Remember when I asked Bleeding Heartland readers to let me know if Representatives Tom Latham or Steve King tried to take credit for infrastructure projects funded by the stimulus bill they opposed?

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee noticed that Latham has been sending out press releases touting earmarks in the 2009 omnibus spending bill that he and nearly every other House Republican voted against. That’s right, Latham has been bragging about earmarks he inserted in a bill he didn’t support on the House floor. This is from the DCCC’s press release of March 12:

In a striking example of hypocrisy, after voting against the recently enacted FY 2009 Omnibus Appropriations, Congressman Tom Latham is taking credit for millions of dollars included in the legislation that will help local community colleges, health care clinics, and renewable energy producers in  Iowa ‘s 4th Congressional District.

“Congressman Latham keeps telling people he ‘secured’ millions of dollars in funding for Iowa, but the truth is he voted against these investments,” said Gabby Adler, the Midwestern Regional Press Secretary for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  “Congressman Latham can’t hide from his voting record, no matter how hard he tries.  Counter to what Congressman Latham would have you believe, these millions of dollars aren’t coming to Iowa because of his hard work, these investments are being made in spite of Congressman Latham’s efforts to defeat this bill and the funding for Iowa.”

In every single press release sent out by Congressman Latham announcing investments for Iowa included in the FY 2009 Appropriations, he not only hid the fact he voted against the legislation but he led people to believe he championed its passage.  One release read Congressman Latham “once again this past week demonstrated his commitment to community colleges,” another one discussed his role as a “long-time supporter” of new health care technologies.  In a third release, Congressman Latham even referred to his support of Iowa’s renewable energy industry as “steadfast” despite his vote against $1.4 million for a cutting edge wind energy project in Iowa.

After the jump I’ve posted the rest of the DCCC’s release, which contains further details about the earmarks Latham voted against but is now taking credit for.

The two-faced Republican position on earmarks is truly sickening.

Latham may feel secure in IA-04 for 2010, but in 2012 he will probably have to run in a redrawn third district, which may not be as friendly as his current turf. For that reason, I have wondered whether voting for some of President Barack Obama’s policies would be in Latham’s political interest, or whether he would be better off rejecting every significant White House proposal, like most House Republicans.

Apparently Latham plans to have it both ways and hope Iowans don’t notice.

Let me know if you see any news reports in the fourth district that tell the whole truth about Latham’s position on the omnibus spending bill. My hunch is that most journalists will pass along the information from Latham’s press releases without mentioning that he didn’t vote for the final package.

If you’ve ever attended a farm tour, farm field day or other harvest event at an Iowa farm, you be concerned by the action alert I received yesterday from the Iowa City-based non-profit Local Foods Connection.

Last fall the Johnson County Planning and Zoning board determined that Susan Jutz would need a “special event” permit if she wanted to hold a harvest celebration at her farm in Solon. She canceled the event because of the expense of obtaining a special event permit and because she did not want to set a precedent that farm tours and celebrations went beyond “accepted agricultural practices.”

I’ve posted the action alert after the jump. Jutz is appealing the board’s ruling next week. If you live in Johnson County, please consider contacting the county officials listed below. Farms all over the country organize tours and harvest parties.  

President Barack Obama proposed reforms to the Congressional earmarking process on Wednesday:

• Members’ earmark requests should be posted on their Web sites.

• There should be public hearings on earmark requests “where members will have to justify their expense to the taxpayer.”

• Any earmark for a for-profit company would have to be competitively bid.

The reforms are intended to deflect criticism after Obama signed the $410 billion 2009 omnibus spending bill, which included about $7.7 billion in earmarks.

I have no time for the Republican Party’s blatant hypocrisy on what is really a “phantom problem”. Republican members of Congress secure plenty of earmarks for their own states even as they posture against “pork.” They don’t seem to care about sweetheart deals and no-bid contracts awarded by executive agencies, which cost taxpayers much more than all earmarks combined.

