Anyone go on RAGBRAI? What were the highlights and low points?

Other than one rainy day and two rainy nights, it seems like the weather was better than average. Last year I think it was in the 90s almost every day.

Share your stories here.

I’ve written before that I think it would be a huge mistake for Barack Obama to select any Republican for a running mate. The next president will appoint at least two and perhaps four Supreme Court justices. Obama is a longtime smoker with a family history of cancer. I don’t want any Republican in line to inherit the presidency.

And I’ve written that I think it would backfire for him to choose a woman other than Hillary Clinton for vice president. Not that I have anything against Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius (I would give her serious consideration if she ran for president someday). But I agree with a MyDD commenter who wrote that for Obama to pick Sebelius or Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill would be like Hillary picking Harold Ford as a running mate if she had won the nomination.

I’ve also said I would hate to see Obama choose a corporate-friendly vice president. I already worry that as president he would do too little to rein in the excesses of corporate power in Washington.

Now Politico reports that Obama’s vetting team is floating the name of Ann Veneman, who was Agriculture Secretary during George W. Bush’s first term, with members of Congress. That would be the worst kind of trifecta in my mind.

I can’t understand what Veneman could possibly have going for her. She’s executive director of UNICEF, but who cares? When she was in the cabinet, she didn’t promote sustainable agriculture or sensible health protections.

As the Organic Consumers Association reported when Bush appointed her, Veneman had a long history of standing with corporate interests. When she left Bush’s cabinet, her “vision and commitment” won praise from the American Meat Institute. Politico notes:

The low-profile Republican was close to food and agriculture industries but clashed with farm-state Democrats and environmentalists during her tenure, which lasted from 2001 to 2004.

Maybe Veneman is being mentioned to throw journalists off the scent, or to trick progressives into feeling relieved if Obama chooses a corporate Democrat who’s not “that bad.”

It bothers me that Obama would even allow his team to consider someone like Veneman, even as a diversion. I want the next administration to make CAFOs pay for the harm they cause.

UPDATE: The Nation explains why Veneman would be “a uniquely awful choice” for Obama.

When I suggested yesterday that Steve King is not an effective representative of his constituents in the fifth district, I failed to consider that from time to time he holds telephone town-hall meetings.

SW Iowa Guy suffered through one of those on Tuesday and provides a humorous account of the experience. Callers were screened so that King was able to field only friendly questions during an hour or so on the line.

One passage in Iowa Guy’s post jumped out at me:

Health Care: King stated that he opposes universal access to health care. He advocates Health Savings Accounts and said that families can deposit over $5,000.00 per year to such an account and by the time they are ready to retire they will have over one million dollars. This is all well and good, but most working families can ill afford the necessities, let alone save for health care. This also fails to address the unemployed and under-employed and uninsured.

Do Republicans expect Americans to buy into this Health Savings Account concept? If my husband and I had donated the maximum amount to those accounts for several years, we would still be in the hole without our health insurance (and we are reasonably healthy people).

A typical, complication-free pregnancy with no medical interventions in the hospital cost us around $3,500 each time for prenatal care and delivery, plus about $5,000 each time for the normal hospital stay of less than 48 hours. If I had given birth to either of my children by cesarean section, the hospital bills would have been in the $10,000 to $20,000 range, even without any complications such as baby spending time in the neonatal intensive care unit.

I had a flukey infection this winter that sent me to the hospital for a week and ended up costing somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000 (considering not just the hospital stay, but also the various tests and procedures). That would wipe out years of deposits in a Health Savings Account if we had to rely on one of those instead of health insurance.

If anyone in our family ever got a really expensive illness to treat, such as cancer, you can forget about any private savings account covering the cost.

It’s not realistic to think that families will be able to build up Health Savings Accounts worth a million dollars by the time they retire. Only a small fraction of Americans could afford to do that, and even then they’d have to be lucky and stay healthy in the meantime.

As Iowa Guy notes, a single-payer system modeled on Medicare makes a lot more sense.

Calling all volunteers: if you’ve got a few hours to spare this weekend, the Obama campaign would love to have you participate in one of the 26 neighborhood canvasses they have planned.

Go here to RSVP.

Most of the door-knocking will be on Sunday afternoon, but a few places will do it on Saturday morning or afternoon.

Here are the places and times where canvassing will happen. I have added the county name next to the city or town:

Ames Canvass (Story County)

Sunday 1 pm

Fort Dodge Canvass (Webster County)

Sunday 12 pm

New Hampton Canvass (Chickasaw County)

Sunday 1 pm

Anamosa Canvass (Jones County)

Sunday 2 pm

Fort Madison Canvass (Lee County)

Sunday 1 pm

Newton Canvass (Jasper County)

Sunday 10 am

Cedar Rapids Canvass (Linn County)

Sunday 12 pm

Guttenberg Canvass (Clayton County)

Sunday 1 pm

Ottumwa Canvass (Wapello County)

Sunday 12 pm

Clinton Canvass (Clinton County)

Sunday 2 pm

Indianola Canvass (Warren County)

Sunday 10 am (I haven’t heard of a Sunday morning canvass in Iowa–maybe you should double-check the time when you RSVP)

Sioux City Canvass (Woodbury County)

Sunday 12 pm

Council Bluffs Canvass (Pottawattamie County)

Sunday 12 pm

Iowa City Canvass (Johnson County)

Saturday 10 am

Waterloo Canvass (Black Hawk County)

Sunday 1 pm

Davenport Canvass (Scott County)

Sunday 12 pm

Iowa City Canvass (Johnson County)

Sunday 12 pm

Waukee Canvass (Dallas County)

Sunday 1 pm

Des Moines Canvass (Polk County)

Sunday 1 pm

Knoxville Canvass (Marion County)

Sunday 1 pm

Waverly Canvass (Bremer County)

Saturday 12 pm

Dubuque Canvass (Dubuque County)

Sunday 1 pm

Mason City Canvass (Cerro Gordo County)

Sunday 1 pm

West Des Moines Canvass (Polk County)

Sunday 1 pm

Winterset Canvass (Madison County)

Sunday 12 pm

Des Moines Canvass # 2 (Polk County)

Sunday 1 pm

If you click the link above to RSVP, you will get more details about where and when to meet up.

Please consider posting a diary here afterwards about your experience. Those are fun to read. You don’t have to include photos–you can just tell the story, like icebergslim did here and clarkent did here.

By the way, John McCain’s campaign website now lists contact information for five field offices in Iowa. It’s not clear from that page whether a sixth office will open in southeast Iowa at some point, or whether field operations for southeast Iowa will continue to be run out of the state headquarters in Urbandale, as they appear to be now.

I reported recently that the Obama campaign has 15 field offices open in Iowa, with two more planned in Cedar Rapids and Iowa Falls. I have since heard that there will also be an office opening in West Des Moines, so the total number of offices in this state will be at least 18.  

Campaigns against incumbents are never easy, but Iowa’s fourth Congressional district is very winnable for Becky Greenwald.

When you run for office, certain things are out of your control, like the nationwide political climate or the partisan makeup of the electorate.

Greenwald is fortunate to be challenging Representative Tom Latham this year, when Democrats have their first registration edge in the fourth district since it was redrawn. According to the June 2008 numbers released by the Secretary of State’s office, the fourth district has 128,482 registered Democrats, 120,694 registered Republicans, and 145,223 voters registered with no party affiliation. Also, the national political climate is favorable to Democrats. IA-04 has a partisan index of D+0, meaning that its vote in 2004 closely matched the nationwide partisan split.

Latham told Iowa Independent that Republicans can win this year’s elections by focusing on high gas prices and the Iraq War. However, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which exists to elect Republicans to the U.S. House, has given GOP incumbents very different advice: run on personal and local issues. An NRCC strategy document notes that Republican candidates who lost special Congressional elections this year did not establish “themselves and their local brand in contrast to the negative perception of the national GOP.”

If fourth district residents let national issues guide their votes down-ticket, Greenwald will do well to keep tying Latham to the Iraq War and leadership of the Republican Party.

So what’s standing in her way? The biggest advantage of incumbency is often money, and this race is no exception.

Charlotte Eby, a commentator for the Mason City Globe-Gazette, assessed this race in a recent column:

After the record-breaking turnout at the Iowa caucuses, the Democratic Party has amassed a voter registration advantage that has grown to more than 90,000 in Iowa.

Democrats also will have presidential candidate Barack Obama and U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin at the top of the ticket to help drive turnout. […]

Latham’s had strong Democratic challengers in the past that he’s been able to fend off. But his district, which includes Mason City, Ames and suburban counties surrounding Des Moines, has become more of a swing district as Democratic registration has swelled. Democrats now outnumber Republicans in the district for the first time ever.

Watch for Greenwald’s campaign to paint Latham as a Republican in lockstep with Bush administration policies, a record that might not be popular with the changing electorate.

First though, Greenwald will have to raise enough money to compete with Latham’s war chest, which sat at more than $700,000 as of the last filing period.

If Greenwald is competitive in raising money, the 4th District race could be the race to watch this fall.

David Yepsen’s latest column in the Des Moines Register reaches the same conclusion:

The key for Democrat Greenwald, a 55-year-old former Garst and Pioneer marketing executive from Perry, is money. Will national Democratic money sources – especially Emily’s List – pour dollars into her contest with Latham?

To get them to make that investment, Greenwald must first convince them she’s viable and has got a credible financial base of her own.

So far, it’s been an uphill task. According to the latest campaign-finance disclosure reports, Greenwald had only $81,800 in the bank on June 30. Latham had 10 times that amount: $832,388. Greenwald had to get through a four-way primary in June, then had to suspend fundraising in Iowa during the floods. Donors in the Democratic money centers of Des Moines, Iowa City and Cedar Rapids were preoccupied.

Raising money isn’t the easiest task in the world, but candidates have more control over fundraising than they do over massive shifts toward the other party on various issues and among many different demographic groups.

Rarely can a challenger raise enough cash to match the incumbent’s spending dollar for dollar. But when the wind is at your back, that often isn’t necessary.

Upsets happen in big landslide years. Just look at what happened to Neal Smith, who had represented Iowa’s fourth district since 1958 until Greg Ganske brought him down in the 1994 Republican landslide. Smith had more seniority and clout in 1994 than Latham has now. I couldn’t find information about the candidates’ spending in that race, because the Open Secrets database doesn’t go back that far. But I’ll bet that Ganske did not win by raising more money than Smith. Ganske was boosted by a national Republican wave and partisan shifts following the 1990 census and redistricting.

Greenwald has a big cash-on-hand disadvantage now, but her campaign has been working hard to raise money in July. I’ve received e-mails from personal friends asking me to donate, as well as two letters from the campaign (one signed by Tom Harkin, Leonard Boswell and Bruce Braley, the other signed by Tom and Christie Vilsack).

I’ve already given to her campaign, but my husband and I are digging deeper to donate again this month.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has not reserved any air time in Iowa yet, but they are watching this race, as is EMILY’s list, which seeks to elect pro-choice, Democratic women at all levels of government.

I expect one or both of those groups to get involved in the IA-04 race, assuming Greenwald produces strong numbers this month. The Des Moines and Mason City media markets are not that expensive, compared to districts where many other challengers need to purchase paid media.

The infrastructure will be there to support heavy Democratic turnout in this district. Barack Obama’s campaign has already opened four field offices in IA-04, with a fifth office planned.

Also, the fourth district has been receptive to strong Democratic candidates in recent years. Speaking to Iowa Independent two weeks ago, Greenwald made this point:

“This is not a campaign that was launched on a whim,” she said. “This is not just a campaign that’s based on hope that I’ll do well. Sen. Harkin won 28 of the 28 counties in the 4th District in 2002. The 4th District is the only district in Iowa in which he carried every single county. Gov. Culver, when he ran in 2006, carried 22 of the 28 counties in the 4th District.”

Please donate to Greenwald’s campaign before the end of July.

UPDATE: I didn’t realize Karl Rove was coming to Des Moines today to raise money for Latham. A press release from Greenwald’s campaign is after the jump. Also, you can view this YouTube she taped in response to Rove’s visit:

I love how Greenwald referred to Rove in this clip: “Today, Karl Rove, the man who is too busy to even testify before Congress, is going to be in Iowa raising money for Tom Latham.”

I got a press release yesterday from Representative Bruce Braley’s office about the National Highway Bridge Reconstruction and Inspection Act, which the U.S. House approved by a vote of 367-55. This bill includes language authored by Braley “to establish a pilot program to monitor structural flaws in highway bridges.”

The full text of the press release is after the jump. Braley was working on creating this pilot program before this summer’s flooding damaged even more Iowa bridges. That’s an example of how a forward-thinking representative can serve constituents, and not only Iowans living in the first district.

Compare this to Representative Steve King’s record. When the Sioux City Journal tried to answer the question “How effective is Steve King?”, they learned that

Of the 44 bills King has sponsored according to www.GovTrack.us, three have made it out of committee and only one has been acted. The piece of legislation? House Resolution 847: Recognizing the importance of Christmas [in] the Christian faith.

Keep in mind that Republicans controlled the U.S. House during King’s first two terms in Congress. What’s his excuse for not getting more accomplished? He points to helping expand a tax credit for small ethanol and biodiesel producers as well as securing some funding for widening Highway 20. But even King admits that in a Democratic-controlled chamber, he is mainly hoping to block Democratic bills:

“That very well may be the best contribution that I have made in this 110th Congress, is slowing down, sometimes stopping” Democratic-sponsored bills,” he said.

King said the extended 2007 funding debate for reauthorization of the federal State Children’s Health Insurance Program was a key moment. The measure was initially written for an increase of $35 billion, but was scaled back before being signed by President Bush in December.

King took to the House floor last fall with a sign that said the SCHIP acronym should instead stand for “Socialized Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents.”

“I do believe if you took me out of the equation, there would have been a different (funding) result,” King said.

With the Democratic Party leading the GOP by nine points on the generic Congressional ballot, and the Republicans defending more than two dozen open House seats, it’s clear that the Democrats are poised to expand their majority.

Do Iowans in the fifth district want their representative to set his sights on blocking bills, disrupting the legislative branch’s oversight of the executive and being the loudest anti-immigration voice in the room?

Rob Hubler has a solid grasp of the issues and would be able to get things done for Iowans as a member of the majority party. Click here to get involved with Hubler’s campaign, or head out to meet him in person at a county fair this weekend.

Haven’t had a chance to watch the speech, but I hear it was a great one. Meteor Blades says, “By This Foreign Policy Speech Will Future Ones Be Measured”:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

Todd Beeton had the bizarre experience of listening to the speech with Rush Limbaugh adding snide remarks from time to time:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008…

What did you think?

There’s big news today for those who have been working toward “blue-green alliances” between organized labor and environmental groups.

Thanks to this Daily Kos diary by TomP, I learned that Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa has pulled the union out of an alliance supporting more oil drilling in environmentally sensitive areas:

“We are not going to drill our way out of the energy problems we are facing-not here and not in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” Hoffa told labor and environmental activists at an Oakland, Calif., summit on good jobs and clean air. “We must find a long-term approach that breaks our dependence on foreign oil by investing in the development of alternate energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal power.”

Hoffa then announced the union’s withdrawal from the ANWR coalition, citing the need to build a green economy that fosters the development of alternative energy sources and creates good union jobs-instead of lining the pockets of big oil tycoons.

Hoffa also said that by investing in green energy solutions, the nation will reap the benefits of curbing its dependence on oil through a revitalized economy with the creation of millions of new jobs in a rapidly growing industry.

The Sierra Club and United Steelworkers forged a “Blue-Green Alliance” in 2006 and jointly endorsed Barack Obama for president at an event in Ohio last month.

But the Teamsters have been strong supporters of expanding oil drilling in the past. I never thought I’d see the day when Jim Hoffa pulled out of the ANWR coalition.

The battle over proposed coal-fired power plants has strained relations between labor unions and environmental advocates in Iowa this year. Today’s news gives me hope that in the future we will see more cooperation between those groups in promoting a forward-looking energy policy.

William Meyers is obviously passionate about politics and willing to spend lots of time volunteering for political causes, which is commendable.

But I am hard-pressed to think of any activist who has applied himself in a more self-defeating and counter-productive way than Meyers. First he declared himself an independent candidate for Congress after losing the fourth district primary–a move I still think he will regret someday.

Now I learn from Iowa Independent that Meyers has launched a new website against Iowa’s smoking ban. I spent a little time on repealthesmokingban.org. The “leaders” page lists Meyers as the founder and online coordinator of Repealthesmokingban.org and former Republican State Senator George Eichhorn as the attorney representing bar and restaurant owners who are fighting the ban. (I don’t give that lawsuit much chance of succeeding.)

Not surprisingly, Meyers’ website disputes evidence of the harm caused by secondhand smoke. It also contains a page listing bars and restaurants all over the country that have closed, allegedly because of local smoking bans.

Guess what? Lots of restaurants and bars go out of business, whether or not they permit smoking. If I’m not mistaken, 50 percent of restaurants fail during their first year of operation. Competition is fierce, and food and transportation costs are rising while the public’s disposable income is dropping.

But there is simply no credible evidence that smoking bans are bad for business. On the contrary, research supports the opposite conclusion.

Meyers’ new website has a page seeking to recruit volunteers in every Iowa county. Repealthesmokingban.org has also grouped counties into 11 clusters and is seeking a district coordinator in each.

If people want to lobby legislators to repeal the smoking ban, it’s a free country. I don’t object to people organizing toward that end, even if I think Meyers is wrong on this issue.

What really bothers me about the website is the page listing the “nannies” (Chet Culver and all the legislators who supported the smoking ban):

CONTACT THEM AND DEMAND REPEAL! – REMEMBER THEM ON VOTING DAY!

The Nannies….anyone who thinks they should be able to tell other adults how to live. The militantly anti-anything-else-they-see-someone-else-enjoying.

Never mind the nonsensical spin about people being “militantly anti-anything-else-they-see-someone-else-enjoying.” No one is trying to deprive Meyers or anyone else the pleasure of smoking in the privacy of his own home. But your right to enjoy a cigarette doesn’t give you the right to jeopardize someone else’e health.

This website goes way beyond lobbying legislators to repeal the smoking ban. By asking voters to “remember” the “nannies” on election day, Meyers is in effect urging Iowans to vote Democrats out of their legislative majority.

Here’s a link to the roll call votes in the Iowa House and Senate on the final version of the smoking ban bill.

In the House, 45 Democrats and nine Republicans voted yes.

In the Senate, 25 Democrats and one Republican voted yes.

As if Meyers hasn’t done enough damage to his political future by refusing to accept the outcome of the fourth district primary, he is now mobilizing angry smokers to cast their votes based on that one issue.

I find it interesting that Meyers supported Barack Obama’s campaign in Iowa. I wonder if he heard what Obama said at a presidential debate last September when asked whether he would support a national law to ban smoking in public places:

I think that local communities are making enormous strides, and I think they’re doing the right thing on this. If it turns out that we’re not seeing enough progress at the local level, then I would favor a national law. I don’t think we’ve seen the local laws play themselves out entirely, because I think you’re seeing an enormous amount of progress in Chicago, in New York, in other major cities around the country. And because I think we have been treating this as a public health problem and educating the public on the dangers of secondhand smoke, that that pressure will continue. As I said, if we can’t provide these kinds of protections at the local level, which would be my preference, I would be supportive of a national law.

Oh, no! Obama thinks that communities are “doing the right thing” to ban smoking in public, but he would support a federal law on the issue if the local ordinances are not adequately protecting Americans against secondhand smoke.

Attention, field organizers for Obama: don’t give William Meyers any numbers to call or doors to knock this fall. For all we know, he’ll go around telling people not to vote for the “nanny.”

