has also drawn Republican criticism. Allocated $25 million in state funding a year for four years, the Power Fund has supported a wide range of projects.

A new Iowa poll confirms that Terry Branstad is the toughest challenger for Chet Culver and that next year’s U.S. Senate race could become competitive. Research 2000 surveyed 600 “likely voters who vote regularly in state elections.” The poll was in the field from October 12 through 14, and you’ll find full results and crosstabs here.

Republicans may dismiss this as a “Democratic poll” because it was commissioned by the Daily Kos blog. However, Research 2000 is not a partisan firm, and the sample for this poll included 32 percent Democrats, 31 percent Republicans and 37 percent independents. That’s a smaller advantage for Democrats than the current Iowa voter registration numbers reflect. The proportion of independents in the sample might be a bit high for an off-year election, but that doesn’t necessarily skew against the Republican candidates.

I’ll highlight some of the key findings after the jump.

Senator Chuck Grassley complained this week that he is not being included in negotiations to merge the health care reform bills passed by the Senate Finance Committee and Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Finance Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, “assured us that Republicans would be at the table through the process of negotiating a single bill,” Grassley said. “And obviously that’s kind of ruled out now by the fact that I am not a part of a bipartisan agreement.”

Look, the HELP Committee adopted about 160 Republican-proposed amendments to the health care bill during the markup process, yet not a single Republican voted to send that bill out of committee. Then Baucus bent over backwards to include Grassley in negotiations all summer, but he joined all the Finance Committee Republicans except for Olympia Snowe in voting against the health care bill. Why should Grassley have a say in how the HELP and Finance bills are combined?

Now Steve Benen catches Grassley “going around the bend” in his criticism of health care reform:

This week, Grassley appears to have completely lost it, offering at least tacit support for radical “Tenther” theories that insist that health care reform may be unconstitutional.

    “I’m not a lawyer, but let me tell you, I’ve listened to some lawyers speak on this. And you know, it’s a relatively new issue. I don’t think we’ve ever had this issue before of having to buy something. And a lot of constitutional lawyers, saying it is unconstitutional or at least in violation of the 10th Amendment. Now maybe states can do this, but can the federal government? So, I have my doubts.”

This was specifically responding to a question about individual mandates — a measure he’s already endorsed as a good idea that he supports.

Obvious inconsistencies notwithstanding, the notion that health care reform is “in violation of the 10th Amendment” is demonstrably ridiculous. The idea that “a lot of constitutional lawyers” see health care reform as unconstitutional is absurd.

For more details on Grassley’s previous public support for an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, read this post by Benen or this one by Jason Hancock.

Grassley’s misleading and inconsistent comments about health care reform have greatly harmed his reputation with Iowa Democrats and independents this year. It will be interesting to see whether he can repair the damage before next November. I don’t see him getting nearly as large a crossover vote as he has in his previous elections.

More than 10,000 blogs around the world are writing something about climate change on October 15 to mark “Blog Action Day.”

If you’re concerned about global warming, you may already have made small changes to reduce your own “carbon footprint.” You can significantly lower your energy consumption (and save money) with simple steps like hanging your laundry to dry and turning the thermostat down a few degrees in cold weather.

I also encourage you to get involved with at least one non-profit organization that works to reduce global warming. Whether you become an active volunteer or send a small donation once a year, your support will make a difference.

Here are 15 Iowa non-profits that deserve broad-based support. Although not all of them mention climate change in their mission statements, they all promote activities, land uses and public policies that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

1000 Friends of Iowa

Center on Sustainable Communities

Environment Iowa

Iowa Bicycle Coalition

Iowa Environmental Council

Iowa Global Warming Campaign

Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation

Iowa Interfaith Power and Light

Iowa Network for Community Agriculture

Iowa Renewable Energy Association

Plains Justice

Practical Farmers of Iowa

Repower Iowa

Sierra Club, Iowa Chapter

Trees Forever

In this comment thread, please recommend other non-profit groups working to reduce climate change.

Over the weekend I talked with lots of people who attended the Community Food Security Coalition’s annual conference in Des Moines. Good programs in Iowa and other states are encouraging more people to eat food produced on nearby farms. Iowans have long supported our farmer’s markets, but we could be doing more to promote and expand our local food networks.

One step in the right direction would be for Governor Chet Culver to revive the Iowa Food Policy Council, which functioned from 2001 to 2004. (The council’s reports are available here.) Hear me out after the jump.

“Sources close to [former Governor Terry] Branstad” tell WHO-TV’s Dave Price that Branstad will announce his candidacy for a fifth term as governor this Friday. Whatever the date, it’s obvious Branstad has committed to the race.

Join me after the jump for recent news and unintentional comedy from the Branstad camp. You’ll also find a Bleeding Heartland reader poll at the bottom of this post.

Americans won’t be happy to learn that Wall Street salaries may be higher this year than they were before the current recession began:

Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their employees about $140 billion this year — a record high that shows compensation is rebounding despite regulatory scrutiny of Wall Street’s pay culture.

Workers at 23 top investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers and stock and commodities exchanges can expect to earn even more than they did the peak year of 2007, according to an analysis of securities filings for the first half of 2009 and revenue estimates through year-end by The Wall Street Journal.

Ian Welsh wrote a depressing post at Open Left yesterday:

All they did was throw cash at the problem, without dealing with the underlying issues, which is why they didn’t manage (as Jerome points out) to kickstart ANY net private spending.  They didn’t break up major banks.  They didn’t allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages.  Their mortgage program kept hardly anyone in the house.  And their money for financial firms did not increase lending by one cent. […]

This is going to be the worst “recovery” of your lifetime, unless you’re in the financial sector at a relatively high level.  Bank profits have recovered but ordinary people are not, in a generation, going to see a full recovery from this clusterfuck – employment will not recover to pre-recession levels before the next recession, and I don’t expect it to recover after that recession either.

At this point, in fact, I am expecting this to turn into a double dip recession-this “recovery” will not have any significant legs.

Continuing George Bush’s Wall Street bailout policy will prove to be a costly mistake for President Obama. Watch the Huffington Post Investigative Fund’s interview with Neil Barofsky, who “monitors a dozen separate bailout-related programs that now account for nearly $3 trillion in financial commitments.” Among other things, his research has confirmed that the bailout did not increase lending to the business sector.

Republicans pretend that Iowa Democrats are to blame for all our economic troubles, but the factors impeding employment growth are nationwide problems, like falling wages and major banks cutting back on loans to small businesses.

This bad news comes to you courtesy of the Mason City Globe-Gazette: State Representative Mark Kuhn will retire from the Iowa House next year to seek a seat on the Floyd County Board of Supervisors. He served on that board for six years before being elected to represent House district 14 in 1998. He told the Globe-Gazette that he will serve out his current term but wants to be closer to his family.

He said some of the highlights of his legislative career include:

– In his first term, securing an $800,000 interest-free loan for Floyd County and Charles City for Iowa’s first shared (with the DOT) transportation maintenance facility, located in Charles City.

– Authoring a bill banning the gasoline additive MTBE, believed to be a cancer-causing agent.

– Increasing markets for ethanol.

– Working to make the State Capitol building safer for persons with disabilities.

– Securing a $500,000 I-JOBS grant to repair the flood-damaged Charles City Fire Station and for infrastructure projects in Rudd, Rockford, Marble Rock and Nora Springs.

Kuhn currently chairs the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Appropriations Subcommittee. He is a farmer and strong supporter of agricultural zoning at the county level, also known as “local control” over confined-animal feeding operations (CAFOs). I had hoped that one day he might chair the Iowa House Agriculture Committee, and I’m sorry to hear of his retirement.

District 14 (map in pdf file) contains all of Floyd and Mitchell Counties, plus part of Cerro Gordo County. Bleeding Heartland readers familiar with north-central Iowa, which Democrats should run to replace Kuhn? According to the Globe-Gazette, one Republican candidate has already declared in this district: Josh Byrnes, the agricultural and industrial technology division chairman at North Iowa Area Community College. In the 2008 election, Kuhn won just under 71 percent of the vote against Jeff Mosiman.

The Senate Finance Committee approved its health care reform bill on a 14-9 vote yesterday, with all Democrats and Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine voting in favor. Ranking Republican Chuck Grassley, a key member of the committee’s “gang of six” negotiators this summer, joined the rest of the Republicans in voting against the bill. Speaking to the Des Moines Register Grassley “said he has no regrets about working with majority Democrats on the committee, only to oppose the bill. Given more time, he might have struck a deal, he said.”

This guy is the perfect picture of a bad-faith negotiator. From the Register:

Grassley said he objects most to provisions in the bill that would require Americans to obtain health insurance. But Grassley also said the bill does too little to block federal money being spent to provide abortions and provide coverage for illegal immigrants.

“Those aren’t the only things, but I think they are the most controversial or the most difficult to deal with,” Grassley told The Des Moines Register.

As Jason Hancock reported for the Iowa Independent last week, Grassley publicly supported the idea of an individual mandate to purchase health insurance this summer. I agree that requiring individuals to purchase insurance is problematic if there is no broad-based public health insurance option (because then the government is just subsidizing private insurers), but of course Grassley opposed the public option too.

In addition, the “gang of six” made changes in the bill before markup to address groundless Republican claims about illegal immigrants. According to PolitiFact, the “Baucus plan explicitly states that no federal funds – whether through tax credits or cost-sharing credits – could be used to pay for abortions (again, except for rape, incest, or the life of the mother).”

Trying to cut deals with Grassley is a waste of time. For more on that point, check out the skipper’s recent diary.

Speaking of Grassley, Cityview’s Civic Skinny thinks he should be worried about a potential race against attorney Roxanne Conlin. When a reporter asked Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack whether his wife, Christie Vilsack, might run against Grassley, he replied, “You should ask her about that.” (UPDATE: Dave Price did ask her and wonders whether she is the mystery candidate.)

As for the health care bill, the Finance Committee and HELP Committee versions have to be merged before a floor vote. It’s imperative that a public option be included in the version sent to the floor, and HELP Committee representative Chris Dodd says he will fight for that. On the other hand, Snowe and a few Democrats, like Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, might vote against the bill on the floor if it contains a public option. Chris Bowers wrote more at Open Left about the merging process in the House and Senate.

Until last week, the money raised to support Terry Branstad as a gubernatorial candidate was hidden in the bank accounts of two 527 groups: the Iowa First Foundation and the Draft Branstad PAC. Now that Branstad has formed an exploratory committee, I expect we’ll soon see a press release about eye-popping early money raised for his campaign. Major Republican donors were key players in the effort to lure the former governor back into politics.

While Branstad’s signing all those thank-you notes to Republicans, he may as well acknowledge three Democrats who have helped him raise the big bucks: Governor Chet Culver, Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy, and Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal. Branstad wouldn’t be able to accept those $25,000 and $50,000 checks if Democrats had passed meaningful campaign finance reform during the past three years.

This rant continues after the jump.

Sioux City businessman and Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats got a surprising endorsement on Monday from Keith Ratliff, pastor of the Maple Street Missionary Baptist Church in Des Moines and president of the Iowa-Nebraska chapter of the NAACP.

Vander Plaats was the front-runner in the Republican field until former Governor Terry Branstad entered the race. Ratliff said Vander Plaats’ position on same-sex marriage rights was “an important factor” in his endorsement.

State Representative Dick Taylor of Cedar Rapids announced his resignation today, effective immediately, saying, “after 9 years in the House, it’s time for me to focus full-time on my family.” Within the next five days Governor Chet Culver will set a date for a special election in Iowa House district 33 (map here–pdf file). UPDATE: On October 14 Culver set this election for November 24.

The race to replace Taylor will lack the drama of the September 1 special election in Iowa House district 90, because district 33 leans much more heavily Democratic. In 2008, Taylor won nearly 70 percent of the vote against Republican Kathy Potts.

A district convention made up of Linn County Central Committee members who live in Iowa House district 33 will select the Democratic candidate for this special election within the next few weeks. Bleeding Heartland readers familiar with Linn County politics, who should replace Taylor?

LATE UPDATE: Iowa Independent previews two likely candidates:

Norm Sterzenbach, Sr., a military veteran who has been a steady presence in county politics for years and currently serves as the county Democrats’ second vice chairman, is expected to make a bid for the seat. Kirsten Running-Marquard, 32, who works in U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack’s office and is the daughter of former state Rep. Rich Running, has also been contacting local Democrats to drum up support.

Breastfed babies can be long and lean, short and fat, or anywhere in between. But I never heard of an insurance company citing a breastfeeding infant’s “obesity” as a pre-existing condition before reading this story from the Denver Post:

By the numbers, [four-month-old] Alex [Lange] is in the 99th percentile for height and weight for babies his age. Insurers don’t take babies above the 95th percentile, no matter how healthy they are otherwise. […]

Bernie and Kelli Lange tried to get insurance for their growing family with Rocky Mountain Health Plans when their current insurer raised their rates 40 percent after Alex was born. They filled out the paperwork and awaited approval, figuring their family is young and healthy. But the broker who was helping them find new insurance called Thursday with news that shocked them.

” ‘Your baby is too fat,’ she told me,” Bernie said.

Up until then, the Langes had been happy with Alex’s healthy appetite and prodigious weight gain. His pediatrician had never mentioned any weight concerns about the baby they call their “happy little chunky monkey.” […]

“I’m not going to withhold food to get him down below that number of 95,” Kelli Lange said. “I’m not going to have him screaming because he’s hungry.”

Good call, Mrs. Lange. There is “no evidence to support ‘dieting’ or substituting other foods or liquids for human milk to reduce weight gain.”

It’s outrageous for an insurance company to use Alex’s weight at four months of age as an excuse to deny coverage. Not that exclusions for other “pre-existing conditions” (such as a benign heart murmur that a child would grow out of without treatment) are any more defensible.

Also, the Lange family wouldn’t have been shopping around for new coverage if their previous carrier hadn’t raised their rates by 40 percent after Alex was born. I remember our insurance premiums went up quite a bit after our second child was born, but I don’t think it was by that much. Then again, they went up 10 percent last year even without any new babies or health problems in our family.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

I learned from Sioux City Journal columnist Bret Hayworth that a Democrat has already filed Federal Election Commission paperwork to run against Representative Steve King in Iowa’s fifth Congressional district:

Mike Denklau has eyed the possibility of running in the strong Republican district since early 2009, and after traveling western Iowa recently he decided to go all-in.

On Oct. 15, Denklau will announce his candidacy 55 weeks out from the election in stops here in Sioux City, Council Bluffs and Des Moines. Denklau will turn 27 next month – he was raised in Blue Grass near Davenport and graduated from the University of Iowa with majors in political science and finance. He worked in New York for two banking firms through June 2009, including Lehman Brothers, until moving to Council Bluffs recently.

Hayworth notes that it’s not clear whether Rob Hubler, King’s 2008 opponent, will run again. Although Democrats cannot realistically hope to defeat King in a district with a partisan voter index of R+9, an energetic challenger may help drive up Democratic turnout across the district. There will be several competitive state legislative races in the counties that make up IA-05.

Meanwhile, Craig Robinson reports at The Iowa Republican that Rod Blum of Dubuque is ready to challenge Representative Bruce Braley in the first Congressional district.

Blum has strong eastern Iowa roots. He graduated from Dubuque Senior High School in 1973, earned a bachelor’s degree from Loras College (Finance) in 1977, and received a Masters in Business Administration from Dubuque University in 1989. In 1989, Blum was one of the initial employees of Dubuque-based Eagle Point Software. In just five years, Eagle Point Software went public on NASDAQ and had 325 employees. In 2000, Digital Canal was created as a result of a leveraged buyout of Eagle Point Software. Digital Canal is a leading provider of home building and structural engineering software. Blum was also named the Iowa Entrepreneur of the Year in 1994.

While Blum has never run for elected office before, he has been making his political views known in eastern Iowa since 2001 as the Dubuque Telegraph Herald’s conservative columnist. Blum’s writings for the Telegraph Herald will be helpful for a couple of reasons. First, having a regular column in the local newspaper helps build credibility and name ID. Secondly, writing a political column means that he has well thought out positions on many of the issues facing our country today, something many first time candidates lack.

He’ll need more than conservative ideology and name ID in the Dubuque area to unseat Braley. Robinson notes that Republican Jim Nussle represented IA-01 before the 2006 election, but Nussle’s position as chairman of a House budget subcommittee helped him hang on in a Democratic-leaning district. That’s different from a Republican challenger trying to swim against the tide in a district with a partisan voting index of D+5. Republicans currently hold only two House disticts with that much of a Democratic lean: Delaware’s at-large seat, which the GOP will lose when Mike Castle runs for U.S. Senate next year, and Louisiana’s second district, which was a fluke in 2008 because of the Democratic incumbent’s apparent corruption.

Braley is a rising star and effective legislator with a spot on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He won re-election with more than 64 percent of the vote in 2008. Even if 2010 turns out to be a Republican year, Braley’s not losing in a district with 35,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans.

To my knowledge, Republican Tom Latham (IA-04) is Iowa’s only incumbent in Congress with no likely challenger yet. Steve Rathje and probably Mariannette Miller-Meeks will run against Dave Loebsack in IA-02, while Dave Funk and Pat Bertroche are challenging Leonard Boswell in IA-03. I don’t expect either of those districts to be competitive in 2010.

Soon after becoming the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Tom Harkin expressed hope that the Senate would approve a food safety bill this year. However, he was less optimistic about that timetable when speaking with a group of Iowans who came to Washington last week to lobby for passage of the bill.

