The members of the Rebuild And Grow Board of Directors submitted a public petition to the Cedar Rapids City Council this week requesting an intensive one-year plan for dealing with flood recovery and reconstruction in the city.

Rebuild And Grow is an affiliate of Beacon of Hope/New Orleans, and its leaders consulted with disaster recovery groups in New Orleans in forming the recommendations.

The full text of Rebuild And Grow’s petition to the Cedar Rapids City Council is after the jump. The council is expected to respond in writing within a week.

If you would like to send comments or support for this citizen petition to the mayor and council members, click here.

Rebuild and Grow has also written “a ten page report on what we learned during our intensive training and internship with Neighborhood Self-Help Disaster Recovery Groups in New Orleans.” To request a copy of that report, send an e-mail to floodsurvivor AT aol.com.

                                                   

I don’t see much evidence that Barack Obama has a problem with women voters. He leads among women by more than Al Gore or John Kerry did at the same time during their own presidential campaigns. The most recent Iowa poll shows Obama leading by six overall but by 12 among Iowa women.

(UPDATE: A new national poll commissioned by EMILY’s list shows Obama leading among women by 12. He leads among women of all age groups, but his narrowest margin is among baby boomer women. Like Digby said, Don’t put baby boomer in the corner.)

Among purveyors of conventional wisdom, however, there is still a perception that Obama has work to do among women voters, and particularly the women who preferred Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

The Obama campaign has been scheduling women’s outreach events to address this issue. Today Governor Kathleen Sebelius is campaigning around central Iowa, and one of her appearances is a lunch in Des Moines specifically geared toward women.

Last Friday I attended a different women’s event featuring Dana Singiser. She served as Director of Women’s Outreach for Clinton’s presidential campaign before joining the Obama campaign as Senior Adviser for the Women’s Vote.

Singiser wrote the Obama campaign memo on John McCain’s “woman problem,” released earlier this week.

Join me after the jump for more.

According to the Des Moines Register,

An investment group that included the late Ed Boesen has informed Des Moines school officials that it is pulling out of a deal to develop the former Rice Elementary School site.

Rice Development Partners told school officials that it intends to terminate an agreement to purchase the vacant school site at 3001 Beaver Ave. for $650,000.

The article quotes the attorney for the Des Moines school district as saying, “we have a valid and enforceable contract,” but I don’t see how they will be able to squeeze money out of this investment group. A long line of creditors are suing Ed Boesen’s estate.

It’s just as well to go back to the drawing board on Rice field. Perhaps it’s better to leave Beaverdale residents to enjoy this green space. If it is developed eventually, let’s hope there are no major conflicts of interest linking policy-makers to the developers selected for the site.

If you’ve never seen Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius in person, you’ve got plenty of chances tomorrow. She’ll be campaigning for Barack Obama and Becky Greenwald, candidate for Congress in Iowa’s fourth district.

The one time I heard Sebelius speak in person, I was very impressed. Come out to hear a woman who is on Obama’s short list for vice-president and may well run for president herself someday.

All events take place on Thursday, August 21.

A women’s brown-bag lunch event will be held at the Scottish Rite Consistory, 519 Park Street in downtown Des Moines. Doors open at 12:30. Becky Greenwald will speak around 12:45. Governor Sebelius will speak at 1:00. Bring your own lunch and enjoy.

Greenwald and Sebelius will hold a community gathering at 2:45 at Funaro’s Deli and Bakery, 201 N Buxton Street in Indianola. (Side note: Take home some of that wonderful Funaro bread!)

At 4:00, Sebelius and Greenwald will hold a meet and greet with voters at the Becky Greenwald Campaign Headquaters and Obama Campaign for Change Office, 144 E Laurel Street in Waukee.

Finally, Sebelius will kick-off a volunteer phone bank at 5:30 at the Obama Iowa Campaign for Change office, 1408 Locust Street in Des Moines.

If you attend any of these events, post a comment or a diary afterwards to let us know how it went.

If you regularly buy food directly from farmers, you have probably noticed that this year’s severe weather disrupted the growing season in Iowa. To make matters worse, many sustainable farmers (such as fruit and vegetable growers) do not qualify for federal crop insurance. Yet a huge amount of time and money is involved in replanting or replacing lost crops.

I enclose an e-mail describing an assistance effort geared toward family, sustainable and market farmers in Iowa. These grants may seem very small to you, but even $500 can make a difference to a cash-strapped small farmer.

The links did not come through when I copied and pasted, but you click here to donate to the project. If you are a farmer in need of assistance, click the same link to find application guidelines and forms.

The Iowa Farm Disaster Relief Coalition — fourteen Iowa farm, faith and rural organizations including the Center for Rural Affairs is collecting donations and making emergency funds available for Iowa’s family, sustainable and market farmers who suffered losses due to storms, rain and flooding in Iowa earlier this year.

Applications and guidelines are available on the coalition’s website. Donations may be made to the fund on the website as well.

