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.  

The end of the second filing deadline is coming up on Tuesday, July 15th. We are featuring Tim Hoy in House District 44 on the Iowa Blogs Expanding the Majority Act Blue page.

The race in House District 44 is one of the top pick up opportunities for Democrats to expand their majority in the House. It is an open seat formerly held by Polly Granzow. Running on the Democratic side is Tim Hoy. Tim was narrowly defeated by Granzow in 2006 by a mere 255 votes.

House District 44 covers all of Hardin County, Western Marshall County, and piece of Franklin County. Tim grew up in Hardin County and currently owns and operates the Ahoy Soda Fountain and Pharmacy in Eldora. He served on the city council and as mayor in Eldora.

Back in May, 7 people had donated to the Iowa Blogs Expanding the Majority Act Blue page.  Hopefully, we can get a total of 15 donations by the 15th.

Please consider donating to Tim Hoy and other great candidates today and help expand the Democratic majority in the Iowa House.

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.