If you like being outdoors in the summer

Consider signing up to help the DNR figure out how many frogs and toads remain in Iowa’s wetlands.

This went out on the Sierra Club’s e-mail loop:

Hi Folks!

Just thought I’d let you know about an opportunity that might interest some of you or your group’s membership.  The Iowa Frog and Toad Call Survey has been in place since 1991 with hundreds of dedicated volunteers going out during the spring and summer to listen at some of their nearby wetlands.   If you are interested in joining this group of volunteers the Wildlife Diversity Program will be hosting 3 workshops this March to train folks to start and run a survey of their own. The workshops will run from 12:30 to 4:30 and will cover Iowa frog and toad id, how to locate and monitor wetlands, what data to collect, and finally how to submit the data to the DNR.

If you know of anyone who might be interested in one of these workshops please feel free to pass this on.

Thanks for your time.  You can contact me at stephanie.shepherd AT dnr.iowa.gov if you would like additional info.

Registration forms are available at: http://www.iowadnr.com/wildlif…

Thank you!

Stephanie

Pre-registration is required along with a $5.00 fee. The workshop schedule is as follows:

NORTHWEST IOWA

March 1, 2008  Ruthven, IA

LOCATION: Lost Island Lake Nature Center, Palo Alto CCB, 3259 355th Ave., Ruthven, IA

TIME: 12:30 pm to 4:30 pm  

EASTERN IOWA

March 15, 2008  Center Junction, IA  Jones County

LOCATION: Jones County Conservation Board Nature Center, Central Park, 12515 Central Park Road, Center Junction, IA

TIME: 12:30 pm to 4:30 pm

CENTRAL IOWA

March 29, 2008  Maxwell, IA  Polk County  

LOCATION: Chichaqua Bottoms LongHouse, 8700 NE 126 Ave., Maxwell, IA

TIME: 12:30 pm to 4:30 pm

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Super Tuesday prediction open thread

It is strange for me to feel so detached the day before an election. I don’t have a dog in this fight anymore. I see advantages and disadvantages to both Clinton and Obama as candidates and as presidents. I could live with either and would be enthusiastic about neither.

Super Tuesday, which looked a couple of weeks ago like it would be a blowout for Clinton, is up for grabs now with Obama surging in some key states. Put your predictions in this thread.

1. How many of the 22 states will Clinton win, how many will Obama win, and how many will be split decisions (with one candidate winning the popular vote and the other winning a majority of the delegates)?

2. Who will have the bigger winning margin: Obama in Illinois, or Clinton in New York?

3. Who will win each of the following states tomorrow?

Alabama

Alaska

Arizona

Arkansas

California

Colorado

Connecticut

Delaware

Georgia

Idaho

Illinois

Kansas

Massachusetts

Minnesota

Missouri

New Jersey

New Mexico

New York

North Dakota

Oklahoma

Tennessee

Utah

Check out MyDD and Open Left for recent polling data in these states, but keep in mind that there haven’t been any polls in some of them.

UPDATE: Obama supporter poblano has his predictions here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

It’s based on delegates, not popular vote, so he thinks several states will be a tie.

I forgot to add Americans abroad and American Samoa to the list of entities voting today. I predict Obama will win both of those groups.

I think Clinton will win these 11 states today: AZ, AR, CA, DE, MA, NJ, NM, NY, ND, OK, TN

Although Obama has all the momentum in CA, I pick Clinton to hang on (barely) there. I was persuaded by silver spring’s diary that most of the polls understate the percentage of women voters:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

I think Obama will win these 11 states today: AL, AK, CO, CT, GA, ID, IL, KS, MN, MO, UT

I think that Obama’s winning margin in IL will be bigger than Clinton’s winning margin in NY.

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Boswell sitting on a big pile of cash

As we all knew would be the case, Leonard Boswell is going to have plenty of money for this campaign. According to Federal Election Commission records, Boswell has more than $730,000 in the bank:

he raised about $131,000 during the last quarter of 2007, with $101,000 coming from political action committees.

Through 2007, he has raised about $730,000, of which $540,000 came from PACs, or close to 74 percent of his contributions.

I’m surprised that such a large proportion of the money came from PACs. I’m sure there will be much more where that came from in Q1 and Q2 of this year.

The Fallon for Congress website is still under construction, but you can donate to his campaign through ActBlue if you are so inclined.