MoveOn Political Action is giving away Vote Obama 2008 buttons:

Dear MoveOn member,

We’re giving away new Obama buttons for free, as part of a massive national visibility campaign. Want one? Click here:

http://pol.moveon.org/obamabut…

After you’ve gotten yours, forward this email on to everyone you know so that they can get free Obama buttons too.

If hundreds of thousands of us wear these wherever we go, we’ll send a strong message that Barack Obama is the candidate with the buzz, momentum, excitement-and sincere support of regular folks across the country.

Thanks for all you do.

-Peter, Patrick S., Laura, Matt and the rest of the team

Want to support our work? We’re entirely funded by our 3.2 million members-no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

I have to admit that I don’t plan to wear an Obama button, but I am happy to help other Democrats obtain them.

Use this as an open thread to discuss your favorite campaign buttons or bumper stickers. A friend of mine has been wearing a very cool button that says Barack Obama in Hebrew.  

The Iowa Independent blog unveiled a new look this week. Check it out if you haven’t already. Some recent posts include:

This story about a new law that will make it harder to challenge a voter’s qualifications to cast a ballot on election day.

This piece in which Ed Fallon and Lynn Heuss reflect on Fallon’s campaign against Leonard Boswell. Heuss correctly notes that budgeting was one of the biggest mistakes the campaign made. They hired so many staffers early in the year that when fundraising failed to meet expectations, they were unable to purchase any paid media before the June 3 primary.

This story about independent Congressional candidate William Meyers launching a new website against Iowa’s smoking ban.

This piece on a former Agriprocessors employee pleading guilty to criminal charges. I haven’t written much about the Agriprocessors scandal, and the main reason is that Iowa Independent has done such a good job of staying on top of this story.

It’s a continuing disgrace that our enforcement of immigration laws punishes workers and their families but rarely if ever punishes corporations and executives who oversee illegal hiring practices (not to mention other labor and safety violations at Agriprocessors).

(Side note: if you want to be shocked and horrified, read this New York Times story about what happened after a pregnant illegal immigrant was pulled over for a routine traffic violation in Nashville.)  

If you’d like to meet Rob Hubler, the man trying to spare Iowans two more years with Steve King in Congress, you’ve got plenty of chances on the county fair circuit this weekend:

Thursday, July 24

1:30 p.m.  Harrison County Fair, Missouri Valley

4:30 p. m. Page County Fair, Clarinda

7:00 p.m.  Union County Fair, Afton

Friday, July 25

12 noon   Adair County Fair, Greenfield

2:15 p.m. Audubon County Fair, Aubudon

      (Aububon fundraiser in evening)

Saturday, July 26

12 noon   Sac County Fair, Sac City

3 p.m.     Plymouth County Fair, LeMars

6 p.m.    Pottawattamie County Fair (Westfair), Council Bluffs

        (Council Bluffs fundraiser in evening)

Sunday, July 27

12 noon    Cass County Fair, Atlantic

5:30 p.m.  Clarke County Fair, Osceola

If you want more details about either of the fundraisers, you can call the Hubler campaign headquarters for information or to RSVP: 712-352-2077

For your reading enjoyment, I give you Texas Nate’s latest diary: King embarrasses Iowa, self again

This article from Wednesday’s Des Moines Register is worth your time: Grinnell theater renovation sparks projects downtown

Bill Menner, a Grinnell area economic development leader, points to the $2 million renovation and expansion of the city’s longtime theater as a turning point.

The 2004 redevelopment of the Strand Theater attracted Washington, D.C., developer Dick Knapp. The 1976 Grinnell College graduate is buying his third building in downtown Grinnell.

The theater project attracted a $7 million investment from the city for new sewers, water mains and streetscape in downtown. It attracted small businesses such as Grinnell FiberWorks, a quilting shop that receives busloads of shoppers.

Redeveloping the theater “got people excited and brought people downtown,” said Jim Ramsey, president of Grinnell Private Investment Corp., the group that organized efforts to reopen the theater. “It’s hard to find a place to park, even during the middle of the week.”

[…]

The theater, owned by 20 investors including former owner Fridley Theatres, “is holding its own” financially. It was expanded from one screen to three with a donated building next door.

Ramsey said it also brings business into downtown restaurants, shops and coffeehouses and has generated excitement about downtown.

Businesses like Fareway rebuilt its grocery store near the city’s core. Also, some businesses that located on Iowa Highway 146 are looking to relocate downtown, said Ramsey, president of Ramsey-Weeks, a real estate, insurance and investment company.

Investing in downtown helps revitalize local economies, and renovating existing buildings is more environmentally friendly than new construction at the fringe of town.

The Strand renovation was one of 1000 Friends of Iowa’s Best Development Award winners in 2005:

Originally built in 1916, the single-screen theater closed in 2002 and the operators suggested it might be economically desirable to build a multiplex on the edge of town, allowing for more parking than the downtown had to offer. A group of local investors (Strand LLC) were gifted the theatre by its owners, as well as an adjacent building shell (no roof following a 1998 snowtorm).  They committed to creating a three-plex on the site of the theatre plus the adjacent lot.  A local fundraising campaign generated $100,000 to restore the old 1916 façade. The total project exceeded $1.5 million.

The building is a beautiful testament to Grinnell’s commitment to maintaining its historic downtown and making efficient use of its existing infrastructure. The renovation is a delightful integration of historic elements with modern technology.

1000 Friends of Iowa is accepting nominations for the 2008 Best Development Awards through this Friday, July 25. Click here for more details about the categories and how to nominate a project.

Click here for information about the Main Street program at the Iowa Department of Economic Development. That page has links explaining some of the benefits of renovating the streets and neighborhoods where our historic buildings are located.

There’s a lot of chatter about John McCain picking a running mate very soon to redirect the media’s attention from Barack Obama’s foreign trip.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s star has fallen because of revelations that she used the levers of state power to try to punish a former brother-in-law. Why do elected officials think they can get away with stuff like this? I suppose the answer is that many do get away with it, but it’s still bizarre that she would abuse the power of her office with so much on the line for her.

If McCain wants to pick a woman, Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison seems like the most logical choice.

Earlier this year there was some buzz about former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as a possible VP choice for McCain, but that must be out of the question now. It was Fiorina’s comment about insurance companies covering Viagra but not birth control pills that led to a embarrassing exchange between a reporter and McCain on the same subject. Planned Parenthood Action Fund is using part of that footage in a television ad aimed at women in six states and the Washington, DC area:

If McCain wants a governor, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana or Charlie Crist of Florida seem like the leading options. (UPDATE: Jindal took himself out of the running today.) For reasons I don’t understand, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota doesn’t seem to be mentioned often anymore.

I find it interesting that I haven’t ever seen any suggestion that Mike Huckabee is being considered. He was in Des Moines ten days ago for the Iowa GOP state convention and acted like a team player, urging support for McCain in his speech to Republican delegates. It would seem wise for McCain to at least pretend that he is taking Huckabee seriously, although maybe that would just give Huck’s supporters false hopes.

Some pundits are betting on Mitt Romney because of the money his people can raise. Also, his own presidential run makes him more of a seasoned campaigner and known quantity than some of the governors being mentioned.

Not much news on Obama’s search for a running mate has emerged lately. It seems prudent for him to wait to see what McCain does and how the public and media react before making a decision.

Bill Richardson made some good comments about McCain’s “whining” about not getting an op-ed piece published in the New York Times.

I still find it weird that there’s no sign Wes Clark or Joe Biden were even asked to submit information to the committee that is vetting Obama’s options.

I would be shocked if Obama were seriously considering Hillary Clinton at this point. I still think she wouldn’t be a bad choice for him, but given his small lead over McCain in national tracking polls and some of the key states he lost to Hillary Clinton in the primaries, Obama probably believes he doesn’t need her on the ticket. It’s obvious he would prefer not to have to deal with the Clintons.

The Iowa Policy Project (http://www.iowapolicyproject.org) is requesting “short, passionate essays” or original photographs about Iowa’s water in order to “facilitate public discussion on Iowa’s water quality and promote sound water-quality policy decisions.”

The top three entries in each category will receive prizes of $500, $250 and $100. Details about the contest are after the jump. The Iowa Policy Project is accepting submissions up to July 31.

If you thought the deteriorating relations between Senator Chuck Grassley and evangelical Christians were just kabuki theater designed to make Grassley look more moderate than he is, maybe you should think again:

Evangelical Christians in Iowa, dominant in the state’s Republican Party, have denied Sen. Charles E. Grassley his request for a place on the state’s delegation to this summer’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.

Mr. Grassley may attend the party’s Sept. 1-4 nominating convention in St. Paul, but not as a voting delegate.

With a majority of nine out of 17 members on the Iowa Republican central committee, religious conservatives made Iowa Christian Alliance President Steve Scheffler chairman of Iowa’s 40-member delegation in a vote immediately after their state party convention July 12.[…]

Mr. Grassley had said “yes” when asked by Iowa Republican Chairman Stewart Iverson if he wanted to be a voting delegate to the national convention, Mr. Iverson said.

Political observers in Iowa saw the move against Mr. Grassley as retribution for his having tangled with evangelical pastors in his state. He initiated a Senate Finance Committee investigation of six televangelists for conspicuous personal spending.

“That had nothing to with it at all,” Mr. Scheffler said Sunday. He said Mr. Grassley and the other members of the Iowa congressional delegation already had national convention floor privileges – meaning they could walk the floor but not vote.

Grassley’s office refused to comment when contacted by the Washington Times regarding this story. Staffers quoted in the Des Moines Register today downplayed the significance of what happened:

Beth Pellett Levine, Grassley’s press secretary, said Grassley won’t be a delegate, but he will attend the convention and will have floor access as a federal elected official.

She said Grassley, as well as Iowa’s two Republican congressmen, Reps. Steve King and Tom Latham, will not be delegates “in order to give additional Iowa Republicans the opportunity to participate in the floor proceedings and activities of the national party convention.”

Levine said that Grassley told state party leaders he would be a voting delegate if they wanted, “like he has previously, but the more Iowa Republicans who participate in the event the better, in his view.”

James Carstensen, a spokesman for Latham, said the congressman “never requested to be a voting delegate so as to allow more party activists to participate in the convention.” Aides to King, similarly, said he didn’t want to take a spot away from other delegates.

Columnist Robert Novak wrote on Saturday that “evangelicals and their allies” dominating the state convention in Iowa earlier this month “dumped their critic,” Grassley.

I don’t know how much this is retribution for Grassley’s investigation of the televangelists and how much is just Christian conservatives flexing their muscles after their power grab at the Iowa GOP state convention earlier this month.

Either way, it seems like quite a snub to a five-term U.S. senator, who has held a voting delegate slot at previous national Republican conventions.

The Republican Party doesn’t have superdelegates, so members of Congress do not automatically become voting delegates to the national convention. But you would think the party central committee would show some respect to the Republicans in Iowa’s Congressional delegation.

I don’t think anyone would mistake me for a big fan of Representative Leonard Boswell, but I’d never support denying him a vote at the Democratic national convention in Denver.

That said, I can’t say I’m too unhappy to see Iowa Republican leaders antagonizing Grassley. Maybe he will get irritated enough to retire rather than seek re-election in 2010. After all, Democrats seem poised to pick up at least four seats in the U.S. Senate this November, and perhaps as many as eight or nine.

In case anyone cares, I’ve put the full list of GOP delegates to the national convention after the jump. The two Republican elected statewide officials, Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey and Auditor David Vaudt, are delegates, as is Polk County Republican chairman and blogger Ted Sporer.

UPDATE: Al Rodgers has lots of video and photos of the reception Obama got from American soldiers in Baghdad. Think these people want to be home with their families?

A staple of John McCain’s stump speech has been to play up his military experience and to claim that he, unlike Barack Obama, will be able to win the war in Iraq.

It wasn’t the strongest hand to begin with, because polls show that a clear majority of Americans would rather bring our troops home from Iraq than keep them there indefinitely. Nevertheless, it made sense for McCain, an outspoken supporter of this unpopular war, to try to depict Obama’s plan for Iraq as irresponsible.

Trouble is, earlier this month Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki called for a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. Obama quickly published this New York Times editorial laying out his plan:

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition – despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success – it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

As Obama pointed out, President Bush and McCain have repeatedly said they would respect the wishes of the sovereign Iraqi government. Well, Al-Maliki told the German magazine Der Spiegel last week that he supports the timetable laid out by Obama.

An unnamed Republican strategist summed it up for Marc Ambinder: “We’re f*cked.”

Couldn’t Al-Maliki have been mistranslated? It doesn’t look that way. NBC’s First Read had this to say on Monday about John McCain’s “rough weekend”:

You know you had a problematic weekend when: 1) one of your top economic advisers/surrogates finally steps down from the campaign after his “nation of whiners” remark; 2) you get panned for breaking CODEL protocol/etiquette by announcing (incorrectly) at a fundraiser that your opponent is headed to Iraq on Friday or Saturday; 3) the prime minister of Iraq tells a German magazine that he backs your opponent’s plan for withdrawing troops from that country; and 4) when the Iraqi government tries to walk back that support, it does so unconvincingly. On the bright side for McCain, his campaign seized on remarks from Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen that withdrawing US troops over the next two years would be “dangerous.”

[…]

Per NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Obama has arrived in Baghdad and he spoke with Maliki. The headline after their photo-op: Maliki’s spokesman said afterwards (in English) that the Iraqi vision is for all US troops to be out of Iraq by 2010. And with this news — as well as the Der Spiegel interview, in which Maliki seemed to back Obama’s withdrawal plan — the trip seems like it has already been a PR success for the Illinois senator.

Memo to political journalists: this trip is a lot more than a PR success. McCain simply doesn’t have anything left supporting his determination to keep us in Iraq long-term. Why should Americans hire him as our commander-in-chief?

Now Republicans are trying to change the subject. Talking heads claim recent events in Iraq prove that McCain was right to support the “surge” in U.S. troops (which Obama opposed but voted to fund).

McCain tried to submit his own op-ed about Iraq to the New York Times, but the newspaper’s editors rejected it because it didn’t contain anything new of substance. (You can read the rejected piece here.)

It doesn’t look like McCain believes he can win the election on the Iraq issue, though. I say that because his paid advertising is not using his own campaign’s talking points on Iraq, such as how Obama never talks about winning the war, only about ending the war.

Instead, the McCain campaign has focused on energy policy in some early commercials. On Monday, as Obama visited Iraq, McCain started running a new television ad contrasting himself and Obama on new oil drilling:

Open Left has the script:

ANNCR: Gas prices – $4, $5, no end in sight, because some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America.

No to independence from foreign oil.

Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?

CHANT: Obama, Obama

ANNCR: One man knows we must now drill more in America and rescue our family budgets.

Don’t hope for more energy, vote for it. McCain.

JOHN MCCAIN: I’m John McCain and I approve this message.

On substance, this ad is absurd. Drilling for more oil in the U.S. wouldn’t come close to replacing the oil we purchase from foreign countries. Oil companies aren’t even leasing all the currently available fields for offshore drilling. Opening up new drilling sites wouldn’t bring any new oil onto U.S. markets for years.

And anyway, who’s been running the country for the last seven and a half years? Obama’s just one senator out of 100, and he’s only been in Washington since 2005. But suddenly he’s to blame for rising gas prices?

At the same time, this commercial may be effective spin for McCain. To the average person, drilling for more oil here in America may sound like a good way to bring down prices and help us be independent from foreign oil. I also think the crowd chanting Obama’s name will be a turnoff for many viewers. If you don’t already support Obama, that probably sounds creepy.

An earlier McCain ad sought to tie Obama’s “hope and change” message to 1960s hippie culture, but I suspect this new approach has more potential for McCain. It suggests Obama only offers empty hope for more energy, while McCain has a plan. (Never mind that Obama has a much better plan for producing clean energy in the U.S.)

When Obama returns from his trip to the Middle East and Europe, he better have a good response ready on offshore drilling and energy independence.

In other McCain diversion news, the sometimes well-informed columnist Robert Novak says McCain may have something else in mind to steal Obama’s thunder this week:

Sources close to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign are suggesting he will reveal the name of his vice presidential selection this week while Sen. Barack Obama is getting the headlines on his foreign trip.

If McCain does name his running mate early, I doubt he will choose a dark horse. My money would be on Mitt Romney.

Final note: I don’t have satellite radio, but Keith Nichols mentioned that The Bill Press Show on Sirius 146 is doing a countdown of 101 reasons to vote against John McCain. They give a new reason every morning at 7:25 am (central time). The list of reasons 63 through 101 can be found here. The page is updated daily.

Post a comment or shoot me an e-mail if I left out anything important.

Political events are slowing down for the summer, it seems.

The Indianola Balloon Classic starts this weekend and runs through the first weekend in August. We’ve found it’s most enjoyable to take our young children on Monday evening, when the crowds are lighter. Bring a camera so you can show the kids photos of the balloons later! Our kids love watching a slideshow of the balloons that my husband put together on his computer. Details on the balloon classic schedule and directions to the field are here.

Wednesday, July 23:

From the Sierra Club, Iowa chapter:

Here’s an opportunity for you to speak up in support of clean water.  After passage of the Clean Water Act 36 years ago and passage of a law requiring antidegradation review 21 years ago, Iowa still has no effective antidegradation implementation.  However, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) will be presenting a draft rule package to the Environmental Protection Commission in September.  The department has set up informational meetings across the state in July and August to share information with the public.

These meetings are an opportunity for the public to give the DNR input when making decisions about allowing pollution into our water.  It’s very important that Iowans take advantage of this opportunity and future regulatory processes, including decisions about issuing permits. The dates and sites for this first round of informational meetings are:

July 23, 2008 – Clear Lake, IA – Clear Lake Public Library – 10 AM

From ICCI:

Voter Owned Iowa Clean Elections (VOICE) meeting this Wed in Iowa City

The VOICE bill has been endorsed by many organizations including: Democracy for America (DFA) , The Sierra Club and I-Renew.

Event Info Host: Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Location: Iowa City Public Library, Meeting Room A

Street:

123 S. Linn

City/Town:

Iowa City, IA

                    Contact Info Phone:

5152820484

Email:

kate@iowacci.org

Description

Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections (VOICE) would provide public funding for state elections, something that has already shown success in Arizona, Maine, Connecticut, and other places.

Come discuss the issues you care about and how the influence of big money creates obstacles to change. With VOICE we can shape a government where people matter more and money matters less.

This meeting is sponsored by Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and Iowa Citizen Action Network.

Friday, July 25:

The DNR will be holding an informational meeting about water quality rules at 10 am in the Wallace Building 5th floor conference room in Des Moines. For background, see details above about similar event in Clear Lake on July 23.

Tuesday, July 29:

OPEN HOUSE FUNDRAISING RECEPTION for:

BILL McCARTHY, Democrat

Candidate for Polk County Sheriff

Next Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Open House – 4:30 P.M. to 6:30 P.M.

At the home of Jim & Roxanne Conlin

2900 Southern Hills Circle

Des Moines, IA

(Just head west on Park Ave. about a mile and a half west of Fleur Drive; turn north off of Park Ave. on Southern Hills Drive; drive north until you reach Southern Hills Circle.)

Contributions Appreciated:  Checks may be made payable to:

McCarthy for Sheriff

Or mail contribution to:

Bill McCarthy for Sheriff,

5201 SE 32nd St., Des Moines, IA 50320

* For questions or to RSVP, contact Linda at 205-4351

It doesn’t get much more visionary and ambitious than Al Gore’s speech last week on energy and climate change, and this sentence in particular:

Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.

If you missed it, you can find the full text here or read a helpfully annotated version here.