Beltway journalists have been following the Republican script, focusing way too much on earmarks, even though they are “inconsequential”:

Not only do they represent less than one percent of the federal budget, eliminating them wouldn’t even reduce federal spending by even that tiny amount, or any amount at all, since earmarks by definition simply tag the spending in an already established pot of money, such as the Community Development Block Grant. The only question is whether decisions about funding individual projects should be made by Congress — through earmarks — or by a supposedly apolitical administrative process.

Furthermore, Jonathan Singer points out, earmarks simply don’t register when Americans are asked an open-ended question about their concerns.

I’m all for the reforms Obama announced yesterday, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that they will make a dent in government spending.

Although I think concerns about earmarks are exaggerated, I do want to examine the origin of Senator Tom Harkin’s $1.8 million earmark for studying odors from large hog confinements (CAFOs) in Iowa. It has become the poster child for Republican taunts about useless earmarks, prompting Harkin to defend himself (see here and here).

Follow me after the jump for more on why the federal government is funding this study. The earmark has its roots in unfortunate decisions that Iowa Democratic leaders made last year–with the enthusiastic support of statehouse Republicans and corporate ag groups.

Iowa is well-positioned to be a leader in the rapidly growing green economy. That requires savvy policy and business-development actions to continue seizing strategic opportunities for progress.

 What's at stake: Iowa's competitiveness and the jobs of the future as the global economy transitions to cleaner technologies for global-warming solutions.

Energy, environmental, employment, economic and national-security goals are converging. President Barack Obama and Congress are moving toward realigning our nation to accelerate clean-energy development to create new jobs and achieve significant greenhouse-gas pollution reductions. Clean-energy development is a win-win-win for job creatin, economic growth and better environmental quality. Three major opportunies:

Energy efficiency

Making our homes, businesses and public buildings more energy efficient is a no-brainer. We really can't afford costly energy waste in today's economy, when household budgets and businesses' bottom lines are strained. Retrofitting buildings with more efficient lighting, heating and cooling, windows and other equipment will create new, good-paying electrical, plumbing, carpentry and construction jobs.

Energy efficiency reduces utility bills, thus helping both businesses' bottom lines and household budgets. It plugs the billion-dollar energy drain that is leaking Iowa's money to states that produce natural gas and coal. Energy efficiency is the best, fastest, cleanest and cheapest way to meet power needs and avoid global-warming pollution.

Iowa's energy-efficiency winners include Pella Windows, Musco Lighting, Cenergy, providing energy design and consulting, and skilled union trade workers performing energy-efficiency upgrades in commercial and public buildings. A new farm bill program championed by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin provides grants for energy-efficiency improvements for farms and rural small businesses. The economic-stimulus legislation provides $20 billion more nationally for energy efficiency.

Wind power

Wind is the nation's fastest-growing energy resource. Iowa has nearly 3,000 megawatts installed. Six major manufacturing plants employing more than 1,000 people are operating or planned. Iowa manufacturers specializing in steel fabrication, castings and gears fit well into the wind-industry supply chain.

Huge wind-turbine blades and towers are increasingly being made near the installation sites in the Midwest to ease transportation and logistics. States with supportive policies are gaining business. Iowa is well-positioned to benefit from the national renewable-energy standard being considered by Congress.

New passenger rail

The economic-stimulus legislation includes $9.3 billion for high-speed rail and improved Amtrak service. The Midwest high-speed rail network would connect 11 major cities within a 400-mile radius of Chicago and the mid-sized cities in between.

Gov. Chet Culver and Congressman Leonard Boswell are calling for new Des Moines-Iowa City-Chicago rail service. These new trains can improve transportation mobility, pull together the regional economy, create jobs and help the environment by reducing pollution. The Greater Des Moines Partnership, labor unions and the Environmental Law & Policy Center are working together to get new rail service going.

Solving global-warming problems is our generation's moral, business, policy, political and technological challenge. The global economy is transforming with the rapidly growing trillion-dollar clean-energy technology sector. Lots of jobs and money are at stake. Iowa should seize the strategic opportunities and use its competitive advantages to help lead the growing green economy of the future.