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Officials fret over cost of dealing with lead poisoning

Uh oh. The Des Moines Register is warning that “a new law that requires all Iowa youngsters to be tested for lead by the time they enter kindergarten could swamp state and local taxpayers in ways lawmakers did not foresee.”

House File 158 was passed last year as part of a campaign against lead poisoning, which health officials describe as one of the most preventable causes of learning disabilities and brain damage in young children. Statewide, more than 10,000 Iowans under age 6 had toxic levels of lead in their blood between 2002 and 2006. Thousands more likely went unnoticed, officials say, because they weren’t tested.

The new law is scheduled to take effect this fall.

“I like to describe these kids as canaries in the coal mine,” said Rick Kozin of the Polk County Health Department. “We let the kids get sick, and then we identify the problem homes.

“With this law, we’re going to find more canaries than we’ve ever found before.”

But health and housing experts say the ripple effect of the law could devastate public and private pocketbooks. Potential fallout includes:

A statewide shortage of inspectors qualified to check houses where lead-poisoned children live or play.

Huge bills, measured in tens of thousands of dollars, to clean or remove lead.

Unprecedented demand for temporary housing when lead-related work forces families from their homes.

“This could be overwhelming,” Polk County Supervisor Angela Connolly said.

While spending tens of thousands of dollars to deal with lead in a building may seem like a lot of money, consider this: children affected by lead poisoning are more likely to need costly special-education programs in school. That’s not a one-time cost, that’s every year they are in school.

Also, lead exposure has been linked to criminal activity. Research suggests that removing lead from paint and gasoline in the 1970s is one reason that violent crime rates in the U.S. dropped dramatically in the 1990s.

Building more prisons to house more criminals is extremely costly in human terms as well as monetarily.

If we remove lead paint hazards from homes, we will reduce exposure for all future children living in those homes, which will save us money in our education budgets and will possibly reduce crime far into the future.

Let’s not be penny-wise and pound-foolish in dealing with this problem.

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Legislature should back Mauro, not Culver, on voting machines

The Sunday edition of the Des Moines Register has a front-page story on the disagreement between Governor Chet Culver and Secretary of State Mike Mauro over Iowa’s voting machines. Key passage:

Meanwhile, each man is trying to drum up support for his own proposal for ensuring a paper trail for every voting machine in Iowa.

Mauro wants to spend $9.7 million to give every voter an actual paper ballot that could be recounted later.

Culver wants to spend only $2 million to equip touch-screen voting machines, which have electronic ballots, with a special printer that shows voters their choices on a continuous roll of paper.

In Mauro’s cheering section are watchdog groups, and some key lawmakers and county election officials of both political stripes.

Sean Flaherty of Iowans for Voting Integrity, a Fairfield-based citizens group, gave Culver’s plan a thumbs down.

“Paper printouts are better than no paper trail, but spending money on paper-trail printers is chasing good money after bad,” said Flaherty, of North Liberty. “No one respects these printers, and it is likely that Congress will ban them in the near future.”

Culver blasted the more expensive plan last week.

“Money does not grow on trees around here,” he said in an interview. “The idea that we could come up with $9 million right now is a pipe dream. It’s irresponsible to suggest otherwise.”

Mauro has said he would pay for his plan for optical scan machines and ballot-marking devices with $3.7 million already earmarked, and by paying the voting equipment vendor the remaining $6 million on installment over the next three years.

As I’ve written before, I agree with Mauro on this issue. I lack confidence in the technology that would attach paper receipts to touchscreen machines, and such a fix would probably be throwing good money after bad, since the federal government may outlaw touchscreen machines in the next few years.

You can find more background on the issue, as well as persuasive arguments in favor of paper ballots, at the Iowa Voters site, which is dedicated to “open and transparent elections.”

Speaking of federal legislation, if you check out Blog for Iowa, Susannah Goodman of Common Cause and Jerry Depew of Iowa Voters have information on an important bill proposed by Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey (H.R. 5036, the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008).

While no voting system is error-free, the recent recount of the New Hampshire primary results showed that the error rate for optical-scanner precincts was very low.

At some point we need to bite the bullet and spend the money necessary to get optical scanners in all the Iowa counties. In the event of another very close election, we need to have real paper ballots to recount.

I would also support hand recounts of a few precincts (randomly chosen) afer every state election. Apparently a bill to that effect is under consideration in the New Hampshire legislature. I don’t know if anyone has proposed a similar bill in Iowa before.