I haven’t written about Sarah Palin for a couple of months, because her political relevance pretty much evaporated when she failed to complete the job Alaska voters elected her to do. She and her entourage seem not to have clued in yet, however.

Senate Democrats have not given up on passing health care reform through normal procedures requiring at least 60 votes to overcome a Republican filibuster. The problem is, several conservative Senate Democrats are on record opposing a public health insurance option. Meanwhile, a bill with no public option will have trouble passing the House of Representatives, where the overwhelming majority of the Democratic caucus supports a robust public option tied to Medicare rates.

The obvious political solution is to include some watered-down public option in the bill, giving cover to Progressive Democrats who insist on a public option while placating House Blue Dogs and Senate conservatives who want to protect private insurers’ market share.

The “triggered” public option favored by many industry allies didn’t fly, because most Democrats understand that the trigger would never be pulled. This past week, a new possible compromise emerged:

It was pulled out of an alternative idea, put forth by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and, prior to him, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, to give states the power to determine whether they want to implement a public insurance option.

But instead of starting with no national public option and giving state governments the right to develop their own, the newest compromise approaches the issue from the opposite direction: beginning with a national public option and giving state governments the right not to have one.

I consider this idea’s pros and cons after the jump.  

When Republican power-brokers formed the Draft Branstad PAC last month, I assumed that the entity was a political action committee, as implied by the name “PAC.” However, the Draft Branstad PAC registered with the Iowa Ethics & Campaign Disclosure Board as a 527 committee. The distinction is important, because unlike PACs, 527 groups do not have to disclose their donors and are not allowed to advocate for candidates.

Today the Iowa Democratic Party caught the folks in charge of the Draft Branstad effort running their 527 group like a PAC:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 9, 2009

DRAFT BRANSTAD GROUP IGNORES IOWA ELECTION LAW

DES MOINES, IA -The political action group called Draft Branstad, formed to promote Terry Branstad’s candidacy for Governor before he became a declared candidate, is ignoring Iowa ethics law and engaging in express advocacy for Branstad, who became a candidate on Wednesday, Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan said Friday.

• FACT: Last night Draft Branstad hosted an event at Graze restaurant in West Des Moines.  The event included Branstad campaign paraphernalia and free drinks.  It was paid for by Draft Branstad and apparently the materials came from the same group.

• FACT: Draft Branstad continues to advertise on conservative websites.  Screen captures made Friday showed activity on multiple sites.

“This Draft Branstad group has spent funds directly benefiting the Branstad campaign,” Kiernan said Friday.  “That’s a blatant violation of Iowa campaign ethics law.”  Iowa election law prohibits 527 groups from engaging in express advocacy on behalf of any candidate or candidate’s committee.  

“Branstad should either embrace the spending of this group, since it’s a group designed by him to promote his candidacy, or publicly disavow it,” Kiernan said Friday.

Iowans know better.  They aren’t confused by the tactics being used to avoid both the letter and the spirit of campaign ethics law.  They know Branstad was behind the “movement” to draft him – and he knows why.  This campaign-that’s-not-a-campaign is a mockery of our system of democratic government and a slap in the face to Iowa’s bipartisan tradition of clean elections.

Now, we call upon Terry Branstad to:

1 Call upon the Draft Branstad group to cease and desist public statements and representations in his favor;

2 Disavow any expenditures already made by the Draft Branstad group after Tuesday, Oct. 6;

3 Call for the immediate disbanding of the Draft Branstad group based on Branstad’s decision to become a candidate on Wednesday, Oct. 7.

The leaders of the Draft Branstad PAC should know better than to make this kind of mistake, and Iowans should know better than to elect Terry Branstad again.

Just announced today:

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.

Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play. Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts. The vision of a world free from nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control negotiations. Thanks to Obama’s initiative, the USA is now playing a more constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world’s leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama’s appeal that “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.”

Oslo, October 9, 2009

Jerome Armstrong notes that only two other sitting U.S. presidents have won the Nobel Peace Prize: Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

I agree that Obama has outlined a compelling vision of international relations, but I find it strange that the committee made this award before waiting to see whether Obama escalates the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan or keeps his campaign promise to get us out of Iraq. Obama hasn’t proposed reductions in the U.S. defense budget yet either (just a smaller increase than what the military requested).

I’m encouraged that Obama is open to cutting our nuclear arsenal. We have way more warheads than we need for deterrence, and they are expensive to maintain. But for all of Obama’s good intentions here, he hasn’t struck an agreement with Russia yet.

According to MSNBC, even the White House was surprised by this award.

Maybe John Deeth is right that the Nobel committee basically gave this prize to Obama for not being George W. Bush.

Post any thoughts about this or previous Nobel Peace Prizes in this thread. Most ridiculous choice ever? For my money, Henry Kissinger.

Mr. desmoinesdem thinks it’s a shame that Czech dissident-turned-president Vaclav Havel never did win this award.

UPDATE: The Washington Post reports:

In response to questions from reporters in Oslo, who noted that Obama so far has made little concrete progress in achieving his lofty agenda, committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said he hoped the prize would add momentum to Obama’s efforts. At the same time, Jagland said, “We have not given the prize for what may happen in the future. We are awarding Obama for what he has done in the past year. And we are hoping this may contribute a little bit for what he is trying to do.”

Jagland specifically cited Obama’s speech about Islam in Cairo last spring, as well as efforts to address nuclear proliferation and climate change and use established international bodies such as the United Nations to pursue his goals.

Sounds to me like they are hoping this prize will make Obama more likely to follow through on his rhetoric. I’ve got a friend heading to Iraq soon, and I want the U.S. to stop sending people over there on tours of duty. If winning the Nobel Peace Prize deters Obama from keeping our troops in Iraq for the long term, I’m all for it.

If Obama fails to deliver concrete achievements to back up his vision, however, the Nobel Committee will have discredited itself with what Glenn Greenwald called a “painfully and self-evidently ludicrous” prize.

SECOND UPDATE: Chris Bowers lays out the arguments for and against giving this award to Obama at this time.

Nick Berning disputes the Nobel Committee’s contention that the U.S. is now playing “a more constructive role” on combating climate change.

THIRD UPDATE: After the jump I’ve posted a mass e-mail President Obama sent out today. Excerpt: “To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize — men and women who’ve inspired me and inspired the entire world through their courageous pursuit of peace.”

Governor Chet Culver announced today that he is cutting spending 10 percent across the board in the 2010 budget. The move follows yesterday’s Revenue Estimating Conference report, which projected that revenue will drop by 8.4 percent this fiscal year, leaving state government with $414 million less to spend. Culver said he doesn’t support any tax hikes or increasing the amount drawn from the state’s cash reserves during the current fiscal year.

Republicans have hammered Democrats for allegedly overspending in the 2010 budget, but Culver rightly noted in a statement on Wednesday,

I proposed and the legislature approved a balanced budget for fiscal year 2010, which began on July 1. This budget was based on the official REC estimates from their March meeting last spring. The budget included a nearly $100 million ending balance, and $373 million in reserves.

During an economic recession, it is not prudent to slash government spending by more than is absolutely necessary. Government cuts themselves can become a drag on the economy, and demand for government social services goes up along with unemployment. The 2010 budget was based on the latest REC estimate during the legislative session, so Republicans are wrong to charge that Democrats overspent.

On the other hand, I agree with Republican critics who say Culver should have convened a special session of the legislature to make targeted cuts. An across-the-board cut is the governor’s only way to reduce spending without legislative approval. It’s faster and cleaner than a special session, but in my opinion an across-the-board cut this large will affect essential services at some agencies.

Culver said he will try to find money in December or January to beef up staffing at Iowa Workforce Development, which helps unemployed Iowans find new jobs. He will also try to backfill money for certain areas of public safety, he said.

This midyear cut is off the charts compared with what any governor in recent history has faced, and it will mean unprecedented turmoil for state employees and state agencies.

Part of the reason the cut is so deep is that Culver said he wants to leave a cushion of around $100 million. The current ending balance for this budget year is $97 million. […]

He will appoint Joni Klaassen, deputy chief of staff for aministration, to help unions to address reduction in the state government workforce.

And he will ask the Legislature to require school districts to spend money from their cash reserves rather than raise property taxes.

After spending 24 hours to think about his options, Culver chose an across-the-board cut option, rather than calling state lawmakers back for a special session.

It would have taken too long to bring the lawmakers back to the Capitol, then to secure 51 votes in the Iowa House and 26 votes in the Iowa Senate.

“We would’ve had 150 different opinions on where to cut. […] But the fact is we need to act. We need to move,” Culver said. I was concerned it would literally take weeks and weeks to reach an agreement.”

I understand the need to move quickly, but it seems unfair to make state employees bear almost all of the pain, instead of imposing a combination of spending cuts and reductions in tax breaks. In that context, I agree with yesterday’s statement from AFSCME Iowa Council 61, which I’ve posted after the jump.

Iowa Republican leaders say Culver’s move will lead to higher property taxes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re right about that. What they don’t tell you is that the Republican-proposed spending cuts of $300 million also would likely lead to higher property taxes.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

UPDATE: I should have emphasized that Culver cut spending by more than the amount needed to take the Revenue Estimating Conference’s projections into account. That means that even though he didn’t call a special legislative session, lawmakers will have some wiggle room during the regular 2010 session to restore funding to certain agencies.

I am tired of reading about the “unsustainable” growth in state government spending (e.g. in Todd Dorman’s latest column) that doesn’t acknowledge the unsustainable growth in tax breaks for business in Iowa. Spending on tax credits has risen far more sharply than spending from the general fund.

Click here and scroll down to view the Iowa Policy Project’s report on Iowa’s real spending problem: “tax expenditures on autopilot.” Excerpt from that pdf file:

State business tax expenditures have been one of the fastest growing parts of the state budget. Business assistance tax credits, a major component of business tax expenditures, increased from $144.3 million in  FY2006 to $242.7 million in FY2008, alone. The Department of Revenue has projected that these credits will grow to $405.9 million in FY2010, a 181 percent growth in just four years.1 Once enacted, these business tax credits are not subject to annual reauthorization and can grow well beyond their intended size and for activities well beyond their intended purpose.

This report doesn’t even include the growth in Tax Increment Financing, which I believe accounted for more than $200 million statewide last year. Tax Increment Financing was intended to spur redevelopment of blighted urban areas but during the last decade was expanded to include lots of suburban sprawl development, including Glen Oaks and Jordan Creek Town Center in West Des Moines. The developers get a big tax break, and city and county governments need to collect more property taxes from individuals. I am hoping to get a guest diary posted here that explains this problem in more detail. My point is that the legislature needs to look beyond simply cutting spending and services to make up for the expected revenue shortfall.

In addition to being unfair, it’s not even wise to slash government spending more than you need to during a recession, because that can prolong and deepen the recession. You’ll never get the party of Hoover to acknowledge that, however.

Terry Branstad shook up the Iowa governor’s race yesterday when he formed an exploratory committee headed by Mary Andringa, the CEO of Pella’s Vermeer Corporation. (Republican power-brokers tried and failed to recruit Andringa to run for governor earlier this year.)

Election-watchers like the Swing State Project and Campaign Diaries bloggers immediately recognized that Branstad is the toughest potential challenger for Governor Chet Culver. But some Iowa Republicans have doubts about going back to the future:

Drew Ivers, a longtime social conservative Republican leader, said some party activists object to the growth in the state budget during Branstad’s tenure. The budget Branstad approved in 1983, his first year in office, included $2.05 billion in general fund spending. In 1998, his last year in office, he approved general fund spending of $4.5 billion.

“The party needs to get back to the Goldwater definition of conservative: that which governs least governs best,” said Ivers, of Webster City, who is uncommitted in the race. […]

Branstad brings many assets, but not a fresh face, noted Roger Hughes, a longtime Iowa Republican strategist.

“I would be hard-pressed to vote against my friend Terry Branstad, but I think we need some new folks,” said Hughes. “I’m not sure him running is good for the party.”

The Republican primary field will narrow if and when Branstad formally becomes a candidate, but no one dropped out in response to yesterday’s news. Updates on the other Republican gubernatorial candidates are after the jump.

Fun new web video from the Iowa Democratic Party in connection with Terry Branstad filing papers for an exploratory committee:

Check out the Iowa Knows Better site for more on Branstad’s record as governor.

UPDATE: Branstad did file papers to form an exploratory committee today.

The Iowa Republican blog reported today,

This morning, former Governor Terry Branstad will file paperwork with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board (IECDB), essentially launching his campaign for governor.

All state candidates are required to file with the IECDB once they spend or raise more than $750.00. While some candidates have claimed that filing this paperwork is like opening an exploratory committee, there are no special distinctions allowed under Iowa law for such committees, meaning that when you file with the IECDB, you are announcing that you are a candidate.

Branstad announced this summer that he would decide in October whether to run for governor again. It’s been clear he was planning to be a candidate since the Draft Branstad PAC started raising big money and running statewide radio ads last month, so why wait? Some people think Branstad, now president of Des Moines University, wanted to make his decision known to that university’s Board of Trustees at this month’s scheduled meeting before announcing his candidacy.

I have been wondering whether Branstad wanted to remain outside the campaign during September so that the Des Moines Register’s Iowa poll by Selzer and Co. would measure his support at the highest possible level. After he formally enters the race, his record will face tougher scrutiny, and his favorability ratings are likely to go down. The Register’s poll (released on September 20 and 21) showed that 70 percent of Iowans approved of his performance as governor, but only 48 percent thought it would be a good idea for him to run again. That poll did not include a head to head matchup against Governor Chet Culver. Republican firm Rasmussen conducted a one-day poll on September 22, which showed Branstad leading Culver by 20 points.

In the coming months, rival Republican candidates are likely to open three main lines of attack on Branstad:

1. During his first three terms as governor, Branstad kept two sets of books in order to run illegal deficits. His fiscal mismanagement was the main factor driving support for then Congressman Fred Grandy during the 1994 Republican primary. State Representative Chris Rants has already started hitting Branstad on this front. Last week he asserted,

“Culver’s repeating the mistakes Branstad made in the 80’s. He moved money on paper and delayed payments from one fiscal year to another until it finally caught up to him and he raised the sales tax to square the books. He could only hide his deficits for so long. It’s these kinds of accounting gimmicks that caused the fallout between Auditor Johnson and Branstad.”

“We Republicans need to be better than that if we expect to earn the trust of Iowans,” added Rants.

Richard Johnson, state auditor during most of Branstad’s tenure, is now co-chairing Bob Vander Plaats’ campaign. Expect to hear more from him in the future.

2. During his four terms as governor, Branstad didn’t deliver on various issues of importance to conservatives. Branstad selected a pro-choice lieutenant governor and didn’t get an abortion ban through the legislature even when it was under Republican control during his final term. Vander Plaats has already promised not to balance his ticket with a moderate, and if Branstad announces a pro-choice running mate, a lot of the Republican rank and file will be furious.

Branstad campaigned every four years on a promise to reinstate the death penalty, but he never got it done as governor.

Last week Rants promised to press for an amendment on gun rights to the Iowa Constitution. Perhaps we’ll hear more in the future about Branstad’s failure to do enough on this front.

3. Branstad raised sales taxes, the gas tax, and favored other tax increases as well.

Tax hikes are never popular with the GOP base, and Rants and Vander Plaats are certain to educate primary voters about Branstad’s record. If Christian Fong decides to stay in the race, we’ll be hearing from him about this issue too. Ed Failor, head of Iowans for Tax Relief, is one of Fong’s key political backers and fundraisers.

The Iowa Democratic Party has already started responding to the Draft Branstad PAC’s revisionist history, and will continue to call attention to how Branstad governed. I’ve posted the Iowa Democratic Party’s response to the first pro-Branstad radio ad after the jump. The IDP has also created the entertaining Iowa Knows Better website, with information about all of the GOP candidates for governor. Here is the page on Branstad, with details on Branstad’s two sets of books, tax increases, use of state bonding, and failure to pay state employees what they had earned.

Branstad will have more money and institutional support than the other Republican candidates and will be heavily favored to win the primary. But I doubt public approval for his work as governor will still be at 70 percent six months from now.

UPDATE: Swing State Project is now calling the Iowa governor’s race a tossup.

That’s me trying to explain the Star Wars storyline to my first-grader, who’s never seen the movies but is curious about them.

He’s heard other kids talking about Star Wars at school, so he checked out a book from the library introducing the series to beginner readers. He’s mostly interested in light sabers and Yoda levitating objects, but he has a lot of questions, and I don’t always know how to answer them.

Former Governor Terry Branstad is expected to announce soon that he’s running for governor again. The rumor going around town is that he will name his running mate immediately upon entering the race. One person I’ve heard mentioned for that role is former State Representative Libby Jacobs. She represented Iowa House district 60, containing most of West Des Moines, from 1995 until she retired in 2008.

Jacobs would be a logical choice for Branstad in some ways. She could help correct the gender gap that hurts Republican candidates. She could help the GOP in wealthy suburban areas that are no longer solidly Republican. Jacobs never faced serious opposition in House district 60, but Chet Culver carried the district in 2006. Although House district 60 voters elected Republican Peter Cownie to replace Jacobs last November, Barack Obama narrowly beat John McCain in the district.

Jacobs also has time to embark on an aggressive campaign. In May of this year, she was laid off as a spokeswoman for the Principal Financial Group.