HOWARD A. LEARNER is the executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center

About the Environmental Law and Policy Center and Iowa Global Warming Campaign:
ELPC is the Midwest’s leading public interest environmental, legal advocacy and eco-business
innovation organization. We are environmental entrepreneurs who engage in creative business deal
making with diverse interests to put into practice our belief that environmental progress
and economic development can be achieved together.

There's a batch of poll data out from SurveyUSA, and it's bad news for the Big Lug.
 

Governor Culver doesn't break even in the poll of 600 adults. 47% of voters surveyed said they disapprove of Gov. Culver's performance as governor, with 46% approving, and 7% not sure. 

What's particularly troubling is that Culver only has support from 59% of Democrats surveyed and 41% of self-identified independents. 

Seperate polls found that Sen. Grassley edges out Sen. Harkin as the state's most popular politician. Grassley carried a 71% approval rate, with Harkin ten points behind at 61%. One interesting fact from that set of polling: Grassley has a 66% approval rating among Democrats. 

Iowa Republicans are mobilizing against House File 530, which would allow employees to select their own doctor in case of a workplace injury. The workers’ compensation reform has already cleared a subcommittee (over the objections of its Republican member) and will be discussed at a public hearing tonight at 7 pm at the capitol. Iowa GOP chairman Matt Strawn held a press conference on the issue yesterday in Davenport, and most statehouse Republicans agree with the business interests working hard to defeat the bill.

Opponents claim the bill would let injured workers go “doctor-shopping,” even though the text states clearly that workers would have to designate a personal physician before any injury occurs. The Des Moines Register explains,

• If employees fail to select a doctor before an injury, the employer will select the doctor.

• If either the worker or employer is dissatisfied with the care chosen by the other party, the dissatisfied party may suggest alternative care. If the parties cannot agree, the dissatisfied party may appeal to the labor commissioner and a hearing may be set within 10 work days.

Seems reasonable to me. Shouldn’t every American be able to choose his or her own doctor?

We already knew Republicans don’t really care about the individual’s ability to choose a physician. If they did, they would support a “Medicare for All” approach to health care reform instead of the status quo in which private insurance companies routinely limit patients’ ability to go “out of network” for a doctor.

The controversy over Iowa House file 530 provides further evidence that Republicans don’t respect your right to choose your own doctor. If you’re an employee suffering from a workplace injury, Iowa Republicans think your rights are less important than the bottom line for businesses claiming this bill will cost them more.

Here’s hoping Iowa will join the 35 states that allow workers to choose their own doctors soon. It’s the least the Iowa legislature can do to advance workers’ interests after last month’s prevailing wage bill fiasco. The failure of Democratic leaders to find a 51st vote in favor of that bill provided a real shot in the arm for the Iowa GOP. Party chairman Strawn recently boasted to the Register about how he

sent e-mail alerts to county party leaders asking them to contact their local membership to flood undecided Democrats with phone calls. […]

“There was some very effective use of new technology that helped rally grass-roots Republicans around the state,” Strawn said. “Most all of that was done using these online tools. It wasn’t the old-school phone tree.”

Sounds like the Iowa Democratic Party and its labor union allies need to get those phones ringing down at the capitol.

I’ll have more to say on the doctors’ choice bill later in the week.

UPDATE: After the public hearing on March 10, the Iowa House Labor Committee approved this bill on a 10-6 vote. We’ll see whether leadership can come up with 51 votes to pass it.

There seems to be some confusion about the potential map for Iowa’s Congressional districts that Nathaniel90 posted here yesterday, so I’d like to clarify a few points after the jump.

UPDATE: Nathaniel responds to Krusty in the comments.  

Congressman Tom Latham is one of 34 Republicans who represent U.S. House districts carried by Barack Obama, according to analysis by CQ Politics.

Jonathan Singer was struck by the fact that Obama won nearly twice as many Republican-held districts as John Kerry did, even though far fewer Republicans won House elections in 2008 compared to 2004. Singer believes that as the next elections draw closer, these Republicans from Obama-districts will eventually feel pressure to support the president on some issues.