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Iowa joins California's lawsuit against the EPA

I haven’t seen any news reports about it yet, but the Iowa Environmental Council put out a release yesterday praising this action by Attorney General Tom Miller:

Today advocates for clean energy solutions applauded Attorney General Tom Miller for a step that could help Iowans reduce emissions from their cars, which endanger public health and contribute to global warming.

The Iowa Attorney General’s office today joined California’s lawsuit against the EPA, for its legal action which denied states’ rights to adopt vehicle emissions standards to regulate global warming emissions.

Nathaniel Baer, energy program director for the Iowa Environmental Council, expects that states will prevail in court.

“If the federal government refuses to lead on climate change, states need the appropriate tools to step up to the challenge,” said Baer. “Better standards for car emissions will help reduce global warming emissions and save Iowans money at the pump.”

UPDATE: Dien Judge has more on this story at Iowa Independent:

http://www.iowaindependent.com…

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New Yorkers overreact to Grassley's comments on Rudy

Chuck Grassley provoked the wrath of New Yorkers with these comments about why Rudy Giuliani failed to do well in Iowa:

“Lifestyle,” Grassley replied. “Things you do in Las Vegas stay in Las Vegas. Things you do in New York don’t stay in New York. I think a New York personality … hasn’t gone over in some places.”[…]

Continued Grassley: “It seemed to me like when he was campaigning in Iowa, he did not have the one-on-one relationship. He didn’t take time to have the one-on-one relationship with people, even with the few events he was at. He tended to be in and out.

Some New York columnists and public figures have been piling on Grassley, calling him a “hick,” a “moron” and worse, leading the Register to publish a follow-up on this story today.

I think Grassley’s only half-right, by the way. Giuliani failed in Iowa because he didn’t do the slightest bit of outreach, even to many moderates who were inclined to support him.

I know of prominent Iowa Republicans who had considered endorsing Giuliani publicly, but ended up on the sidelines because he just wasn’t making the effort. I also remember overhearing a man in a restaurant telling his friends, “I thought I was gonna be for Rudy, but I am just loving Romney now.”

You can’t win if you don’t play, and Rudy wasn’t playing.

I think he could have finished a strong third or perhaps even second if he’d run a better campaign in Iowa.

On the other hand, he spent more time campaigning in New Hampshire and failed to move in the polls there. Maybe people really did like Rudy less the more they saw of him.

For me, the only disappointing thing about the Giuliani campaign’s slow-motion implosion is that Steve Gilliard wasn’t around to write about it.

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Boswell wants his constituents to know he's working for them

I read on the front page of Wednesday’s Des Moines Register that this week, Representative Leonard Boswell introduced legislation directing the U.S. Postal Service to create a unique zip code for my suburb of Windsor Heights.

As we’ve discussed here at Bleeding Heartland, a recent survey of Windsor Heights residents showed that 99 percent are satisfied with the quality of life in Windsor Heights, and 89 percent described the city services and quality of life as “above average.”

Apparently the most frequent complaint city officials hear from residents is the lack of a unique zip code. Windsor Heights has three different zip codes; two mostly cover neighborhoods in Des Moines, and one mostly covers parts of Urbandale.

According to the Register on Wednesday,

Confusion between the ZIP codes and city boundaries has caused mail to be undelivered or returned to senders, has caused difficulty in tracking sex offenders, and has created problems for businesses.

Despite pleas from Windsor Heights city officials, U.S. postal officials have remained adamant that the suburb will not get its own ZIP code. Postal officials say the town has too few residents and doesn’t have a stand-alone post office. The city receives its mail from three post offices in Des Moines and Urbandale.

The article goes on to note that more than 100 Iowa cities and towns with smaller populations than Windsor Heights have unique zip codes, but that’s not the point of this post.

I personally know Windsor Heights residents who asked Boswell’s office years ago to help us get a zip code.

He just introduced a bill on the subject this week.

It’s too early to know whether Boswell’s proposed legislation has any chance of passing, or even getting out of the House Government Oversight and Reform subcommittee.

“We hope it will go forward, and the congressman will work hard with his colleagues in the House to get it moving,” Boswell spokeswoman McAvoy said.

Looks to me like this is another reason to thank Ed Fallon for challenging Boswell in the primary to represent Iowa’s third Congressional district.  