Farmers may apply for up to $500 in relief to help offset household expenses, which in turn will free up finances for replanting, clean up, repair, etc., on the farm. It is our hope that assisting as many qualifying farmers as possible with grants up to $500 to cover expenses will help ease some of the pain of the tough times created by these disasters.

Again, please find applications instructions and grant guidelines on the coalition’s website.

Applications will be reviewed as quickly as possible by a committee of representatives of the state’s membership based sustainable agriculture groups. The deadline for the first round of applications is Sept. 30, 2008. Additional rounds of grants will be made available as funding allows.

For more information, contact John Crabtree at 402-687-2103 extension 1010, or by email at johnc@cfra.org.

Whether or not you can apply or contribute, please help us get the word out by letting others who may be interested know about the project.

—

Farm Aid is supporting the disaster-relief efforts of the coalition, which includes Buy Fresh Buy Local Iowa, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Iowa Farmers Union, Iowa Network for Community Agriculture, Iowa Organic Association, National Catholic Rural Life Conference, Practical Farmers of Iowa, Women Food and Agriculture Network, Edible Iowa River Valley, Iowa Valley Resource Conservation and Development, National Farmers Organization, Churches’ Center for the Land and People, Atlantic farmer and advocate Denise O’Brien and the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Nebraska which is serving as the project’s fiscal sponsor.

Thanks to all the participating organizations and to Denise O’Brien, one of the best advocates for sustainable agriculture that Iowa has ever known.

The Democratic National Committee is putting together a Democratic Change Commission to review possible changes to the presidential nominating process. According to the Associated Press, DNC leaders want to reduce the number of superdelegates and “regain control of the primary calendar”:

A goal of the new commission would be to establish a calendar in which only a handful of states would be allowed to hold nominating contests before March.

This diary at MyDD contains the full text of the press release. Here is an excerpt:

Today the Obama Campaign and the Democratic National Committee announced a proposal to establish a special commission to recommend changes to the Democratic Party’s rules for delegate selection and presidential primary timing for future presidential cycles. The proposal will be presented to the Convention Rules Committee on Saturday in Denver.

The ‘Democratic Change Commission’ will address three issues 1) changes to the opening of the window and pre-window, 2) reducing the number of superdelegates and 3) changes to the caucus system. The goal of the commission will be to ensure that no primary or caucus is held prior to the first Tuesday in March of 2012, with the exception of the approved pre-window states, whose contests would be held during February 2012.

I’m all for reducing the number of superdelegates and strictly limiting the number of states that can hold primaries or caucuses before March.

But if we are going to increase the relative importance of pledged delegates, we need to be aware that the pledged delegate count does not necessarily reflect the will of the people.

Longtime readers know that I am not a big fan of the caucus system even in Iowa, where voters and party officials have a lot of experience with it. I don’t think any of the alleged benefits of caucuses outweigh the barriers to participation that caucuses create.

Furthermore, no state but Iowa can claim any genuine party-building benefit from caucuses, because other states didn’t have multiple campaigns organizing at the precinct level for months.

Many states switched from primaries to caucuses in order to save money, figuring the nomination wouldn’t depend on that state’s vote anyway. As a result, poorly-trained precinct chairs presided over chaos in many parts of Nevada.

Even where caucuses ran relatively smoothly, turnout was unnecessarily limited, and results were skewed.

Consider Minnesota. Probably Obama would have won a primary there, but would he have won it by a 2-1 margin, as he did the caucus delegate count? Seems unlikely.

In Colorado, Nebraska, and several other states, Obama emerged with three or four times as many delegates as Hillary Clinton. Again, he probably would have won a primary in those states, but not by that kind of margin.

Even worse, in Nevada and Texas, Obama emerged with more pledged delegates even though more voters turned out to support Hillary. I would want to change the way pledged delegates are allocated so that no candidate could lose the popular vote in a state while winning the pledged delegate count.

Not only that, one caucus-goer in Wyoming had as much influence over the pledged delegate race as 19 primary voters in California (here is the link). That’s partly because caucuses attract lower turnout and partly because smaller states have a disproportionate number of delegates in the Democratic Party’s current nominating system.

I will be interested to see what this commission recommends with respect to caucuses. My preference would be to ban caucuses for purposes of presidential candidate selection, but I’m sure that a commission created with the participation of the Obama campaign would never agree to that reform. My guess is that they will propose some nominal changes to caucuses but will do nothing to discourage states from holding caucuses instead of primaries.

Before anyone gets upset in the comments, please note that by criticizing the caucus system, I do not intend to excuse the strategic failure of the Clinton campaign to have a game plan for the caucus states.

But if we are going to reduce the number of superdelegates, or require superdelegates to get behind the pledged delegate leader in their states or districts, then we better have a more equitable system for allocating the pledged delegates.

It was wrong for Obama to net as many pledged delegates from a low-turnout caucus state as Hillary netted in the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries. She exceeded Obama’s popular vote count by more than 200,000 in each of those states.