My only quibble with this fantastic speech was that Gore said little about the transportation sector, which is the second largest contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

But that’s a minor point. Go read what he said, if you haven’t already. We can meet demand for electricity using clean, renewable sources. We do not need new nuclear reactors or coal-fired power plants.

Gore turned up at the Netroots Nation conference over the weekend, and Mooncat at Left in Alabama posted some videos from his speech.

Andrew Villeneuve of the Northwest Progressive Institute liveblogged Gore’s speech in Austin here for those who don’t have time to watch the video.

I got these job listings from Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa and thought some Bleeding Heartland readers might have the right qualifications, or would know someone who would be a good fit.

Political campaigns and/or progressive non-profit organizations should feel free to send me any job listings you’d like posted here (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com).

PPGI currently has the need to fill three Director positions.  For detailed information, please visit our web at www.ppgi.org.

Director of Marketing

This position will develop a strong public knowledge of PPGI’s programs and services and provide leadership to the Marketing team while designing and executing against a developed plan.  Req. include a BA in a related field and 4-6 years marketing/advertising exp with a min of 5 yrs. mgmt..  MA or high level certification in PR, Mkting, Pub. Admin or Bus. is pref.

Director of Communications

This position will lead the communications team with focus on developing strong programs and procedures within all departments/centers of PPGI, to include our allies, partners and third party experts.  It is critical to build solid relationships with statewide media.  Req.  include a BA in related field and 5-10 years related exp. with 5-7 years prior mgmt.

Director of Governmental Affairs

This position will lead the governmental affairs team in expanding grassroots support for reproductive health freedoms and building the assets and capacity of PPGI to mobilize support on key issues. Req. include 5-10 yrs. related exp (public policy, or grass root advocacy), BA and a min. of five yrs. mgmt. exp. for team of 5.

To send resume by e-mail:

resumes AT ppgi.org

To send resume by mail:

PPGI-Human Resources

PO Box 4557

Des Moines, IA  50305-4557

Fax. 515 280-9525

A friend forwarded to me the latest issue of Senator Matt McCoy’s electronic newsletter. It includes the following passage:

With the rapid rise in gas prices, it is clearer than ever that Iowans need more choices when it comes to transportation.  

Over the next several months, I’ll be working with a Mass Transit Study Committee to review ways mass transit might be used to improve public transportation among Iowa communities.  We’ll hear from policy experts and citizens who are concerned with improving transportation alternatives.  

I hope you’ll contact me with your ideas on how to address this difficult problem.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: To fight global warming, we also need to rethink transportation policy.

Whether or not you live in Senate district 31, I hope you will contact Senator McCoy if you have input for this committee.

Remember that public transit doesn’t have to be restricted to larger towns and cities. A small town can have express bus service or vanpools taking people to jobs, shops or other facilities in other communities. That can save users a lot of money while reducing gasoline consumption and congestion on roads used by commuters.

Governor Chet Culver says says Iowa may consider moving to a four-day work week for state employees to save energy costs:

In Utah starting next month, most government employees will not go in on Fridays and will work 10-hour shifts the other four days of the week.

Utah’s innovation was a popular topic at the National Governors Association meeting last weekend in Philadelphia, Culver said Friday.

If Utah state workers commute 20 percent less, the idea is that fuel use and pollution will decrease. State officials also hope to improve customer service with state buildings open from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., said Lisa Roskelley, spokeswoman for Utah’s governor. And they want to boost employee morale by giving them a three-day weekend every week, she said.

City employees in Birmingham, Alabama are also working four-day weeks this summer, and that link discusses some of the environmental benefits and cost savings.

Meanwhile, seven Iowa locations are among the 600 stores Starbucks is closing nationwide. I can’t say I’m surprised. When you read about tips for saving money, a common piece of advice is to brew your own coffee instead of paying $4 or $5 at Starbucks.

Daily Kos user Lava20 used to work for two different major credit card companies and has posted helpful advice for reducing your credit card bills. Here are the links:

Simple Credit Card Advice For Everyone, Yes You! (includes tips on how to protest every fee, ask for lower interest rates, request that every fee be waived, and so on)

Simple Credit Card Advice. SERIOUS UPDATE (on lowering interest rates, balance transfer options, and improving your credit score)

A theme running through both diaries is that you have a better chance of getting what you want if you are polite and don’t call the customer service representative names or threaten to close your account.

Use this as an open thread to discuss anything you are doing to save a little money in light of rising costs for gas, food and other necessities.

When it comes to making ends meet, you can’t beat this timeless advice from Saturday Night Live.

The weekly Des Moines Business Record gives out “Women of Influence” awards every year to “women who have made outstanding contributions to the community in a variety of areas.” This year’s winners are:

Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu

Former Iowa Attorney General Bonnie Campbell

Des Moines attorney Lori Chesser

Community volunteer Sheila Drevyanko

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage employee Cara Heiden

Iowa Environmental Protection Commissioner and philanthropist Charlotte Hubbell

Community activist Willie Glanton

Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge

West Des Moines City Council member Loretta Sieman

The woman business owner of the year is Sarah Grant of Sticks.

As you can see, there are some great Iowa Democrats on the list.

The award-winners will be honored at a reception on August 12 from 4:30 to 7:30 pm (honors presentation at 5:00) at the Des Moines Marriott Downtown. You can register for the event, which costs $25 to attend, at http://www.businessrecord.com.

The Nevada Republican Party didn’t want to take that chance. They canceled their state convention, set for next Saturday, because the number of RSVPs from delegates was well below the level needed for a quorum.

This was the second attempt to hold the Nevada GOP convention. State party officials abruptly ended the originally scheduled event in April when Ron Paul supporters outnumbered supporters of John McCain among the delegates.

Nevada is in my opinion the state most likely to go Democratic thanks to Libertarian presidential candidate and former Republican Congressman Bob Barr. Not only are there huge numbers of Ron Paul supporters who don’t back McCain, there is a relevant history. The Libertarian vote in the 1998 Senate race was large enough to hand a narrow victory to Democrat Harry Reid.

Speaking of Barr, he showed up at the liberal Netroots Nation gathering today. Daily Kos user dday landed an impromptu interview and put up this entertaining diary about it.

This guy is all class.

According to the Des Moines Register, about 160 immigrants face deportation “because their U.S. citizen spouses died less than two years after their marriages and before the survivors’ permanent residency applications were approved.”

A bipartisan group in Congress, including some conservative Republicans, is trying to change the law so that these widows’ and widowers’ residency applications can be reviewed individually. Otherwise these unfortunate people are forced to fight deportation while also dealing with a bereavement and in some cases looking after children.

Who’s the one person loudly objecting to this law? None other than fifth district Representative Steve King. In addition to being generally concerned about our “runaway immigration policy,” he has specific problems with the bill:

King also said more protections were needed to ensure immigrant spouses have good moral character or that they planned to come to the United States prior to the spouse’s death.

“A soldier, man or woman, could get drunk in Bangkok, wake up in the morning and be married, as will happen sometimes in places like Las Vegas or Bangkok, be killed the next day, and the spouse who was a product of the evening’s celebration would have then a right to claim access to come to the United States on a green card,” King said.

Remember, this bill would have U.S. immigration officials review applications on a case-by-case basis. I doubt a marriage of drunk people who barely knew each other would be deemed legitimate.

Anyway,

He said he agreed with the sentiment in the bill but Congress cannot take care of “every sad story that we have and if we do that, we are going to create a lot more sad stories in the United States from the people that will take advantage.”

His position has befuddled advocates of changing the penalty […].

“I’ve never come across anybody who actually voiced opposition,” said Brent Renison, an Oregon immigration lawyer […].

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who sponsored the bill in committee, said the “widow penalty” is one of the top reasons for private relief bills in Congress.

But why do something humane that will also save members of Congress the time they spend on passing these private relief bills?

Better to continue making a name for yourself as the guy who can always think of a reason not to help immigrants.

As I’ve written before, any serious effort to combat global warming will have to include policies that give Americans more accessible alternatives to driving.

Otherwise continued increases in vehicle miles traveled by car and truck could cancel out reductions in greenhouse gas emissions due to cleaner fuel sources and greater fuel efficiency.

Last week 41 members of the House of Representatives signed a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging Congress to address transportation issues in forthcoming legislation on climate change.

Representative Dave Loebsack was the only Iowan to sign this letter, which was drafted by Ellen Tauscher (D, CA-10) and Earl “the Bike” Blumenauer (D, OR-03).

I received a copy of the letter from a Smart Growth America e-mail list and am reproducing it here. I couldn’t find the text anywhere online, so there’s no link:

July 14, 2008

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi

Speaker

H-232, The Capitol

Washington, DC 20515

Dear Speaker Pelosi,

We thank you for your continued work to address climate change through federal legislation. As you have previously noted, Congress has a historic opportunity to provide leadership on one of the defining issues of this era. As Congress begins work on comprehensive climate change legislation, we ask that this legislation address the second largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions: surface transportation.

As you know, surface transportation produces one-third of the United States’ greenhouse gases, and sixty percent of these emissions come from personal vehicle use. Last year, Congress demonstrated leadership on climate change by raising CAFE standards to thirty-five miles per gallon by 2020. However, recent studies suggest that the expected increase in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMTs) will negate both higher CAFE standards and a reduction of carbon content in fuel. If VMTs are not reduced, transportation sector emissions will rise forty percent above 1990 levels by 2030.

Through climate change legislation, we believe that Congress should encourage greater use of VMT-reducing strategies, especially public transportation. Significant funds should be dedicated to increase public transit, intercity passenger rail, freight rail capacity, intelligent transportation systems, and bicycle and pedestrian alternatives. In addition, the legislation should encourage smart growth and transit-oriented development.

We believe that climate change legislation should allocate a portion of funds to all sectors that generate greenhouse gases, including transportation. Supporting VMT-reduction strategies will lower greenhouse gas emissions, decrease transportation costs for Americans, and relieve pressure on other sectors to meet an overall emissions cap. Without such efforts, other industries will have to overcompensate to offset the transportation sector’s emissions. In addition, these policies will have the added benefits of providing consumers with increased transportation choices, improved accessibility, a greater range of housing choices, improved personal health and fitness, decreased air pollution, and reduced traffic congestion and commute times.

In the coming months, we look forward to supporting legislation that will reduce the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions and demonstrate the United States’ commitment to addressing climate change.

Sincerely,

Ellen O. Tauscher

Earl Blumenauer

(and 39 other members of Congress)

This letter explains concisely why transportation has to be part of our conversation on global warming.

I also like the way it makes clear that dealing with transportation issues in the climate change bill will create more flexibility in setting the emissions caps for other sectors.

The road-building lobbies will vigorously oppose the changes this letter advocates. But perhaps they can be pitted against the powerful corporate interests that will oppose sharp reductions in industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

Here is some background on smart growth and transit-oriented development, in case you are wondering what those terms in the third paragraph mean.

Tauscher and Blumenauer deserve credit for leading on this issue. It will take a huge effort by many people to make good changes in federal transportation policies.

All the representatives who signed this letter are listed after the jump. After Tauscher and Blumenauer, they appear in alphabetical order, as they did on the letter to Pelosi. Chris Shays of Connecticut is the only Republican in the group.

The weekly Cityview has published a special supplement about locally-owned businesses in central Iowa.

I am passionate about buying local. At first, I was influenced by the fact that both of my grandfathers were small business owners. The more I learned about the economic and environmental benefits, the more committed I became to shopping and dining out at locally-owned businesses.

In addition, as a volunteer for many non-profit groups I know that local business owners are often more supportive of charitable causes in the area than corporate executives at companies with headquarters out of state.

One of the main reasons I got involved with 1000 Friends of Iowa seven or eight years ago was that the group supports economic development with a focus on locally-owned, Main Street businesses.

Rob Marqusee, the rural economic development director for Woodbury County, recently directed me to this outstanding website. It’s full of resources on the economic benefits of buying locally-grown food. I’ll write more about this in the near future, but meanwhile I encourage you to go explore the website yourself.

Marqusee has done a tremendous job in promoting the growth of organic farming and local food networks in northwest Iowa.

If Congressman Steve King hadn’t already won the “jackass award,” someone would need to give it to him for the way he behaved at a House Judiciary Committee hearing this week.

It’s no secret that King isn’t interested in the Congress serving as a check or balance on executive power. As we saw just a few weeks ago, King believes former White House spokesman Scott McClellan could have “done this country a favor” by keeping his mouth shut about alleged lawbreaking and lying in the Bush administration.

Apparently not satisfied with his efforts to sidetrack the McClellan hearings, King used one parliamentary trick after another on Tuesday to prevent Democrats on the Judiciary Committee from effectively questioning Douglas Feith, the former number three Pentagon official.

You really have to click over to Dana Milbank’s story for the Washington Post and read the whole thing to fully grasp how disgracefully King behaved. He and Congressman Darrell Issa (the wallet behind the recall of California Governor Gray Davis a few years back) were so disruptive that, according to Milbank, “Three and a half hours later, Feith had become but an asterisk at what was supposed to be his hanging.”

Not that it’s any big deal–Feith was only a key architect of the Bush administration’s policy on torture and false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

As usual, King appears to be proud of his outrageous behavior. I learned from this piece by Douglas Burns that King’s campaign has prominently featured Milbank’s article on the incumbent’s website.

Incidentally, as far as I can tell, King’s campaign site ripped off Milbank’s whole article, rather than posting a link to the Washington Post site with an short excerpt. Are members of Congress subject to copyright law?

Anyway, King is proud to stand in the way of meaningful Congressional oversight of the executive branch. But don’t get the wrong idea. He doesn’t believe Congress should be powerless. Iowa Guy 2.0 recently reminded me that King went on record three years ago saying Congress could abolish federal courts, cut their funding or instruct the Department of Justice not to enforce court rulings if judges didn’t behave.

Separation of powers seems to be too difficult a concept for King to grasp.

Getting rid of King would not only benefit the residents of Iowa’s fifth district, but would also further the cause of proper Congressional oversight. Please kick in some cash to Rob Hubler, the Democratic nominee to represent Iowa’s fifth district.

It’s a Republican-leaning district (R+8), but we just won Mississippi’s first Congressional district, which tilts even more strongly to the GOP.

King has a money advantage, but his cash on hand of $251,000 is not a dominating war chest compared to what other incumbents have at their disposal.

Also, the Iowa wingnuts may be crazy, but they aren’t crazy about John McCain. The GOP presidential candidate will have a much weaker turnout operation in Iowa than Barack Obama, and the editor of the Storm Lake Times thinks King may be vulnerable given the atmosphere of “Republican despondence.”

If I haven’t convinced you with this post or my previous work highlighting King’s more embarrassing moments, take it from Texas Nate, who declared King to be “the worst Congressman of them all” in this MyDD diary. That’s quite a statement coming from Nate. They’ve got some really bad ones representing parts of Texas.

UPDATE: Ted Mallory, who lives in King’s district, has drawn a cartoon about King’s behavior in the Feith hearing:

http://tedstoons.blogspot.com/…

But last week the Wall Street Journal made a big deal about how Barack Obama supposedly “only” raised $30 million in June.

Today Obama’s campaign revealed that it raised $52 million in June, and the Democratic National Committee raised $22 million the same month. Obama apparently has about $72 million in cash on hand, while the DNC has about $20 million in cash on hand.

At Open Left, tremayne graphed Obama’s fundraising per month this year. February was his best month; he raised $55 million then.

John McCain raised about $22 million in June, but the Republican National Committee has crushed the DNC in fundraising this year, so if you combine the RNC and McCain numbers, their side has slightly more cash on hand.

But guess what? The average donation for Obama in June was $68. That means he has a ton of small donors who are not maxed out. In fact, only $2 million of the $52 million he raised is for the general election (in other words, came from people who had already maxed out at $2,300 for the primary).

I found this analysis by Jerome Armstrong intriguing:

I believe that Obama could have raised $100M in June if that’s what they wanted to do. In fact, there may have been plans to do just that too, but they changed. Notice that just $2M was raised for the GE by Obama, they certainly could have raised a ton more money there if they had wanted, for the GE, at least $20-30M, and combined with the $74M that was raised between Obama and DNC, over $100M.

So, either the Obama camp isn’t as committed to self-funding for the GE, and might still go the route of taking the $84M in public financing (unlikely); or they are holding off their donors to give for the GE later (there are accounts of projecting a $100M month in Sept); or the Obama camp will use July and August to raise big numbers for the GE, as the decision to opt-out was made on June 19th, late in the month for fundraising plans. It could be either of these last two it seems.

Certainly Obama will not take public financing for the general. But could his campaign be deliberately holding big general-election donations off until later this summer?

Reporting a $100 million haul this fall, at the height of the campaign, could hurt Republican morale and drive a lot of media coverage about the enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans.

Maybe McCain will be forced to pick Mitt Romney for a running mate. He’s disliked by the Christian right but excellent at bringing in cash. Romney-skeptic Jeff Angelo is re-thinking the wisdom of this course for the GOP nominee.

Put your thoughts and suppositions about the presidential candidates’ fundraising in the comment thread.

Showing the leadership and vision that would have made him a better president than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, Al Gore set out some very ambitious goals in a speech on energy policy today.

TomP’s diary gives you lots of information about the speech. The key goal is to generate every kilowatt of electricity in the U.S. from renewable sources in 10 years.

That’s environmentally-friendly renewable sources–not so-called “clean coal” and nuclear power.

Imagine where we’d be as a country if a screwy Palm Beach County ballot and a corrupt Supreme Court majority had not handed the presidency to George Bush in 2000.

But I agree with Matt Stoller that Gore needs to stop praising John McCain with respect to global warming policy.

As always, post a comment or send me an e-mail if I’ve left out any important event.

Democratic candidates, please e-mail me about your upcoming public events and/or fundraisers, so that I can include them in these posts.

Thursday, July 17:

Democracy for America is holding another one of its “Night School” sessions, this time featuring Professor George Lakoff:

Ever wonder why simply stating our positions on the hot button issues isn’t enough to win votes? Or why Democrats who try and adopt conservative stances on issues usually lose their elections even in conservative districts?

Professor George Lakoff has the answers and will show us how to frame the solutions during the next Night School. Thursday, Professor Lakoff will be our special guest trainer; highlighting specific thinking points from his new book “The Political Mind” and teaching the framing progressives need to know to win. Join us “Live from Netroots Nation” at a special time: 5:30pm Eastern.

The Political Mind with George Lakoff

Thursday 5:30pm Eastern Time

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR NIGHT SCHOOL NOW!

More information from Democracy for America is after the jump.

Rob Hubler will be at the Decatur County fair in Leon at 6:30 pm.

Friday, July 18:

Rob Hubler will be at the Carroll County fair in Carroll at 1:00 pm.

Hubler will be at the Crawford County fair in Denison at 3:15.

Hubler will be at the Mills County fair in Malvern at 6:15.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement is holding its Statewide Convention on Friday and Saturday at the Hotel Fort Des Moines (10th and Walnut). The keynote speaker on Friday night will be John Nichols, writer for The Nation magazine. Tickets for the Nichols event can be purchased for $15 in advance or for $20 at the door. To purchase tickets, call Iowa CCI at 515-255-0800 or visit www.iowacci.org.

For more background on Nichols, read this diary posted by Whitney. To register to attend ICCI’s convention, click here.

Saturday, July 19:

ICCI’s convention continues all day at the Hotel Fort Des Moines. A particularly interesting workshop on how to win the battle over clean elections reform will be led by State Representative Pam Jochum.

The Iowa Renewable Energy Association is holding a Residential Solar Photovoltaic Workshop at the Des Moines Botanical Center from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm. It costs $100 for I-Renew members and $150 for non-members, with an optional $11 lunch. Click here for more information, or read the whole e-mail announcement from I-Renew after the jump.