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Iowa Democratic Party is Hiring!

Are you interested in technology and politics?  Do you want to work in a swing state to help elect Democrats?  Do your friends come to you with their computer problems?  If this sounds familiar, the Iowa Democratic Party wants you.

We are looking for a highly-motivated individual to serve as IT assistant for our coordinated campaign.  While there will be the usual rigmarole of fixing computers and printers, it will  also be a chance to gain experience in micro-targeting, web and cell-based organizing, and more.  If you're interested in innovating at the intersection of politics and technology, you're probably the right person for the job.

We have one position starting mid-February, and another in early May. If you are interested in either, please contact Drew Miller at dmiller@iowademocrats.org.  You may also call the Iowa Democratic Party t (515) 244-7292.

We are also hiring right now for regional field directors (that's what I did last cycle), and Senate and House campaign managers.  At some point in the future we will be hiring for field organizers and summer canvassers, but you're more than welcome to send your resume now.  Email me any questions, or just leave them in the comments!

Iowa Republicans downbeat about election prospects

As Simon Stevenson noted here last week, the Iowa Republican Party’s fundraising lags well behind what Iowa Democrats have raised for the upcoming elections.

Now the Des Moines Register reports that Tom Harkin has $3.4 million in the bank going into his re-election campaign. Prominent Republicans are taking a pass on this race, and Harkin’s only declared opponent

is Steve Rathje, a Cedar Rapids businessman. Rathje as of Sept. 30 had raised about $49,000 for his campaign and had $259 cash on hand.

Finally, Harkin gets to take it easy. He had to fight hard against Greg Ganske in 2002, although he ended up winning by a comfortable margin.

Meanwhile, Ray Hoffman stepped down as chairman of the Iowa Republican Party halfway through his term and has been replaced by Stewart Iverson, who used to be the top Republican in the Iowa Senate but was blamed by some for the erosion of the GOP’s majority in that body.

Hoffman has said he is stepping down to focus more time on his growing restaurant business in Sioux City, but I suspect that the GOP’s woeful election prospects weighed on his mind as well.

As the Des Moines Register reported on Sunday, Iowa Republicans are taking a pass on the big races this year. So far Congressman Leonard Boswell (IA-03) does not even have a declared Republican opponent. This passage from that article was revealing:

Iowa Republicans’ apparent hesitation to mount strong challenges in these two races [against Harkin and Boswell] represents what top GOP activists and strategists say is a low point for the party that might not begin to rebound until after legislative and congressional districts are redrawn in 2012.

“We’ll be lucky with anything we get this year,” said Steve Roberts, a Republican National Committee member from Des Moines. “I don’t think there are a lot of people with high expectations this year. It’s a long road back for us this time.”

Danny Carroll, a former state legislator from Grinnell, considered running against Boswell, but told the Register,

Boswell has won against credible GOP candidates in more competitive political environments and 2008 does not look good.

“I’ve watched the pendulum swing for us,” said Carroll, who went from second in command of the Iowa House majority to one of his party’s highest-ranking casualties in 2006. “I think it’s a time of re-evaluation and reorganizing. I think we’re all just trying to figure it out for ourselves.”

Carroll’s decision was based in part on his belief that the district’s most Democrat-leaning counties, where Republican candidates have done well without winning in recent elections, had become less competitive.

Now, some people in the Democratic establishment are going to warn us that we better not support Ed Fallon in the primary against Boswell, because if we do, we might lose the seat.

But let’s be realistic. Boswell has no Republican opponent. If he wins a tough primary, it’s not going to matter.

If Fallon wins the primary, will some Republican come out of the woodwork to challenge him? If so, that candidate will be starting to build a fundraising and outreach effort six months after Fallon started working the district hard:

Craig Robinson, political director of the Republican Party of Iowa, said a Fallon victory might convince an established candidate to enter the race. He also cautioned against such a strategy, which would keep a Republican from getting organized until after the June 3 primary.

“If the Democrats are going to have a contested primary, my advice is to get out there now and start raising money and building a campaign organization,” said Robinson.

In any event, the Register’s article from Sunday makes clear that Iowa’s third Congressional district leans even more Democratic following the presidential caucuses:

For instance, more than 8,600 Polk County voters changed their registration to Democrat in January, the vast majority to participate in the Jan. 3 presidential caucuses, according to a preliminary monthly report by the Polk County auditor. The changes represented an increase in Democratic membership of 8.7 percent compared to December 2007.