I don’t accept Singer’s premise that Obama will remain popular in all of the districts he carried in 2008. We don’t know what the economy will look like 18 months from now or whether Republicans will pay any political price for obstructing Obama’s agenda.

Still, Singer’s post got me thinking–is there any reason for Latham to cooperate with Obama?

After the jump I’ll try to answer this question.

As you can see from this graph, job losses in the current recession are worse than in other recent recessions and are continuing to accelerate at a time when the U.S. economy has already started adding jobs during the past two recessions.

Paul Krugman, who has been arguing for a much larger stimulus package, is very worried:

To see how bad the numbers are, consider this: The administration’s budget proposals, released less than two weeks ago, assumed an average unemployment rate of 8.1 percent for the whole of this year. In reality, unemployment hit that level in February – and it’s rising fast.

Employment has already fallen more in this recession than in the 1981-82 slump, considered the worst since the Great Depression. As a result, Mr. Obama’s promise that his plan will create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 looks underwhelming, to say the least. It’s a credible promise – his economists used solidly mainstream estimates of the impacts of tax and spending policies. But 3.5 million jobs almost two years from now isn’t enough in the face of an economy that has already lost 4.4 million jobs, and is losing 600,000 more each month. […]

So here’s the picture that scares me: It’s September 2009, the unemployment rate has passed 9 percent, and despite the early round of stimulus spending it’s still headed up. Mr. Obama finally concedes that a bigger stimulus is needed.

But he can’t get his new plan through Congress because approval for his economic policies has plummeted, partly because his policies are seen to have failed, partly because job-creation policies are conflated in the public mind with deeply unpopular bank bailouts. And as a result, the recession rages on, unchecked.

At MyDD Charles Lemos wonders whether current job losses may become permanent because of the manufacturing sector’s continuing decline.

Only the biggest layoffs make headlines, as when John Deere cut 325 jobs in Dubuque and Davenport last week. But almost all of us have friends or relatives who have lost their jobs in the past six months. Thankfully, none of my recently-unemployed friends are likely to lose their homes, but lots of people aren’t so lucky. Tent cities are booming across the country.

If you are looking for work, read this piece by Teddifish on How to get a job when no one is hiring.

Daily Kos diarist plf515 just found a new job and shared some advice in this diary:

How did I get this job?

I told everyone I was looking for work!  

This particular lead came from an announcement I made on SAS-L a mailing list about software that I use.  I am a frequent contributor there, someone who has read my work saw my mention, and then forwarded me a link to a job offer. […]

But I didn’t just mention it there.  I told everyone. I wrote a diary here; and I joined dkos networking; I announced it on mailing lists; I told my friends; I told former employers; I told the guy who does our dry cleaning; I told EVERYONE.  I also left cards advertising my consulting business all over.  

Can you find a job in this economy? Well, there are no guarantees.  But, if people don’t know you’re looking, they’ll never tell you about any openings.  

MyDD user ragekage has specific advice for people pursuing a career in nursing because they think it is a “recession-proof” occupation.

This thread is for any comments about unemployment or helpful advice about finding jobs.

UPDATE from desmoinesdem: Click here for further discussion about where this map came from and why it appeared on this site.

At Daily Kos, I've been posting a series of diaries taking an early look at redistricting after the 2010 Census in each state. Today I posted a diary mapping possible scenarios in Iowa and Ohio, and was encouraged to post the Iowa portion here.

Read my proposal for Iowa below the fold…

Via the Stinging Nettle blog, I found this piece in Politics magazine by Marty Ryall, who managed Senator Elizabeth Dole’s unsuccessful campaign last year. Ryall’s main subject is the grotesque “Godless” ad that Dole ran against Kay Hagan in late October. He contends that contrary to widespread opinion, backlash against the ad did not cost Dole the election. Rather, the ad was “our Hail Mary pass” that ran only because they felt they had no other chance to win.