Choosing Jacobs would incur some political risks for Branstad, because she was a fairly reliable pro-choice vote in the Iowa House. Jacobs hasn’t been active in Planned Parenthood like some other former Republican women legislators (Joy Corning, Janet Metcalf, Betty Grundberg, Julia Gentleman), but that distinction won’t matter to social conservatives. Certain people on the religious right had trouble accepting even GOP Congressional candidate Mariannette Miller-Meeks, who was against abortion rights with very few exceptions.

Branstad didn’t attend the Iowa Family Policy Center’s big fundraiser in September, and he skipped last weekend’s Iowa Christian Alliance dinner too. Selecting Jacobs or any other pro-choice running mate would indicate that Branstad agrees with his longtime top aide Doug Gross, who says Republicans will continue to lose until they stop alienating moderates and shift their focus from social issues to the economy. In effect, Branstad would be telling social conservatives, “I’ve got the money to win this primary, we need to appeal to the center, now sit down and shut up.”

Republicans who believe Gross hurts the party and are looking for Branstad to distance himself from him will be disappointed. Those who share Bob Vander Plaats’ view (Republicans have been losing elections in Iowa because they’re not conservative enough) will be enraged. Expect WHO talk radio host Steve Deace to go ballistic if Branstad shuns his campaign advice.

Of course, the rumor about Jacobs could turn out to be false. Branstad might choose a running mate with strong backing among social conservatives. That would indicate a desire to unify the party and neutralize critics who are angry that he chose Joy Corning to serve as lieutenant governor. If Branstad has any concerns about losing the Republican primary, he might take this route. Doing so would undercut Vander Plaats, who has already pledged not to pick a pro-choice running mate. State Representative Jodi Tymeson, who co-chairs the Vander Plaats campaign, is widely expected to be his choice for lieutenant governor.

Share any relevant rumors, thoughts or predictions in this thread.

Via the Senate Guru blog I saw that Survey USA released results from its late September poll of 600 adults in Iowa (margin of error 4.1 percent). The survey measured Senator Chuck Grassley’s approval rating at 50 percent. That’s the lowest figure ever for Grassley by this pollster, and you can see from this graph that Grassley’s trendlines are ugly. A full 40 percent of respondents disapprove of Grassley’s performance. His high-profile role in the health care reform debate seems to have hurt his image. Senate Guru notes, “Grassley is also below 50% approval among independents (48%) and self-described moderates (47%).”

The Des Moines Register published a new article Monday on rumors that a well-known and well-funded Democrat will give Grassley “the race of his life.” Speculation seems to be centering on former First Lady Christie Vilsack, who is now executive director of the Iowa Initiative, and prominent attorney Roxanne Conlin, a onetime U.S. Attorney who was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1982.

Other notable findings from Survey USA in September: Senator Tom Harkin is at 44 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval. President Barack Obama’s approve/disapprove numbers in Iowa are now 46/48, but there is a huge gender gap. Among male respondents, 39 percent approve of Obama and 56 disapprove. Among female respondents, 53 percent approve and only 40 percent disapprove.

I was surprised to see that Survey USA didn’t find nearly as much of a gender gap concerning Governor Chet Culver. Culver’s at 41 percent approve/48 percent disapprove overall. Among men and women, 41 percent approve of Culver’s performance. The difference is that 55 percent of men said they disapprove of Culver, versus only 44 percent of women (a full 15 percent of female respondents answered “not sure”). If I were running Culver’s re-election campaign, I would put a high priority on building support among women voters. If a well-known woman makes a serious run at Grassley, that should help boost turnout among women Democrats and leaners.

Incidentally, Swing State Project changed its rating on the Iowa governor’s race from “race to watch” (but safe for the incumbent) to “likely D.” They may revise that rating again if former Governor Terry Branstad enters the campaign.

Survey USA’s Iowa sample in September consisted of 35 percent Democrats, 29 percent Republicans, and 31 percent independents. The sample for their August Iowa poll was quite different: 28 percent Democrats, 34 percent Republicans, and 35 percent independents. That alone could explain why Grassley’s approval rating fell from August to September, while Culver’s rose a bit from his all-time Survey USA low in August.

It’s obviously way too early to predict what proportion of Democrats and Republicans will turn out to vote in Iowa next November. The GOP primary for governor could energize that party’s base or cause lasting divisions. The Democratic base may or may not be excited, depending on what Culver and state legislators accomplish next session and whether Grassley’s race becomes competitive.  Unemployment seems likely to keep rising.  

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

All of the health care reform bills under consideration in Congress would prohibit insurance companies from refusing to cover people because of prior health problems. “Guaranteed issue” is the wonky name for this ban on discrimination because of pre-existing conditions. Unfortunately, various economists and health care experts told David Hilzenrath of the Washington Post that “simply banning medical discrimination would not necessarily remove it from the equation […].”

If insurers are prohibited from openly rejecting people with preexisting conditions, they could try to cherry-pick through more subtle means. For example, offering free health club memberships tends to attract people who can use the equipment, says Paul Precht, director of policy at the Medicare Rights Center.

Being uncooperative on insurance claims can chase away the chronically ill. For people who have few medical bills, it is less of a factor, said Karen Pollitz, research professor at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute.

And to avoid patients with costly, complicated medical conditions, health plans could include in their networks relatively few doctors who specialize in treating those conditions, said Mark V. Pauly, professor of health-care management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. […]

America’s Health Insurance Plans, a lobbying group for health insurers, has endorsed the idea of guaranteeing individuals access to coverage regardless of their medical history — if that guarantee is part of a larger plan to help the uninsured pay for coverage and bring everyone into the insurance market.

At a more nuts-and-bolts level, AHIP has been trying to shape the legislation in ways that could help insurers attract the healthy and avoid the sick, though it has given other reasons for advancing those positions. In a recent letter to Baucus, AHIP President Karen Ignagni said benefit packages “should give consumers flexible options to meet diverse needs.”

If the final health care reform bill has no public health insurance option, many chronically ill Americans are likely to be left outside the system as insurers find new ways of denying coverage or dropping policy-holders.

Even if the final bill includes a limited public option, cherry-picking by private insurers could set up the public plan for failure. President Obama has endorsed the idea of making the public option available only to people who are currently uninsured, meaning it will serve a disproportionate number of chronically ill people. That will drive up costs of operating the public plan.

I don’t have an answer for this problem, beyond feeling depressed that corporate groups like AHIP have so much sway with Congress. If Americans with prior health issues are still facing discrimination after Obama signs what he claims to be sweeping “health insurance reform,” the political backlash against Democrats could be severe.

UPDATE: MyDD user Bruce Webb wasn’t impressed by Hilzenrath’s article. I’ve posted his rebuttal after the jump.

Pope John Paul II visited Iowa 30 years ago today. Iowa Public Television’s Iowa Journal broadcast a retrospective on the event last week, and you can read the transcripts here and here.

Mike Kilen’s feature for the Des Moines Register includes anecdotes from some of the estimated 340,000 people who came to see the Pope at Living History Farms in Urbandale. (Even if you believe the lower crowd estimates of 100,000 or so, that’s still the largest public gathering in Iowa history.)

The momentous event sprang from a handwritten request by Truro farmer Joe Hays.

He was watching television and learned of the pope’s visit to America. Pope John Paul II was only 59 then – a new, youthful voice, a robust hiker, a scholar with doctorates in theology and philosophy, a man at ease with children and one of the leaders of Catholic Church reform.

He urged nations to uphold rights of citizens, lectured on the horrors of war and challenged consumptive lifestyles, yet held to conservative Catholic doctrines, including a devotion to the Virgin Mary.

But he was, in his beginnings, a country boy from Poland.

A pope had never ventured to Iowa, Hays thought, so why not him, why not now? He sat down to write a letter, telling the pope that the strength of the church here in America is found in its rural people.

A month later, a response arrived, and Hays was called to an Aug. 29 news conference.

I recommend reading Kilen’s feature. The Pope’s visit was a life-altering experience for some people, like the farmer who began shifting to more sustainable methods after hearing Pope John Paul II urge Iowans to “conserve the land well, so that your children’s children and generations after them will inherit an even richer land than was entrusted to you.”

While you’re on that page of the Register’s site, you can watch a video clip from the Pope’s address that day and view a photo gallery from the visit. The second picture in the gallery shows masses of people walking down Hickman Road in Urbandale, which had been closed to traffic.

That image brought back a lot of memories for me.

As a young child, I knew virtually nothing about the Catholic Church. The first time I remember realizing the Pope was important was when Pope Paul VI died in 1978, and Pope John Paul I died shortly thereafter. I could tell that was a big deal for Christians. (I didn’t know the difference between Catholics and Protestants at that point.)

Our home in Windsor Heights was about three miles from Living History Farms, and when we learned about Pope John Paul II’s planned visit, my parents decided that our family would walk to the farms to hear him speak. I remember my mother joking ahead of time that she was a “fair-weather friend of the Pope,” because she was only going to make the journey if the weather was nice. October 4, 1979 was chilly but dry, so my family walked to Living History Farms with neighbors who were Jewish, like us.

I don’t recall anything Pope John Paul II said that day. I just remember being excited to be walking so far and seeing more people in one place than I’d ever seen before. I’ve never been part of a crowd that large since. Even at age 10, having no spiritual connection to Catholicism, I sensed that I was witnessing something historic.

If you were living in Iowa 30 years ago, please share your memories of the papal visit in this thread.

Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal discussed the film tax credit fiasco on this weekend’s Iowa Press program, and it sounds like defenders of the tax credit will be fighting an uphill battle during next year’s legislative session:

“I think we’re going to get this investigation from the Attorney General and from the State Auditor. I think we’re going to do a good evaluation of the program and if we can’t show a real benefit to the state of Iowa – and not just a few part-time jobs, but a real long-term benefit to the state of Iowa – I think it’s 50-50 as to whether this program continues.”

According to Gronstal, he and other legislators right now “see very little in terms of potential benefits” to the state from the film tax credits which have been awarded already.  […]

Gronstal says he may regret having voted to create the program and he expects some political fall-out from this episode.

“People will be disappointed in that, but I think it’s the responsibility of the legislature – we try things in economic development. Everything we try doesn’t work and it’s perfectly o.k. to occasionally decide, ‘You know, we’ve (gone) down a road and that road doesn’t make as much as sense as we thought it made,’” Gronstal says. “And so we’re going to go back and change that.”

Gronstal also defended Governor Chet Culver, saying “once he found out about [problems with the film tax credit] he acted quickly and put the program on hold and got people to investigate.”

Gronstal expressed surprise that a flood of applications for film tax credits this spring allowed producers to get around the $50 million annual cap the legislature approved for the program. (Note to legislators: next time you cap a tax credit, make the law go into effect immediately on being signed by the governor.)

Culver has ordered a comprehensive review of all Iowa tax credits, and Gronstal made clear that legislators will subject these programs to additional scrutiny in the coming year:

“If you can show that a tax credit creates a climate, for instance, the research activities tax credit – if you can show that that keeps an industry here in the state of Iowa and builds long-term jobs and high-wage, high-skills jobs in this state where there’s a net benefit to the state by having that set of jobs come along with it, yeah, that makes sense,” Gronstal says.  But Gronstal says if you can’t show that, then the tax credit should be repealed.

A critical analysis of Iowa’s tax credits is overdue, but better late than never. State revenues continue to lag behind projections because of the recession. Repealing wasteful tax credits could reduce the size of state spending cuts during the 2010 fiscal year. Iowa Republicans would like to plug the budget gap entirely through spending cuts, but they forget that deep spending reductions by state and local governments can also be a drag on the economy.  

Representative Tom Latham has enjoyed some nice weekends on the dime of his For America’s Republican Majority PAC, I learned from a must-read piece by Jason Hancock at Iowa Independent.

A golf outing in West Virginia and a weekend getaway to Atlantic City, N.J., are just two of the trips taken this year by U.S. Rep. Tom Latham of Ames that have garnered the attention of campaign finance watchdogs.

That’s because the trips were paid for by Latham’s political action committee and touted as fundraising events, a practice that is legal but that government reform advocates contend turns the PAC into little more than a slush fund designed to skirt campaign finance law.

Go read Hancock’s piece for details on Latham’s fundraising trips to the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort in Atlantic City and various high-end golf resorts in West Virginia and California. Latham’s PAC “raised $205,447 during the 2008 election cycle, with almost all of it coming from lobbyists, PACs and corporate leaders.”

A new report by ProPublica explains how leadership PACs function:

Legally, lawmakers are free to spend the leadership PAC money pretty much as they wish.

Lobbyists and lawmakers can — and do — use it to travel together to play golf at Pebble Beach, ride snowmobiles in Montana’s Big Sky Country and go deep-sea fishing in the Florida Keys. The lobbyists don’t pay the costs directly. They contribute to the leadership PAC, which then pays the lawmaker’s resort and travel bills.

Leadership PACs have grown steadily since they began cropping up in the 1970s. What separates them from campaign committees is that lawmakers are supposed to pass along the bulk of the money to other members of their party for their campaigns. That way, lawmakers with leadership PACs can earn their beneficiaries’ support when it comes time to divvy up committee chairmanships and other party leadership posts.

This system helps party leaders spread money to candidates with less money or tighter races. On the other hand, it also fuels the Washington money chase, allocates power in Congress based on fundraising prowess, and encourages lawmakers and lobbyists to mingle socially and recreationally as political money changes hands.

In this tough economy, couldn’t Latham encourage his corporate lobbyist buddies to golf, gamble and spread political money around in Iowa?  

In case you’re wondering whether everyone in Congress does what Latham’s been doing with his PAC, ProPublica’s report has lots more information on hundreds of leadership PACs. But Hancock notes that Iowa’s other members of Congress have used their leadership PAC money for campaign contributions and various expenses, as opposed to trips to high-end casinos and golf resorts.

It’s been raining all day, and the high’s only in the 50s, which has me thinking of soup.

Last Saturday I used a buttercup squash to make my first curried squash soup of the season. The recipe is after the jump.

This is my favorite carrot soup, with garlic, ginger and some Chinese flavors.

Another favorite on days like this is simple potato, carrot and leek soup.

I still have a huge kohlrabi to use up, so kohlrabi and potato soup with caraway is in my future.

What are you doing now that autumn has arrived?

If you’re an insurance company, that is:

Late in the afternoon [on Wednesday], Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the top Republican on the committee, requested consideration of the “Grassley F-1 Modified Amendment.” Its goal: eliminate $7 billion a year in fees that the government would charge private health insurance companies, and make up the shortfall by reducing benefits to poor people and legal immigrants.

It was dangerously close to a parody: Republicans demanding that fees be reduced on a profitable industry and shifted to low-income Americans. But Grassley pressed on, unafraid. The fees on the corporations, he said, are a “bad idea” and would undoubtedly result in higher insurance premiums. “I urge my colleagues to vote for my amendment, to strike the fees,” he exhorted.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) recognized the fat target that Grassley had just set up. “I think it’s a ‘message amendment,’ ” he said, suggesting Grassley was sending a symbolic signal to the conservative base. “It certainly takes on legal immigrants and Medicaid in a very sharp way.”

Grassley looked hurt. “You don’t really believe that this is a message amendment, do you?”

Why so cynical, Senator Rockefeller? I take Senator Grassley at his word. He would rather reduce health care coverage for poor people and immigrants (during a recession!) than force a profitable industry to pay higher fees.

I encourage Bob Krause and Tom Fiegen to add this Washington Post story to their Senate campaign websites.

In case anyone is wondering, I still have no idea who the mystery Grassley challenger might be.

UPDATE: Grassley also failed on Wednesday to get the committee to adopt “that would have required beneficiaries of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to show a photo ID in order to enroll.” However, the committee unanimously adopted Grassley’s amendment “that would require members of Congress to get their health insurance through a proposed federal exchange.”

The White House agreement with the pharmaceutical industry, which is reflected in the Senate Finance Committee’s health care bill, is one of the most shameful episodes of the health care reform process. Presidential candidate Barack Obama had promised to “put an end to the game-playing” in Washington, citing in one television ad the deal the pharmaceutical industry wrote into the Medicare prescription drug legislation. Yet in order to bring big Pharma on board with health care reform, the White House “stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.”

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota says no deal, according to Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post:

A Senate Democratic leader is hoping to blow up the deal reached between the White House, drug makers and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), by introducing an amendment on the floor to allow prescription drugs to be re-imported from Canada.

It’s one of the simplest ways to reduce health care costs but was ruled out by the agreement, which limits Big Pharma’s contribution to health care reform to $80 billion over ten years.

North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, a member of Democratic leadership, isn’t a party to that bargain. “Senator Dorgan intends to offer an amendment to the health reform bill and his expectation is that it will be one of the first amendments considered,” his spokesman Justin Kitsch told HuffPost in an e-mail. “Prescription drug importation is an immediate way to put downward pressure on health care costs. It has bipartisan support, and has been endorsed by groups such as the National Federation of Independent Businesses and AARP.” […]

Jim Manley, senior communications adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said that he sees no reason the amendment won’t get a floor vote.

If an amendment on reimporting drugs from Canada gets to the Senate floor, it is hard to see how it fails to pass. Grim notes that a separate bill to allow re-importation of prescription drugs from Canada “has 30 cosponsors, several Republicans among them.” I hope the White House doesn’t start twisting arms to keep that amendment off the Senate floor.