Rob Hubler will be at the Buena Vista County fair in Storm Lake at 1 pm.

Hubler will be at the O’Brien County fair in Primghar at 3 pm.

Polk County supervisor Tom Hockensmith is holding the 6th Annual Hockensmith Family Picnic from noon to 3 pm at Doanes Park, Shelter #1, 451 S. Pleasant Hill Blvd. $10 per person – or – $25 per family. Directions from E. University / Hwy 163: Go South on Hickory Blvd., West on Maple Dr., then South on S. Pleasant Hill Blvd.

Sunday, July 20:

Rob Hubler will be in the Monona County fair parade in Onawa at 10 am.

Hubler will be at the Pottawattamie County fair in Avoca at 3:15 pm.

Iowa businesses in areas affected by recent flooding will have an extra month this summer to remit withholding, unemployment and sales tax for activity from April 1 to June 30. The floods cut off cash flow for many businesses, and the extension is intended to give them time to secure Small Business Administration or other loans before they have to make tax payments.

More details are in the press release from State Representative Tyler Olson, which is after the jump. Olson is a first-term incumbent in House district 38, which includes parts of Cedar Rapids. He requested the extension after being contacted by a business owner.  

The Center on Sustainable Communities (COSC) sent out an e-mail reminding members that Habitat for Humanity’s eight Restores in Iowa are available to help people affected by the flooding rebuild.

The full text of the e-mail is after the jump. It includes contact information for Restores in Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines, Hiawatha (suburb of Cedar Rapids), Iowa City, Mason City, Sioux City, and Waterloo.

Click here to learn more about COSC’s mission and work in our state.

I have some questions for anyone who participated in the statewide canvass Barack Obama’s campaign organized in Iowa last Saturday.

I would like to hear from as many people as possible, from different regions of Iowa if possible.

If you prefer not to post your answers on a blog, you can e-mail them to me confidentially: desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com

1. Did the script the campaign provided for volunteers say anything about Democratic candidates other than Obama?

2. Were you instructed to ask for voter preferences about Democratic candidates for Congress?

3. Were you instructed to ask for voter preferences about Democratic candidates for the Iowa House or Senate?

4. When you recorded voter IDs, were all Obama supporters and/or leaners lumped together in one group? Or were you asked to keep track of which Obama supporters were also backing down-ticket Democrats?

I’m trying to figure out how much emphasis there was on 1) getting the name of down-ticket Democrats out there, 2) tracking voter IDs regarding down-ticket Democrats, and 3) separating Obama supporters into different groups depending on whether the voters were also backing down-ticket Democrats.

Today I ran into a central Iowa college student I know. She asked about my t-shirt, which says Jerry Sullivan, State Representative District 59.

I explained that he’s a candidate in my district for the Iowa House. I asked where she lived, and when she told me I informed her that she lives in House district 60, where Alan Koslow is the Democratic candidate.

Her response was to shrug and say she doesn’t vote for anything but president. I tried to explain that a lot of things are decided by state governments, so she should check that “Democratic Party” box (Iowa allows party-line voting). I don’t know if I got through to her.

My point is that the Obama campaign should help educate voters so that they understand the need to do more than check the box next to Obama’s name.

Also, given Obama’s Iowa caucus strategy, I have some concern that his campaign may work on activating Republicans who will vote for him but against Democrats down-ticket.

Sorry for the short notice–tonight, Wednesday the 16th, there will be a “Ridin’ the Storm Out” flood benefit concert at Prairie Meadows in Altoona.

A $20 donation gets you in the door. There will be a silent auction as well.

All proceeds go toward flood relief, and Polk County will match donations dollar for dollar.

Opening act Little River Band (a 70s group that I love) will come on stage at 6:30 pm.

REO Speedwagon comes on at 8:00 pm.

More info here:

http://www.rocktheflood.org/

Last week Senator Tom Harkin announced the winners of his “Building Blue” contest.

Apparently Oskaloosa residents were well-represented among the more than 5,000 Iowans who voted, because Representative Eric Palmer (HD 75) and Senator Tom Rielly (SD 38) were the winners. They will each receive $5,000 from Harkin’s campaign fund.

They already received $2,000 from Harkin’s fund for advancing to the final round of the contest, as did the other Democratic House and Senate candidates listed here.

Both Palmer and Rielly are first-term incumbents being targeted by Republicans. We should be able to hold both seats, especially since the Obama campaign has a field office up and running in Oskaloosa already. But we’ll need all hands on deck, so chip in to their campaigns if you can, and volunteer if you live in the area.

On Tuesday the House overrode George Bush’s veto of a bill that stopped planned cuts in the Medicare reimbursement rate for doctors. It’s the fourth time Congress has voted to override Bush’s vetoes. This is the bill that just barely cleared the Senate because of Ted Kennedy’s return.

This diary by noweasels has the story and links to the roll-call votes, along with a lot of comments about how this law will affect people. TomP has some background on Medicare and how it was adopted.

The House vote was 383-41. In the Iowa delegation, Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack and Tom Latham voted yes on the override. Steve King voted no. Leonard Boswell was among the 11 representatives who missed the vote.

The Senate vote was 70-26, with Tom Harkin voting yes and Chuck Grassley voting no. Barack Obama and John McCain were among the four senators who missed the vote.

I’ve never watched an episode of “Big Brother” and don’t ever plan to, but for some reason part of this Associated Press article on the new season caught my eye when the Des Moines Register published it:

Libra Thompson, a married 31-year-old human resources representative from Spring, Texas, left behind her husband and three children — including 4-month-old twins — to participate in “Big Brother 10.” During production, Thompson and the other “Big Brother” contestants are prohibited from communicating with the outside world.

Hang on, I thought–doesn’t the taping of this show go on for a long time? I flipped back to the beginning of the story and found that indeed, contestants are isolated in a house for three months.

When I started writing this post, I looked for the link to the AP story to see if it mentioned the age of Thompson’s older child, and I realized that the Register’s print version cut out part of the relevant passage:

Libra Thompson, a married 31-year-old human resources representative from Spring, Texas, left behind her husband and three children — including 4-month-old twins — to participate in “Big Brother 10.” During production, Thompson and the other “Big Brother” contestants are prohibited from communicating with the outside world.

“It’s better for me that they’re younger,” said Thompson of her newborns. “At four months old, they’re not going to remember much. It’s probably going to be a little bit more difficult for my 4-year-old. However, I’m going to stay focused and remember the reason I’m here, and that’s the cash. That will help me.”

That is a big trauma to inflict on your children for money. I know that $500,000 is a lot of money, but Thompson isn’t a homeless, unemployed person who has no way to feed her family besides appearing on this show.

I had to laugh when I read this description of her strategy:

Strategy: “I’m intuitive. I think I’ll be able figure out how to push people’s buttons.”

I wonder if Ms. Thompson is “intuitive” enough to realize that disappearing for three months could permanently affect her children’s bond with her and ability to form secure attachments generally.

I wouldn’t seek to impose my parenting style on others. I wouldn’t judge any woman for going back to work when her children are young, or for taking overnight trips away from young children (for business or vacation). But to deprive children of the sight, sound, smell and touch of their mother for three full months, for no reason other than a desire to make money, is deeply disturbing.

I assume the children will receive loving attention from their father and substitute caregivers. Nonetheless, I worry that such a lengthy separation from the mother could have lasting effects along the lines of those described in this scholarly paper by a psychologist:

Bowlby (1973) identified three phases of a normal response to separation. The child first protests the loss and uses attachment behaviors to try and bring back his mother. When Mother does not return, the child seems to despair, but still awaits her return. Eventually he seems to detach and appears to lose interest. However, attachment behaviors will return upon reunion if the separation has not been too extended. Following reunion, the child whose parent has been appropriately responsive to his attachment behaviors will often cling to the parent, demonstrating anxiety at any hint of separation.

Bowlby’s theory provides a new perspective on clinging behavior, or separation anxiety. In contrast to traditional psychoanalytic models which viewed separation anxiety as a displacement of some other fear (Bowlby, 1988), Bowlby saw anxious attachment as the result of real or threatened separations or temporary abandonments by caretaking figures during childhood (Bowlby, 1973). When a child knows that an attachment figure will be available whenever he needs a secure base, he will develop a lifelong ability to tolerate separations well, and will handle new situations confidently. Lacking such knowledge, he will demonstrate anxious attachment and general apprehensiveness at new ventures.

The availability of an attachment figure during childhood also influences the person’s response to losses. When a frightened child needs his mother but ultimately finds that he is abandoned and alone, he protects himself from further suffering by detaching himself from any awareness of his feelings and needs. Summarizing studies of children who underwent prolonged separations, Bowlby (1980) noted detachment as the final stage of dealing with a separation. During detachment, the child stops emitting attachment behavior and even turns away from attachment figures when they return (as Robertson’s [1952] film of a two-year-old’s week long hospitalization and separation from his parents poignantly demonstrates).

Bowlby saw detachment as the result of a deactivation of the system of attachment behavior. By defensively excluding from awareness “…the signals, arising from both inside and outside the person, that would activate their attachment behavior and that would enable them both to love and to experience being loved” (Bowlby, 1988, pp. 34-25), children experiencing prolonged separations can block attachment behaviors and its associated affects. Once established as a defensive process, detachment then becomes the child’s characteristic coping style.

I don’t care if Thompson “turned it out” during her audition for Big Brother. In my opinion, the producers of this reality show should not have selected a mother with such young children as a contestant. But hey, anything to attract an advertiser-friendly demographic like thirty-something working moms.

I find it more revealing that there’s no public outcry from the self-appointed defenders of “family values.” Why are social conservatives not calling for a boycott of CBS or its advertisers if the producers of “Big Brother” do not send this contestant home to her children?

Apparently a show that celebrates leaving small children in pursuit of money is not as worthy of condemnation as various sitcoms and drama programs that have been called anti-Christian.  

You know, the one showing Barack Obama in traditional Muslim dress fist-bumping Michelle Obama, who sports an Angela-Davis-style afro and a machine gun, while the American flag burns in the fireplace?

I understand the point the cartoonist was trying to make, but in my view it was a poor editorial decision to put that on the magazine cover. Put it inside the magazine, where people who read the article about Obama will see it. On the cover it will reach many times more people, most of whom won’t understand the irony.

Pam Spaulding of Pam’s House blend has a guest post up at Open Left with an interesting take on this controversy, sexism and racism.

Speaking of Obama-related artwork, if you’ve got $65,000 burning a hole in your pocket, you can bid on this mixed-media piece called “Obama HOPE” (proceeds go to a charity bringing the arts to urban youth).  

Calling all volunteer foot soldiers: the Obama campaign has been working the phones for a “strategy session” that will be held today, Tuesday, at Dos Rios restaurant (4th and Court in downtown Des Moines) beginning at 5:30.

I don’t know which prominent Iowa Democrats will be there, but if you live in central Iowa and plan to volunteer for Obama this year, it sounds like a good event for you.

UPDATE: In the comments, noneed4thneed says former Governor Tom Vilsack will speak at this event.

Representatives Ellen Tauscher (D, CA-10) and Tom Petri (R, WI-06), both members of the House Transportation Committee, are forming a “Metropolitan Mobility Caucus” to revamp federal transportation policy.

Here is the “Dear colleague” letter they are circulating among members of Congress:

Dear Colleague,

We invite you to join the Metropolitan Mobility Caucus.

Transportation congestion is a major economic and environmental problem in metropolitan areas. Although the top 100 metropolitan areas represent only 12% of the land in the United States, they contain 65% of our nation’s population. They account for more than 90% of traffic congestion, transit ridership, and population exposure to autorelated air pollution. Urban areas handle 95% of the nation’s trade, 96% of rail passengers, and 75% of seaport tonnage. Congestion has never been worse. In 2005, urban congestion cost $78.2 billion in wasted time and fuel, which equates to $707 annually per traveler.

We believe that federal transportation policy should take a fresh approach to solving the various metropolitan infrastructure problems. As we continue to examine the structure of the next highway bill, our caucus will advocate for stronger partnerships between federal, state, and local transportation officials; greater use of public transportation, including intercity passenger rail; regional mobility goals; and performance standards.

In the coming months, we plan to hold staff briefings to examine these and other issues. The first briefing will take place on Monday, July 21st at 4:30 PM in 2253 RHOB. Cohosted by the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations and the American Planning Association, this briefing will focus on the role of MPOs in the transportation planning process. If you would like to join the Metropolitan Mobility Caucus, please contact Paul Schmid (Tauscher) or Tyler Schwartz (Petri).

Sincerely,  

Ellen O. Tauscher

Tom E. Petri

I hope some of Iowa’s representatives in Congress will join this caucus. It’s a natural fit for Leonard Boswell and Bruce Braley, who serve on the House Transportation Committee, but others could get behind this initiative as well. The number of Iowans who do not drive or cannot afford a car will grow as our population ages and gasoline becomes more expensive.

We don’t think of Iowa as having major metropolitan areas, but most of our medium-sized and larger cities would benefit from better public transit options and intercity rail. Even small towns would benefit from express bus service or vanpools that could get people to jobs, shops, doctors or other facilities in larger cities nearby.

Bike-friendly and pedestrian-friendly roads provide alternatives to driving and improve the quality of life in cities and towns of all sizes.  

The Smart Growth America website has lots of information on how federal policies could improve our transportation system.

By the way, of all the presidential candidates, Bill Richardson had the best vision on transportation policy. It wasn’t just talk, either–as governor, Richardson spent political capital to make intercity rail between Albuquerque and Santa Fe a reality.

People often mention Richardson as a possible vice-president or secretary of state, but in my fantasy cabinet he would be secretary of transportation.

If you want to contribute your time, energy and expertise toward helping Iowa communities recover and rebuild after this summer’s floods, consider applying to serve on one of these nine task forces.

Act quickly, because I heard they will be appointing task force members soon:

GOVERNOR CULVER, LT. GOVERNOR JUDGE CALL ON IOWANS TO APPLY FOR REBUILD IOWA TASK FORCES

To apply, Iowans should complete and return attached application form, also available on-line at flood2008.iowa.gov

Governor Chet Culver and Lt. Governor Patty Judge are inviting Iowans to apply for a position on one of the nine new Rebuild Iowa task forces, which will help create a vision for Iowa’s recovery efforts.

“As the flood waters rose, we saw the strength, resilience and determination of Iowans shine through as our state joined together to save our homes, businesses, and communities,” said Governor Chet Culver.  “Now, we must tap into this same spirit of service as Iowans begin down the road to recovery.  I call on Iowans from across the state to help our friends and neighbors in need, and serve on one of these nine Rebuild Iowa task forces.  By locking arms and working together, I am confident that we can rebuild our state, stronger and better than before.”

Last month, Governor Culver signed his seventh executive order, which created the Rebuild Iowa Advisory Commission.  To be chaired by Gen. Ron Dardis of the Iowa National Guard, the 15 member commission is designed to help guide our state’s recovery efforts.  The Executive Order specifically calls for the creation of task forces to help guide the commission’s work.

“These task forces are an important step in helping Iowans recover from this year’s historic and severe flooding,” said Lt. Governor Patty Judge.  “The Governor and I look forward to working with the Rebuild Iowa Commission, the nine task forces, and all Iowans as we begin the difficult work of rebuilding our state and returning life to normal for all Iowans.

The nine task forces created are:

   * Housing

   * Flood Plain Management and Hazard Mitigation

   * Infrastructure and Transportation

   * Economic and Workforce Development

   * Cultural Heritage and Records Retention

   * Public Health and Health Care

   * Long-Term Recovery Planning

   * Agriculture and Environment

   * Education

Iowans interested in applying should complete and return attached application form, also available on-line at http://flood2008.iowa.gov

At least one regular Bleeding Heartland reader is going on the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa next week. Surely there will be a few more Bleeding Heartland users among the 10,000 intrepid riders.

This is an open thread for those planning to ride to make contact with each other. Maybe you can meet for a drink or some ice cream in one of the stopover towns.

I've never done RAGBRAI. Someday when my kids are old enough to do the ride, I'll consider it if they are interested. I think I'd enjoy the exercise, and I know I'd enjoy the camaraderie, but frankly, I am not crazy about camping out.

I’d appreciate it if someone who does RAGBRAI would post a diary here afterwards about the visibility of various candidates (road signs, volunteers, etc.) along the way.

In the Des Moines Register on Monday, Thomas Beaumont reports on the contrast between the ground games of Barack Obama and John McCain in Iowa.

As I wrote yesterday, Obama has opened 15 field offices in Iowa, with two more planned.

McCain’s state headquarters in Urbandale is the GOP nominee’s only Iowa office so far, and according to Beaumont, the campaign is still trying to figure out where to locate about half as many field offices as Obama has up and running.

This passage is particularly telling:

Obama spent almost a year campaigning in Iowa before January, building up a staff of more than 150 and a volunteer network of about 3,500. That network had little time to rest after the caucuses.

Obama’s campaign aides have remained in touch with his Iowa supporters, as they worked to turn out delegates to county and district conventions in their battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York for national delegates.

Obama’s general election campaign plan in Iowa follows the template that helped him win the caucuses, and which proved effective in his success in many states during the grueling nomination fight with Clinton.

That strategy focuses on having a local presence in as many places as the campaign can support and on keeping an army of 3,500 volunteers engaged, said Jack[ie] Norris, Obama’s Iowa campaign director.

“So much of what we were doing before the county conventions … was bringing up to speed again the Obama network in each of those counties,” said Norris, who was a top adviser to Obama’s caucus campaign.

Here’s hoping that army of volunteers gets deployed in the down-ticket races. They would be a huge asset to Rob Hubler, Becky Greenwald, and our House and Senate candidates all over the state.

Late last week the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took the unusual step of releasing detailed information about where they plan to spend $34 million on television advertising this fall. Click the link to read how much the DCCC says it will spend in each of 31 districts, only 12 of which are currently held by Democrats.

As you can see from the comment thread under this post at Swing State Project, a lot of people are unhappy about winnable seats left off this list. What about netroots hero Darcy Burner, who fell just short in Washington’s eighth district in 2006? Shouldn’t Dan Seals get some help in Illinois’s tenth? Are we really going to give “Mean Jean” Schmidt a pass in Ohio’s second?

I was disappointed not to see Iowa’s fourth district listed. Most of its 28 counties are covered by Des Moines or Mason City television, which is not that expensive. But keep in mind that this is just time reserved by the DCCC, and it could change if the situation on the ground changes.

If some of the Democratic districts targeted now appear safe by September or October, the DCCC could shift money elsewhere.

I also think Todd Beeton is right to note that

There are plenty more GOP seats that should be on this list, CA-04 and WA-08 come immediately to mind. I look forward to seeing more seats added to this list as we get closer to November. What should be remembered is that this list is simply what the DCCC was comfortable making public and putting the GOP on notice.

It’s up to us Iowans to give Becky Greenwald a boost against Tom Latham in the D+0 fourth district. We already have a registration advantage in the district. We need to help Greenwald raise money and generate excitement around the race. When the DCCC reassesses the field later this year, it won’t be too late to get involved.

Clearly, the DCCC is not going to spend much money supporting Rob Hubler in Iowa’s fifth district, but we should keep our focus on that race too. It’s a terrible district to cover with television commercials, because the 32 counties are located in so many different media markets. But we can still give our time and money to Hubler’s campaign. King is an embarrassment, and he will get little top-of-the-ticket help from John McCain, who has no organization in Iowa.

The fifth is the most Republican district in Iowa with a partisan index of R+8, but we just won Mississippi’s first Congressional district, which tilts even more strongly to the GOP. The Storm Lake Times thinks that King may be vulnerable given the current political environment.