As you’d expect from an operative who worked on a failed campaign, Ryall goes out of his way to explain why Dole’s campaign was already in trouble before he came on in May 2008, and why she lost the election mostly for reasons out of his control. (For instance, Barack Obama targeted North Carolina and registered hundreds of thousands of new voters.) Ryall also claims that he and others intervened to make the final version of the “Godless” ad more fair to Hagan than the first cut. Whatever.

I was more interested in why Dole would have to resort to that kind of desperate attack. Ryall doesn’t explicitly address that point, but this passage in his piece suggests Dole simply had nothing else to say:

We knew we had three weaknesses. A report by Congress.org had ranked Dole 93rd out of 100 senators in effectiveness. She voted with President Bush more than 90 percent of the time. And during the two-year period when she was chairman of the NRSC, she only traveled to North Carolina a handful of times.

No doubt external conditions helped sink Dole. But if she had built up a solid record during her six years in the Senate, Dole would have had a better chance of withstanding the Democratic wave. At the very least she would have had a better final-week message for voters than, “Atheists held a fundraiser for my opponent.”

Democrats control the executive and legislative branches in Iowa and in Washington. Current economic trends suggest that they may face a challenging political environment in 2010. I hope they will draw the right lessons from Dole’s disgrace. Don’t blindly follow failed policies and do something substantial for your constituents.

Having a record to run on is no guarantee of victory if the prevailing winds are against you. My very effective 18-term Congressman Neal Smith (IA-04) lost in the 1994 landslide. But it helps to be able to remind voters of some big achievements. In the worst-case scenario you’ll lose with more dignity than Dole.

Freeze federal spending in response to a huge spike in unemployment.

No, seriously, House Republican leader John Boehner is now proposing a federal spending freeze. Like Josh Marshall says,

I’m not even sure it’s fair to say that this is a replay of the disastrous decisions the magnified the Great Depression between 1929 and 1933. It’s more a parody of it. When the crisis is a rapid and catastrophic drop off in demand, you handcuff the one force that can create demand (i.e., the federal government) in the throes of the contraction. That’s insane. Levels of stimulus are a decent question. Intensifying the contraction is just insane and frankly a joke.

Paul Rosenberg has some good comments and a Rachel Maddow clip on this topic.

Republicans have long advocated dumb ideas on economic policy, like Congressman Steve King’s proposal to boost investment by eliminating capital gains taxes. To state the obvious, investors are not staying away from stocks because they’re worried about paying taxes on huge capital gains. On the contrary, investors fear that they will lose money because the market has not hit bottom yet and the recession will bring down more companies.

Similarly, fear of taxes on corporate profits has little to do with why businesses are not investing in production now. Business owners are not worried about finding money to pay taxes on profits. They are worried about losing money because skyrocketing unemployment reduces consumer demand for the goods or services that businesses sell.

In fairness, if we followed bad Republican advice on cutting corporate and capital gains taxes, we’d only be giving wealthy Americans tax breaks with a very small economic stimulus “bang for the buck” (see this data compiled by the chief economist for Moody’s). If we followed Boehner’s “new and improved” Republican advice to freeze federal spending, we would send the economy into a meltdown.

I have to wonder whether Republicans even believe in their own talking points. A spending freeze, really? That’s not what George W. Bush and the Republican majority in Congress did during the previous recession.

I think they may be beating the drum on spending to scare some Democrats out of supporting Obama’s budget proposal. What worries me is the scenario outlined by Open Left user Master Jack:

1. Obama submits a budget with the spending necessary to avoid a depression.

  2. Blue Dogs bitch and bleat and whine.

  3. Obama caves to the blue dogs and waters down his budget.

  4. Depression ensues.

  5. Democrats get clobbered in 2010.

  6. Liberals get blamed.

  This is what the Republicans are trying to make happen. And it wouldn’t stand a prayer of working of not for their blue dog enablers.

Democrats from President Obama on down need to push back hard against the Republicans’ idiotic new line.  

It’s another busy week, so I’ve put the event details after the jump. Please post a comment or send me an e-mail (desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com) if you know of an event I’ve left out.