Giving the government the ability to negotiate prescription drug prices would bring costs down even more. Obama should support that reform, since he says he won’t let the health care bill add a dime to the deficit. But apparently, not taking that step was part of the White House deal with drug companies.

Speaking of backroom deals, Alexander Bolton reports for The Hill, citing “senior Democratic aides,” that Reid will “not include legislation repealing antitrust exemptions for the health insurance industry in the healthcare package he will bring to the Senate floor.”

So far the powerful insurance industry has held back waging a full-out battle against Democratic health reform proposals because companies stand to gain tens of millions of new customers. But adding language that would open health insurance companies to prosecution by the Justice Department would provoke a strong counterattack from the industry.

Hey, why take something valuable away from the insurance industry (the ability to fix prices) just because we’re about to hand them a “bonanza” (individual mandate to buy their products)? They might run ads against us.

It is time to replace Reid as Senate majority leader. Since Senate Democrats are unlikely to take that step, I agree with Chris Bowers that Reid losing re-election next year wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Getting a more effective majority leader, like Dick Durbin of Illinois or Chuck Schumer of New York, would make up for losing Reid’s Senate seat.

As expected, the Senate Finance Committee rejected two amendments yesterday that would have added a public health insurance option to the health care reform bill Chairman Max Baucus drafted with a big assist from industry lobbyists. Five Democrats voted with all the committee Republicans against Senator Jay Rockefeller’s amendment, which would have created a national public option tied to Medicare rates. Three Democrats also joined Republicans to vote down Senator Chuck Schumer’s much weaker “national level playing field” public option. CA Berkeley WV liveblogged yesterday’s hearing for Congress Matters.

Senator Chuck Grassley sang the same old song about the “government run plan” forcing private insurance companies out of business. He got a little tripped up when Senator Chuck Schumer asked him for his views on Medicare, though.

“I think that Medicare is part of the social fabric of America just like Social Security is,” Mr. Grassley said. “To say that I support it is not to say that it’s the best system that it could be.”

“But it is a government-run plan,” Mr. Schumer shot back.

Mr. Grassley, a veteran Senate debater, insisted that Medicare did not pose a threat to the private insurance industry. “It’s not easy to undo a Medicare plan without also hurting a lot of private initiatives that are coupled with it,” he said.

Chairman Baucus scored highest on the chutzpah meter, praising the public option even as he refused to support it. Grassley also held out false hope that maybe someday some other bill will accomplish that goal.

Several Senate Democrats, including Tom Harkin, insisted yesterday that they will get some kind of public option into the bill that reaches the Senate floor. After the jump you’ll find lots of links on the battles to come.

I agree that the public option is not dead yet, but for it to survive, President Barack Obama and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid will need to do a lot more than they’ve done so far to lean on the Senate conservadems.  

The Congressional Democrats’ stampede to join Republican efforts to defund ACORN was stupid on many levels, as Paul Rosenberg explained in this post. Among other things, Rosenberg argued, Democrats empowered and validated the GOP’s strategy of demonization. They may have thought cutting off ACORN’s funding would cause Republicans to stop exploiting the issue, but of course, the opposite is true.

Like many Iowa Democrats, I was impressed by Senator Joe Biden whenever I saw him speak during the presidential campaign. Whether you’re a longtime Biden fan or have never seen him in person before, you should mark your calendar for Saturday, November 21. The vice-president is coming to Des Moines to headline the Iowa Democratic Party’s Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner (exact time and location to be announced later).

I’ve posted the IDP’s news release on the event after the jump. Click here to sign up for ticket information.

We won’t know the full story on Iowa’s film tax credit for weeks, as investigators look into lax oversight and other problems at the Iowa Department of Economic Development. It may be months before we learn whether Iowa taxpayers will end up paying around $110 million or as much as $300 million in exchange for some temporary jobs in the film industry.

One thing is already clear, however: the original bill creating the film tax credit laid the ground for this costly mistake. Todd Dorman isn’t buying state legislators’ effort to pin all the blame on IDED, with good reason:

One common theme in this week’s legislative dodge-fest is that the Department of Economic Development pushed through rules governing the program on an “emergency” fast track in July 2007. Lawmakers insist that left them no chance to review the rules before they took effect, including allowing credits for the purchase of aircraft, vehicles, furnishings, hairstyling and makeup.

There’s one small problem with that argument: Much of what was in those rules was also spelled out in the bill they approved by overwhelming bipartisan majorities. The cars, the planes, the hair. All there.

You also have to wonder why lawmakers approved a tax credit program with the authority to hand out tens of millions of dollars but provided only enough money for a one-person office to administer it. A recipe for trouble.

And last spring, when legislators prudently decided to cap dollars flowing from the program, why did they delay screwing on that cap until July 1? In the meantime, a flood of credit applications exploded the program’s potential cost.

The film tax credit received little attention when it was created, probably because it was uncontroversial (approved 95-1 in the Iowa House and 48-2 in the Iowa Senate). Journalists covering the statehouse and political junkies like me tend to notice action and partisan warfare.

Unfortunately, a lot of bad laws glide through the process with little controversy. Some of them give the appearance of solving a problem without accomplishing anything. The sorry excuse for campaign finance reform the legislature approved unanimously this year comes to mind. So does Iowa’s 2002 law establishing residency restrictions on sex offenders. Every legislator but Ed Fallon voted for that bill, but such laws do nothing to protect children from predators, in the opinion of groups representing county attorneys, corrections officers, prosecutors, and advocates for missing and exploited children. (Legislators fixed some of the problems with that bill during the 2009 session.)

Sometimes consensus politics ends up constraining the rights of individuals. The 1998 Defense of Marriage Act sailed through the Iowa legislature with only Fallon voting no, but the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously held this year that “the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective. The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification.”

During the 2009 session, the little-noticed House File 233 unanimously passed both the House and Senate. It changed the rules so that citizens have only ten days (as opposed to the 12 months previously allowed) to file a lawsuit challenging a school board’s decision on disposition of property. As a result, Iowans will in effect have no legal recourse against future decisions by school boards.

Let’s not forget the nursing home bill that Iowa legislators also approved unanimously this year. That bill eliminated fines for the most common causes of neglect in nursing homes. Advocates for the elderly warned that the bill would make it easier for nursing home operators to violate Iowa law.

Federal laws approved with huge bipartisan majorities can turn out to be unwise as well. Some are merely useless, such as the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which failed to curb unfair practices by private health insurance providers.

Others are harmful. Banking deregulation laws (like this one) passed Congress with large majorities during the 1980s, contributing to the Savings and Loan crisis that eventually cost taxpayers more than $150 billion.

No one person could keep track of all the bills pending in Congress or even the Iowa legislature, but the film tax credit debacle should remind us all that the most significant bills aren’t always the ones that generate heated debate. By the same token, getting everyone to agree to do something doesn’t make it worth doing.

UPDATE: Nate Silver followed up here, comparing patterns in Strategic Vision poll findings to those from Quinnipac.

Strategic Vision released a number of Iowa polls during 2007, sampling Democratic and Republican would-be caucus-goers on the presidential candidates.

Did any Iowa journalist or political analyst receive cross-tabs or any details about the methodology from these polls? Does anyone remember talking to any Iowan who had been surveyed by Strategic Vision?

I’m asking because incredibly, polling experts are now questioning whether Strategic Vision has been conducting polls at all. More on that story is after the jump.  

Sunday evening marks the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Like Jews around the world, I’ve been reflecting on mistakes I made during the past year and how I can do better in the future. For those who attend services on Yom Kippur, I recommend reading those meditations at the beginning of the high holidays prayer book.

Congressman Steve King’s not the introspective type, judging from his recent interview with The Hill (hat tip to MyDD user Louisiana 1976):

THE HILL: What vote would you like to redo?

   KING: I don’t really go back and re-live that sort of thing. Some of the big votes that I’ve thought about, some of the jury’s still out. And at this point, maybe I’d answer that question another way, probably the singular vote that stands out that went against the grain, and it turns out to be the best vote that I cast, was my “no” vote to the $51.5 billion to [Hurricane] Katrina. That probably was my best vote. But as far as doing something different again, I don’t know.

So, well into his fourth term in Congress, King can’t think of a single vote he would cast differently. Not only that, when asked about any decision he might regret, King’s mind leaped to what he considers his “best vote.” A cartoon villain couldn’t have picked a more inappropriate vote to brag about.

Do you think King works hard to be offensive, or do these comments come to him with no effort?

This is an open thread for anything on your mind this weekend.  

The U.S. Constitution requires that the government conduct a census every ten years. Population counts determine federal funding for various programs, as well as the number of Congressional districts allocated to each state, so the public interest in conducting a thorough census is obvious.

The next census will take place in 2010, but some right-wing loudmouths and Republican politicians have unfortunately demonized the effort as an intrusive government plot. Over at Think Progress, Faiz Shakir recaps some of the paranoid chatter from Representative Michele Bachmann (MN-06) and Glenn Beck of Fox News. Shakir also cites radio host Neal Boortz, who told his listeners, “Most of the rest of the [Census] information is designed to help the government steal from you in order to pass off your property to the moochers. They’re looters.”

Not long ago I discussed my worries about the rhetoric of armed resistance coming from the political right, and I’ve been reflecting on this problem since I heard about census-taker Bill Sparkman’s murder. Sparkman was found naked and bound with “fed” written on his chest and his census ID taped to his neck. In rural Kentucky,

Sparkman’s gruesome death has ignited a debate over whether it was a byproduct of harsh anti-government rhetoric on talk shows, blogs and protests. Residents of impoverished Clay County say most people harbor no resentment for agents of the federal government, and they’re baffled by Sparkman’s apparent killing.

Sheriff Kevin Johnson, a native, said most residents feel a measure of gratitude to the federal government.

“We’ve been a poverty-stricken area pretty much all our lives,” he said. “The government’s taking care of 70 percent of people here, through Social Security, SSI, food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid.”

None of those programs could function without the demographic data the Census Bureau provides.

If conservative politicians and opinion leaders keep stoking fears about the government using census data to steal from or perhaps even round up law-abiding citizens, I am concerned that mentally unstable individuals will commit further acts of violence against census-takers next year. Republicans should condemn the hatemongers and make clear that the census is not only permitted, but required under the Constitution.

A full six months after Senator Tom Harkin recommended Stephanie Rose and Nick Klinefeldt for the U.S. attorney positions in Iowa’s northern and southern districts, President Barack Obama sent Rose’s and Klinefeldt’s names to the Senate for confirmation. Radio Iowa posted the September 25 press release from the White House.

I don’t know when the Senate Judiciary Committee will take up these nominations. Some advocates have objected to Rose’s nomination because of civil liberties and due process violations in the wake of last year’s immigration raid in Postville. Senators should thoroughly explore Rose’s role in the Postville prosecutions during her confirmation hearing. Harkin’s office has defended Rose’s record and her work with the detainees from Postville.

Iowa Democratic Party chair Michael Kiernan spoke confidently today about a “first-round draft pick” who is ready to run against Senator Chuck Grassley, Kay Henderson reported for Radio Iowa.

“I’m going to tell you here today that Chuck Grassley is going to be in for the race of his life.” […]

“You’re just going to have to wait to find out,” Kiernan said this morning during taping of this weekend’s “Iowa Press” program.  “We want to wait ’til, obviously, after Terry Branstad announced his candidacy for governor.”

Kiernan isn’t revealing the characteristics this phantom candidate may have either. “I’ll just wait for the announcement,” Kiernan said.  “You will be impressed.” […]

“I’m here to tell you today that it will be the toughest race that Chuck Grassley has faced since John Culver,” Kiernan said.

Grassley defeated Senator John Culver (Governor Chet Culver’s father) in the 1980 Reagan landslide.

Speaking to reporters after today’s taping, Kiernan said the big-name challenger is “100 percent committed” to this race.

Your guess is as good as mine. A retired politician? Christie Vilsack? A celebrity in a non-political field? Someone from the business world? (Retired Principal Financial Group CEO Barry Griswell has ruled out running, as has Fred Hubbell, the incoming interim director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development.)

Grassley’s approval rating has fallen this year, but it’ll take a lot to convince me that we can defeat him. He’s still got a strong brand name and 30 years of constituent service behind him.

The news keeps pouring in on the mismanagement of Iowa’s tax credit for film-making, which may turn out to be among the most expensive mistakes in our state’s history.

Lots of links are after the jump.

For months, White House officials and Senate leaders praised the “gang of six” negotiations toward a bipartisan deal on health care reform, even as other observers doubted the Republicans in that group were negotiating in good faith. At the beginning of the summer recess in August, Senator Jay Rockefeller (who was shut out of the deal-making) warned:

Changes to the bill have been frustrating, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) told reporters at a press conference, particularly given that the Republicans — Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Olympia Snowe of Maine — are, in his opinion, just stalling for time.

“You just watch as the bill diminishes in its scope, in its coverage, in its ferocity to try to attack the problem. I don’t know where it will come out,” Rockefeller said. “My own personal view is that those three Republicans won’t be there to vote it out of committee when it comes right down to it, so that this all will have been a three-or-four-month delay game, which is exactly what the Republicans want.”

No Republicans stood with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus last week as he finally unveiled what David Waldman described as “a plan that amounts to capitulating to every Republican demand, and then adding a heaping pile of political suicide on top of it.” The bill is in markup this week, and CA Berkeley WV has been blogging the Senate Finance Committee meetings for Congress Matters (day one, day two and day three).

Where does ranking Finance Committee member Grassley stand after Baucus bent over backwards to keep negotiating with him all summer? After the jump I’ve posted the relevant portion of a transcript from Grassley’s September 24 telephone news conference with Iowa reporters. The short version is, he’s against the bill because:

1. The individual mandate to buy health insurance amounts to “[q]uite a steep tax for people that maybe don’t pay a tax.”

2. Democrats supposedly were “not willing to go far enough” on enforcement to make sure illegal immigrants wouldn’t be covered.

3. Democrats supposedly “weren’t willing to go far enough to make sure that the subsidy through the tax credit was not used to finance abortions.”

4. You shouldn’t be “increasing taxes and cutting Medicare” when “we’re in depression.”

I told Iowa Republicans not to worry about Grassley voting for any health care reform bill. Senate Democrats should reject the concessions Baucus made to win GOP votes that are now off the table.

The Republican polling firm Rasmussen Reports surveyed 500 “likely voters” in Iowa on September 22 and came up with bad numbers for Governor Chet Culver. Former Governor Terry Branstad leads Culver by 54 percent to 34 percent, and Bob Vander Plaats leads Culver by 43 percent to 39 percent. Culver’s approval rating is 43 percent, with 53 percent of respondents disapproving of the job he is doing.

Topline results and favorability ratings are here. Culver was viewed very or somewhat favorably by 43 percent of respondents and viewed very or somewhat unfavorably by 50 percent. Branstad’s favorability was 64 percent, and his unfavorable numbers were just 29 percent. Vander Plaats was viewed favorably by 45 percent and unfavorably by 30 percent.

These numbers will encourage Branstad, who appears likely to seek his old job again. He has said he’ll decide by October, and I’ve heard rumors that Branstad will announce his candidacy very soon (September 28 according to one person, October 3 according to someone else). I believe that the numbers we see for Branstad this month will be his high water mark, since no one has campaigned against him for 15 years.

Vander Plaats will surely cite the Rasmussen poll as proof that he can beat Culver. The whole “draft Branstad” movement grew out of fears that Vander Plaats could not win a general election.

As a rule, Rasmussen polls tend to come in with somewhat better numbers for Republican candidates and worse numbers for Democrats. Go to Pollster.com and click on almost any national or state-level race to compare recent results from different pollsters.

The recent Selzer Iowa poll for the Des Moines Register found much better numbers for Culver (50 percent approve, 39 percent disapprove). Selzer polled 803 Iowans over a three-day period (3.5 percent margin of error), while Rasmussen polled 500 “likely voters” on a single day (4.5 percent margin of error). Selzer did not poll Culver against Branstad or any other Republican.

I am seeking further information about the likely voter screen Rasmussen used, as well as the proportion of Democrats, Republicans and no-party voters in the sample. I will update this post if I receive more details. If any Rasmussen premium subscriber is reading, feel free to post a comment here or e-mail me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com.

The same Rasmussen poll shows Senator Chuck Grassley leading Democrat Bob Krause 56 percent to 30 percent. Chase Martyn looks at the trendlines and concludes that Grassley could become vulnerable next year. In my opinion, Grassley is still well outside the danger zone for an incumbent despite his falling approval numbers.

Click here for Rasmussen’s results on how Iowans view President Obama, the economy and health care reform proposals.

UPDATE: The commenters at Swing State Project trust Selzer a lot more than Rasmussen. One person pointed out that in late July, Rasmussen found Senator Barbara Boxer of California leading Republican Carly Fiorina by just four points (45-41), while a few weeks later Research 2000 found Boxer leading Fiorina 52-31. It appears that Rasmussen’s likely voter screen produces a sample skewed a bit toward Republicans.

It would have been helpful if the Des Moines Register’s recent poll had asked respondents about Culver and Branstad and Vander Plaats. Craig Robinson is wrong to imply that the Register might have asked those questions and decided to cover up the results. The Register published the full questionnaire from its recent poll. Some pollsters don’t think head to head matchups are useful this far out from an election.