UPDATE: DCCC Executive Director Brian Wolff issued the following statement on the ad buy:

“Our initial media buy is the first act of a many act play.  As we have been all cycle, the DCCC is focused, prepared, and organized.  Watch what we do over the next four months and our aggressive strategy to expand the playing field and strengthen the Democratic Majority will become clear.”

Dr. Michael DeBakey, who developed bypass surgery and many other procedures for heart patients, died of natural causes at age 99.

Chances are you care about someone who benefited from the surgical techniques he pioneered and the instruments he invented.

Click the link to read about his achievements and the tens of thousands of patients he operated on, including world leaders and people who could not afford to pay for surgery.

I used to follow Russian politics closely, and Dr. DeBakey became a celebrity in Russia after he was a consultant to President Boris Yeltsin’s bypass operation in 1996.

The other famous passing of the weekend was former White House spokesman Tony Snow, who died of cancer at age 53.

Senator Chuck Grassley is considering how to proceed with an investigation of six televangelists who may be abusing their tax-free status. The Des Moines Register gives some background:

In November 2007, Grassley did the right thing when he sent six “media-based ministries” a letter asking them about everything from executive compensation to the list of vehicles purchased or leased. He wondered, for example, why a tax-exempt organization – which the public subsidizes by paying more taxes because that organization doesn’t pay any – was purchasing a $23,000 commode.

Just like his many other investigations of tax-exempt organizations, Grassley operates under the proper assumption that all charitable organizations enjoying preferential tax status should have to earn that status and be accountable to the public.

The questioning of the televangelists was “nothing more than a nonprofit tax review,” Grassley has said.

Most of the ministries have cooperated. But one – Kenneth Copeland Ministries – has been especially arrogant. Copeland has refused to respond to questions about compensation and publicly said he would not cooperate.

The Register’s editorial board wants Grassley to issue subpoenas, which could lead to contempt charges, to demonstrate that Copeland can’t get away with stonewalling a Senate investigation.

In May, Copeland launched a website attacking Grassley for “religious McCarthyism.” If you’re curious, click over to the Believers Stand United site, and explore the various hit pieces on Grassley and the man who may have given Grassley information about the ministries under investigation.

Will Grassley issue a subpoena against the uncooperative preacher who may go to jail rather than testify before his committee?

I am curious to see how far this clash will escalate. It’s not the kind of thing that would threaten Grassley’s career, but it can’t be pleasant to have popular evangelicals trash your reputation. I don’t listen to Christian talk radio–anyone know how much play this story is getting?

In other news, Grassley was annoyed with Senate Democrats for rejecting what he thought was a deal on the Medicare bill passed last week:

He said that Republicans and Democrats put together a bipartisan agreement and had been “working together for months until the Democratic leadership pulled the rug right out from under that effort” and made the vote partisan. Democrats engaged in an “unconscionable effort to scare seniors and providers,” Grassley said.

Even more painfully for Grassley, Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., publicly denied in CQ Today having reached a deal with Grassley earlier.

Grassley and Baucus work closely together. If the Democrats pick up four or five seats in the Senate, perhaps Baucus will become less willing to compromise with Grassley. Then maybe Iowa’s senior senator will decide he doesn’t need the hassle of serving another six years in the minority. Maybe retiring in 2010 would be better than facing defeat after defeat in a Democratic-controlled Congress.

Grassley’s seat is safe as long as he wants it, but this becomes a strong pickup opportunity for Democrats if Grassley retires.

Then again, maybe the flattering coverage he gets for token efforts to reduce waste are enough gratification to keep Grassley in his current job forever. Case in point: the Register noted that Grassley has written a letter to the president

to complain there are too many government-owned SUVs and big sedans that sit around Washington idling while waiting for their passengers.

“Some of the biggest culprits of this practice are vehicles attending to Cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries and assistant secretaries,” Grassley wrote Bush on Thursday.

With gasoline prices rising, Grassley said that when he walks out and sees the vehicles, “it just looks to me like the federal government is out of touch,” when it should be leading the way.

That article goes on to say that Grassley never allows his staff to let a car idle while waiting for him. It’s the kind of publicity he loves, highlighting what a modest, common-sense guy he is.

Look, it’s nice not to waste gas by idling, but it would be nicer to have more fuel-efficient vehicles on our roads.

Unfortunately, Grassley has stood with failed Republican policies on energy policy for many years and has repeatedly opposed higher mileage requirements for cars and trucks.

Also, it would be nice for government officials not to waste taxpayer money by letting cars idle, but it would be nicer not to keep spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq while we are running up massive debt.

Unfortunately, Grassley votes for every Republican tax cut package and every blank check to fund the Iraq War.

He’s far from the worst in the Republican Senate caucus, but I would sure like to see him get fed up enough to retire in two years.

cross-posted around the blogosphere

Barack Obama’s campaign held kickoff events in 15 Iowa field offices on Saturday, coinciding with the first statewide canvass of the general election campaign. In addition, the Obama campaign plans to open at least two more field offices in Iowa.

The Des Moines Register published an alphabetical list of cities and towns with Obama field offices. In this diary, I group the offices according to Congressional district.

If 17 field offices sounds like a lot for a medium-sized state like Iowa, keep in mind that Obama had at least 40 field offices here before the caucuses in January.

Also, the Iowa Democratic Party has in effect shut down its “coordinated campaign” for getting out the vote, which means that Obama’s field offices will coordinate GOTV for all Democratic candidates in the state.

Follow me after the jump for details.

Democratic candidate Rob Hubler has sent an open letter to Congressman Steve King inviting him to participate in eight debates before the November election.

King refused to debate challenger Joyce Schulte in 2004 and 2006, but his spokeswoman did not immediately rule out the possibility that the incumbent would debate Hubler.

The sites proposed by Hubler for debates are geographically dispersed around the fifth district: Sioux City, Carroll, Spirit Lake, Red Oak, Storm Lake, Council Bluffs, Orange City, and Osceola.

Speaking of Storm Lake, the editor of the Storm Lake Times wrote in the July 5 issue that

We’re told by the Obama camp that it will push to win the Fifth District. It may sound far-fetched, but Democrats Berkley Bedell and Tom Harkin proved that a progressive with common sense can win in Western Iowa.

The conservative Christian base of the Republican Party that prevails in these quarters is not energized by GOP standard bearer John McCain as it was with Bush. It’s possible that turnout could be muted in November among this key voting bloc. […]

We could see Obama carrying the Fifth by winning Dickinson, Clay, Buena Vista, Carroll, Woodbury, Pottawattamie and Cherokee counties. That’s where the population is, and that’s where the most independent voters are. He might be able to compete in Crawford and O’Brien counties.[…]

Republican despondence also may be a threat to incumbent Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron. Scoff if you will, but again recall that Harkin defeated incumbent Bill Scherle and Bedell knocked off incumbent Wiley Mayne in the post-Watergate landslide. The atmospherics may be similar this year.

Sorry, no link is available on that newspaper’s website.

Hubler visited all 32 counties in the fifth district last year and has continued to campaign actively this year. He is visiting all the county fairs in the district during July.

The full text of the press release about Hubler’s open letter to King is after the jump.

I had family visiting the past few days and didn’t look closely at the paper, so I only realized today that Congressman Leonard Boswell was hospitalized this week:

Boswell, 74, underwent surgery on Wednesday that “made some corrections” to surgery he had in 2005 to remove a non-cancerous tumor from his abdomen, said his chief of staff, Susan McAvoy.

She said that the surgery was not as major as the 2005 operation, and it was performed by the same Washington physician who treated Boswell three years ago.

“He’s doing well and hopefully will be back to work very soon,” she said, though she declined to speculate on how long that might be. “They’re really hoping for a quick recovery.”

The Bleeding Heartland community also hopes Boswell will be back in his office before long.

The Iowa GOP convenes today after flooding derailed its originally scheduled state convention last month. John Deeth is liveblogging the proceedings over at his blog.

Please share any thoughts you have about the Republicans’ prospects or strategies in our state.

By the way, Deeth wrote an interesting post on the uncontested races for the Iowa House and Senate. Republicans left one Democratic state senator and 20 Democratic state representatives without a challenger. Democrats failed to field a candidate in six Republican-held Senate districts and 10 House districts.

UPDATE: David Yepsen notes that Mike Huckabee’s presence signals he may run for president in 2012 if John McCain loses to Barack Obama this year. Yepsen also sees the Iowa GOP moving to the right:

Steve Scheffler, the head of the Iowa Christian Alliance, easily ousted longtime national committee member Steve Roberts by a vote of 788 to 543.  Kim Lehman, the head of the Iowa Right to Life, defeated state Rep. Sandy Greiner for the job of national committeewoman by a vote of 729 to 484.

Roberts and Greiner were seen as the older, more centrist candidates who sought to make the party a big tent that appealed to a wide, diverse group of people.  Scheffler and Lehman said the party needed to take strong stands on social issues in order to attract voters and inspire workers.  Yet centrists argue these positions turn off independents and mainstream voters needed to win elections.

At one level, their election is further evidence of the rightward drift of the Iowa GOP and how it’s been hijacked by a narrow ideological faction that sometimes seems bent on turning the GOP into a church instead of a political party.

But it’s also a recognition that the party machinery is in sad shape and some Republicans want a shake-up in management.  While Scheffler and Lehman are most definitely on the right hand side of the spectrum, they are also respected for their organizational skills.

The desire for new management bodes ill for state party chairman Stewart Iverson when the central committee meets after the November election to elect a chair for the coming year.  (He just replaced Ray Hoffman as party chair, has little time to right the organizational ship, but will still take the rap for any Republican defeats in the fall.)

Polk County GOP chairman Ted Sporer, who is allied with Scheffler and Lehman supporters, is making noises about challenging Iverson if he runs.

John Deeth periodically updates readers on the growings on at the “smallest farm” (his vegetable garden) over at his blog.

I don’t even have a garden–just a sungold tomato plant and some basil growing in pots on our deck. Our yard is too shady to try to grow any food.

The first four sungold tomatoes ripened this week, and I’ve eaten two already. They were great. I’ve got a lot of blossoms and some other green tomatoes growing, but I didn’t pinch off the side shoots this spring, so I’m not going to get a very good yield from this plant. At least I’ve learned a lesson I can apply next year.

This is an open thread to discuss any fruits or vegetables you’ve planted at your home. You can’t do better for your health or the environment than to grow your own food.

I encourage you to read this article by “mystery pollster” Mark Blumenthal about the level of support for independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr. Blumenthal shows that historically, polls (especially summer polls) have overstated the level of support for third-party presidential candidates.

I still think that Barr could be a factor in a handful of states. The two I am watching most are Georgia (where Barr has high name recognition from the years he served in the U.S. House from a George district) and Nevada.

Ron Paul tied with John McCain in the GOP caucuses in Nevada, and the state has a history of relatively strong support for Libertarians (compared to the national Libertarian vote). In fact, Harry Reid would have lost his Senate seat from Nevada in 1998 if not for a Libertarian candidate who picked up a couple of percentage points.

Democrats have increased their voter registration edge in Nevada, and Barr’s candidacy could be one more thing that pushes this state toward Barack Obama.  

Not long ago I wrote about tension between Governor Chet Culver and advocates for organized labor in Iowa.

The Des Moines Register reported this week that labor layer Mark Hedberg has created a few hundred fake milk cartons with Culver’s photo under the word “MISSING”:

“Have you seen me?” the cartons read. “Description: Democratic Governor with alleged loyalty to Iowa workers and Labor. … Approach With Caution: May have developed amnesia and is known to throw fits when reminded of his promises. If found, please call 1-800-NOT-LOYAL.”

The Uncommon Blog of Iowa posted a photo of the fake milk cartons.

The Des Moines Register described the text on Hedberg’s creations:

BRAND NAME: The brand name of the milk is C Abunchof Hot Air. Under that label, it says: “Empty words added. Grade F homogenized pasteurized.”

SLOGANS: One side says “got chet?” and “High hopes by voters. Broken promises by Chet.”

NUTRITION INFORMATION: In the nutrition chart, the serving size is “1 term (4 years).” It goes on: “Amount of Support Per Serving: Hot Air 600, Empty Words 520.” There’s a breakdown of a fictitious percentage of daily values: corporate terrorist money 100%, secret health care legislation 100%, raising taxes on Iowa workers 100%, broken promises to labor 100%. It cites 0% for public employee union rights, fair share, prevailing wage, choice of doctor, employee misclassification and leadership.

“Corporate terrorist money” supposedly refers to a $5,000 campaign contribution to Culver from Agriprocessors, which allegedly has committed numerous labor and safety violations at its meat-packing plant in Postville.

The Register quoted Hedberg as saying that no union helped him pay for or assemble the fake milk cartons. His professional web site lists AFSCME and seven other unions as clients.

I’ve got four comments and one question regarding the issues Hedberg raised.

Comment 1: This wasn’t the best time to tease Culver about being missing on the job.

I find myself in rare agreement with Des Moines Register columnist John Carlson, who noted that Culver has been “anything but missing” in recent weeks. He’s been out there talking with Iowans in dozens of flooded communities.

Comment 2: Aside from collective bargaining, which refers to a bill Culver vetoed (House File 2645), most of Hedberg’s complaints apply equally to the Democratic leadership in the state legislature.

After all, it was the Iowa House and Senate which passed bills Hedberg doesn’t like (such as the cigarette tax increase) and failed to pass things he wants (such as “fair share” or “prevailing wage” legislation).

The Register quoted Hedberg as blaming Culver for the inaction: “He lost an opportunity to work out a joint party agenda and get it passed,” Hedberg said. “He didn’t take the initiative.”

My recollection is that Culver did support the “fair share” proposal. If the votes weren’t there to pass that or other measures important to organized labor, the solution is to elect more and better Democrats to the Iowa legislature.

The major labor unions in this state recognize this and are working to expand the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

The money Hedberg spent on his publicity stunt would have been better spent supporting the campaigns of Democratic incumbents or challengers who are good on labor issues. I’m sure he knows who they are.

Comment 3: Regarding the collective bargaining bill that Culver vetoed, I believe that labor advocates are wrong to put all of the blame for that mess on the governor.

As I’ve written before, I support the substance of the collective bargaining bill. However, the way that bill was passed would have made Culver look like a tool of organized labor if he had signed it.

The solution is for the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate to pass a collective bargaining bill the normal way next year. That is, get the proposal out in the open early in the session and allow full debate. Don’t let someone offer it as an extra-long amendment after the “funnel” deadline for introducing new legislation has passed, and then try to limit debate on the measure.

With several more Democrats in the Iowa House and Senate, we could get a good collective bargaining bill through with no problem.

Comment 4: I suspect that publicity about organized labor being mad at Culver is on balance good for the governor. Who can claim that he is beholden to “special interest” unions when a labor lawyer is giving him low ratings on their issues and the Iowa Federation of Labor’s newsletter publishes this?

“The 2008 Legislative Session will go down in Iowa labor history as the session when a Democratic governor turned his back on the unions that enthusiastically supported him and helped get him elected,” the newsletter said. “When Gov. Culver vetoed the public sector collective bargaining bill, not only public workers, but all of labor was stunned by what they felt was an out-and-out betrayal.”

If Hedberg’s goal is to drum up more business for his law firm, fake milk cartons making fun of Culver might achieve that. But if the goal is pressuring the governor to spend more political capital on supporting labor’s legislative agenda, I don’t see this working.

The milk cartons give the serving size for Culver as “1 term (4 years).” But let’s get real. Labor unions are not going to support a Democratic primary challenger to Culver in 2010, and they are not going to support his Republican opponent.

This whole controversy will probably help Culver’s reelection campaign more than it hurts.

Which leads me to my question for labor advocates who are angry with Culver:

Do you have any reason to believe that Mike Blouin, whom AFSCME and some other unions endorsed in the 2006 Democratic primary for governor, would have signed the collective bargaining bill under the same circumstances, or would have done more to adopt “fair share” or “prevailing wage” legislation?

If so, I’d like to hear why. I never did fully understand the union support for Blouin. It’s not as if Blouin’s economic development work focused on creating union jobs or promoting collective bargaining. If anything, he got more money and support from Chamber of Commerce types than Culver.

Let’s elect a stronger Democratic majority in the Iowa House and Senate. If good labor bills are adopted through normal legislative procedures in 2009, I expect Culver to sign them.

UPDATE: Someone has e-mailed me to note that AFSCME and other unions endorsed Blouin not because they thought he’d be better on labor issues, but because they thought Culver couldn’t beat Jim Nussle.

That was also my impression (although I have no contacts inside those unions).

I think that if they’d gotten their wish and Blouin had won the primary, we would have a governor no more supportive of collective bargaining or “fair share” than Culver, and perhaps even less supportive.  

Barack Obama’s campaign is doing a statewide canvass in Iowa this Saturday. I just got this e-mail from the Polk County Democrats:

Hello,

I would like to let everyone know about an important day coming up.  Saturday, July 12th, is going to be a statewide day of canvassing.  We need to recruit volunteers to go door to door in their neighborhoods.  People will be canvassing anytime between 10am and 3pm.  It is important to have neighbors reaching out to neighbors about Senator Obama.  Please email me if you can make it!  

In addition, we will be hosting a Potluck BBQ at our new Volunteer Office (Location to be announced soon) after the canvassing.  The Potluck BBQ will start at 3pm and go into the evening.  We will hopefully be announcing the new office location  later this week.  As always with a campaign, we are in need of office supplies!  

Please save the date and thank you!  We are all so grateful for your help!

Joe Kennedy

Regional Field Director- Polk County

Obama for America

847-507-0642 (cell)

An Obama precinct captain forwarded to me an e-mail from Jackie Norris, the Iowa director of the Obama campaign. It looks like there will be about two dozen “Office Opening Kickoff” events across the state on Saturday, all beginning at 10 am and followed by a few hours of knocking on doors.

The full text of Norris’s e-mail is after the jump. It includes links for people who want to volunteer or find an office near them.

If you have the time and the inclination, show up to help at your local office.

Then put up a diary here to tell us about your canvassing experience. First-person accounts like this diary by icebergslim and this diary by clarkent are fun to read and informative.

Barack Obama has released a strong statement on the Medicare bill that the U.S. Senate passed yesterday. John McCain opposed the bill but did not show up to vote against it.

Obama’s statement begins by briefly explaining why he is right and McCain is wrong:

“Today, the U.S. Senate took a major step forward in addressing the needs of seniors and military families all across this nation.  At a time when doctors are facing double digit increases in the costs of providing care, I am proud to have joined with my colleagues to stop a devastating cut in physician reimbursement that would have caused them to shut the door to many Medicare and Tricare beneficiaries.  John McCain has said that he would have opposed this bill, demonstrating yet again that he’s more than willing to put the interests of the health insurance industry over our nation’s 44 million seniors and 9 million uniformed service members,” said Senator Barack Obama.

The release then cites numbers calculated by the American Medical Association on the impact of this bill in 19 states (which just happen to be states contested in the presidential race). For each state, five numbers are given:

-the dollar amount in Medicare payments that would have been lost by December 2009 if the bill had not passed

-the average dollar amount each physician would have lost in reimbursements

-the number of employees who would have been affected

-the number of Medicare patients who would have been affected

-the number of TRICARE patients who would have been affected

For instance,

Iowa:

         Payments Lost by Dec. 2009: $110 million

         Average Physician’s Loss: $17,000

         People Affected:       27,095 employees,

468,637 Medicare patients

41,891 TRICARE patients

The format makes it quick and easy for a newspaper editor or broadcast news producer in any of these 19 states to cast this story in a favorable light for Obama and an unfavorable light for McCain.

The full text of the press release is after the jump.