Also please let me know of any Iowa organizations that post good event calendars on a regular basis. For instance, I hear about lots of things going around the state via the Sierra Club’s Iowa Topics e-mail loop and the websites of the Iowa Environmental Council and 1000 Friends of Iowa. Probably other groups I’m less involved with also post useful notices about upcoming events.

(UPDATE: Jill Richardson’s sources differ on whether these appointments are imminent.)

I received a disturbing action alert today from Food Democracy Now about who may oversee food safety regulations in the new administration. (Note: I got the action alert via e-mail, and it hasn’t been posted yet at the Food Democracy Now website. The link above is to the organization’s main page.)

Excerpt:

There’s a possibility that former Monsanto executive Michael Taylor and irradiation proponent Dr. Michael Osterholm will be named to top food safety spots in the new Administration. […]

1. Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto executive, whose career literally fits the definition of the revolving door between government, lobbying and corporate interests. Before serving on the Obama ag transition team, Taylor made a name for himself rotating in and out of law firms, Monsanto, the USDA and FDA. While at the FDA he helped write the rules to allow rBGH into the American food system and our children’s milk.

Now we’ve learned that Taylor may be in line to run an office in the White House on food safety!

2.  On Monday, Secretary Vilsack is set to announce the appointment of Dr. Michael Osterholm, a food safety expert, to lead the Food Safety agency at the USDA. According to Food  & Water Watch, Osterholm has been “a zealot in promoting th[e] controversial technology (of irradiation) as the panacea to contaminated food.”

Irradiation allows food processors to nuke disease from contaminated food at the end of the production line, while ignoring the root problems that create unsafe food.

For Osterholm, the recent peanut butter fiasco apparently was just another example of how irradiation could save the day. “Clearly it’s a problem where the raw peanut butter or paste is consumed and not cooked,” Osterholm said.

Food Democracy Now wants people to e-mail Vilsack immediately, asking him to block these appointments. The action alert included a sample e-mail, which I’ve posted after the jump, but it’s always better to write this kind of letter in your own words.

You may recall that in November, the Organic Consumers Association came out strongly against Vilsack for secretary of agriculture, largely because of his connections to Monsanto and other biotech companies. But it’s worth noting that President Obama put Michael Taylor on his transition team before he chose Vilsack to run the USDA. If Taylor does end up running a White House food safety office, don’t pin that mistake on Vilsack.  

Rep. Leonard Boswell is pushing for a feasibility study of Amtrak service from Chicago through Iowa to Omaha.

Iowa's Third District Congressman Leonard Boswell has asked that AMTRAK study the feasibility of extending a proposed Chicago to the Quad Cities passenger train not only to Iowa City and Des Moines, but also on west to Council Bluffs and Omaha. This is the first time that AMTRAK has been asked by a government official to consider extending service beyond Des Moines. AMTRAK, at the request of the Iowa Department of Transportation, is looking at the feasibility of a Des Moines to the Quad Cities and Chicago train. […]

If passenger train services returns in Iowa between the Quad Cities and Council Bluffs-Omaha, it would use the former Rock Island line. Cities along the route from the Mississippi River to the Missouri River include Davenport, Iowa City, Grinnell, Newton, Des Moines, and Atlantic.

I am definitely on board with this idea.

Governor Chet Culver made two appointments to the Iowa Utilities Board this week. He named Rob Berntsen as the IUB’s new chairman, replacing John Norris. Norris stepped down from the IUB in order to serve as chief of staff for Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Culver also reappointed Krista Tanner as one of the IUB’s three members. Culver appointed her in 2007 to serve out the remainder of someone else’s IUB term, which expires at the end of April. Now she will serve out the remainder of Norris’s term, which ends in April 2011.

The governor named Berntsen for the full six-year term that begins on May 1 and expires in 2015. (The third IUB member, Darrell Hanson was appointed by Culver in 2007 for a term that expires in 2013.)

Join me after the jump for more background on the new IUB chairman, along with some speculation about what can we expect from the board.  