Representative Steve “10 Worst” King hasn’t lost his touch for grabbing attention with outlandish statements. Speaking to a conservative radio program, King asserted,

If there’s a push for a socialist society where the foundations of individual rights and liberties are undermined and everybody is thrown together living collectively off one pot of resources earned by everyone, this is one of the goals they have to go to, same sex marriage, because it has to plow through marriage in order to get to their goal. They want public affirmation, they want access to public funds and resources.

The Hill has more ridiculous assertions from the interview, including King’s opinion that “Not only is [same-sex marriage] a radical social idea, it is a purely socialist concept in the final analysis.” Matt Corley at Think Progress posted the full transcript, with an audio clip.

King’s logic eludes me. Perhaps someone can explain how individual rights are supposedly undermined when same-sex couples gain legal rights already available to heterosexual couples. Maybe King just wants to show that he really is as wingnutty as any Iowa Republican on the subject of gay marriage.

Having spent a fair amount of time in the former Communist bloc, I can assure King that the socialist world was extremely homophobic. Same-sex relationships had no legal status in any communist country, and homosexuality was a crime for decades in many of them.

Jed Lewison and John Deeth have further comments on King’s absurdity. Please add your own thoughts in this thread.  

Next year’s campaign in Iowa Senate district 37 will be closely watched statewide and may draw some national attention. Republican State Representative Kent Sorenson has decided to challenge first-term Senator Staci Appel instead of seeking re-election to Iowa House district 74. The socially conservative Sorenson made a splash this summer with his open letter imploring Senator Chuck Grassley to provide “principled and bold leadership” to advance the Republican Party platform. Appel is assistant Senate majority leader and chairs the State Government Committee. Her husband is one of the seven Iowa Supreme Court justices who unanimously struck down our Defense of Marriage Act in April.

Republican blogger Craig Robinson is upbeat about Sorenson’s chances.

My opinion on this matchup hasn’t changed since Robinson first discussed the prospect in May: Bring it on.

On Tuesday the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2009, which “would extend unemployment insurance benefits by 13 weeks in states that have jobless rates above 8.5 percent.” 27 states and the District of Columbia have unemployment rates exceeding that level.

The bill easily passed by a vote of 331 to 83, but as you can see from the roll call, Iowa’s House delegation was divided in an unusual way. Representatives Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Leonard Boswell (IA-03) were among the 17 Democrats who voted against the bill. They opposed it because unemployed Iowans would be ineligible for the extended benefits. Although our state has the eighth-lowest unemployment rate in the country, we also have pockets of higher unemployment, especially in rural areas.

After the jump I’ve posted statements released by Braley and Boswell on this bill. Boswell noted that four counties in the third Congressional districts have unemployment rates above 9 percent. Braley noted, “When you’re unemployed, it doesn’t matter to you what your state’s unemployment rate is.  What matters is that you need to support your family.”

Representative Dave Loebsack (IA-02) did not vote yesterday, because he was meeting with Fema Administrator Craig Fugate and various state and local officials in Cedar Rapids to discuss flood recovery efforts. I contacted his office for comment on the unemployment bill. His spokesperson Sabrina Siddiqui told me that Loebsack had serious concerns about the way Iowans were excluded from the extended unemployment benefits, adding that Loebsack is working with House leaders to address the needs of unemployed Iowans in future legislation.

Extending unemployment benefits during a severe recession is good policy, not only to help struggling families, but because spending on unemployment benefits has a very high economic stimulus “bang for the buck.” That said, it’s unfair to penalize unemployed Iowans for the fact that our state is faring better than many others on the jobs front.

Iowa’s Republicans in the U.S. House were also divided on this bill, with Tom Latham (IA-04) voting yes and Steve King (IA-05) voting no.

Governor Chet Culver announced on Tuesday that he has appointed Fred Hubbell to serve as interim director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development (IDED). Hubbell will start working there on October 5. He will continue to serve on the Power Fund board, only he will now be IDED’s representative on that body. Last month the rumor mill floated Hubbell’s name as a possible challenger to Senator Chuck Grassley, but he said he was not interested in running for Senate.

Culver picked Joe O’Hern, deputy director at the Iowa Finance Authority, to be the new interim deputy director at IDED, focusing on IDED’s flood recovery efforts. This press release from the governor’s office contains more background on Hubbell and O’Hern.

Culver spoke about the abuse of Iowa’s film tax credit program during a press conference in Cedar Rapids on Tuesday:

When information was first brought to my attention last week about Iowa’s film tax credit program, I was troubled. But as we began our investigation into this program, and more information has come to light, frankly, I am outraged – not only that a program involving millions of Iowa tax dollars was so mismanaged but that some companies were taking advantage of this situation.

This problem first came to my attention last week when I was traveling on Tuesday with former director Tramontina. At that time, I asked him to prepare for me a memo outlining problems with the program. And, after receiving that memo, I took immediate steps to protect the taxpayers of Iowa. […]

These actions are intended to protect the best interest of Iowans, and not to harm the growing film and television industry in our state. This program should continue only after we have the controls, oversight, and due diligence in place to assure that it operates properly.

But, while there were clearly not the controls and oversight in place at the Iowa Film Office, we need to make sure that the film and TV productions in our state are following the rules.

For example, projects must have commitments for at least 50% of their funding before even applying for assistance under the program.

In addition, projects are not to receive tax credits until after their work is complete and they have submitted invoices of qualified expenses.

And, we expect film and television productions to obey Iowa’s labor laws – which mean people get paid for the work they do. That does not mean they wait until after their tax credit has been approved.

Iowans will not be taken for suckers. While we need to make changes to strengthen management of this program, we are not going to be taken advantage of – and if we are, we are going to claw back and make sure any money wrongfully provided is returned.

If something good can come out of this scandal, I hope that all of Iowa’s tax credit programs will now receive greater scrutiny. Even if there are no other tax credits being abused, we may not be getting our money’s worth for all of these programs. In a weak economy that puts pressure on state revenues, wasteful tax credits need to be on the chopping block along with government spending.

Governor Chet Culver took more steps on Monday to deal with the scandal surrounding Iowa’s tax credits for the movie industry:

Culver fired Iowa Film Office manager Tom Wheeler, who was in charge of coordinating tax-credit deals with moviemakers, who flocked to Iowa during the past year.

Vince Lintz, deputy director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development, which oversaw the film office, turned in his resignation. […]

On Monday, Culver asked state Auditor David Vaudt, Iowa Department of Revenue director Mark Schuling and Attorney General Tom Miller to assist in reviewing the program.

Culver said he was “very troubled” by reports of abuses in the tax credit program, which reportedly included purchase of two luxury vehicles by unidentified movie executives, and lax oversight.

“I’ve made it very clear from the very beginning that we would like to continue the program,” Culver told The Des Moines Register. “But not until we have all of the controls in place, the oversight, the due diligence that is necessary to run any program involving taxpayer money.”

Surely we’ll be hearing a lot more about this mess, which already prompted the Department of Economic Development director’s resignation last Friday.

Naturally, Republican legislative leaders are blaming the “governor’s lack of oversight and failure to properly manage the film tax credit” for the problems. Several people I’ve spoken with share Bleeding Heartland user American007’s view that this scandal is going to become a major headache for Culver, like wrongdoing at the Central Iowa Employment Training Consortium was used to attack Governor Tom Vilsack and other Democrats a few years ago.

It’s not clear to me how Culver could have or should have micromanaged the film tax credit program. Upon learning of problems, he has acted promptly and appropriately. If the governor were resisting change to this program, protecting the officials who screwed up, or blocking an investigation, that would be a different story.

In addition, as you can see from this CIETC scandal timeline, the CIETC abuses became public knowledge during the spring of 2006. The scandal didn’t stop Iowa Democrats from making big gains that November. Mike Mauro was elected secretary of state that year, even though he shared a surname with one of the CIETC board members (I remember some fretting over that at the time).

Culver should brace himself for more bad news about the film tax credits when investigators have completed their reviews, but I don’t see this issue being salient with voters more than a year from now.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

The Dubuque mayor and city council decided in 2006 to make the community “a Sustainable City.” Last week federal officials recognized the progress made toward that goal. From an Environmental Protection Agency press release on September 17:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and White House Director of Urban Affairs Adolfo Carrion kicked off their three-city Sustainable Communities Tour today. The officials, representing the administration’s DOT-HUD-EPA Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities, announced proposals during stops in Chicago and Dubuque that will help communities to improve access to affordable housing, provide additional low-cost transportation options, and protect the local environment.

Also on September 17, the city of Dubuque and IBM

outlined their plans to partner in the development of new “smarter” technologies and implementation strategies to create an international model of sustainability for communities of 200,000 and under, where over 40 percent of the U.S. population resides. Dubuque, a city that is recognized as a national leader in sustainability with its forward-thinking public policy, together with IBM, will address the ever-increasing demands of cities to deliver vital services such as energy and water management, and transportation, all while reducing the community’s impact on the environment.

More details about the recent events, along with some background, are after the jump.

Congratulations to the Iowa Food Cooperative, which is among 86 recipients of U.S. Department of Agriculture grants under the 2009 Farmers Market Promotion Program. If you live in the Des Moines area, check out what the Iowa Food Cooperative has to offer.

I missed the latest “Sample Sunday” at three farms near Woodward, because my kids wanted to go to the “Renaissance Faire” instead. (Couldn’t do that on Saturday because of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.) I admit that I enjoyed the combination of civil society and “fakelore” at the “faire,” but I would have rather been eating Northern Prairie Chevre cheese and Picket Fence Creamery ice cream than carnival food.

In August and September I absolutely love my weekly boxes of vegetables from One Step at a Time Gardens. Not long ago the largest kohlrabi I’ve ever seen showed up in one box. Apparently it is some kind of European variety that grows very big. I have farm-fresh, chemical-free potatoes as well, so it looks like I’ll be making kohlrabi and potato soup with caraway seeds this week, for the first time since last season.

You can find locally-grown fruits and vegetables in more and more major Iowa grocery stores, but you can often pay less for fresher food by buying directly from farmers. This page lists 126 farmers markets and fruit stands in Iowa. Many other farmers sell out of their trucks in urban parking lots or along country roads.

If you live in northeastern Iowa, I highly recommend the 2009 Buy Fresh Buy Local Food Directory, published by the Northern Iowa Food & Farm Partnership (NIFFP) at the University of Northern Iowa Center for Energy & Environmental Education. This guide covers grocers, farmers markets, local food producers and restaurants that serve local foods in Allamakee, Benton, Black Hawk, Bremer, Buchanan, Butler, Chickasaw, Fayette, Floyd, Grundy, Mitchell and Tama counties. To download, go to the UNI’s Center for Energy & Environmental Education site, clicking on “Local Foods” and scrolling down to “Find Local Foods Near You.”

The Iowa Network for Community Agriculture has lots of good links here for consumers interested in local foods.

If you find it hard to incorporate seasonal foods in your diet, it may help to change some of your shopping and cooking habits.

The freshest and most economical food is the food you grow yourself, but I can’t help you there. Our yard is too shady for a garden, and even the tomato plant on our deck was a total failure this summer.

Please share your own local food stories, successes or disappointments in this thread.

Marriage equality is here to stay in Iowa, if the latest statewide poll for the Des Moines Register is any guide:

Forty-one percent say they would vote for a [constitutional amendment to] ban [same-sex marriage], and 40 percent say they would vote to continue gay marriage. The rest either would not vote or say they are not sure. […]

The overwhelming majority of Iowans – 92 percent – say gay marriage has brought no real change to their lives. […]

The poll shows that 26 percent of Iowans favor April’s unanimous court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, 43 percent oppose it and 31 percent don’t care much or are not sure.

Despite the 43 percent opposition to the ruling, 61 percent of Iowans say other issues will influence their decision on whether to vote to retain Iowa Supreme Court justices in the 2010 elections.

Selzer and Co. surveyed 803 Iowans between September 14 and 16, and the poll has a margin of error of 3.5 percent.

I recommend clicking through to view the chart showing the breakdown by party affiliation on this issue. Among independents, only 44 percent either oppose or strongly oppose the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision that cleared the way for marriage equality, while 32 percent “don’t care much” and 22 percent either favor or strongly favor it.

Many Iowa Republicans are convinced that they can gain traction in next year’s legislative elections by bashing statehouse Democrats who oppose a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. However, the Republican candidate fell just short in the recent special election in Iowa House district 90, even though the National Organization for Marriage poured nearly $90,000 into ads supporting the Republican because of the marriage issue. (The NOM plans to be involved in next year’s Iowa elections as well.)

A poll commissioned by The Iowa Republican blog in July indicated that two-thirds of Iowans wanted a public vote on same-sex marriage, but that poll framed the question as follows: “The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled gay marriages can legally be conducted in the state. Whether you agree or disagree with the decision, do you think Iowa voters should have the chance to vote on a traditional marriage amendment to the constitution or is the issue best decided by the Supreme Court?” Todd Dorman was right to point out that it would have been more enlightening to ask respondents how they would vote on a marriage amendment.

The Register’s poll could strengthen the hand of Republicans like Doug Gross, who have been saying all year that the GOP should downplay divisive social issues and focus on the economy in next year’s elections. On the other hand, 51 percent of Republicans surveyed by Selzer and Co strongly oppose the Supreme Court decision, while 11 percent just oppose the decision, 27 percent don’t care much and only 10 percent either favor or strongly favor it. Gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats promises to issue an executive order on day one halting same-sex marriages if elected, and he will find plenty of support among the Republican rank and file.

I’ve been telling my friends, “Don’t worry, be happy,” since the Iowa Supreme Court announced its Varnum v Brien decision in April. I figured that with each passing year, more Iowans would understand that no one is harmed and thousands are helped by granting gays and lesbians civil marriage rights. I also felt that Republicans would not be able to win many races on this issue in 2010, let alone in subsequent years. Still, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a poll this year showing majority support for overturning the Supreme Court ruling. Learning that a constitutional amendment on marriage lacks majority support even now makes me that much more optimistic. (UPDATE: Forgot to add that Iowa has a lengthy constitutional amendment process.)

Now it’s imperative to defeat Proposition 1 in Maine this November. Please help if you can.

The Sunday Des Moines Register published results from its latest Iowa poll. Selzer and Associates surveyed 803 Iowans between September 14 and 16 (click here and scroll down to read the questionnaire).

50 percent of respondents approve of Governor Chet Culver’s performance, while 39 percent disapprove. The last Iowa poll for the Register, published in April, found Culver’s approval rating at 55 percent. Culver’s re-elect number continues to drop, which is a bit worrying. In this poll, only 28 percent of respondents said they would definitely vote to re-elect Culver, while 27 percent would consider an alternative and 21 percent would definitely vote for an alternative.

On the other hand, Culver’s approval numbers are still net positive, which isn’t bad given the state of the economy. The right direction/wrong track numbers in this poll are 48/41.

Survey USA has had Culver in net negative territory for most of the year, but it looks to me like that pollster has some kind of negative house effect. The only public polls showing Culver below 50 percent approval this year have been by Survey USA. The Register poll’s approval numbers for Senators Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin are also more than 10 points above Survey USA’s comparable numbers.

The Register’s new poll may encourage former Governor Terry Branstad to take the plunge, as it shows 70 percent of respondents approve of the job he did as governor. Branstad’s favorability rating is 59 percent, a bit higher than Culver’s 55 percent. Political columnist Kathie Obradovich suggested that these numbers should “incinerate” any doubts Branstad might have about getting back into politics.

I see the results somewhat differently. Today’s numbers are probably Branstad’s high water mark, since no one has campaigned against him for 15 years. Once he becomes a candidate, his real record, as opposed to the Draft Branstad PAC’s version, will get more scrutiny. Yet even today’s poll indicates that just 48 percent of all respondents think it would be a good idea for Branstad to run for governor again (36 percent thought it would be a bad idea).

Among Republicans, 60 percent thought Branstad should run. However, 26 percent of Republicans thought that would be a bad idea. Again, that’s before anyone seriously campaigns against him. I assume Branstad would win a GOP primary by a healthy margin, but he will have to fight for it, and a significant proportion of Republicans won’t welcome his return. Will he be able to count on disappointed party members to vote for him, or activists to volunteer for him next November? He’ll need help to overcome Iowa Democrats’ voter registration advantage, which Branstad never faced in any of his previous elections.

If I were Branstad, the most worrying sign in the Register’s poll would be something else Obradovich mentioned in her column on Sunday:

The former governor’s biggest problem comes from seniors, who are usually dependable voters. Among the 65-and-older set, nearly half think it’s a bad idea for Branstad to run again. Only about three in 10 said it’s a good idea.

It’s telling that Iowans who were adults during the entirety of Branstad’s tenure as governor, and are old enough to remember his predecessor Bob Ray, are the least likely to want Branstad back in politics. In contrast, various polls have indicated that Culver’s support is higher among over-50 Iowans than in the population as a whole. (I didn’t see the age breakdown for Culver’s numbers in this poll.)

Doubts about Branstad are likely to grow when the inevitable negative commercials hit the airwaves, focusing on the Mastercard governor’s two sets of books or his failure to deliver on some key promises made to Republicans.

No wonder longtime political observers like Des Moines Register columnist Marc Hansen and Civic Skinny’s unnamed source think it would be a mistake for Branstad to run for governor again.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Talk about a bolt from the blue:

A memo from auditors investigating irregularities in a state tax-credit program for filmmaking paint a picture of movie producers and film executives taking personal advantage of the program and state administrators paying little attention.