The Trust for America’s Health has released a comprehensive analysis of public health indicators in all 50 states.

You can view all the statistics for Iowa here. As you might expect, it’s a mixed bag. We do pretty well in terms of proportion of people having health insurance (40th in percentage of uninsured adults, 45th in percentage of uninsured children). We also rank 43rd in infant mortality.

On the other hand, we rank 19th in obesity, 15th in terms of shortage of dental care, and 15th in terms of the percentage of high school students who currently smoke.

Click over to find many more facts and figures.

His problem attracting women voters, that is.

The memo is after the jump. Its author, Dana Singiser, did several women’s outreach events for the Obama campaign in Iowa last week. I attended one of those and will write it up when I have the chance. She was very impressive.

Singiser thoroughly documents the gender gap revealed by recent opinion polls on the presidential race. Her memo also gives several reasons why John McCain’s stand on the issues would not appeal to women voters.

The just-released University of Iowa Hawkeye poll showed Barack Obama leading McCain by five or six points overall (depending on which voter screen you use) but by 12 points among Iowa women voters.

cross-posted at La Vida Locavore

The Iowa legislature and state agencies have notoriously failed to do anything to address the pollution problems stemming from confined-animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

But the Environmental Protection Commission took one small step in the right direction:

The state Environmental Protection Commission today rejected previously approved permits for two large hog confinements in Dallas County.

The surprise move came after a two-hour meeting in Urbandale at which commissioners said rules drawn up to dictate approval of large-scale confinement permits leave out important environmental considerations and neighbors’ quality-of-life concerns.

“There are battle lines being drawn on this, and it creates a political situation that the Legislature cannot ignore,” commission chairman Henry Marquard said.

Only a handful of permits have been denied in Iowa, but rarely has one been turned down after it met approval from the Department of Natural Resources and passed a complicated scoring system adopted by counties, including Dallas.

The nine-member commission voted to block these permits on a strong 6-2 vote. I wouldn’t be surprised if the matter ends up in court, however.

Noneed4thneed wrote about the controversy over the new Dallas County CAFOs in late July:

The proposed hog confinements would have a total of 7,440 hogs in rural Dallas County, which is the fastest growing county in the state. These confinements will produce as much waste as a town of 30,000 people and it will go untreated.

Earlier this month, Dallas County Supervisors voted against allowing these proposed hog confinements, but in reality there isn’t much the local people can do about the hog confinements that will be owned by the out of state company, Cargill.

We need federal legislation to make CAFOs pay for the harm they cause, because our state legislature has shown itself to be unwilling to act to protect air and water quality in Iowa.

But in the absence of federal action, a state law giving counties “local control” (agricultural zoning rights) would at least offer some protection. Some county supervisors would rubber-stamp every proposed CAFO, but others would follow the lead of the Dallas County supervisors.

For all I know, Cargill will sue to reinstate their permits to open these hog confinements. But however this story ends, it’s good to see the majority of the Environmental Protection Commission’s members doing something to protect the environment.

UPDATE: I learned from the online newsletter of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement that the Iowa Department of Natural Resources recently denied a permit for a different proposed CAFO.

Because of the efforts of CCI members and other local residents, the DNR recently denied a 4,900-head hog factory proposed for southern Appanoose County. The permit application did not meet legal requirements, nor did their master matrix pass muster. Although the applicant for this proposed confinement is a local resident, the 4,900 hogs would have been owned by Cargill. Cargill, one of the largest privately-held corporations in the world, has been behind a number of proposed factory farms around the state, including two proposed 7,440-head hog factories in northwest Dallas County.

John Wenck, an outreach coordinator for the Department of Natural Resources, had a good guest opinion column in Monday’s Des Moines Register about why building a new road through the Des Moines River Greenbelt is a bad idea.

This road project used to be called the “MLK extension,” because it would extend Martin Luther King Drive north through the river greenbelt. A group of environmental advocates and interested citizens helped defeat that proposal years ago.

Now it has been revived as the “Northwest 26th Street extension,” which is the Ankeny street that would be extended south through the greenbelt to connect with MLK on the Des Moines side.

A new name does nothing to lessen the impact of this road. A Sierra Club “sprawl report” from the fall of 2000 had this to say:

Tearing down urban highways has brought new life to neighborhoods long hemmed-in by the roads. Unfortunately, Des Moines seems to be heading in the opposite direction with the proposed extension of Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway. This project will put a highway in what is now an urban green space and flood-control zone.

The Des Moines River Valley is a unique urban green space that provides a variety of habitats for wildlife, plants and people. It is an important wintering ground for the bald eagle and ideal habitat for many species of migratory birds. This area also serves as a buffer between existing neighborhoods and the current interstate. Two bicycle trails run along the river and improve the transportation choices for Des Moines residents.

Building a highway through this area will clearly harm its value to wildlife, reduce the value of the land as a floodplain and make areas downstream more prone to flooding. The proposed extension will also encourage sprawl outside the city and add to the traffic and air pollution problems of the region. Middle- and low-income neighborhoods near the proposed route will suffer from more noise and air pollution.