Ninety-nine senators showed up today to vote on a Medicare bill, including Ted Kennedy, who recently had brain surgery and wasn’t scheduled to return to the Senate until September. (Here’s some background on the content of the bill.)

Kennedy’s vote was needed to break a Republican filibuster. Once it was clear Democrats had the 60 votes for cloture, a bunch of Republican senators flipped and voted with Democrats, so the final vote was 69-30.

John McCain was the only senator to skip this vote.

In fact, John McCain has missed more than half the Senate votes this year, including dozens after he had already locked up the GOP nomination.

By the way, the GOP stand on this Medicare bill has caused them to lose a lot of support from doctors and from the American Medical Association, which has traditionally supported Republicans.

I saw John McCain’s latest television commercial on the Cotton Mouth Blog:

This ad will run on national cable networks and in Colorado, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Did you catch that?

McCain is paying for television time in Mississippi, a state where George Bush beat John Kerry by 59 percent to 40 percent.

In May, DavidNYC laid out a scenario for how Barack Obama could win Mississippi. I thought that sounded fanciful, but as the Cotton Mouth Blog noted,

John McCain’s campaign doesn’t have enough money to spend in places he’s “not worried.”

In terms of content, this ad is mostly a standard introductory biographical piece. It presents McCain as a war hero in Vietnam and a maverick in the Senate, where he isn’t guided by polls and isn’t afraid to take on presidents and partisans, including in his own party.

The 60-second commercial takes a few not-so-subtle swipes at Obama. It opens with visuals of hippies as the voice-over says:

It was a time of uncertainty, hope and change. The Summer of Love. Half a world away, another kind of love–of country. John McCain.

Get it? “Hope and change” = dirty hippies. I doubt connecting those images with Obama is going to work, though. He was what, seven years old at the time? Anyway, he explicitly rejects the politics of the 1960s in his speeches.

Toward the end of the ad, the voice-over says:

John McCain doesn’t always tell us what we hope to hear. Beautiful words cannot make our lives better, but a man who has always put his country and her people before self, before politics, can.

Don’t hope for a better life. Vote for one. McCain.

I bolded the words that the voice-over speaks with special emphasis.

Can a commercial like this neutralize Obama’s message of “Yes we can” and the “politics of hope”? I didn’t find it convincing, but I’m obviously not the target audience.

What do you think?

If you support the Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections (VOICE) act, which would create a voluntary public-financing system similar to that used for state elections in Maine and Arizona, you’ll want to come to Des Moines for this event:

State Representative Pam Jochum, who has proposed publicly financed elections yearly since 2000, will host a workshop at CCI’s annual convention to discuss how Iowans can win VOICE. The workshop will be held July 19 at the Hotel Fort Des Moines – additional convention information can be found at www.iowacci.org. […]

At the convention, Jochum will speak about how Iowans can clear the hurdles to win VOICE.

Click the link to read the whole press release from Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement at Blog for Iowa.

Speaking of ICCI, John Nichols, a writer for The Nation, will deliver the keynote address for that group’s convention in Des Moines on July 18. More details on that event are after the jump.

Jochum gave up her seat in the Iowa House this year to run in Senate district 14. That’s a Democratic-leaning district, so we are likely to have a strong VOICE advocate in the upper chamber for the 2009 legislative session.

If you’re not familiar with the VOICE act, the Iowa Voters blog posted this detailed bill summary last year.

Public Campaign’s website is still the best source for information about clean elections reform nationwide.

Reducing the influence of money in politics is the key to solving many other problems. The Maine and Arizona-style systems are court-proof, because they are voluntary for candidates. But over time, more office-holders in those states have tended to run with the “clean money” option.

The Senate will debate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act today. Despite the heroic efforts of Senators Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold, all signs point toward capitulation by the Democrats.

Glenn Greenwald again tells you why you should care.

Daily Kos front-pager smintheus explains why the advocates touting this new, improved version of FISA are wrong about the oversight potential of inspectors-general.

The Barack Obama supporters against the FISA bill have been organizing at an incredible pace, but he indicated last week that he will vote for the bill. How far will he go in supporting various amendments offered by Senate Democrats?

I won’t be watching C-SPAN today, but if you are, feel free to “document the atrocities” in the comments (as Atrios might say).

UPDATE: mcjoan has more detail on the key votes that will take place today.

SECOND UPDATE: The FISA bill passed 69-28, with three not voting. McCain dodged another big vote.

The roll call vote is here:

http://www.senate.gov/legislat…

No surprises from the Iowa senators: Grassley voted yes, and Harkin voted no.

Obama voted yes, as expected. Hillary voted no.

Daily Kos user mindgeek, also known as the Princeton neurologist Sam Wang, co-authored an article on left-handedness and the presidency, which I highly recommend.

Only about 10 percent of people are left-handed, but half of the U.S. presidents have been southpaws, as are both John McCain and Barack Obama. Click the link to read some hypotheses about why this group might be overrepresented among the most successful politicians.

Share your speculation in the comments, and please note your handed-ness. (I am right-handed.)

A couple of weeks ago the same authors wrote this fascinating piece on “The neuroscience of false beliefs.” It’s a must-read.

If you’re a Fallon supporter, you might want to come to this party on Wednesday evening:

Dear Friends,

I take a lot of heat in my political work. So, it’s wonderful that Progressive Coalition of Central Iowa (PCCI) is throwing an “appreciation party” for me and my campaign team. They’ve asked me to make one more plug, and we hope you can come. (NOTE: Later this week, I’ll send out the final Fallon for Congress update with a candid assessment of the June 3rd primary.)

COME JOIN ED FALLON AT AN APPRECIATION PARTY

When: Wednesday, July 9 from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Where: Raccoon River Park, Shelters A & B, 2500 Grand Avenue, West Des Moines

FOOD AND DRINK PROVIDED (donated by PCCI)

Pork & boca sandwiches

Salads

Desserts

Lemonade & ice tea

ENTERTAINMENT

Tiffany Cox & Veelas of the Moonlit Forest Belly Dancing Troupe (family friendly)

Mikiel Williams – New Orleans-style Jazz Musician

BeJae Fleming – Blues Singer

Exit 113 – 70s Hits, Blues, R & B and Rock

Ed Fallon – Accordionist

APPRECIATION EXPRESSED

To . . . Ed Fallon for his progressive stand on issues, for running for the office of U.S. Congressman in Iowa’s Third District, for conducting a clean campaign based on issues, and for refusing donations from political action committees (PACs) and paid lobbyists.

To . . . campaign manager Lynn Heuss and all the Fallon for Congress staff and volunteers.

FREE-WILL DONATIONS ACCEPTED to help offset the campaign’s debt. Suggested donation is $50 (or more, if possible), but donations of any size are appreciated. PLEASE COME EVEN IF A DONATION IS NOT POSSIBLE AT THIS TIME.

Raccoon River Park is very kid-friendly, and it’s usually windy enough to keep the mosquitoes from being a problem.

This Associated Press story has the worst analysis of a poll I’ve seen in a while (which is saying something): Pet owners prefer McCain over Obama

Click the link to read about an AP-Yahoo! poll that showed pet owners prefer McCain, 42 percent to 37 percent, while people who don’t have a pet prefer Obama 48 percent to 34 percent.

Associated Press writer Randolph E. Schmid asserts that the “pet-owning public seems to have noticed the difference” between McCain, who has many pets, and Obama, who has none. There are some silly quotes from pet owners about the fine characteristics of people who have pets at home.

I’m not a pollster or a statistician, but without even trying hard I can think of five confounding variables that may have more to do with the results than pet owners identifying with McCain because he also has animals at home.

1. Are wealthier people more likely to have a pet? Because that group would skew more Republican than the population at large.

2. The same goes for people who own their own homes, who are probably more likely to own pets than people who are homeless or live in apartments. Remember, many landlords don’t allow pets in apartments.

3. Are married people more likely to keep a pet than single people? Republicans tend to do better among married voters than single voters.

4. The AP piece mentions that dog owners are particularly slanted toward McCain. Well, most hunters own at least one dog, and people who keep a gun at home are more likely to vote Republican than people who live in a home with no guns.

5. Are men more likely to be dog owners than cat owners? The gender gap in voting behavior has been documented for decades.

The AP article doesn’t bring up any most of these potential confounding variables. [CORRECTION: Buried down at the bottom of the piece, the AP article does mention that a higher proportion of dog owners are married, compared to the population at large, and that white people are more likely than black people to own dogs.]

Despite being a dog-lover myself, I didn’t even know that Obama had no pets, and I’m well-informed politically. I doubt that even 1 percent of Americans will make up their minds based on whether a presidential candidate has a pet.

UPDATE: The “mystery pollster” Mark Blumenthal posted his entertaining and informative take on this story. He also links to this Google search showing how many mainstream news outlets ran with the AP’s misleading but “irresistibly cute lead.”

Last month I wrote about 1000 Friends of Iowa taking nominations for their annual Best Development Awards.

The original deadline for nominations was June 25, but because flooding caused disruption in many communities that may have worthy projects, 1000 Friends of Iowa has extended the deadline for submitting a nomination to July 25.

Read my earlier post, or go here on the 1000 Friends of Iowa site, to find more information about the Best Development Awards, how to nominate a project, and the criteria used to judge nominees.

I didn’t find out about this meeting soon enough to add it to my weekly calendar of events, but I wanted to let you know that the Iowa Power Fund is holding a public forum in Jefferson (Saint Joseph’s Parish Hall at 501 North Locust Street) at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 9.

Earlier that day, the Power Fund directors are meeting in Jefferson to consider four requests for funding.

More details about both meetings are after the jump.

The Power Fund is scheduled to hold public forums in Mount Vernon on August 13, Algona on September 10, and possibly in Decorah in October, Sioux City in November, and somewhere in southeastern Iowa in December.

Via Jeralyn at TalkLeft, I saw this video from Progress Now. Today in Denver, McCain campaign staff got the police to escort a 61-year-old librarian from a public town-hall meeting on public property. She was issued a ticket for trespassing as well. Her offense was to stand there with a sign that said, “McCain = Bush”:

If you watch the video, you’ll see a man dressed up as a peapod with photos of Bush and McCain. It looks like he was also forced to leave the venue.

I don’t think it’s consistent with the First Amendment for the police or the Secret Service to remove Democrats from McCain’s public appearances.

But I’m gratified to know how worried they are about a “McCain = Bush” sign. At the end of that video clip, the librarian asks rhetorically why any Republican who voted for Bush would find her sign offensive. The obvious answer is that Bush is the most unpopular president in history.

In case you think this was an isolated incident that doesn’t reflect the judgment of McCain’s senior staff, watch the tv ad McCain has been running in Pennsylvania:

That’s right, the ad explicitly praises McCain for allegedly standing up to the president on global warming.

Chris Bowers explains why this ad spells doom for McCain:

McCain’s message focus for over a week now has been on how we need progressive change on energy and global warming. Even if his policies don’t match, he is at least running on a progressive, Democratic message. Not only does this imply that Democrats have the right ideas on energy, global warming and other ideas, McCain’s ad explicitly says that he stood up to other Republicans on this issue. In other words, McCain is bluntly saying that Democrats are right, and Republicans are wrong.

I don’t know how you win an election by making “the other guys were right [all] along” the focus of your message. Seems to me that it will only reinforce the growing notion that Democrats were right all along, and result in more people voting for Democrats.

Do you think the Republican Party is angry about McCain’s messaging? Not from the looks of this ad that the Republican National Committee is now running in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin:

Josh Orton notes the irony of the RNC paying to run ads that brag about how McCain pushed his own party to act on climate change.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the National Republican Congressional Committee is advising candidates to make their campaigns about personal and local issues.

Republican strategists know which way the wind is blowing, and it’s not at their backs.

Virginia Senator Jim Webb withdrew his name from consideration as a vice-presidential candidate. That’s a relief from my perspective.

According to Marc Ambinder,

A Democrat close to Webb confirms that a request for documents preceded his declaration to the Obama campaign. The Democrat said that Webb did not want to relive the vigors of a campaign so soon after his election to the Senate.

Like I’ve been saying, Webb does not like campaigning enough to be a good running mate.

Meanwhile, John Edwards will debate “Bush’s brain” Karl Rove on September 26. Some people have interpreted the scheduling of that event as a sign Edwards knows he will not be Obama’s running mate.

I still think Wes Clark would be an excellent choice for Obama, despite the recent dustup over comments he made about John McCain.

Some smart people think he will pick Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, but I still think that it would be a mistake for Obama to choose a woman other than Hillary Clinton.

VP search teams for Obama and McCain have both begun vetting candidates. McCain is said to be considering Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.

I tend to agree with Douglas Burns, who wrote that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin would be a good running mate for McCain.

If McCain is feeling pressure in Florida (a state he must win in order to get 270 electoral votes), he might consider selecting Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Rumors that Crist is gay could be a problem with that scenario. Crist was married to a woman in his early 20s and just got engaged to his current girlfriend.

Put your predictions or opinions about either candidate’s VP choice in the comment section.

OrangeClouds115, a well-known blogger on food safety and sustainable agriculture issues, has started a community blog on these topics called La Vida Locavore (a “locavore” being a person who consumes local foods).

The blog is only a few days old, but there are already a lot of interesting posts up. I hadn’t heard that the American Nurses Association passed a resolution at their annual conference calling for “national and state laws, regulations and policies that specifically reduce the use of rBGH or rBST in milk and dairy production in the United States [….]”

Bookmark this blog and join the community if you are passionate about organic or chemical-free food, regulating corporate agriculture, food safety or related issues.

Speaking of food, Asinus Asinum Fricat wrote a good diary yesterday about the benefits of the Mediterranean diet. I learned from him that there are apparently a lot of problems with the production and storage of extra virgin olive oil imported from Europe. This affects the nutritional quality of the oil as well as the environment where it’s produced.

Click the link for details, but here is a reassuring excerpt:

However there’s no need to panic as there are numerous olive oil companies in the USA who are family owned and operate their business the old-fashioned way, that is, by pressing the olives traditionally. I’m personally fond of the Bariani brand, made in Sacramento by the Bariani family.

Here is a handy guide of US olive oil companies here.

cross-posted around the blogosphere

On July 4 I marched with volunteers and staff for Jerry Sullivan, Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 59.

We don’t hear much about state legislative races on national blogs, because it would be overwhelming to keep up with what’s going on all over the country.

But you should get involved on behalf of a good Democrat running for your state’s Assembly, House or Senate. Five reasons why are after the jump.

I should visit Pam’s House Blend more often. Today I noticed her post about the Freeway Blogger’s latest effort. Click the link to view a photo of huge signs he hung over I-80 Eastbound in Berkeley, California, which read:

If you think telling kids

there’s no Santa is hard

Try telling them

there’s no North Pole

Research suggests that children respond better to positive exposure to and conversations about the environment. Young children especially can get confused and overwhelmed by scary talk about global warming and species extinction.

However, the Freeway Blogger’s signs pack a nice punch for the adults who will see them as they drive in heavy traffic.

As always, post a comment or send me an e-mail if I’ve left out a noteworthy event.

If you have kids and live in central Iowa, this coming week is your last chance to see the Asian elephant Rosie and her calf JP at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines. July 13 will be their last day at the zoo.

Monday, July 7:

It’s Edna Griffin day at the Fort Des Moines Museum and Education Center, 75 S.E. Army Post Road in Des Moines. Sixty years ago, Griffin “led a series of protests that ultimately enforced Iowa’s civil rights statutes after she was refused service at a Katz Drug Store in downtown Des Moines because she was black.”

The Des Moines Register reports:

The tribute to Edna Griffin, who served in the Women’s Army Corps in World War II, includes a 2 p.m. ceremony for naming a room at the Grimes State Office Building, 400 E. 14th St., and a 7 p.m. theatrical tribute at the Fort Des Moines Museum and Education Center, 75 S.E. Army Post Road.

The tribute will be done by Ruth Ann Gaines and Maureen Korte, with music by John Cheatem, and a march to remember Iowa’s civil rights heroes. Both events are free. For more information, call 282-8060. […]

To recreate the mood of the era, the tribute uses monologues derived from interviews with people involved with Griffin’s protests of the store and subsequent lawsuit.

Representative Bruce Braley (IA-01) begins his annual “Congress on Your Corner” tour on Monday.  “Congress on Your Corner” meetings are designed to give Iowans an opportunity to meet with Braley to discuss their concerns, discuss recent initiatives in Congress, and open casework.

Here is Braley’s public schedule for the day:  

8:00 am                    Waterloo/Cedar Falls Congress on Your Corner

                                   Cedar Falls Conference Center

                                    3712 Cedar Heights Dr .

                                    Cedar Falls , Iowa      

11:00am                    Parkersburg Congress on Your Corner

                                   Parkersburg Veterans Memorial Building

                                    205 Colfax St .

                                    Parkersburg , Iowa

2:00pm                    Waverly Congress on Your Corner

                                   Waverly Public Library

                                   1500  W. Bremer Ave.

                                   Waverly, Iowa

The Environmental Protection Commission will hold a general discussion meeting from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. July 7 at King’s Pointe Resort, 1520 Lakeshore Drive in Storm Lake. This meeting will be followed by a walking tour of Storm Lake, starting at the resort at 3:00 p.m. At 6:00 p.m., the committee will attend the Storm Lake Preservation Association Picnic at the Storm Lake Municipal Golf Course Club House at 1528 Lakeshore Drive.  

Tuesday, July 8:

Lots going on at the Environmental Protection Commission’s monthly meeting:

The Department of Natural Resources will update the Environmental Protection Commission on the status of flooding events in Iowa and summarize its response efforts to the flood at the monthly EPC meeting July 8. They will also discuss how land use practices can contribute to flooding.

The meeting will start at 9:00 a.m. at King’s Pointe Resort, 1520 Lakeshore Drive in Storm Lake. The meeting is open to the public, with public comments starting at 10:30 a.m.

During the meeting, the EPC will also consider a proposed rule to establish criteria for awarding grants to independent recycling redemption centers. The DNR received $1 million in grants from the state’s general fund to improve these centers.

The EPC will also hear a proposal to update the Water Quality Standards Antidegradation Policy, which sets minimum requirements for the state to follow in order to conserve, maintain and protect existing uses and water quality.

DNR geologist Claire Hruby will discuss manure application on frozen or snow-covered ground at 1 p.m. on Tuesday. This issue was raised in May with an EPC motion. The EPC also received a petition from the Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement to limit or ban this practice. ICCI has amended its petition and granted an indefinite extension on the usual 60-day period for response to the petition.

Look for more information about the agenda items on the DNR Web site under Commissions and Boards at www.iowadnr.gov.

Join Senators Staci Appel, Amanda Ragan, and Becky Schmitz for a fundraising reception to benefit the Senate Majority Fund:

Women of the Senate”

Past, Present & Future

Tuesday, July 8th from 5:30-7:30 PM

at the home of Roxanne Conlin

2900 Southern Hills Circle, Des Moines 50312

Join us for an evening of good food and drink and to support the Senate Democratic Majority Fund.  Valet Parking will be provided.

Suggested Contribution Levels:

Host: $1000      Sponsor: $500

Patron: $250      Supporter: $125

Guest: $50

Click here to contribute.

*all online contributions before July 6th will be recognized at the event

Please RSVP if you can attend. (The link to RSVP was broken–I would call the Senate Democrats office.)

Bruce Braley will hold a telephone town hall meeting on July 8 at 7 pm Central Daylight Time:

The purpose of the call is to allow Rep. Braley and his staff to discuss federal assistance available to flood victims and answer questions about federal disaster programs.

The technology employed by Braley will call out to thousands of Iowans in the First District who can then choose to participate in the forum when reached.