The director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development, Mike Tramontina, abruptly resigned Friday after allegations of mismanagement of the program surfaced. The department oversees the Iowa Film Office. The manager of that office, Tom Wheeler, was placed on paid administrative leave.

The departure of Tramontina, who was appointed to the post by Gov. Chet Culver in 2007, came after preliminary findings from auditors looking into allegations that filmmakers had purchased luxury vehicles for themselves.

According to the memo obtained by The Des Moines Register, auditors found a long list of bookkeeping lapses and poor oversight in the program, which has spent $32 million on tax credits for 20 film projects since its inception in 2007. The program was aimed at promoting filmmaking in Iowa as a way to contribute to the local and state economy.

The governor’s office announced Tramontina’s resignation at 4:56 pm on Friday. Culver also suspended the tax credit program until auditors complete a review of it.

State Senator Tom Courtney, a Democrat from Burlington, told the Des Moines Register “he talked to state officials about problems with the movie tax credits about a month ago, when labor officials complained that few Iowans were getting hired to work on the movies.” Courtney raised those concerns again in a meeting with the Iowa Economic Development Board the day before Tramontina resigned:

“I’m hearing nothing but complaints that workers are being brought in from other states” during film productions in Iowa, Courtney said. “I don’t imagine we have a lot of Clint Eastwoods running around, but with a little training, we could be doing many of those jobs.”

Michael Tramontina, the state’s economic development leader, said he couldn’t put a number on how many jobs are created, since many are temporary – from contractors used to build sets to caterers and “extra” actors.

“Anecdotally from the film industry, it ranges from 20 to 60 percent Iowans” employed on films produced in Iowa, Tramontina said. […]

Tramontina said the agency is working to develop “employment thresholds” for a film, but hitting a number is complicated.

Employment requirements should depend on the kind of film being made – whether it’s a feature film being made over three to six months or a TV series that might run for years. […]

Courtney said lawmakers might need to address closing what he called “an open door” in film tax credits if Tramontina’s agency is unable to do it. He said most Iowa economic development incentives carry job-creation requirements. “Iowa has a bright future in the film industry, but we have to help the people who live here.”

While Republicans harp on the need to cut spending further, it’s equally important to subject every tax credit to scrutiny. The Iowa Policy Project has found that expenditures on tax credits for business have “skyrocketed” in recent years, far outstripping the rate of increase in spending from Iowa’s general fund. These tax credits should be on the table as legislators look for ways to balance the budget.

The House of Representatives passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act on Thursday on a mostly party-line vote of 253 to 171 (roll call here). Iowa Democrats Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack and Leonard Boswell all voted for the bill, while Republicans Tom Latham and Steve King voted against it.

Click here to download a pdf file containing the House Education and Labor Committee’s estimates on how many students in each Congressional district will be able to receive Pell Grants during the 2010/2011 academic year under this reform. The estimate is 16,355 students in Iowa’s fourth district (Latham) and 16,301 students in Iowa’s fifth district (King).

Overall, just four Democrats voted against the bill: Allen Boyd (FL-02), Paul Kanjorski (PA-11), Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (SD-AL), and Mike McMahon (NY-13). Six Republicans voted for the bill: Vern Buchanan (FL-13), Joseph Cao (LA-02), Timothy Johnson (IL-15), Tom Petri (WI-06), Todd Platts (PA-19), and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18). At Congress Matters, David Waldman posted details about the amendments proposed to this bill and which ones passed yesterday.

A press release from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee included these bullet points about the bill:

*The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act is the largest single federal investment in higher education in American history and will also be used to pay down the national debt (H.R. 3221, #719, 9/17/09)

*The measure will make federal student lending more efficient through a variety of reforms that will save the federal government $87 billion. Of those savings, $77 billion will be invested toward making college more affordable and $10 billion will be used to pay down the national debt.

*These savings will be achieved through a number of reforms including:

*Converting federal lending to the Direct Loan Program.

*Establishing a competitive bidding process, allowing the U.S. Department of Education to select lenders based on how well they serve borrowers.

*Allowing non-profit organizations to continue servicing student loans.

*This measure will increase the amount of Pell Grants in 2010 and 2011, lower the interest rates of federally subsidized student loans, expand the Perkins Loan program, and streamline the application form for financial aid.

Senate HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin is committed to passing student loan reforms this year.

UPDATE: Like Latham and King, all the House Republicans from Kentucky voted against this bill, and I agree with RDemocrat’s assessment at the Hillbilly Report:

I think this once again properly demonstrates the hypocrisy of Kentucky Republicans and the Republican Party as a whole. They constantly lecture us on spending, but they care little about money being wasted as long as it is being wasted on corporate welfare. When presented with a chance to both save money, and help working poor children afford college, they would rather waste that $80 billion.

Senator Jay Rockefeller was excluded from the bipartisan group of Finance Committee members who worked on the bill Chairman Max Baucus unveiled on Wednesday, so he spent part of his summer vacation researching the fake public option favored by some “gang of six” members. He reported on his findings in an open letter to Baucus and ranking member Chuck Grassley. You should click through and read Rockefeller’s whole letter, but here are some excerpts:

“First, there has been no significant research into consumer co-ops as a model for the broad expansion of health insurance. What we do know, however, is that this model was tried in the early part of the 20th century and largely failed. As the USDA states in its response letter, ‘Government support for the cooperative approach to delivering universal health care was reduced during [World War II] and terminated afterward.’ This is a dying business model for health insurance. Moving forward with health insurance cooperatives would expose Americans, who are hoping for a better health care system, to a health care model that has already been tried and largely failed in the vast majority of the country.

“Second, there is a lack of consistent data about the total number of consumer health insurance cooperatives in existence today, and there have been no analyses of the impact of existing health insurance cooperatives on consumers.

“Third, all of the consumer health insurance cooperatives identified by the [U.S. Department of Agriculture] and [National Cooperative Business Association] operate and function just like private health insurance companies. Therefore, it is unclear how expanding consumer health insurance cooperatives would actually achieve greater affordability for consumers or bring about greater competition in the private market…

The Congressional Budget Office doesn’t expect the co-ops to affect the cost of the Baucus bill:

(The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the estimates of total enrollment in the exchanges or federal costs because, as they are described in the specifications, they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments.)

The failure of co-ops to provide competition in Iowa bears out the CBO’s expectations:

In the 1990s, Iowa adopted a law to encourage the development of health care co-ops. One was created, and it died within two years. Although the law is still on the books, the state does not have a co-op now, said Susan E. Voss, the Iowa insurance commissioner.

Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield collects about 70 percent of the premiums paid in the private insurance market in Iowa and South Dakota.

It’s past time for President Obama to stop sending out White House staff and cabinet secretaries to signal that Obama might accept cooperatives as an alternative to a public health insurance option.

Here’s hoping that even in the absence of presidential leadership, Rockefeller can get strong amendments attached to the Baucus bill or make sure it never gets out of the Senate Finance Committee.

I’M for Iowa made the announcement today in a mass e-mail:

For too long, Iowa’s airwaves have been dominated by Rush Limbaugh, Jan Mickelson, Steve Deace, Glen Beck and Michael Savage. Well, we have great news: times are changing!

Beginning Monday, September 21st, we will host our own talk show from 7:00 – 8:00 pm, Monday through Thursday on 98.3 WOW-FM. It’s called “THE FALLON FORUM” and can be heard from Fort Dodge to Chariton, from Grinnell to Carroll, and can be live-streamed at http://www.983wowfm.com. We hope you’ll tune in, and you can join the conversation at (515) 312-0983.

This is an unprecedented opportunity for those of us concerned about pressing economic, social and environmental issues. We want to offer true “talk” radio, as opposed to the “shock” radio dished-up by those on the far right. In fact, THE FALLON FORUM replaces some of the airtime currently given to Michael Savage, the guy who recently recommended making “the construction of mosques illegal in America, and the speaking of English only in the streets of the United States the law.”

We’ll kick off the show on Monday with Dolores Huerta. Dolores helped found the United Farm Workers of America with Cesar Chavez. At 79, she remains an energetic, outspoken advocate for many important causes, including marriage equality.

On Tuesday, we’ll dig into Iowa politics.

Zach Mannheimer with The Subjective Theatre Company joins us on Wednesday to discuss the merger of the artistic and corporate worlds. We anticipate a spirited exchange on the new sculpture garden set to open in downtown Des Moines.

On Thursday, we want to hear your thoughts on America’s historic health care debate . . . providing you keep it civil and based on fact. We’ll pull the plug on any caller who insists the legislation before Congress pulls the plug on grandma.

Thanks, and we hope you can join us on the show next week!

Ed and Lynn Fallon

Speaking of the Fallons and Iowa politics, I wonder how many primary challengers they’ve recruited in certain Iowa House districts.

In his latest e-mail blast to constituents, Senator Tom Harkin touches on his priorities as the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. One point he mentioned hasn’t been on my radar screen this year:

The full agenda of the Committee will focus on reforming federal student loan programs so that we can stop subsidizing private banks and instead focus on loans that the federal government can make more cheaply.  We can save $87 billion over 10 years in that effort, and use that money to increase Pell grants for low- and middle- income college bound students, and to fund other important education initiatives.  

I had forgotten about President Barack Obama’s effort to reform the student loan system:

His plan is to do away with a system in which the Federal Government subsidizes banks and other private finance companies like Sallie Mae to lend money to students. The Administration essentially wants to cut such companies out of the game and run the system itself. Democrats claim the move will save $87 billion over 10 years, which can be used for a laundry list of education priorities, including increasing the maximum amount of Pell Grants, expanding Perkins Loans and investing in community colleges and other programs. […]

Educational institutions currently have two ways to offer federal loans to students. In the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL, pronounced “fell”) program, the government pays subsidies to banks and lenders to dole out money to borrowers and reimburses companies up to 97% of the cost of any loan that is not paid back. The second way is the direct-loan program, created in 1993 as an alternate option, in which the government cuts out the middle man, lends money directly and gets all the profits. If the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) passes both houses of Congress, the approximately 4,500 colleges and universities that are currently signed up for FFEL will have to abandon the program and start using the direct-loan option by July 1, 2010.

Directing federal money toward programs that help needy students, such as Pell Grants, makes a lot more sense than subsidizing private banks to make student loans.

Finding 60 votes in the Senate for this proposal will be challenging, however. This is one banking bailout Republicans will fight hard to protect, and according to Time magazine, at least one Democrat (Ben Nelson of Nebraska) opposes the plan too. If this bill passes, it will probably be through the budget reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes in the Senate.

Health care reform is sure to take up a lot of Harkin’s time this fall, but I’m glad the HELP chairman will also focus on other bills that could change many lives for the better. Even if the health care project falls apart in the Senate, Harkin could accomplish a lot this year if he gets the student loan bill through and brokers a good compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act.

I see only one downside to Harkin becoming the HELP chairman, and that’s Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas taking over the Agriculture Committee. Jill Richardson has been on this case at La Vida Locavore. I recommend reading her posts on industry lobbyists who used to work for Lincoln, Lincoln’s strong support for corporate ag interests such as Arkansas-based Tyson Foods, and Lincoln’s positions on trade, the climate change bill, and the Clean Water Act.

Now that we’re done with the Joe “You Lie” Wilson sideshow, I want to talk about a different kind of Republican disrespect for normal political disagreement.

Having been raised by a Republican of the now-extinct Rockefeller variety, I am often struck by how extreme the GOP has become. Chuck Grassley and Terry Branstad were on the far right in the early 1980s, but many Iowa conservatives now consider them “moderate” or even “liberal.”

Mainstream extremism in the Republican Party is depressing on many levels. It fosters ignorance, as when Iowa Republicans are led to believe that the judiciary is not supposed to interpret the constitution. It encourages politicians to put their theology ahead of civil laws.

Most troubling is when prominent conservatives use language that condones physical violence or “revolution” to resist Democratic policy proposals. I fear that people will get hurt or killed if some mentally unstable person takes these appeals too literally.

More thoughts on this subject are after the jump.

OneTray.org has two new videos promoting healthy school lunches. Click through to watch “Lunch Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Priceless.”

The goal is to raise awareness of Farm to School programs for the upcoming reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act by depicting the cafeteria tray as the centerpiece for a reformed school food system that supports healthy children, local farms and smart schools. Learn more.

Everyone’s seen those “priceless” MasterCard ads, but how many of you are old enough to remember the Richard Dreyfuss mashed potato scene in Close Encounters?

I’m relieved my first-grader is too picky to want to eat the school lunches (except one or twice a month when they serve pancakes or waffles). I would rather pack a lunch for him anyway.

Iowa needs to invest more in getting locally produced foods in school lunches. The Malcolm Price Laboratory School in Cedar Falls has a good pilot program going this year.

I learned from 1000 Friends Of Iowa that the Iowa Department of Transportation and the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization are seeking public input on two important issues.

The DOT is finalizing the Statewide Public Transportation Study and will make recommendations to the state legislature in December. Officials want to hear from Iowans about:

   * Baseline level of service for public transportation in Iowa

   * Gap analysis between baseline service and public transportation demands of Iowans.

   * Transportation services needed to close these gaps.

   * The additional cost of these services.

   * Addressing Iowa’s energy conservation goals.

   * The range of possible funding concepts to address service needs.

   * Draft findings of the study to date.

You can comment on any of these issues at public meetings in Centerville, Sioux City, Des Moines, Iowa City, Bettendorf, or Waterloo on September 15-17 (event details are after the jump). Alternatively, you can submit comments through an online survey at www.iRIDE21.com.

Anyone with an opinion on how to improve Iowa’s passenger transportation should let the DOT know. You do not have to be an expert or policy wonk. Remember, public transit is not just for big city residents. An express bus or vanpool that takes people from a smaller town to work in a nearby larger city saves passengers money while reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. Last year the weekly Cityview profiled Winterset resident Ann Pashek, who saves thousands of dollars a year through the Des Moines Area Transit Authority’s Rideshare program.

Meanwhile, the Des Moines Area Metropolitan Planning Organization is hosting the last series of public input meetings on the Horizon Year 2035 Metropolitan Transportation Plan. They need to hear from central Iowa residents who are concerned about land use, air quality and global warming.

Although reducing vehicle miles driven is a critical element of any plan to address greenhouse gas emissions, the DMAMPO’s plan for the next 25 years involves 341 projects that, if completed, would increase vehicle miles traveled in our region by 33 percent (by the DMAMPO’s own calculations). 1000 Friends of Iowa adds:

The study also indicated that despite increases in [vehicle miles traveled], cleaner vehicles and fuels will result in continued reductions in vehicle pollutant emissions.  Gasoline was used in their project model.  However, when ethanol was used the increase in CO2 was 66% higher.  DNR Air Quality Division has studies which conclude that emissions with ethanol are substantially higher.   It seems this plan will not reduce VMTs or promote cleaner air.

The DMAMPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization) is hosting the final series of public input meetings to receive input and comments on the HY 2035 MTP final draft. You must tell the DMAMPO that Central Iowans want to concentrate more transportation dollars on alternatives which will promote the responsible use of our states resources, land water and air. This is the most important series of meetings, please mark your calendars, plan to attend and make your opinion count!

The DMAMPO meetings are on September 15 and 16 at the North Side Library in Des Moines. Event details are in the 1000 Friends of Iowa action alert, which I’ve posted after the jump. That also includes talking points as well as contact information for those who prefer to submit written comments to the DMAMPO. Anyone can send a comment; you do not have to have attended a public meeting.

On a related note, today is the last day to submit a comment urging the DNR to protect water quality in Iowa’s cleanest lakes and streams. Please take a minute to send an e-mail to the right DNR officials.

So much policy that affects our lives is made below the radar. If I weren’t involved with 1000 Friends of Iowa, I would never have heard of these discussions about transportation priorities. If I weren’t involved with the Iowa Environmental Council and the Sierra Club’s Iowa Chapter, I would not have heard of the debate over water quality rules either. I encourage you to join some non-profit organizations that are active on matters important to you. You will become much more informed than if you rely solely on the mainstream media.

BruceMcF breaks it down for you:

So: (1) Public Choice

“No Taxation without Representation”. Every single person facing an individual mandate must be provided with the choice of a publicly administered plan. Otherwise the government is forcing the citizen to pay without the elected representatives of the citizen controlling the spending.

You want to put a trigger on the public option. Fine, except the exact same trigger applies to the individual mandate.

You want to restrict access to the public option to some smaller group? Fine, except the same restriction applies to the individual mandate.

The system is not politically legitimate if it requires payment to for-profit commercial corporations.

(2) Robust

It cannot be lumbered down with any restrictions not faced by private insurers.

State by state public options? Really? You are really prepared to restrict the corporations to firms with no commercial activity across state lines? If they are free standing state by state public options, it has to be state by state for profit corporations. Oh, not allowing [United Healthcare] into the exchanges defeats the purpose of lining private pockets at the public expense? Yeah, kind of thought so.

BruceMcF has long been one of my favorite transportation bloggers and has written great stuff on health care reform too, including Axelrod: Government by Consent of the Corporation. His home blog is Burning the Midnight Oil, but he frequently cross-posts his work at Progressive Blue, Daily Kos, My Left Wing, Docudharma, and the Hillbilly Report.

Speaking of real and fake public options, Timothy Noah explains “the sorry history” of triggers enacted by Congress, and slinkerwink has suggestions and talking points to use when contacting House Progressives about health care reform. I still think it’s worth urging Populist Caucus members as well as Progressives to insist on a real, not fake or triggered, public option in the final health care bill.