Given that new highways draw more drivers onto the road, the parkway extension would do little to ease traffic. Rather than building a major new highway and destroying this open space, a smarter plan would enhance this urban green space and use public transportation to ease the area’s traffic congestion.

The last paragraph is crucial: this road project would do little to ease traffic. I am old enough to remember the debate over extending 100th St. in Clive over the Clive Greenbelt during the 1980s. That was supposed to solve a lot of traffic problems in the western suburbs, but it didn’t do the job. Instead, there has been more sprawling development and more traffic in the area.

The Des Moines River Greenbelt contains outstanding habitat for birds that are very sensitive to noise that would accompany a major road. We don’t have an abundance of riparian forests in central Iowa anymore and should preserve the ones that remain.

If you care about wildlife habitat and/or sound transportation policy, I encourage you to get involved with one or more of the organizations that are fighting the NW 26th St extension. They include the Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club, 1000 Friends of Iowa, and Iowa Rivers Revival.

For her incredible performance during the Olympics, which culminated in a gold medal for balance beam.

I have friends whose kids take gymnastics at Chow’s in West Des Moines, and apparently Shawn is so kind and gracious with the kids who look up to her there. She did us all proud.

She was fantastic on the days she earned silver medals in the team exercises, all-around competition and floor exercises. I suspect she would have taken the gold in the floor exercises if she hadn’t been scheduled to perform first in the final. She had a flawless routine, but the judges often leave themselves room to go higher later when they are scoring the first competitor (at least that’s what some of the commentators were saying during other individual competitions). I wouldn’t have blamed her for being very angry, but she was smiling and sportsmanlike in her comments to the media after the competition.

Nastia Liukin, the all-around gold medalist, was amazing as well, even though she may have been robbed of the gold in uneven bars. The Chinese gymnast who won gold in that event through a controversial tiebreaking procedure was reported by the official Chinese agency Xinhua to be 13 years old last year. Gymnasts are required to be at least 16 years old to compete in the Olympics.

There needs to be an investigation of some of the scoring in the gymnastics competitions. Alicia Sacramone (who had to go first in the final for the individual vault competition) ended up finishing fourth by hundredths of a point, even though she landed on her feet, and the Chinese gymnast who won bronze fell to her knees on one landing.

Use this thread for any chatter related to the Olympics. Des Moines native and Roosevelt High School graduate Lolo Jones looked dominating in her semifinal in the hurdles.

UDPATE: Lolo Jones was leading the 100-meter hurdles race until she hit the second to last hurdle. She finished out of the medals, which must have been crushing after she posted a personal best time in the semifinal. Elite-level sports can be a heartbreaking business.

Several health care providers in Cedar Rapids are making free mammograms and pap tests available this week to women age 40 and older with no medical insurance. Call 319-369-8111 for an appointment, which is required. The appointments are available on a first come, first serve basis.

Wednesday, August 20: Planned Parenthood’s clinic in Cedar Rapids will offer pap tests to women of all ages.

Thursday, August 21: St. Luke’s Breast & Bone Health in Cedar Rapids will provide mammograms and pap tests.

Friday, August 22: Mercy Women’s Center in Cedar Rapids will provide mammograms and pap tests.

Saturday, August 23: RCI Imaging Center will provide mammograms only.

Women, if you are overdue for your pap test or mammogram, call your health care provider today to make an appointment.

In June, I wrote about a bill passed by the House of Representatives providing $1.7 billion in funding for public transportation.

Noneed4thneed alerted me to this post by Matthew Yglesias, who reports that Hillary Clinton has introduced a companion bill in the Senate. However, only the New York and New Jersey delegations have signed on so far. Some members of Congress are trying to secure earmarks to fund public transit projects in their home states. Yglesias correctly points out that

Organizing needed funding through earmarks, however, is not an especially sound way to proceed. Far better to pass a proper, widely applicable bill that uses the federal government’s ability to engage in deficit spending to help provide some transit stimulus. At a time when booming energy prices are the main factor driving an economic downturn, cutting back on alternative transportation services is extremely foolish and will only prolong economic problems.

With cheap oil a thing of the past, there should be a strong bipartisan consensus in favor of better public transit in every state. I hope Iowa’s senators will support Clinton’s bill on this subject.

On a related note, this past Saturday 1000 Friends of Iowa organized a “tour de sprawl” in northern Polk County as part of its annual meeting. The bus tour took us through several areas in the corridor being considered for a four-lane beltway in northeast Polk County.

It is incredible to realize that Congressman Leonard Boswell will be seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding for this road project. A very small number of people would benefit (primarily developers who are buying up farmland near the beltway’s path).

Meanwhile, valuable farmland could be lost and irreplaceable natural areas such as the Moeckley Prairie could be threatened.