Iowans who wish to call in to the town hall themselves should contact one of Rep. Braley’s district offices for a call-in number and passcode.

Nearly 5,000 residents of the district participated in Braley’s first telephone town hall meeting last month, which was about gasoline prices.

One Iowa’s “Coffee House/Happy Hour” will be at the Ritual Cafe, 13th Street between Grand and Locust in downtown Des Moines, from 5:00 to 6:45 pm on July 8:

At One Iowa, we believe all families should have equal protections and responsibilities; the way to achieve this is through marriage.  As we continue our work toward Marriage Equality, this month we are focusing on the newly released comic (hot off the presses) “Iowa’s Noble Courage In Civil Rights” and the recently shot video “United for Equality.”

On Tuesday, One Iowa has the honor to host Andrea Fehring, our Marriage Equality Educator at Ritual; she will talk about the comic and video, and discuss how you can become more involved in this campaign toward equality.  Andrea’s presentation will start at 5:30pm. […]  

For questions, please contact One Iowa at (515)288-4019, or you can visit our web site at www.oneiowa.org.

Thursday, July 10:

A huge list of prominent Iowa Democrats including former Lt. Governor Sally Pederson & Jim Autry and Charlotte & Fed Hubbell are hosting a fundraiser for Becky Greenwald on July 10 from 5:00 to 6:30 pm at Dos Rios restaurant on 4th Street and Court Avenue in downtown Des Moines:

Contribution levels:

$1,000 – Host             $500 – Sponsor           $250 – Supporter        $100 – Friend

Please make checks payable to: Becky Greenwald for Congress

RSVP (515) 987-2800 or BeckyGreenwald@gmail.com

Individual contributions limited to $2300 and are not tax deductible.  Corporate contributions are not permitted.

Becky Greenwald for Congress * Iowa 4th District

P.O. Box 608 * Perry, IA  50220 * 515-564-3883 * www.beckygreenwald.com

Friday, July 11:

IowaPolitics.com is holding another “Cookies and Conversation” program at Drake University from 1:30 to 2:30 pm:

The program, “Food, Fuel, and Iowa ‘s Future Energy Needs” will feature panelists:

Bill Northey, Iowa’s Secretary of Agriculture; Frank Cownie, Des Moines Mayor; John Norris, Chairman of the Iowa Utilities Board; and Roya Stanley, Executive Director of the Iowa Office of Energy Independence.

The event is free, but reservations are required. Free cookies and beverages will be served.

Doors will open at 1 p.m. The program will be held in Levitt Hall, in Old Main, at 25th and University.

If you can attend please RSVP to Julie Rutz at rutz@IowaPolitics.com or call 515.226.8774. If you cannot attend but are interested in the program Mediacom will be taping the program and rebroadcasting it on its Connections Channel and Video On Demand program. The schedule will be posted on our Website at http://www.iowapolitics.com/ as soon as it becomes available.

Sunday, July 13:

House district 59 candidate Jerry Sullivan is holding a fundraiser at the Great Midwestern Café, 1250 NW 128th St in Clive, from 5 pm to 7 pm:

Partner: $500

Host: $250

Sponsor: $100

Friend: $50

Checks can be made out to Sullivan for State Representative.

Please RSVP with Mike at (614) 561-9117 or mmccall@iowademocrats.org.

The rest of the press release from Sullivan’s campaign is after the jump. It includes a link to his ActBlue page.

The Des Moines Register reported on Thursday that

On the same day a new statewide smoking ban went into effect [July 1], several bar and restaurant owners filed a petition in Polk County District Court seeking to overturn the ban.

The Iowa Bar Owners Coalition, based in Clinton County; the Clinton Organized Bar and Restaurant Association; Froehlich Properties; and longtime smoker Ron Oveson filed the petition in Des Moines on Tuesday.

The group’s attorney, George Eichhorn, said he’s seeking a temporary injunction on the enforcement of the ban until the case can go to trial.

That’s former state Senator George Eichhorn, who last month just barely lost the Republican primary to run against U.S. Senator Tom Harkin.

Some restaurant and bar owners wanted to challenge the exemptions granted to casinos and other venues. Former Governor Tom Vilsack had expressed a willingness to take the case, as long as the lawsuit was aimed at overturning the exemptions and not at overturning the ban itself. Apparently no court anywhere in the U.S. has struck down a smoking ban.

However, some people say Iowa’s new law is more extreme than other restrictions on public smoking, to the point of being “monstrous” and “vicious” and “cruel”.

In his comments to the Register, Eichhorn suggested that was the angle he would pursue:

Eichhorn said the state adopted “radical” regulations that affect a lot of private businesses but did not take the necessary precautions to protect them. However, he said he thought the state made sure that it would still benefit monetarily.

“I think that Iowa has done some rather unusual things,” he said. “We will get some good results out of this lawsuit.”

I suspect that the people footing the bill for this lawsuit will be sorry they didn’t listen to this guy:

Randy Stanford, a Des Moines small business owner who organized Iowans for Equal Rights, said no smoking ban has ever been overturned.

“They can waste their money any way they want, but there’s only one legal issue,” he said. “I wish there was a way to challenge the entire bill and be successful, but there isn’t.”

The only option is to “get rid of the unfair exemptions that are in the bill,” he said.

I noticed that Iowans for Equal Rights was not among the groups that filed the petition in Polk County on Tuesday. Anyone know whether that group may still be planning to challenge the exemptions to the smoking ban?

I haven’t written about Barack Obama’s statement on the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, which the campaign released on Thursday. I have nothing original to say about it.

Glenn Greenwald has the long, analytical version of what’s wrong with Obama’s statement.

Paul Rosenberg has the short, funny version.

While Obama has disappointed progressives lately, you have to admit that his campaign is still sharp on the marketing side.  

DemConWatch reported on Thursday that Obama might accept the Democratic Party’s nomination on Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium in Denver. That venue can hold at least 70,000 people. The Pepsi Center where the rest of the Democratic National Convention will be held could only accommodate about 21,000.

DemConWatch reported yesterday that this looks like a done deal, despite the possible logistical problems.

How great will it be to have the Democratic nominee speak in a packed football stadium, while John McCain (not the darling of any GOP base constituency) gives a ho-hum speech in St. Paul? It will force the media to dwell endlessly on the enthusiasm gap between the Democrats and Republicans and on the charisma gap between Obama and McCain.

I love it.

I was glad to see this press release a few days ago from Becky Greenwald’s campaign:

For Immediate Release

Contact: Erin Seidler

July 2, 2008                                                                                                        515-537-4465

Tom Latham’s Other ‘Milestones’ In Congress

Des Moines – Tom Latham announced today that he has held 450 town hall meetings since taking office. The Greenwald for Congress campaign thought this was a good opportunity to discuss Tom Latham’s other “milestones” since taking office in 1995.

7             The number of times Tom Latham has voted to continue the Iraq War, even as recently as June 19th.

92            The percentage of Tom Latham’s votes cast in Congress that were following the Republican Party line. That is even higher than Steve King.

507          Amount, in millions, for veteran’s healthcare that Tom Latham voted against in 2006 in favor of tax cuts for people making more than a million dollars per year. (HR 5385)

“Looking at the numbers, Tom Latham isn’t listening to the people of the 4th District at his town hall meetings,” said Erin Seidler, Communications Director. “It’s time to make a difference in the 4th District and elect Becky Greenwald for Congress. “

The National Republican Congressional Committee is advising Republican candidates “to establish themselves in a personal manner, emphasizing local issues whenever possible.” A recent strategy document warns against nationalizing the Congressional races in light of the GOP’s very unpopular national brand.

It’s no surprise that Latham would brag about his town-hall meetings. He has every reason to go by the new GOP playbook in his swing district where Democrats have made huge gains in voter registration and now slightly outnumber Republicans.

Remember, Democratic candidates have won special elections this year in Republican-leaning Congressional districts in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi.

If I were Greenwald, I would remind fourth district voters every day that on Iraq and many other issues, Latham has continually marched in lockstep with President Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress.

The Cook Political Report recently changed its rating for Iowa’s fourth district from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican.”

Don’t be surprised if it gets upgraded to “Lean Republican” before too long.

Greenwald is working hard. She participated in three Fourth of July parades yesterday (in Clear Lake, Waukee and Iowa Falls) and is raising a lot of money. She has another big fundraiser coming up in Des Moines on July 10, by the way–for details, call 515-564-3883. The more local contributions she receives, the better the chance that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and EMILY’s List will fully commit to this race.

Five great conservationists have been nominated for the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation’s 2008 Lawrence and Eula Hagie Heritage Award. I am fortunate to know two of the five. Their knowledge and commitment inspire me.

After the jump you can read the press release that briefly describes each nominee. Click the links below to read longer summaries of what these people have accomplished. The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation will announce the winner later this summer.

Roland Bernau of Algona

Susan Heathcote of Des Moines

Roslea Johnson of Des Moines

Erwin Klaas of Ames

Jimmie Thompson of Ames

Feel free to mention any other outstanding environmentalists you know in the comments.

Use this as an open thread to tell us about anything interesting that happened today at a parade or other holiday event.

The number of spectators at the Windsor Heights parade was way down compared to last year. I think more people than usual went out of town this year, because July 4 fell on a Friday. There were still a lot of people lining the streets, but nothing like last year.

According to this report by Jason Hancock at Iowa Independent,

At least 20 employees of the Iowa Democratic Party have been demoted or fired and a coordinated state-wide campaign was essentially disbanded, replaced by a focus on the presidential bid of Sen. Barack Obama.

Details are sketchy, but the changes could have an impact on November’s legislative races, with field staff that was previously working for down-ticket races now being placed on the payroll of Obama’s presidential campaign and working almost entirely on its behalf.

If this story is accurate, it could be very bad news for down-ticket candidates. Obama’s campaign needs only to win the statewide popular vote, and no doubt its field plan will reflect that reality. They have every reason to focus on increasing turnout in Democrat-rich, highly-populated areas.

However, most of those precincts are in the first, second and third Congressional districts, and/or in urban state legislative districts where Democratic incumbents are safe.

I was hoping that the Iowa Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign would put a special emphasis on getting out the vote in the fourth and fifth Congressional districts, as well as in the battleground districts for the Iowa House and Senate.

Governor Chet Culver recently donated $100,000 from his campaign fund to the Iowa Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign. If I were Culver, I’d want to make sure that turnout efforts focused on building larger Democratic majorities in the state legislature.

Hancock’s article for Iowa Independent notes that

the biggest impact could be on state legislative candidates, who depend on the pooled resources of the coordinated campaign for much of their volunteer coordination and get-out-the-vote programs. Candidates in close races had already paid the initial fee to join the coordinated campaign — up to about $10,000 each — before word leaked out that the Obama campaign would not participate in the joint effort. Money that was paid into the coordinated campaign by candidates will be used to fund the summer canvass and, if financially possible, to extend the canvass through November.  Canvassers will focus on down-ticket races.  The rest of the Democratic operatives deployed around the state will report directly — and exclusively — to the Obama campaign.

The situation mirrors what happened in Colorado, where the Obama campaign announced last last month it would not be joining the state’s coordinated campaign and instead would operate alongside it. The move drew criticism from some Colorado Democrats who fear the party will end up duplicating efforts and squandering resources.

The difference is that Colorado is likely to be much more closely contested in the presidential race.

Obama is heavily favored to win Iowa’s electoral votes. He has never trailed McCain in a head-to-head poll in Iowa. The Democratic voter registration edge has increased substantially in Iowa during the past year, thanks largely to the caucuses in January. Obama has a strong statewide network of volunteers, while John McCain has never built an organization here and barely campaigned here before the caucuses.

I am concerned that Iowa Democrats will lose some close districts as a result of letting the Obama campaign run the statewide field operation. For the first time in my life, a Democrat is running a strong campaign in my own House district 59. As an environmental activist, I know we can’t make headway on a number of important issues unless we get more good Democrats to the statehouse.

I would like assurances from the Obama campaign that they will dedicate substantial GOTV resources to the key legislative districts, and not only to the areas likely to produce the largest number of presidential votes for Obama.

UPDATE: Open Left user Valatan raised another good point:

if anyone wins in Iowa, they owe their victory to Obama’s machine, not the Iowa Democratic party’s GOTV machine.  I wonder if this is quietly happening everywhere, or just in the swing states.

I’ve asked a lot of other state bloggers whether the Obama campaign will coordinate all GOTV in their states. Someone from Missouri wrote back to say that Missouri Democrats would never allow that to happen, because in 2004 the state Democratic Party cooperated with the Kerry campaign, and then the Kerry campaign pulled the plug on all GOTV in Missouri in October.

That makes me even more worried. What if Obama is feeling very confident in Iowa by October, but looks like he may be in trouble in other states? Could his campaign shut down the bulk of his Iowa field operation in order to invest the resources elsewhere?

Whether Obama wins Iowa by 5 percent or 10 percent is of no concern to me, but whether we have 51 or 53 or 55 or 57 Democrats in the Iowa House could make or break a lot of important legislative initiatives in 2009.

Daily Kos user filmgeek83, an Iraq War veteran, posted a moving diary today called “I Dread Tomorrow Night.” Here is an excerpt:

When I came back from my first tour of duty in Iraq, I spent a Veteran’s day cookout with my uncle and his friends.  My uncle’s friends lived in Santa Monica at the time.  The day was gorgeous, even by Southern California standards, so when my uncle and I took our leave of the festivities we decided to pass a moment on a bench and enjoy the day.  We sat, chatting and soaking up the sun, when a car backfired.

I dove for the ground immediately, and only just regained my senses in time to keep from falling from the bench.  My breath quickened, my pulse raced.  My uncle, God bless him, knew what was going on immediately, and began to soothe me.  It only took a moment for me to regain my composure, but even in Santa Monica, and even though I had seen no combat to that point, the stress of constant vigilance had followed me back to my civilian life.  

I later learned what incoming fire sounds like (it’s a frission, a small sonic boom that sizzles the air around it).  A car backfire and a gunshot really sound nothing alike.  Yet every time an old wheezing jalopy rolls by, I become uneasy.

The same is true for fireworks.  Not the big, professional kind.  While I don’t enjoy them nearly as much as I used to, I can observe them with no apprehension.  It’s the amateur fireworks I can’t stand.  The whistling, popping, exploding-at-random-intervals kind that rub my nerves raw.  All of my neighbors, it seems, are fireworks enthusiasts, and every 4th they come out of the woodwork.  The night’s events bother my dog less than me, while I spend the evening on pins and needles, jumping at every explosion, transported for a split-second back to that hellhole until I remind myself that I am home, that I am safe, that I survived.

If you know a veteran of this or any other war, take a moment tomorrow to make sure that they are all right, that the images of horror and death don’t weight too heavy on them.  That they are as close to normal as they’ll ever be.

Steve Gilliard wrote about this problem on Independence Day two years ago:

Personally, I hate fireworks, the noise, the explosions. Always reminded me of Pathfinder Force over Germany. Don’t much like the 4th of July either.

But I just wanted to say that for a lot of people, this is a very tough day, especially with PTSD. While everyone else is celebrating, they’re either alone, or pretending nothing is wrong. And every firecracker reminds them exactly what is wrong, and why they aren’t the same.

It’s easy to talk about sacrifice on the 4th of July. But who talks about what people live with?

I avoid amateur fireworks because of the safety hazard, but after reading filmgeek83’s diary I’m even more convinced that they are a bad idea. Just go watch your local city or county’s fireworks display. Don’t mess around with stuff that could injure you or increase the anxiety of those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Rising gasoline prices are prompting more Americans to seek out transportation alternatives.

In Europe a high-speed rail network links seven countries already. But Amtrak only has 632 usable cars in the whole country.

Unfortunately, John McCain’s hostility to Amtrak over the years blew any chance of building a modern, effective passenger rail system before the price of oil hit record highs:

In 2000, when he was chairman of the Senate Science, Commerce and Transportation committee, McCain killed $10 billion in capital funding for Amtrak. He denounced Amtrak as a symbol of government waste, claiming, “There’s only two parts of the country that can support a viable rail system – the Northeast and the far West.”

He made these claims though Amtrak investment had the support of several notable Republicans. Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi warned that Amtrak “is guaranteed and doomed to failure if we don’t give it an opportunity to succeed. If you don’t have modern equipment, if you don’t have the new fast trains, if you don’t have a rapid rail system, it will not work.”

Tommy Thompson, the secretary of Health and Human Services during President Bush’s first term, was Amtrak chairman when McCain blocked the funding. Thompson said, “The traveling public are sending a distress call to escape our nation’s endless traffic jams and airport gridlock.”

How much better off would we be if we had invested $10 billion in upgrading Amtrak’s equipment eight years ago?

Click the link to read the whole column by Derrick Jackson. While Barack Obama has co-sponsored a Senate bill to increase investment in passenger rail, McCain’s website has no mention of rail in the transportation section.

We can’t afford to let McCain screw up our transportation policy any more than he already has.

If you are interested in passenger rail, I highly recommend these diaries by Daily Kos user BruceMcF:

America, as it turns out, was Made for High Speed Rail.

5 Lessons Learned: America was made for HSR, Pt. 2.

High Speed Rail: The Three Level Program.

I expected great things when I heard that Elizabeth Edwards would be working on health care issues as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

But I am even more excited to learn that she will headline a $40 million ad campaign promoting universal healthcare, which will be unveiled next Tuesday.

Healthcare for America Now coalition includes a who’s who list of liberal organizations such as MoveOn.org, the housing group ACORN, Americans United for Change, the Campaign for America’s Future, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the National Education Association, Planned Parenthood, the Service Employees International Union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, United Food and Commercial Workers, and National Women’s Law Center.  Many state organizations are also participants.

Many of these are also participating in John Edwards’ Half in Ten Poverty Initiative.

By the way, today is Elizabeth Edwards’ birthday. Many happy returns to her and her family!

If you’re not going out of town for the holiday weekend, I highly recommend that you march or ride with fellow Democrats in your local Independence Day parade.

These events are fantastic outreach opportunities for campaigns and a great way for you to meet like-minded neighbors.

It’s not too late to volunteer. Just contact your county Democratic Party, or the campaign of a local candidate, or the Obama campaign office if there is one in your city. Ask where and when you should show up if you want to help out during the July 4 parades. (Keep in mind that some communities have parades on the evening of July 3.)

A few more tips to help you enjoy the parade are after the jump.

Barack Obama’s communications director in Iowa for the general election campaign will be Brad Anderson, who was Governor Chet Culver’s spokesman until May.

The Obama campaign hired Tripp Wellde to be Iowa field director. He was one of the early hires in Obama’s Iowa campaign, arriving in Davenport in March 2007 according to Hotline.

Anyone out there planning to volunteer for Obama in Iowa this summer? Do they have anything special going on for the holiday weekend? I assume they will have a presence in July 4 parades all over the state.  

Barack Obama has figured out that he doesn’t need to go along with the media’s feeding frenzy on Wesley Clark.

The TPM Veracifier team put together a tremendous collection of clips on how pundits have distorted what Clark said on Face the Nation this Sunday:

Media Matters points out the obvious: the manufactured outrage over Clark’s so-called attack obscures the fact that Clark praised McCain’s military service, while noting that military service alone does not qualify him to be commander-in-chief.

The Columbia Journalism Review’s Zachary Roth has a must-read commentary about the media distortions as well.

I had to laugh when I read this letter to the editor in Tuesday’s Des Moines Register:

The Register ran an editorial on June 23 with this headline: “Don’t Leave Behind the High Achievers.”

Huh?

The notion that gifted children “suffer” and are “invisible” vis a vis their lower-achieving classmates flies in the face of my impressions as a parent and the spouse of a teacher in the Des Moines school district.