Bruce Braley (IA-01) leads the Populist Caucus, and Dave Loebsack (IA-02) and Leonard Boswell (IA-03) both belong to the caucus. All of them have advocated for the public option, but to my knowledge none has pledge to vote down any bill that lacks a public option.

For those interested in the nitty gritty of legislative wrangling, David Waldman ponders what might happen if the Senate Finance Committee members can’t agree and consequently fail to report out a health care bill.

I received this news release from the Iowa Democratic Party on September 11:

DES MOINES — Longtime Democratic activist Jan Bauer of Ames is one of 75 new at-large members of the Democratic National Committee following a vote Friday at the party’s annual meeting in Austin, Texas.  Bauer also will serve on the DNC Resolutions Committee.

Other appointments Friday included: Sandy Opstvedt of Story City to the the Resolutions Committee, and Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Michael Kiernan to the Rules and Bylaws Committee.  In addition, members re-elected Opsvedt to the DNC executive committee.

Kiernan’s post is expected to give him important clout in protecting Iowa’s first in the nation caucuses. “We have a stronger Iowa delegation than at any time in memory,” Kiernan said Friday.  “This is great for Iowa Democrats and for our state.”

Iowans serving on the Democratic National Committee are Bauer, Kiernan, Opstvedt, Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, State Sen. Michael Gronstal, Linn County Supervisor Linda Langston, Sue Dvorsky and Leroy Williams.

Since last November’s election, I haven’t worried at all about Iowa’s place in the nominating process. As long as Barack Obama is president, I don’t think he will let the DNC allow any state to jump ahead of Iowa. For what it’s worth, I don’t think any number of influential Iowans could have saved our first-in-the-nation status if Obama had lost to John McCain.

I’m more concerned about reforms that would improve the integrity of the caucus process and the ability of interested voters to participate. I also would like to see changes to the rules allocating pledged delegates, so that in 2016 one candidate won’t be able to net as many pledged delegates from, say, winning the Wyoming caucuses as another candidate nets from, say, winning the Ohio primary by 10 percent.

Share any relevant thoughts in this thread.

Senator Tom Harkin told a crowd of nearly 2,000 people today that health care reform including a public health insurance option will pass before this Christmas. Speaking at his 32nd Annual Steak Fry in Indianola, Harkin joked,

“This is my kind of town-hall meeting,” […] because he didn’t see any Republicans standing up to say, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”

Harkin and event headliner Al Franken predicted that health care reform would pass with some Republican votes, which seems unlikely if the final version of the bill contains a public option. Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine has been the focus of White House courting on health care, but she opposes a public option, apparently because it has the potential to provide lower-cost health insurance.

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions passed a bill this summer containing a public option, but according to one critic, the HELP bill’s public option is anything but robust:

the actual provisions in the HELP Committee bill call for numerous “community health insurance options,” not the single “Medicare-like” plan promised by “public option” advocates. That means the individual “options” will probably be as small and weak as the co-ops now under discussion in the Senate Finance Committee. More importantly, these “community options” will almost certainly be run by insurance companies.

The public option in the bill that cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee, HR 3200, is also weak in several respects.

President Barack Obama met with 17 relatively conservative Democratic senators on Thursday, reinforcing many people’s fears that he was ready to discard the public option. The same day, Harkin assured the Progressive Populist blog that 51 votes can be found in the Senate for a bill with a public option.

So what about all the hubub about the Blue Dogs and/or Progressives opting out if the bill doesn’t meet their liking? Harkin said don’t put too much stock in those statements.

“Look, around here people are always jockeying for power. That’s all this is,” Harkin said.

The only chance of making this bill stronger, in my opinion, is getting a large bloc of House Democrats to draw a line in the sand. If you live in Iowa’s first, second or third Congressional districts, please contact Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack or Leonard Boswell to urge them not to accept any bill containing a “trigger” (which is guaranteed to fail) or some other fake public health insurance option. Organizing for America has a new petition out if you prefer that method of generating an e-mail to your member of Congress.

UPDATE: Don’t miss John Deeth’s entertaining liveblog from this event, with lots of photos. Braley and Loebsack praised Boswell for standing up for a public option (unlike many Blue Dogs).

From Chase Martyn’s write-up at Iowa Independent:

Boswell and fellow Democratic U.S. Reps. Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack also expressed optimism that a final bill would include measures to reform medicare reimbursement rates. Medicare currently pays doctors in rural states like Iowa less than what doctors in densely populated states receive for the same procedures.

My mind’s been on other things this week, so I didn’t have a chance to write a bunch of stories about the various candidates for governor.

Follow me after the jump to catch up.

UPDATE: This diary generated a lot of discussion at Daily Kos. Several readers pointed me to Glenn Greenwald’s rebuttal of Podhoretz’s central claim: Jews should vote Republican because of Israel. Leon Wieseltier’s review of Podhoretz’s book for The New York Times is also worth reading.

Norman Podhoretz began his political life on the Trotskyite left but swung sharply to the right and edited the conservative magazine Commentary for more than three decades. His latest book is called “Why Are Jews Liberals?”, and he published a few thoughts on the subject in the Wall Street Journal this week.

All the other ethno-religious groups that, like the Jews, formed part of the coalition forged by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s have followed the rule that increasing prosperity generally leads to an increasing identification with the Republican Party. But not the Jews. As the late Jewish scholar Milton Himmelfarb said in the 1950s: “Jews earn like Episcopalians”-then the most prosperous minority group in America-“and vote like Puerto Ricans,” who were then the poorest.

Jews also remain far more heavily committed to the liberal agenda than any of their old ethno-religious New Deal partners. As the eminent sociologist Nathan Glazer has put it, “whatever the promptings of their economic interests,” Jews have consistently supported “increased government spending, expanded benefits to the poor and lower classes, greater regulations on business, and the power of organized labor.”

As with these old political and economic questions, so with the newer issues being fought out in the culture wars today. On abortion, gay rights, school prayer, gun control and assisted suicide, the survey data show that Jews are by far the most liberal of any group in America.

After the jump I’ll offer my thoughts about why many Jews are liberals and, equally important, why many Jews who are not liberals vote for Democrats anyway. Podhoretz is convinced that more American Jews should identify with political conservatives, but today’s Republican Party makes that unlikely.  

Like many of you, I’ve been thinking today about the terrorist attacks eight years ago. My husband and I were living in London. I had watched the uneventful 1 pm news while eating lunch. Around 2 pm, which would have been 9 am in New York, someone called and told me to turn the tv back on. I was glued to the BBC for the rest of the day and night.

I remember watching the people trapped on the roof of the World Trade Center and wondering why none of the helicopters could get close enough to rescue them. I remember watching the south tower and later the north tower collapse. I simply could not believe a plane was able to crash into the Pentagon.

I remember the tremendous grief for the victims of the attacks, including 67 UK citizens. 9/11 claimed the lives of more British people than any single terrorist act by the Irish Republican Army. My not-easily-riled husband still gets irritated when people refer to the 3,000 “Americans” killed on 9/11.

In the weeks after the attack, I lost count of how many British people told me how very sorry they were about what had happened. Some of those people were strangers who approached me after hearing my American accent in a shop or a train station. They felt compelled to speak to me. The outpouring of support for the U.S. was real.

I didn’t lose any friends on 9/11. I only had one acquaintance who lost a loved one that day (his father was on one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center). Still, I felt incredibly angry about the attacks. I read many of the newspaper profiles of victims. During the Jewish high holidays in late September 2001, the last thing I felt like doing was reflecting on the past and forgiving wrongs from the past year. I remember listening to a BBC radio segment taped by the UK’s Chief Rabbi, David Sacks. He reminded listeners that the Bible (I assume he meant the Hebrew Scriptures or “Old Testament”) tells us once to love our neighbors, but tells us approximately 30 times to love the stranger. That’s because it is easier to love our neighbor, who is probably a lot like ourselves, than it is to love a stranger. It was an important message during a time of grief and sorrow.

Please share your own memories of 9/11, or anything else on your mind, in this thread.

UPDATE: If you haven’t seen it yet, read the diary Billy Parish cross-posted here yesterday, containing his memories of 9/11 and a call to action on global warming.

The UK Sunday paper The Observer published these statistics from 9/11 and the aftermath during the summer of 2002.

This weekend is packed with good events for Iowa progressives. If you love books, make your way to the Planned Parenthood Book Sale in the 4-H building at the State Fairgrounds in Des Moines. Admission is free; the sale is open from 9-9 Friday and Saturday and from 9-6 Sunday and Monday. The sale offers great deals on books, DVDs, prints, comics, and music, especially on Sunday, when everything is half-price, and on Monday, when everything left is 25 cents.

Proceeds support Planned Parenthood’s education programs, which you can learn more about here.

Incidentally, Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa recently merged with Planned Parenthood of Nebraska/Council Bluffs to form a new affiliate called Planned Parenthood of the Heartland.

The Iowa Renewable Energy Association‘s annual Energy and Sustainability Expo takes place in Norway Saturday and Sunday. There’s so much to learn at the I-RENEW expos.

On Sunday, Senator Al Franken (cartographer extraordinaire) will headline Senator Tom Harkin’s 32nd Annual Steak Fry. The event will be at the Warren County Fairgrounds from 1 pm to 4 pm. Click here for more info and to buy tickets.

Follow me after the jump for details on many other events coming up soon.

I mentioned on Labor Day that I haven’t heard much lately about Senator Tom Harkin’s efforts to reach a compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act. The EFCA is one of the top legislative priorities for organized labor and needs 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster. Several Democrats who supported the bill in 2007, knowing that President Bush would veto it, either oppose the bill or have dodged the question this year.

Harkin has been the lead Senate negotiator on EFCA and is replacing the late Senator Ted Kennedy as chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Speaking to the American Rights at Work group yesterday, Harkin said he had 60 votes lined up behind a compromise this summer:

“As of July, I can tell you this openly and I know the press is all here but we had worked out a pretty good agreement. […]”

Harkin said prominent labor leaders were on board with the deal, including AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.

“That’s when we needed 60 votes and that’s when I called to get Sen. Kennedy down because we needed him for three days. That’s when Dr. [Lawrence] Horowitz told me that he couldn’t make it,” Harkin said.

The Hill’s Kevin Bogardus reported that Harkin refused to specify the terms of the compromise deal:

“I will not say because it was closely held, it never leaked out and it still hasn’t,” Harkin said. “I took it off the front-burner and put it on the back-burner so it is still on warm, OK?”

In May Harkin suggested that the “card check” provision might be dropped from the bill in favor of other changes to labor election procedures. He did not say anything about binding arbitration, which is also an important part of the EFCA.

If Massachusetts law is changed to allow Governor Deval Patrick to appoint a temporary replacement for Kennedy, then Harkin may be able to revive this compromise and pass the EFCA this fall. Democratic leaders in the House agreed earlier this year not to bring the EFCA up for a vote until the measure had passed the Senate. Getting the bill through the House should not be difficult, even if a substantial number of Blue Dog Democrats vote no.

Last year all five Iowa incumbents in the House of Representatives were re-elected by double-digit margins. The main challengers failed to win even 40 percent of the vote against Democrats Bruce Braley (IA-01) and Dave Loebsack (IA-02), as well as Republicans Tom Latham (IA-04) and Steve King (IA-05).

I’ve long assumed that none of Iowa’s Congressional districts would be competitive in 2010. Although Republicans have put Leonard Boswell (IA-03) on their long list of House targets, several other analysts share my view that Boswell is safe for next year. To my knowledge, the only declared candidates against Boswell are the little-known Dave Funk and Pat Bertroche. Boswell’s 1996 opponent Mike Mahaffey is thinking it over too.

Isaac Wood and Larry Sabato released new House race rankings, and they included IA-03 among 47 Democratic-held districts that are “likely” to remain Democratic:

The “likely” category is reserved for those competitive races where one party has a distinct advantage over the other. Most of these races feature either strong challengers or weak incumbents, but not a combination of the two that would warrant a more competitive designation. Consider these races as a watch list which could turn into heated battle with a single misstep by an incumbent or positive fundraising report.

I could see Iowa’s third district becoming competitive, but only if the economy is in terrible shape next fall and Republicans fund a well-known candidate with a base in Polk County (the population center of the district).

I question Wood and Sabato’s decision to put Loebsack’s district in the “likely” category as well. So far right-winger Steve Rathje is definitely running against Loebsack (he narrowly lost the 2008 GOP primary for U.S. Senate). Mariannette Miller-Meeks is also considering a rematch. She’s an impressive woman, but I frankly can’t imagine this district becoming competitive in 2010. IA-02 has much stronger Democratic voting performance than IA-03, which tracks closely with the nationwide vote in presidential elections.

Share any thoughts or predictions in this thread.

I received this alert from the Sierra Club’s Iowa Chapter:

Two years after a coalition, including the Iowa Chapter, petitioned the Environmental Protection Commission for rulemaking to strengthen Iowa’s antidegradation rule, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is recommending “softer” language for protecting some of Iowa’s waters.  Once again, the DNR is succumbing to pressure from polluters to a less protective status for Iowa’s water.

Make your voice heard to DNR that “softening” the language in the antidegradation rule is not acceptable.

At issue is Tier 2.5 protection for Outstanding Iowa Waters.  The DNR agreed early in discussions that Iowa’s high-quality waters, outstanding state resources with exceptional recreational or ecological significance, needed this enhanced level of protection.  Recently, the DNR changed the Outstanding Iowa Waters originally listed.  Now only two of the waters listed in the new NOIA receive a pollution discharge.  See a map of the proposed Outstanding Iowa Waters here. (pdf)

The DNR also proposes language that will make it more difficult to nominate future waters as Outstanding Iowa Waters.  Although any individual or organization can nominate a surface water, the burden of proving that water is worthy falls on whoever is making the nomination.  Draft language indicates that the water will by default receive less protection unless it is proven to deserve otherwise.

The Sierra Club, Iowa Chapter believes that the default should be maximum protection and the burden of proof should fall on the polluter.

Tell the DNR that you want Iowa’s high-quality waters to receive maximum protection and that all proposed streams and lakes should be designated Outstanding Iowa Waters.

Your comments about the proposed Outstanding Iowa Waters are important.  Let the DNR know your experiences and why they should receive maximum protection.

Thanks for all that you do.

Neila Seaman

Sierra Club Iowa Chapter

Click here to see the list of creeks and lakes that the DNR designated as “Outstanding Iowa Waters” earlier this year. This Google document is the memo revising the list, removing all lakes and most of the creeks.

The Sierra Club makes it easy for you to e-mail the right people at the DNR with your comment on this issue. It’s always better to personalize your message if you can, so you might want to look at this document to see whether any lakes or creeks you have enjoyed have been removed from the Outstanding Iowa Waters list. The Iowa Environmental Council provides much more background here on antidegradation rules and Outstanding Iowa Waters.

If you prefer to contact the DNR without going through the Sierra Club site, the Iowa Environmental Council has contact information for the right person here. Public comments must be received by September 15.

Water quality is a huge problem in Iowa already, so we need strong rules protecting our best waters from increased pollution. Please make your voice heard with the DNR.

President Barack Obama goes before Congress this evening to urge passage of health care reform this year. I will update this post later when the prepared text of the speech becomes available. White House officials say Obama will make the case for a public health insurance option, but it sounds as if he will still leave the door open for Congress to take a different approach. That doesn’t look like a strong negotiating position to me.

Various polling firms will survey people who watch Obama’s speech tonight. Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com discusses the methodology of instant reaction polls and gives a few reasons for you to be skeptical of their findings.

Speaking of polls, I was disappointed to learn from Greg Sargent that a recent White House memo omitted results from polls showing strong nationwide support for a public health insurance option. (Multiple polls earlier this summer also found majorities in favor of a public option. In fact, Republican pollster Rasmussen has found that support for health care reform drops sharply if there is no public option.

Still, expect to hear Republicans demagogue against government-run “Obamacare.” Yesterday The Iowa Republican blog hyped a new poll from the Winston Group showing that a plurality of Iowans oppose “Obama’s plan” for health care (whatever that is). I wasn’t surprised to read that the head of the Winston Group

has served as a strategic advisor to Senate and House Republican leadership for the past 10 years. He was formerly the Director of Planning for Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and advises center-right political parties throughout Europe. Additionally Winston was a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation where he did statistical policy and econometric modeling. He has served in a senior staff role to four RNC Chairmen.

Gee, I’m shocked that the Winston Group would produce a poll indicating that Obama’s plan is unpopular.

The president’s support has declined quite a bit among Democrats and independents recently. The obvious way for him to turn this situation around is to get behind a real health care reform package that doesn’t give away the store to corporate interests.

Speaking of giving away the store, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus finally made his health care plan public this week. Turns out K Street lobbyists had the draft before Baucus showed it to fellow senators or White House officials. Also, a Baucus staffer who used to work for WellPoint is the author of the document.

Ezra Klein thinks the Baucus plan isn’t as bad as you may have heard, but Chris Bowers explains why it is very, very bad. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell are correct, and the White House is sick of dealing with Baucus. But like Bowers, I am skeptical that Obama would push for any law encountering objections from the major industry it affects. Consequently, I have no confidence in Obama to reject the Baucus approach outright.

Post any thoughts about the president’s speech or health care reform in this thread.