The opportunity cost of spending hundreds of millions on a new road heading north from Altoona and then east to I-35 would be enormous. Traffic flows do not justify this project through sparsely-populated rural areas, especially when gasoline is expensive and many Americans are seeking alternatives to driving.

Imagine how many people in the Des Moines metro area would benefit from a significant federal investment in public transit and making roads safer and more accessible for pedestrians and bicyclists.

The Progressive Patriots Fund, chaired by Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, is holding an online vote to determine which of nine featured candidates will receive a $5,000 donation. Both Becky Greenwald and Rob Hubler are on the list.

You can cast your vote on this page and read short bios of all the featured candidates on this page.

Please vote and tell your friends about this opportunity to raise more money for your candidate.

As always, please send me an e-mail if I’ve left out any important event.

UPDATE: I found out that Kathleen Sebelius will do several events in Iowa on Thursday and added them to the calendar below.

Monday, August 18:

The Obama campaign is holding a Rural Roundtable Discussion with Gary Lamb, a member of the Agriculture and Rural Policy and Action Committee, at the Charles City Public Library (Zastrow Room), 106 Milwaukee Mall St in Charles City at 12 pm.

From the Center on Sustainable Communities:

Iowa Home Crafters is hosting a COSC member open house at 1571 P Avenue in Madrid, IA, Monday, August 18th from 4-7pm.

Free to COSC members and those interested in membership.

Carpool with at least two others and you will be eligible for a door prize.

Visit www.icosc.com for more details.

Representative Steve King will appear at a fundraiser for Mariannette Miller-Meeks at The Drake in Burlington at 6 pm. Bring your sign and/or chicken suit to ask why King won’t debate Rob Hubler, Democratic candidate in Iowa’s fifth district.

Tuesday, August 19:

The Obama campaign is holding a Rural Roundtable Discussion with Lt. Governor Patty Judge at 4:15 pm in the Formal Dining Room at Gentle Student Center, Ellsworth Community College, 1100 College Avenue in Iowa Falls.

The Rebuild Iowa Advisory Commission will hold its fourth meeting to discuss the state’s disaster and rebuilding efforts at the Holiday Inn Cedar Falls – University Plaza, 5826 University Ave., Cedar Falls, from 2 to 5 pm.

Steve King is holding four town-hall meetings:

8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m.

King to host Council Bluffs Town Hall Meeting

Iowa Western Community College Aviation Center

211915 Cessna Avenue

Council Bluffs, Iowa

10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.

King to host Red Oak Town Hall Meeting

US Bank, Community Room

323 Reed St

Red Oak, Iowa

1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

King to host Creston Town Hall Meeting

Supertel Inn and Conference Center

800 Laurel St.

Creston, Iowa

4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

King to host Denison Town Hall Meeting

Cronk’s Restaurant

812 4th Ave. S.

Denison, Iowa

Wear your chicken suit outside the event, or bring your video camera inside in case there are any “macaca moments”!

Wednesday, August 20:

The Obama campaign will hold a Rural Roundtable Discussion with Gary Lamb, a member of the Agriculture and Rural Policy and Action Committee, at 10 am in the Benton County Library, 510 2nd Ave. in Vinton.

A second Rural Roundtable with Gary Lamb will take place at 3 pm at the Farley Fire Station, 202 1st St. NE in Farley.

An Obama campaign Rural Roundtable Discussion with state Representative John Whitaker will be held at 6:30 pm at the White Buffalo Restaurant, 100 Hwy 34 E in Albia.

Tom and Ruth Harkin will attend a fundraiser for Becky Greenwald at the home of David and Loree Miles, 1402 Tulip Tree Lane in West Des Moines at 5:30 pm. To RSVP or for further information, call Eric Dillon at (515) 987-2800 or e-mail dillon AT beckygreenwald.com. The minimum suggested contribution level for this event is $100.

Democracy for America is holding another “Night School” session:

Join us on Wednesday, August 20th as DFA Night School returns for an hour with one of the pioneers of the Netroots movement: Zack Exley.

DFA Night School: Online Organizing w/ Zack Exley

Wednesday, August 20th

8:30pm Eastern Daylight Time

CLICK HERE TO RSVP NOW!

http://democracyforamerica.com…

Zack Exley was an early player in the Dean movement and later went on to work as Director of Online Organizing for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. We’ll be talking about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to organizing online as well as what are some of the new technologies poised to revolutionize campaigns of the future.

Night School is DFA’s interactive online training program. Every month Night School brings top campaign experts right to your home at absolutely no cost to you. Simply visit www.democracyforamerica.com/onlineorganizing and sign up to learn how to listen to the call live on either your home computer or over the telephone.

The training will last approximately one hour and will be accompanied by a slideshow you can view online or download and print out ahead of time.

From One Iowa:

Join other political, civil rights, business, religious and civic leaders to learn more about the Campaign for Marriage Equality in Iowa.  You are invited to join One Iowa and members of our Kitchen Cabinet to discuss our current campaign to ensure that all Iowa families are protected equally!