President Barack Obama held a summit on health care yesterday with about 150 politicians and experts in the field. This morning the White House followed up by announcing plans to hold regional forums on health care in five states, including Iowa. From the press release:

The Regional White House Forums on Health Care Reform will be hosted by the states’ Governors and will include participants ranging from doctors to patients to providers to policy experts.  They will be open conversations with everyday Americans, local, state and federal elected officials – both Democrat and Republican — and senior Obama administration officials.  The events will begin with a video recorded by the President, a summary of the findings from the Health Care Community Discussions that took place in December, and an overview of the discussion that took place at the White House Forum on Health Reform.

The meetings in California, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina and Vermont will take place in March and early April.  Further logistical information about the forums is forthcoming.

Presumably Iowa was chosen because both of our senators will play an important role in drafting health care legislation. Chuck Grassley is the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, and Tom Harkin will be in charge of drafting the parts of the bill concerning disease prevention and public health.

Ezra Klein posted about an exchange between Obama and Grassley at the White House yesterday:

“Max Baucus and I have a pretty good record of working out bipartisan things,” said Grassley. “I think only two bills in eight years that haven’t been bipartisan.” (One of them, however, was the S-CHIP bill, and another was Medicare payment reform, so their record on health care is more contentious). Grassley then moved onto a more relevant sore spot: The public insurance option. “The only thing,” he pleaded, “that I would throw out for your consideration — and please don’t respond to this now, because I’m asking you just to think about it — there’s a lot of us that feel that the public option that the government is an unfair competitor and that we’re going to get an awful lot of crowd out, and we have to keep what we have now strong, and make it stronger.”

The question was no surprise: In recent Finance hearings, Grassley has clearly signaled his anxiety on this issue. What was a surprise was that Obama rejected Grassley’s plea to think it over and instead replied on the spot with a strong articulation of the case for a public plan. “The thinking on the public option has been that it gives consumers more choices, and it helps give — keep the private sector honest, because there’s some competition out there. That’s been the thinking.”

“I recognize, though, the fear that if a public option is run through Washington, and there are incentives to try to tamp down costs and — or at least what shows up on the books, and you’ve got the ability in Washington, apparently, to print money — that private insurance plans might end up feeling overwhelmed. So I recognize that there’s that concern. I think it’s a serious one and a real one. And we’ll make sure that it gets addressed.”

I love it when conservatives like Grassley drop the free-market-warrior act. David Sirota asks the right question: if what we have works so well, why are “Republicans insisting that Americans would overwhelmingly opt to be covered by a government-run health care program, if given the choice?”

Also, why are there 48 million Americans without health insurance, with 14,000 Americans losing their health insurance every day lately? Why do the uninsured have less access to basic care and even organ transplants?

And why do so many people who do have health insurance face financial ruin following a medical crisis?

There must be a public health insurance option for people too young to qualify for Medicare and not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Someone close to my family just got laid off this week and was diagnosed with diabetes within the last few months. What are his chances of finding good private health insurance coverage under the current system?

This thread is for any thoughts about the substance or the politics of health care reform. I’ll post more details about the upcoming White House regional forum when they become available.

The right-wing noise machine is in high gear regarding the $7.7 billion earmarked for various projects in the fiscal year 2009 omnibus spending bill.

Where was the outrage when the Defense Department inspector general determined last year that the DOD can’t account for $7.8 billion spent in Iraq?

Why didn’t they cheer on President Barack Obama when he moved this week to reduce the billions wasted on no-bid and fraudulent government contracts?

Senator Tom Harkin is under fire for getting so many earmarks in the omnibus bill (though Chuck Grassley also helped secure a substantial number of earmarks). I don’t agree with everything Harkin said yesterday about the earmarks, but he was right on target here:

What needs more attention, according to Harkin, are no-bid contracts done by federal agencies.

“I had a hearing a year ago on the Department of Labor and there were — I forget the exact figure – but several hundred million dollars that had gone out under Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao on no-bid contracts,” he said.

When Harkin directed a federal oversight agency to look into the contracts, it was discovered that the contractors had not done what they were hired to do and, according to Harkin, “didn’t really do anything. …

“At least we are transparent,” he said. “You can see where it is going. But on a lot of these non-bid contracts that go through the executive branch, no one knows what they are doing. We have no transparency there.”