UPDATE: The full text of the speech as prepared is after the jump. I didn’t watch, but I did read the speech and I am very disappointed. He made a big deal about the moral case for reform, then defended the public option by saying don’t worry, hardly anyone will sign up for it. The only veto threat he made was, “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future.”

If we did health care reform right, we would save money and not add to the deficit. But on principle, I reject the idea that providing universal health care at reasonable cost is not worth doing if it adds to the deficit. Obama doesn’t mind expanding our commitment in Afghanistan, providing an open-ended bailout to Wall Street, extending most of the Bush tax cuts and any number of other things that add to the federal deficit. But for some reason, health care reform isn’t as important. Pathetic.

Corrupt Democrats will make sure that no real public option remains in the bill, which will drive up the cost, allowing Republicans to complain that Obama is breaking his promise not to add to the deficit. To keep costs down, Congress will probably reduce the subsidies available to citizens who will be forced to purchase private insurance. Huge bonanza for insurance companies, nothing to keep costs down, political suicide for the Democratic Party.

I don’t care what the instant reaction polls say; in my view this speech was a failure.

Senator Ted Kennedy’s death left a vacancy as chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. I had assumed that Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who is looking vulnerable going into his re-election campaign, would jump at the chance to become the HELP committee chairman, but surprisingly, he prefers to remain chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Paul Kane reports for the Washington Post,

Dodd’s decision leaves the chairmanship of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who follows Dodd in seniority. Multiple sources in the Harkin orbit, requesting anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said that he is certain to take over the HELP committee.

Harkin is currently chairman of the Agriculture Committee and would have to give up that position. He would likely be replaced at Agriculture by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), who faces a difficult reelection bid in 2010. Other Democrats are more senior than her on the Agriculture Committee, but they hold more prestigious chairmanships already.

Leaving the chairman’s position at Agriculture means Harkin will have less influence over the drafting of the next farm bill. On the other hand, the HELP Committee deals with a range of extremely important issues.

I have contacted Senator Harkin’s office seeking confirmation of this report, and I’ll update this post when I hear back from his staff.

UPDATE: Harkin will replace Kennedy as HELP chairman. His statement is after the jump, along with a statement from Iowa Democratic Party chair Michael Kiernan.

Turnout was low in most of Iowa’s school board elections yesterday, but not in Iowa City, where a controversy over a school closure earlier this year helped spark the highest level of voter participation since the 1995 school board races. John Deeth has details and analysis of the results. Many Iowa Democrats will recognize the name of Sarah Swisher, a superdelegate to the DNC who has been Iowa Political Director of the SEIU.

In Des Moines, Margaret Buckton was the only challenger to win one of the four seats up for grabs. As the associate executive director of public policy for the Iowa Association of School Boards, she’s got a lot of relevant experience.

Buckton’s day job is to train school board members and superintendents about how to work with state legislators and advocate for their district, how school finances and budgets work, and how to implement policies such as the new Iowa Core Curriculum, the state’s blueprint for what students should learn while in school.

The three re-elected incumbents in Des Moines were Connie Boesen, Teree Caldwell-Johnson and Patty Link, whom many of you may have seen at Democratic functions. She is married to the campaign consultant Jeff Link.

The Des Moines Register published results for many other central Iowa school districts here. Many Iowa Democrats may know newly-elected West Des Moines school board member Liz Brennan, a Montessori pre-school teacher. Her husband, Scott Brennan, was the previous chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party.

Ankeny voters rejected a bond initiative that would have funded a new elementary school and improvements to a different school. Given the rapid population growth in Ankeny during the past decade, it’s hard to see how the school district can avoid overcrowding if they can’t build a new elementary school.

Share any thoughts about education or school board races in this thread.

Atlantic residents are rightly angry about the strip search of five girls that staff conducted after a student said $100 had gone missing.

After a few months of exploring the possibility, Francis Thicke is ready to announce his candidacy for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture in 2010. He’s scheduled press conferences in Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and Ottumwa on September 9.

Thicke’s campaign website outlines his “new vision for Iowa agriculture,” which involves more local food production, on-farm energy production, and “animal production systems that are profitable, environmentally sound, and socially responsible.”

You can see from his bio how qualified he is for the position as an organic dairy farmer, educator and public servant.

There’s also a blog on the campaign website; recent posts include this endorsement from Denise O’Brien, founder of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network and Democratic nominee for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture in 2006.

Thicke will be an underdog against incumbent Bill Northey, who after considering a bid for governor announced this summer that he’ll run for re-election instead. Industrial agriculture interests generously funded Northey’s 2006 campaign and will fight hard against Thicke. If you can afford to contribute to Thicke’s campaign, his ActBlue page is here.

This is one of those rare cases when a down-ticket candidate might help Democrats higher up the ballot. Thicke’s candidacy is likely to become a focal point for Democratic activists who are (to put it mildly) not satisfied with Governor Chet Culver or Democratic legislative leaders on environmental issues. Some of these people would not volunteer for Culver’s campaign or their local statehouse incumbent, but they will be happy to help GOTV for Thicke.

In case anyone’s wondering, the name is pronounced “Tic-kee.”

Salon.com published a feature today on 12 U.S. senators who “for reasons of questionable IQ or eccentricity, because they are vapid, stubborn or ornery, can fairly be called knuckleheads.” Here’s why Chuck Grassley made the list:

Evidence of knuckleheadedness: Oh, pretty much just the entire debate over healthcare reform. Grassley’s the primary Republican negotiator on healthcare in the Senate, and Democrats have been working hard to please him, but at this point no one besides Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., understands why.

Never mind that Grassley has said there’s almost no chance he’ll actually vote for the final bill, no matter how many concessions to him are included in it. He’s actually gone so far as to claim that provisions in the legislation that would provide coverage for end-of-life counseling are really setting up a “government program that determines if you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.” What he didn’t mention? He’s voted for end-of-life counseling before.

And don’t even get us started on his use of Twitter.

I’m old enough to remember when first-term U.S. Senator Grassley was known as “Tweedle Dumber,” but let’s be honest–Salon’s staff have shown here that the man is shrewd. Although he seems to have no intention of voting for health care reform, and his vote is not needed in a chamber with 60 Democrats, Grassley has made himself a major player on this issue.

Moreover, Grassley has strung along President Obama so successfully that the White House press secretary still supported the “gang of six” bipartisan health care negotiations, even after Grassley fueled unsubstantiated rumors about “pulling the plug on Grandma.” Who’s acting like a knucklehead?

Anyway, Grassley’s use of Twitter can be quite entertaining.

School board elections are being held across Iowa today. Here’s why you should get out and vote.

1. Everyone should support strong educational standards in our schools and competent management of the school district’s affairs, whether or not you have kids in school or will have in the future.

2. Your vote is more likely to make a difference in a low-turnout school board election. Many of these races will be decided by a handful of votes.

You should vote even if your school board election is a snoozer, with only as many registered candidates as seats available. Extremely low turnout creates opportunities for fringe candidates to win seats on write-in campaigns.

3. Your property tax dollars are being spent in the local schools, whether or not you have kids. Homes in a good school district are often worth more than comparable homes in an area with lower-performing schools.

4. School board members vote on some issues that affect the broader economy and quality of life. For instance, property values in established neighborhoods and the ability of many kids to walk to school were harmed when school boards closed Roosevelt Elementary in Ames a few years ago and voted this year to close Roosevelt Elementary in Iowa City.

Iowa school boards will be less constrained in making decisions on school closures going forward. This summer, the Iowa Supreme Court invalidated the Barker rules on school closure procedures that the State Board of Education adopted more than 30 years ago. That ruling simultaneously rejected the lawsuit of parents challenging the Des Moines school board’s decision a few years ago to close several schools. Click here for the Iowa Supreme Court ruling (pdf file).

5. Iowans will have almost no legal recourse against future decisions by school boards, thanks to a law the Iowa legislature adopted during the 2009 session. House File 233 was a below-the-radar bill that unanimously passed both the House and Senate. It changed the rules so that citizens have only ten days (as opposed to the 12 months previously allowed) to file a lawsuit challenging a school board’s decision on disposition of property.

For all practical purposes, it is impossible to find plaintiffs, hire legal counsel, draft arguments and file a complaint in ten days. It’s disappointing that a bill limiting legal checks on a school board’s actions passed with so little public debate. Despite following the news during the legislative session closely, I would never have heard about this bill if not for a panel discussion at the 1000 Friends of Iowa annual meeting in July.

House File 233 makes it all the more important for citizens to choose their school board members wisely. Abuses of power can happen, and there’s no guarantee school boards will always comply with the law. For instance, Spirit Lake school board members “met illegally twice in 2007 and 2008” and were fined by a judge this year. Amazingly, no challengers filed to run against two of the incumbents involved.

If you’re reading this post at work, it should only take you a few minutes to vote on the way home today. Or, if you’re reading this at home, zip out to vote before or after dinner.

Your local newspaper probably has published short bios of the candidates. For those in central Iowa, these nine candidates are seeking four spots on the Des Moines school board, and here’s a list of candidates in other Des Moines-area districts. John Deeth has been covering the Iowa City school board campaign at his blog.

Sometimes it can be hard to figure out what the candidates stand for based on news reports or vague campaign mailings. If you aren’t sure how to vote, ask a friend who has attended a candidate forum or has been following the school board campaign closely. (Teachers and retired teachers can be good sources of information.) Many of my well-informed friends speak highly of Des Moines school board candidate Margaret Buckton, for instance.

Please post any comments about education or school board elections in this thread.

Hope you’ve been enjoying the perfect Iowa weather during this holiday weekend. The U.S. Department of Labor and Blog for Iowa provide background on the history of Labor Day.

Organized labor doesn’t have a lot to celebrate right now, with more job losses in the manufacturing sector and unemployment rising across the country (though Iowa’s unemployment rate is significantly lower than the national average). The Iowa Policy Project finds that “the state of working Iowa” is not good. As in the previous recession, we are losing jobs with good benefits as wages stagnate for the people who still have jobs. We now rank 32nd in terms of median wages, and lower incomes mean less money for consumers to spend at other businesses. Click here for the full report, which also explains that “policy makers could do more to make work pay for low- and moderate-income working families and to insist upon job-quality requirements in economic development strategies.”  

Iowa hasn’t adopted most of organized labor’s key legislative priorities in recent years, in part because of the “six-pack” of Iowa House Democrats that blocked those bills. On the plus side, Curt Hanson’s victory in the House district 90 special election means we haven’t lost any ground on this front. We only need to persuade one or two “six-pack members” (or defeat them in Democratic primaries) to find the 51st vote for “prevailing wage,” for instance.

I haven’t heard much lately about Senator Tom Harkin’s efforts to find a compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act. Getting 60 votes in the Senate for anything meaningful is likely to be quite difficult. The Service Employees International Union has some news related to the EFCA here.

Two years ago I attended the Solidarity Fest Labor Day celebration in Des Moines, featuring John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. The same event, sponsored by the South Central Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, takes place today in the 4-H building at the State Fairgrounds from noon to 2 pm. Later today, the Friends of Iowa Midwives are having a family-friendly potluck picnic at Raccoon River park in West Des Moines (4 to 8 pm, suggested donation $5).

After the jump I’ve posted details for lots of other events coming up this week.

UPDATE: Two professional negotiators, Jerome a Paris and BenGoshi, discuss Obama’s negotiating strategy on health care reform.

Let’s say I’m trying to sell my house, and I have an interested buyer. I could tell the buyer one of two things:

1. The minimum offer I’ll consider for this house is $300,000.

2. This house is worth at least $300,000. Compared to the house down the street that went for $280,000, this house has an extra bedroom and a fully remodeled kitchen. In fact, my house has a bigger yard and more closet space than one in the neighborhood that sold for $310,000. Also, we just added more insulation in the attic and installed triple-pane windows, so you’ll spend less on utility bills than you would in a different house this size. Plus, this house is within walking distance of a good elementary school. But the bottom line is, my mortgage is expensive, and I need to sell my house this month. If you can’t pay me $300,000, I’m willing to consider another fair offer.

Which message is more likely to get me the offer I want: the one justifying my asking price, or the one making clear that I won’t settle for less?

Unbelievable:

School officials in Atlantic forced five teenage girls to take off their clothing for a search after a classmate reported $100 missing from her purse, according to the girls’ families and two lawyers.

The classmate and a female counselor stood watch in the girls’ locker room at Atlantic High School as the five girls removed their clothing, lifted up their underwear, and in one case took off all her clothing, according to lawyers Ed Noethe of Council Bluffs and Matt Hudson of Harlan.

Strip-searching is illegal in Iowa schools.

Dan Crozier, the interim superintendent of the Atlantic school district, said the search took place Aug. 21, the third day of school, during a gym class in the last period of the day.

Crozier said faculty members denied it was a strip-search. “According to our board policy, it was an allowable search,” he said.

Two predictions:

This matter will be settled out of court if the Atlantic school district has minimally competent legal advisers.

This interim position won’t lead to a permanent job for Crozier. Telling a group of girls to take off their clothes is an allowable search now? The Register quoted from the district’s search policies:

“A more intrusive search, short of a strip-search, of the student’s person, handbags, book bags, etc. is permissible in emergency situations when the health and safety of students, employees or visitors are threatened.”

I don’t think strip searches should be permitted in high schools at all, but I understand why it might happen if a student claimed to have seen a classmate carrying a gun, bomb or knife. For these girls to be humiliated over $100 allegedly stolen is outrageous.

Earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that strip-searching an Arizona middle school student suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school was unconstitutional.

UPDATE: Pam Spaulding discusses this case at Pandagon. An administrator has reportedly been placed on leave because of this incident.

Kid oakland has a simple request for those who supported Barack Obama’s presidential campaign:

This Labor day weekend, I would like to invite you join me in a very simple, direct project in support of comprehensive healthcare reform.

I’d like to invite you to write personal letters to the President about health care reform at his info@barackobama.com email address.

If Barack Obama inspired you should reply to him today. In particular, like msblucow, we need to root our principled requests for Obama to pass comprehensive health care reform in stories from our activism and our day to day lives, especially stories that tell the president about the urgent need for reform. The more principled, specific and rooted those stories are, the more they will break through the clutter of the health care debate. […]  

(The simplest way to write Obama is hit reply to the last email you received from BarackObama.com, that way you will be sure to use the email address they have on record for you.)

Kid oakland’s letter to Obama is here, and many more powerful letters have been posted in the comment thread at Daily Kos. Here’s a good letter from a former regional field organizer for the Obama campaign, and here’s one from a loyal supporter of Hillary Clinton during the primaries.

Please post your own thoughts or letters in the comments.

Over at the Campaign Diaries blog, Taniel wrote a good post on Thursday debunking the “unsubstantiated myth” of a pending primary challenge against Senator Chuck Grassley. Bill “crazier than Steve King” Salier got this speculation going in the spring, when many among the religious right were disappointed by Grassley’s reaction to the Iowa Supreme Court’s Varnum v Brien ruling.

This summer, Grassley continued to disappoint the right by negotiating with other Senate Finance Committee members on health care reform. State Representative Kent Sorenson wrote an open letter to Grassley, pleading with him to provide “principled and bold leadership”. Sorenson’s letter is the most-viewed post ever published on The Iowa Republican blog, where Craig Robinson warned last month,

The longer Sen. Grassley strings along Iowa Republicans, the more difficult his re-election effort may become. At the beginning of the year, it would have been absurd to suggest that Sen. Grassley could face a legitimate primary challenge. Now, with each and every passing day that Grassley flirts with supporting some version of health care reform, the possibility of a primary challenge grows.

Grassley’s conservative critics are misguided in the sense that the senator has done more to block health care reform than move it along. If not for Grassley and the rest of the Finance Committee “gang of six,” Democrats might have been able to get the bill through the Senate this summer.

Still, the disappointment with Grassley is real. The trouble is, you can’t defeat an incumbent just by being mad, and as Taniel points out, no Republican appears likely to run against Grassley in next year’s primary. Salier has ruled himself out, as has Sorenson (though I wish Sorenson would run for Senate, giving Iowa Democrats an open seat target in House district 74).

Social conservatives are likely to focus on the governor’s race between now and June 2010. Bob Vander Plaats will officially announce his candidacy on Labor Day and will need all the help he can get from the religious right if former Governor Terry Branstad gets back into politics. Yesterday Vander Plaats promised to give homeschooling parents and those whose children attend private schools more influence over education policy. If the GOP primary comes down to Vander Plaats against Branstad, education is sure to become an issue, since some Republicans feel Branstad didn’t do enough to fight the teacher’s union or oppose sex education. The Network of Iowa Christian Home Educators is large and well-organized.

Some Iowa legislative districts may also be targeted by social conservatives, if there is an open GOP primary or a Republican incumbent deemed to be doing too little to advance the religious right’s causes. The Iowa GOP is in a bit of a bind; party strategists understand that they should emphasize economic issues, but some social conservatives become angry when Republicans say too little about abortion or same-sex marriage. We saw this dynamic play out in the recent House district 90 special election. Although Republican candidate Stephen Burgmeier toed the line on the so-called “pro-family” agenda, two conservatives ran against him because he wasn’t emphasizing their issues. The two minor candidates received 282 votes combined, while Burgmeier lost to Democrat Curt Hanson by 107 votes.

You can run a statehouse campaign on a shoestring, while taking on Grassley in a GOP primary would be a very expensive hopeless cause. The religious right may give other establishment Republicans headaches next year, but Grassley is home free.