Campaign for Marriage Equality Briefing

August 20

11:30 AM – 12: 45 PM (Lunch Provided) or

5:00 PM – 6:15 PM (Refreshments Provided)

Davis Brown Law Firm

Board Room – 13th Floor

215 10th Street, Des Moines

Kitchen Cabinet

Lt. Governor Sally Pederson

Mary Middleton

Eric Tabor

Senator Matt McCoy

Alicia Claypool

Rich Eychaner

Gordon Fischer

Marcia Nichols

Mike Simonson

Suzi Alexander

Connie Ryan Terrell

Ben Stone

Mark Daley

RSVP by August 19 to Brad Clark, Campaign Director at brad@oneiowa.org or 515-783-5950

Thursday, August 21:

The Obama campaign will hold a Rural Roundtable Discussion with Congressman Bruce Braley at 12 pm at Luigi’s Restaurant, 1020 S. Frederick Ave in Oelwein.

Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas will campaign for Obama in several places on Thursday:

1:00 PM CDT

Governor Sebelius to speak at a women’s brown bag lunch about pay equity and Senator Obama’s plan to strengthen economic security for America’s women

Scottish Rite Consistory

519 Park St.

Des Moines, Iowa

2:45 PM CDT

Governor Sebelius to hold a community gathering

Funaro’s Deli and Bakery

201 N Buxton St.

Indianola, Iowa

4:00 PM CDT

Governor Sebelius and Becky Greenwald to hold a meet and greet with voters

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change Office

144 E Laurel St.

Waukee, Iowa

5:30 PM CDT

Governor Sebelius to kick-off a volunteer phone bank

Obama Iowa Campaign for Change office

1408 Locust St.

Des Moines, Iowa

Richard Leopold, director of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, is holding a public forum at Lake Wapello State Park Lodge in Drakesville. The public forum begins at 6 p.m. with Director Leopold outlining the department’s top 10 priorities, work being done to develop environmental indicators for the state, providing an update on sustainable funding for natural resources and discussion of local issues. Another hour-and-a-half will be devoted to answering questions from the public.

Friday, August 22:

The Obama campaign will hold a Rural Roundtable Discussion with Chuck Hassebrook, a member of the Agriculture and Rural Policy and Action Committee, at 10 am at Lakeshore Family Restaurant, 1520 Lake Avenue in Storm Lake.

A second Rural Roundtable featuring Hassebrook will take place at 3 pm at the Boone Historical Center, 602 Story Street (Use South Entrance) in  Boone.

Steve King is holding two more town-hall meetings:

9:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.

King to host Spencer Town Hall Meeting

Spencer Library Meeting Room

21 E 3rd St

Spencer, IA

11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

King to host Storm Lake Town Hall Meeting

City Council Chambers

620 Erie St.

Storm Lake, Iowa

I cannot imagine what Maureen Boesen has been going through, trying to deal with her husband’s suicide while parenting four children who suffered a shocking bereavement.

Compounding her grief is a lawsuit from a creditor trying to claim most of her husband’s $3 million life insurance policy:

Maureen Boesen testified that she didn’t know for sure she was in a Great Western Bank office at 10101 University Ave. in Clive or what kind of documents she co-signed with her husband in May.

“I can’t say for sure what I signed,” Maureen Boesen said. “My husband said I was there just to sign some documents because some banks need the wife’s signature on them.”[…]

Great Western officials claim they are entitled to the large majority of the insurance payments because fraudulent documents were used to obtain the loan.

Executives for the bank insisted Maureen Boesen be held responsible for her husband’s filing of false statements to obtain a $3.5 million loan even though they acknowledged she probably didn’t know they were fraudulent. The lawsuit said the bank “does not allege Mrs. Boesen engaged or devised the acts” of falsifying documents.

In many households, the woman keeps track of the family finances. However, many families operate like Ed Boesen’s: the husband handles money issues, and the wife plays little role. It’s easy to see why Maureen Boesen didn’t ask any questions before signing those papers.

When I was growing up, I remember my father warning me many times not to give a future husband total control over the family money, and not to let my husband invest too much into any risky business scheme.

He also taught me that “the most optimistic person in the world is the guy on the brink of bankruptcy,” because he always hopes that the next deal will turn things around.

The Boesen story is making the news because Ed Boesen was a prominent local citizen and died owing an unusually large amount of money. But reckless borrowing by one partner sends plenty of families into bankruptcy every year.

A woman whose husband is the sole wage-earner for the household is particularly vulnerable in this situation:

Maureen Boesen became choked with emotion at one point during Friday’s testimony, when she was asked about her children. The Boesens, who had been married 23 years, have four children, ages 22, 19, 16 and 13. During her examination, she repeatedly insisted she knew little of her husband’s financial world and centered her attention on her family. She said that she would seldom pick up the family’s mail, and all bills were sent to the family accountant.

“I took care of things at the house,” she said. “Ed was at work all the time and he took care of the work part of it.”

Parents, please teach your daughters not to cede total control over family finances and not to sign financial documents without understanding them.