Weep neither for gifted kids nor their parents. The kids, after all, are gifted. Just ask their parents. They get lots of mail printed on the district’s gifted and talented stationery and plenty of bumper stickers trumpeting their prodigies’ ascension to the middle school honor rolls. At least here in Des Moines, the gifted, not to mention the talented, have thrown off the cloak of invisibility.

I do need some help getting my mind around the concept of “languid” performances by “top students.” Guess I’m just another low-brow clamoring for some one-on-one.

– Mike Wellman, Des Moines

Really, Mr. Wellman? You can’t get your mind around the concept that some bright children don’t do well in school?

I recommend that you read the John Templeton Foundation’s report called A Nation Deceived: How Schools Hold Back America’s Brightest Students.

It takes more than a letter from the school district and a bumper sticker for a parent’s car to challenge and engage gifted students day after day. Too many of these kids get bored and tune out.

Mark your calendar for July 9: Moveon.org is organizing events at gas stations around the country in a “National Day of Action for an Oil-Free President.” The main goal is to inform voters that

John McCain’s campaign is run by oil lobbyists,1 it’s funded by oil companies,2 his policies are straight out of Big Oil’s playbook,3 and he won’t solve our energy crisis.

After the jump you can read the full text of the e-mail I received from Moveon.org. It includes footnotes supporting the assertions in that quote.

Fortunately for Barack Obama, Moveon.org isn’t going to be less involved in this election just because Obama made a gratuitous swipe at the group on Monday.

I was happy to see that Moveon.org also defended Wes Clark, who has been getting slammed by the right-wing noise machine. By the way, the Obama campaign went out of its way to “reject” Clark’s reasonable statements about McCain’s qualifications to be president.

This post by Chris Bowers explains succinctly why disavowing Clark was dumb:

No one in the entire country is more important to Democratic credibility on foreign policy than Wesley Clark. No one. And this isn’t just my opinion, it is the opinion of Democratic congressional candidates who requested him.

There are those who think that Obama is being super secret strategic on this one, and playing both the McCain campaign and the media for a fiddle. However, if you really want to be strategic, you need to see the whole board. Going well beyond this media cycle, and even going beyond this presidential election, Republicans score a huge strategic victory if they are able to permanently damage the credibility of the leading Democratic spokesperson on national security.

Paul Rosenberg had a priceless comment in that thread:

Incompetent is you think tactically instead of strategically.

Idiotic is you think tactically instead of strategically about the strongest surrogate you have on your weakest suit in the game.

Getting back to the main point of this post, Moveon.org is right to hit McCain campaign over energy policy. He is worse than Obama on that issue, and the price of gas is at the forefront of voters’ minds this summer.

If you attend or help organize one of the July 9 events, please put up a diary here to let us know how it went.

Starting a year from today, Windsor Heights will have its own zip code. A majority of the Des Moines suburb’s residents who mailed surveys back to the U.S. Postal Service voted yes to the change.

City officials have been working toward this for more than a decade, but I don’t think they would have succeeded if Ed Fallon had not challenged Leonard Boswell in the Democratic primary to represent Iowa’s third Congressional district.

Boswell had been asked to help with this matter many times, but only introduced a bill to secure a unique zip code for Windsor Heights in January, after Fallon announced his bid for Congress.  

The Iowa Democratic Party posted a press release announcing the Iowa delegation to the Democratic National Convention on its website.

I’ve reposted the release after the jump. It lists not only all of the delegates and alternates, but also members of the various National Convention Standing Committees.

I hadn’t realized that Iowa Utilities Board chairman John Norris was on the Platform Committee. Maybe someone in Denver will be able to persuade him that we have better options on energy policy than building more coal-fired power plants or expanding our use of nuclear power.

Watch Rob Hubler make his case:

Not only does Steve King embarrass all Iowans on a regular basis, he doesn’t even serve his constituents well. The Sioux City Journal researched the question How effective is Steve King?, and couldn’t come up with many accomplishments.

In fact, only three of the 44 bills King has sponsored even made it out of committee. Keep in mind that for the first two of King’s three terms in the House, Republicans controlled the chamber.

King has managed to get one bill through, according to the the Sioux City Journal. That was a resolution on “Recognizing the importance of Christmas in the Christian faith.”

No, that is not a joke from The Colbert Report.

Commenting on the Sioux City Journal’s article about King, Douglas Burns notes that King has focused on expanding Highway 20 but seems little concerned about Highway 30, which has more traffic and economic development potential.

Do Iowans a favor and give some cash to Hubler’s campaign.

According to the Des Moines Register,

A proposal before the state Board of Education would limit how and when teachers can lock up children and would ban risky methods of restraint, including chokeholds.

Teachers also would be trained to use “positive” alternatives, such as talking through disputes with children.

These proposed rules were probably inspired by media coverage of horrendous misuses of timeout rooms in the Waukee Community School District. After news of those incidents emerged last August, I talked with an acquaintance who pulled her son out of a Waukee elementary school because of a similarly inappropriate use of timeout rooms for discipline.

The Register reports that

studies have shown teachers confine students [to timeout rooms] for the wrong reasons.

A James Madison University survey of teachers at one Minnesota school found that teachers were more likely to lock up children for minor misbehavior.

“Without any guidance and policies, they make very poor choices, and kids suffer the consequences of it,” said Joseph Ryan, a Clemson University professor who worked on the 2004 survey.

The rules to be considered by the State Board of Education would force teachers to keep records of how timeout rooms are used, and would also stipulate that educators

– Can’t hold a child face down or otherwise use force that hampers a child’s ability to breathe.

– Must provide “continuous” supervision of children in timeout rooms.

– Must get permission from an administrator to confine a child for longer than an hour.

– Can’t lock up or restrain children for “minor infractions.”

– Can lock the door of a timeout room only if they hold the lock in position, or the lock automatically releases when school alarms go off or power is cut off.

– Must use timeout rooms that are safe and suitable for children of varying sizes, ages and conditions.

I am not an expert on appropriate discipline for special-needs children, but those guidelines sound much more reasonable than what I have read about the way some schools have used the timeout rooms in the past.

Members of the public can submit comments on the proposed rules until 4:30 pm on July 8. The address to which those comments should be sent is after the jump.

There will also be public hearings on July 8 to discuss the rules, and details about where and when they’ll be held are after the jump.

Until I read this article in the Des Moines Register, I had never heard about the

Innocence Project of Iowa, a non-profit created by some attorneys last year.

Experts say people who are wrongfully convicted are uniformly poor and disproportionately a minority. One recent study by the Innocence Project in New York, the nation’s first program founded in 1992, showed at least 156 of 216 people exonerated through DNA testing were African-American, Latino or Asian American.

Many of the cases also fall apart when scrutinized for unreliable or limited science, faulty eyewitness accounts, false confessions, poor defense work and unreliable testimony from informants, experts say.

The nonprofit Innocence Project of Iowa began last year out of a discussion among lawyers at Drake University who wanted to start their own program. Years ago, the University of Iowa’s law school provided legal assistance to Iowa prison inmates, but it never had a program focused exclusively on exonerating people believed to be wrongfully convicted.

Brian Farrell, a Cedar Rapids attorney who specializes in appeals and post-conviction cases, said the group could not find a home or funding at the state’s two big law schools at the U of I or Drake, but both schools nonetheless liked the idea of getting students involved.

[…]

Mark Gruwell, program coordinator for the paralegal-legal studies program at Iowa Lakes Community College, said about a dozen of his students have been reviewing correspondence from inmates, which the organization has been soliciting since last fall.

Those students submit analyses and reports, which are forwarded to a committee in Des Moines. That committee decides whether to reject a case or look into it more. From there, law and journalism students at the U of I will assist pro-bono defense lawyers with cases worth pursuing.

The project has identified two cases to pursue thus far.

Drake law students also are expected to get involved in the future.

[…]

Farrell said the project’s only financial support is from the Iowa Public Defender’s Association, but it hopes to develop other sources of funding.

The article mentions David Flores, but it’s not clear whether that case is one of the two that the Innocence Project will be focusing on. Flores has served 12 years in prison for first-degree murder. He will have a hearing next month to determine whether his sentence can be vacated. Des Moines police withheld evidence naming a different suspect in that murder case from Flores’ attorneys.

The blog Talk Left, which often covers crime-related issues, has posted on Flores’ case here and here.

Although John McCain hasn’t raised nearly as much money as Barack Obama has, the Republican National Committee has far outpaced the Democratic National Committee in fundraising.

The DNC is trying to narrow that gap, but it will need a lot more donations from individuals, because like Obama’s campaign, the DNC is not accepting donations from Washington lobbyists or political action committees.

They’ve designed a t-shirt that says “Democratic Party–Not Paid For by Special Interest PACs or Washington Lobbyists.” If you click this link and donate at least $30, you can get one:

https://donate.barackobama.com…

I am not currently donating to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, because I am dissatisfied with the House and Senate leadership and prefer to give to individual candidates.

However, I encourage everyone to support the DNC, because I believe Howard Dean’s investment in the 50-state strategy will pay huge dividends to our party. Two or three years ago, some skeptics thought it was a waste of time for Dean to invest in the state Democratic parties, but we have won three special Congressional elections in a row this year in Republican-leaning districts.

After the jump I’ve put the full text of the DNC’s fundraising e-mail that went out today.

If you haven’t donated to any Democratic candidates yet in the second quarter, what are you waiting for?

The various major blogs are raising money for some of their favorite candidates for the U.S. House and Senate, and many deserve your support. For instance, Larry Kissell (NC-08) lost to Republican incumbent Robin Hayes by only a few hundred votes in 2006.

If David Mizner, veteran of a hundred blog flamewars between supporters of Barack Obama and John Edwards, can give money to Obama, you can dig into your wallet and give money to some good Democrats today.

I’ve already donated to Rob Hubler and Becky Greenwald, who are running for Congress against Steve King and Tom Latham.

Here is Greenwald’s page at ActBlue, and here is Hubler’s page.

Most Democratic candidates for the Iowa legislature have pages at ActBlue as well. Go to www.actblue.com and search for the candidate’s name.

Or, google the candidate’s name to find a campaign website, where a mailing address will be provided in case you prefer sending checks in the mail.

Just be sure to write the check today. It has to be dated June 30 to count for the second quarter.

Look, I understand that many Iowans are upset about the smoking ban that will go into effect tomorrow.

I agree with the Des Moines Register editorial board, which argued on Sunday that legislators should have delayed the starting date for the ban so that businesses wouldn’t have to implement it just a few days after the Iowa Department of Public Health completed the rulemaking process.

But critics lose all credibility when they rant about the “fascist state Department of Health” and claim that the “monstrous” smoking ban is “all about cruelty,” “all about viciousness,” and so on.

Not surprisingly, that post I linked to denies that secondhand smoke is a serious health problem, despite mounting research to the contrary.

You can read up on what fascism is here. You may disagree with the smoking ban, but don’t compare it to fascism.

We went to a party last night, and one of our friends told us that their next-door neighbors frequently go out on their porch to smoke. The smoke drifts onto my friends’ deck and into their house if they have the window open. She said there’s nothing she can do about it, because her neighbors are on their own property.

So take heart, angry smokers. Even after you are barred from smoking in most public places, you will still be free to pollute the air at your own home. Maybe your neighbors will get to experience your freedom as well.

Today is the last day of the second quarter, and it’s important for candidates to show strong fundraising.

I encourage you to give to a few good Democrats today, either online or by writing a check (the check must be dated June 30).

I received this appeal from Rob Hubler, who is trying to do all Iowans a favor by retiring Congressman Steve King:

June 29, 2008

Dear [desmoinesdem],

I am trying to bring back Real Representation to Iowa’s fifth district, and I need your help.

The second quarter FEC deadline is only a day away – Monday, June 30th. Will you help show our strength in the upcoming filing by contributing what you can today?

The political analysts love to base their idea of a campaign on the size of its pocketbook over the issues of the candidate. While you and I know that ideas and organization are what really matters to the people of the fifth district, we also need to show financial strength. National organizations face a decision of which races to help, and look at this quarter to base their decision. We need to show that western Iowa is working hard to defeat Steve King. If you have been waiting to donate to my campaign, this is the perfect time when it will help us out the most.

In the last few weeks I have spoken to democrats, independents and republicans at events across the district and the state; and everywhere I go people are telling me the same thing: give Steve King the pink slip!

Even the press is taking notice. Check out this article from the Sioux City Journal with the headline: How effective is Steve King?

I hope you’ll be able to help us show them that what Iowa really wants in its congressman is a servant – not a king.  

Thank you,

Rob

p.s. – you can contribute online by visiting our ActBlue page. If you are sending a check, it is important that it is written on or before June 30th. If you are donating online, it’s important that it is done by midnight June 30th.

Can you imagine how frustrated Mitt Romney must be right now?

I submit to you that if Romney’s opposition research team had discovered that John McCain didn’t pay property taxes on one of his seven homes for more than four years, or that McCain didn’t know the price of gasoline and didn’t think that it was important for him to know it, Romney would be the Republican presidential nominee.

He didn’t lose to McCain in Florida and California by much, and Mike Huckabee didn’t lose to McCain in South Carolina by much either. With most GOP primaries being winner-take-all, McCain would probably have been out of the running if primary voters had known about his tax problems.

I so wanted Romney to win the nomination. I think either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would have beaten him in a crushing landslide. Whatever the pundits thought about his telegenic nature, he came across as incredibly phony to me. A lot of evangelical Christians would have stayed home or voted for third-party candidates rather than vote for him because his change of heart on abortion didn’t seem authentic.

I’m surprised his well-funded campaign didn’t figure out that McCain defaulted on California property taxes.  

The wonderful Frankenoid is hosting an open house for bloggers coming to Denver for the Democratic National Convention.

Read this diary to find out where and when the party will be held. You might want to RSVP by commenting in one of Frankenoid’s diaries. She has a regular Saturday morning gardening series at Daily Kos.

Did Barack Obama sell us out by endorsing the new version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and not showing up to support a filibuster of that bad bill last week?

Are too many Obama supporters in the netroots making up excuses to cover for him?

Or are the bloggers criticizing Obama being way too tough on a guy whose overriding concern has to be to get elected?

Is it right for some activists to say they no longer plan to volunteer for Obama’s campaign because he has failed to stand up for us on FISA?

Here are some links to good diaries exploring those questions.

Nathaniel Ament Stone is sure that Obama’s actions on FISA are better than they appear at first glance: Obama’s Outsmarted Us Again.

Big Tent Democrat argues that Obama is just like any politician and contrasts Obama’s previous statements on retroactive immunity for telecoms with his recent actions.

JedReport thinks the activists vowing not to lift a finger to help Obama (beyond voting for him) are making a big mistake: President McCain Just Got Elected, But That’s Okay.

Mike Lux seems to think the criticism of Obama over FISA is a waste of time, since “there is literally no acceptable way of holding a Democratic Presidential candidate accountable in the last few months before a general election.”

Chris Bowers counters, I Thought I Was Helping Obama. His point is:

First, we lefties are repeatedly told that it is necessary for Democrats to distance themselves from us in order to win elections. However, we are then we are told that we should be quiet in our criticism of Democrats, even though such criticism overtly distances Democrats from us.

I don’t get it. Aren’t we helping Democrats out by distancing them from us? Won’t Obama be helped by news stories about how he has angered the left? Won’t it make him look like he has Sista Soulhaj-ed us, or something? Why is our criticism a negative? Either Obama will be helped by distancing himself from the left, or he won’t. And, if he will be helped by distancing himself from the left, then our criticism should actually help him, especially when it starts to appear in news stories like these:

–National Journal: The Netroots Push Back

–Newsweek: Netroots Angry At Obama

–CBS: Netroots Feel Jilted By Obama Over FISA

Through our criticism of Obama, aren’t the netroots providing exactly the distance from lefties that we have always been told Democrats need to win? And, as such, aren’t we really helping Obama?

Attorney NCrissieB, who has experience with legal arguments surrounding the Fourth Amendment, offers A pragmatist’s view on FISA.

Wmtriallawyer, a vocal supporter of Obama this past year, has a warning: Barack, Take Note: FISA Demonstrates What’s Wrong with Washington. Key excerpt:

Sen. Obama, are you getting to see the problem now? As much as you talk about the partisan rancor that usually stalemates Washington (and I agree with you believe me), you’ve got to watch out for the so-called bipartisan compromises that actually serve noone but a few entrenched interests.

THIS has been the problem in Washington for years now.  The partisan fights occur over issues that actually matter and can benefit the people, and the bipartisan stuff compromises are over insidious stuff that benefits noone but the entrenched few.

Chris Bowers makes a strong case for taking Obama at his word instead of constructing theories about how he secretly agrees with FISA opponents, even as he fails to help stop the bill.

David Sirota notes that Obama has explicitly said, “You should always assume that when I cast a vote or make a statement it is because it is what I believe in.”

The exchange between Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann is worth your time. Here is Greenwald’s original post, which contrasted Olbermann’s scathing commentary about President Bush’s support for FISA a few months ago with Olbermann’s cheering as Barack Obama goes along with the same bill.

Olbermann posted a response that shot to the top of the Daily Kos recommended list, even though he admitted not to have read Greenwald’s entire post.

Greenwald’s next shot was wonderful: Keith Olbermann’s reply and Obama’s secret plan to protect the rule of law.

Then Olbermann changes the subject with a crowd-pleasing diary about Grover Norquist saying Obama is “John Kerry with a tan.” Nice try!

The final vote on FISA will take place after the Senate’s July 4 recess, but efforts to remove the provision granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies appear unlikely to succeed.  

cross-posted around the blogosphere

Two days before the June 3 Democratic primary in Iowa, I received an automated push-poll, followed the next day by a second robocall containing “important information” for me. Both calls were hit jobs on Jerry Sullivan, the leading Democratic candidate in Iowa House district 59.

Many of us will receive similar calls between now and November. We need to be prepared to help the Democrats who will be targeted in this way.

My number one piece of advice is do not hang up the phone.

Do not hang up the moment you hear an automated voice on the other end.

Do not hang up the moment you are asked to participate in a brief survey.

Do not hang up the moment you realize that this is not a legitimate opinion poll.

Stay on the line and grab a pen and paper for taking notes.

Follow me after the jump for further instructions.

Did anyone go to the Iowa Democratic Party’s state convention today?

Use this as an open thread to talk about what happened there.

UPDATE: John Deeth liveblogged the convention for Iowa Independent.

Chet Culver donated $100,000 from his campaign committee to the “coordinated campaign” that will get out the vote for all Democrats in Iowa this November.

The organized labor community is still mad at Culver for vetoing the collective bargaining bill this spring, as this curtain-raiser by the AP’s Mike Glover confirms.

The solution is to elect more Democrats to both chambers of the legislature, which the coordinated campaign will help do. With solid Democratic majorities, another collective bargaining bill can be passed in 2009, with a more open legislative process than what occurred this year.

It’s no surprise that the Bush administration and other Republican politicians would seize on high gasoline prices as an excuse to expand offshore drilling for oil. Never mind that oil companies apparently are not fully utilizing the leases they already have to drill offshore, as Tom Harkin points out in a statement excerpted at iPol.

But are you cynical enough not to be surprised by this story in the New York Times?

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.      

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

If that makes you mad, get involved with the Iowa Renewable Energy Association. Their list of upcoming events includes a residential solar energy workshop on July 19, as well as a huge annual Energy Expo, which will be in Cedar Falls the weekend of September 13 and 14.

Speaking of renewable energy, the Iowa News Service ran this report on growing demand for wind turbine technicians, which has prompted Iowa community colleges to create new programs for training them.

Also from the Iowa News Service, I found this report on how farmers can increase their cash flow by owning their own wind turbine.