Hundreds of millions of dollars wasted in just one department of the executive branch–but conservatives won’t get upset about that. Nor will they express outrage upon learning that George Bush’s political appointees awarded pricey USDA consulting contracts that did nothing for the Department of Agriculture.

I’ve got another post coming later about the infamous Harkin earmark for studying pig odor. I want to know where the angry Republicans were last year when progressives and environmentalists were trying to persuade the Iowa legislature not to pass the deeply flawed odor-study bill (see here, here or here).

Jill Richardson has an action alert up at La Vida Locavore regarding new rules for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Environmental Quality Initiatives Program (EQIP). She lays out the problem with the status quo:

A report (Industrial Livestock at the Taxpayer Trough by Elanor Starmer and Timothy A. Wise, Dec 2008) found that nationally, factory hog farms comprise 10.7% of all hog operations – but get 37% of all of the EQIP contracts. Factory farm dairies make up 3.9% of all dairy farms – but they get 54% of EQIP contracts. All in all, between 2003 and 2007, 1000 factory hog and dairy farms ate up $35 million in EQIP conservation funding.

This happened at the expense of smaller farms that COULD HAVE gotten the money. Mid-sized hog farms make up 15% of hog operations but got 5.4% of EQIP contracts. Mid-sized dairy farms make up 13% of dairies – and got 7% of contracts.

This report by the Union of Concerned Scientists estimated that confined animal feeding operations “have received $100 million in annual pollution prevention payments in recent years” through EQIP.

Do you think CAFOs should be able to hog taxpayer dollars intended for conservation programs? Neither do I. More important, neither does Congress:

USDA was directed by Congress in the 2008 Farm Bill to make EQIP more inclusive of organic agriculture practices – including implementing a new provision that assists farmers converting to organic farming systems and rewarding the conservation benefits of organic farming. However, USDA fell far short of meeting this directive in their [Interim Final Rule for EQIP].

We have until March 16 to submit public comments urging the USDA to make EQIP more organic-friendly, as Congress stipulated last year. There is a clear public interest in helping more farmers meet the growing demand for organic food. As a side benefit, directing more EQIP funds to organic farms would be a step toward making CAFOs pay for the harm they cause.

For details on how to submit your comments on this issue, click here or here.

Here’s some good news for the environment and public health:  

Interstate Power and Light on Thursday canceled plans for a $1.8 billion coal-fired power plant in Marshalltown, citing the economy and uncertainty over state regulations. […]  

“At the end of the day it’s economic condition, uncertainly regarding future regulatory and legislative treatment of environmental issues, meaning greenhouses gases,” said spokesman Ryan Steensland.

Other factors were terms placed on the power plant by the Iowa Utilities Board, including a 10.1 return on equity for investors. “It would have made it very challenging to attract the capital necessary to build these types of investments. The cost and the return laid out by the board just did not wet the appetite of the investment community to move forward with this project,” Steensland said.

Economic concerns prompted a different company to pull the plug on a proposed coal-fired power plant near Waterloo earlier this year.

Thanks to all the environmental and public-health advocates who have worked so hard for years to defeat both coal plants, including the Sierra Club, Plains Justice, the Iowa Environmental Council, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Community Energy Solutions, the Iowa Renewable Energy Association and Iowa Interfaith Power and Light.  

I am still annoyed that the Iowa Utilities Board approved an application to build the Marshalltown plant last spring, but at least the IUB’s recent ratemaking decision helped doom the project.

Please disregard my action alert regarding public comments on the DNR’s draft air quality permit for the Marshalltown plant.

UPDATE: At Century of the Common Iowan, noneed4thneed points out that the coal plant would have created 85 permanent jobs as well as providing a lot of temporary jobs during its construction. I sympathize with people who are upset about losing those jobs. However, I do not support making a 50-year investment in the wrong direction on energy production, which would also result in more respiratory illness, mercury pollution and higher utility bills for thousands of Iowans, all for the sake of some jobs in the Marshalltown area.