Ragbrai08 pointed me to this post by Steve Clemons, who reports that Wes Clark will not attend the Democratic National Convention in Denver:

Clark was informed by Barack Obama’s people that there was no reason to come.

General Clark has been given no role of any kind at the convention.

Rubbing salt in the wound even more, the “theme” of Wednesday’s Democratic convention agenda is “Securing America.”

Wesley Clark’s PAC also happens to be called SECURING AMERICA.

I have to agree with Paul Rosenberg, who once noted at Open Left that incompetence is not using your strongest surrogate, and idiocy is not using your strongest surrogate in your weakest suit.

Unfortunately, distancing the Obama campaign from Clark will not just reduce Clark’s influence. It will also embolden the right-wing noise machine. If they manage to get the punditocracy to throw a big, unjustified hissy fit, Obama will run scared. Expect further efforts to discredit strong Democratic voices during the general election campaign and next year if Obama beats McCain.

So, definitely cross Clark off the VP list. Senators Joe Biden and Evan Bayh will speak in Denver on Wednesday night of convention week, fueling speculation that one of them will be Obama’s running mate.

Last week, I attended a fundraiser for Steve Sodders with Sen. Tom Harkin. It was a well attended event for being on Monday morning at 8 am.

Sen. Harkin stressed how important it is to elect good people to the statehouse and highlighted all of Steve's great work in the community. Sodders is a deputy sheriff in Marshall County, is on the Red Cross board, serves on the Youth and Shelter Services board, and coaches middle school wrestling.

Then Harkin went on to discuss rising energy costs. Harkin cited increased production of cellulosic ethanol in the 2008 Farm Bill and discussed the potential of renewable energy. One example heused was making ethanol out of algae. He also mentioned how we can't drill our way out of this problem.

I have attended a couple of events for Steve Sodders this year. This was one of the first ones he gave real campaign speech at and I think everyone left impressed. I got the whole speech on video, but the sound didn't come out. Since I was taping the speech, I missed a lot of the details, but here is the gist of the speech.

Sodders told a story of him growing up. There was an elderly lady that lived down the block and he and his brothers would mow her yard and help with yard work. When they'd finish, the lady would get her checkbook out and ask them how much they were worth that day. Steve then made the connection to present day Iowa, saying that he believes Iowans are worth a quality education, health care, and a state where young people want to stay in after graduation. To keep young people in the state, it requires good paying jobs. Sodders said we have a great opportunity to create good paying jobs through the research and development of renewable energy in the State.

Sodders is running for the State Senate in District 22 that covers Marshall and Hardin Counties. The seat was formerly held by Republican Larry McKibben who has retired. Sodders is facing Republican Jarret Heil.  Democrats consider this seat to be one of their top chances to pick up a seat in the Iowa Senate this year. 

2laneIA posted a great diary at Daily Kos with photos of activists in chicken suits outside one of Representative Steve King’s recent town-hall forums. Do click over, not just for the pictures. I love this line:

We used to think King was a chicken hawk.  Now he’s just plain old chicken.

I also enjoyed the way 2laneIA referred to the recent publicity stunt by King and other House Republicans as “the Exxon Sleepover Camp on the House floor.”

Background on King’s excuse for not debating Rob Hubler is here.

Hubler staff and volunteers will be out canvassing in more than a dozen towns today. Go here for more details.

Go to Hubler’s campaign website to get more involved in his effort to send Steve King into early retirement.

UPDATE: Anyone in southeast Iowa have a chicken suit? Apparently King is doing a fundraiser with Mariannette Miller-Meeks, the GOP candidate against Dave Loebsack, on Monday, August 18 at 6 pm at The Drake in Burlington.

On Tuesday, the Des Moines Register reported that the Federal Elections Commission unanimously found “no reason to believe” that Gordon Fischer broke the law in the way his blog Iowa True Blue supported Barack Obama for president.

A supporter of Hillary Clinton had filed the FEC complaint, saying

the blog “ceased being just another political blog” and became a “direct arm” of the Obama campaign after Fischer endorsed Obama. He said the blog included information that was similar to that being disseminated by the Obama campaign.

Tofte said that he also saw a tab labeled “donate” at the Web site and asked Fischer via the Web site why a donation would not have to be disclosed as a donation to the Obama campaign. When he returned to the site later Tofte said he found the “donate” tab no longer existed, and he charged that Fischer changed the Web site and attempted to cover up donations.

In its analysis, the FEC staff said Fischer denied any coordination existed between him and the Obama campaign and said that anything he wrote on the blog was an exercise of his right to free speech. Fischer also denied soliciting donations on the blog.

The staff agreed. “There is no information to suggest that the Obama Committee is coordinating with the Fischer Web site as to its contents,” the FEC analysis said, and added there was no information to suggest the donation tab ever existed.

It’s the right ruling. Political blogging itself is not considered a campaign contribution by the FEC. Many bloggers, including myself, receive press releases and other occasional communications from political campaigns.

It might not be very interesting to read a blog that consists primarily of press releases and talking points, but that certainly falls under the free speech rights of any blogger, in my opinion.

I do not recall whether I ever saw a “donate” button on Fischer’s blog. It’s not possible to evaluate how much his writing changed after he endorsed Obama in September, because in January he reported on his blog that all of his past posts had been deleted. I know that some of his posts during the spring made a lot of Clinton supporters angry, but it’s no FEC violation to be a strong advocate for your candidate.

I have and will continue to support various Democratic candidates on this blog. However, no campaign ever has or will tell me what to write, what to write about or when to write it. If I feel a press release is newsworthy, I write it up. If not, I don’t bother. I don’t submit any material to anyone prior to publication either.

I want to say a few words about blog commenters, because last Sunday, Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu got me thinking about the subject with a long piece called Stop spewing online venom. She talked with a few of the “trolls” who enjoy offending other people at the Register’s website and placed most of the blame for this phenomenon on the Register’s tolerance for anonymity. The newspaper won’t print anonymous guest columns or letters to the editor, but it does allow anonymous comments on its website, and most of the inflammatory material is posted by commenters who don’t use their real names.

The Register’s home-page editor, Yvonne Beasley, spends much of her day taking down posts with “moron,” “retard” and “white trash” in them. “I’ve taken down horrible, perverted things about Shawn Johnson,” she said.

She figures about a dozen people on the Register’s Web site fit the description of trollers, including missdorothy. And Beasley says her communications with counterparts at other papers indicate most handle them just like the Register does.

The problem for the Register is that with 2,000 or so comments posted every day, it’s impossible for one editor to delete all that deserve to be deleted.

Al Tompkins, a professor of ethics and online journalism at the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank, has a problem with newspapers allowing anonymous posts because newspapers are supposed to filter truth and accuracy from fiction and not publish things that are untrue or injurious to others. When names are not used, he said, “people will take advantage of others, bullying, and saying and doing things they wouldn’t otherwise do.”

Nor does he see it as a free-speech issue to allow that.

“If you can’t afford to do it right,” he says, “don’t do it.”

[Register editor Carolyn] Washburn says a feature allows readers to hide online comments. She also encourages use of the “report abuse” tool to steer conversations in a more constructive direction.

Basu thinks the Register should  

gradually start requiring people to provide their names, and begin matching those to e-mail addresses. It’s a safe bet many would stop lobbing missiles in stealth and start being more civil, and the conversations would improve.

Not surprisingly, since I choose to blog as “desmoinesdem,” I disagree with Basu regarding anonymous comments. There are many valid reasons for someone to prefer to use a screen name online.  I would never require Bleeding Heartland users to reveal their real names.

However, I have asked that each person who writes here choose one username for Bleeding Heartland and stick to that. In other words, no “sock puppets” created to lend support for your own position.

While no one has to reveal any personal details here, I ask people not to make false statements about themselves either. You’re free to never mention your gender, age or location at Bleeding Heartland, but if you say you are a thirty-something mom of two in Windsor Heights, you should be a thirty-something mom of two in Windsor Heights.

Bleeding Heartland has fortunately not attracted many trolls. Users can rate comments, and comments can be hidden if they receive too many “zero” ratings.

I am reposting some guidelines for rating other people’s comments at Bleeding Heartland:

You don’t have to rate comments (my personal style is to be sparing in handing out ratings), but if you do, you can give five possible ratings.

“4” is for excellent. That means the comment has valuable insight, original information or analysis, and makes a strong contribution to dialogue at Bleeding Heartland.

“3” is for good. You might use this if you largely agree with someone’s comment, but not with every point he or she makes.

“2” is for marginal. You might use this if you strongly disagree with the content of someone’s comment. Also, a 2 rating could be a “shot across the bow” to warn someone that the line of argument in the comment didn’t do much to advance dialogue here, or comes close to crossing a line.

“1” is for unproductive. If you not only strongly disagree with a comment, but feel that it detracts from the atmosphere here (for instance, because it is disrespectful or contains ad hominem attacks), you might give it a 1.

“0” is for troll. If more than one user gives a comment a zero, it will be hidden so that some Bleeding Heartland readers cannot see it.

Never use a zero rating to express disagreement with the argument someone is making. That is ratings abuse, and if you do it repeatedly, Bleeding Heartland administrators will either take away your ability to rate comments or potentially ban you from posting here.

A zero rating should be reserved for extreme circumstances, when the comment deserves to be hidden. For instance, if someone is impersonating someone else by choosing a different real person’s name as a screen name (for instance, if I signed up as “Leonard Boswell” and posted ridiculous comments pretending to come from him).

Comments that use racist or otherwise bigoted language also would merit a zero.

Trying to expose the real names of Bleeding Heartland users who choose to write under screen names will not be tolerated either.

Slanderous, ad hominem attacks could get a zero rating too, but be careful not to accuse other posters of slander just because you disagree with their point of view or interpretation of events.