By contrast, roughly 3,100 Polk County voters changed their registration to Republican, an increase of 4.2 percent.

In Jasper County, 707 voters changed their registration to Democrat, an increase of 7.5 percent, compared to 284 who changed to Republican, an increase of 4.3 percent.

Some of those new Democrats may change their registration back to independent or Republican, but count on many to remain in the Democratic fold. Fallon already had a strong base in Polk County, where he got about 40 percent of the vote in the 2006 gubernatorial primary, and Polk County contributes at least 75 percent of the votes in the third Congressional district.

Democratic turnout for the general election is usually higher in presidential election years as well, which further improves our prospects of holding the district.

Republicans’ pessimism is great news for Iowa Democrats, and makes this an ideal year for us to build on our state legislative majorities while getting a stronger progressive to represent central Iowans in Congress.

The one good piece of news for Iowa Republicans is that Congressman Tom Latham (IA-04)

has been named the top Republican on a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.

Latham, of Ames, is the only member of the U.S. House from Iowa on the influential committee, which controls government spending.

Latham’s district was always going to be an uphill battle for Democrats, and this will make it that much tougher.

But overall, it doesn’t look like Iowa Republicans will have much to celebrate this November.

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Grassley got some good things in a bad bill

As I’ve written, the so-called “economic stimulus” bill is a charade that won’t really help the economy.

However, I give full credit to Chuck Grassley for working hard to get good provisions on renewable energy incentives and green jobs into the version that passed the Senate Finance Committee today. A Sierra Club press release notes:

The $5.5 billion package includes short-term extensions of key renewable energy tax incentives due to expire at the end of 2008–including the Production Tax Credit (PTC), Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar, clean energy bonds, and other measures designed to promote energy efficiency.

I’m putting the full text of the Sierra Club’s statement after the jump. It includes examples of how “green jobs” have improved local economies.

Grassley has disappointed environmentalists many times, but today he came through and significantly improved the bill that’s going to the Senate floor.

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Iowa a major contributor to Gulf of Mexico "dead zone"

To our state’s shame, Iowa and other corn belt states are still the largest contributors to the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a new study.

The logical thing would be to impose more regulations on the use of fertilizers and other farming practices that contribute to the problem. But don’t hold your breath for any movement on those issues at the statehouse. After all, Iowa is an agricultural state and anyone who doesn’t like it can leave in any of four directions.  

A sad day for Edwards supporters

Just last week I wrote a front-page post for MyDD called Ten arguments for sticking with John Edwards. I was getting ready to post the revised version on Daily Kos today or tomorrow, when I saw the news this morning that Edwards had decided to leave the race.

I was hoping Edwards would stay in to keep his message out there. I hope that he decided to quit for political reasons, or because he ran out of money, rather than because of a change in Elizabeth’s condition.

I feel lucky to have caucused for Edwards already. I have no idea how I would vote now. For most of the past year I strongly preferred Obama to Clinton, but in the past few months I’ve grown disenchanted with Obama’s campaign and skeptical about his ability to win. Maybe I would write in Edwards or Al Gore rather than vote for either of the candidates left in the race–I don’t know.

As for how this affects the race, I also have no idea. In some states, Clinton clearly benefits, while in others, Obama may benefit. My own siblings who supported Edwards are split, with my brothers breaking for Obama and my sister strongly leaning to Clinton.

Since most Bleeding Heartland readers seem to be Obama supporters, I recommend this diary by the wonderful JedReport called Some tips for Obama supporters, from an Edwards partisan.

UPDATE: Here is a link to the text and video of Edwards’ farewell address:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…

Florida primary results open thread

Sigh. McCain pulled this one out and is the clear front-runner, especially since Rudy Giuliani is going to endorse him. I was hoping Rudy wouldn’t finish in the top three in a single state.

On the bright side, Romney has more money, and conservative groups are starting to target McCain, with ads such as this one comparing McCain to Hillary Clinton:

http://link.brightcove.com/ser…

Results with 77 percent of precincts reporting:

McCain 615,203 (36%)

Romney 531,139 (31%)

Giuliani 252,925 (15%)

Huckabee 228,687 (14%)

Paul 55,070 (3%)

Thompson 20,231 (1%)

Clinton 753,543 (50%)

Obama 497,341 (33%)

Edwards 218,899 (14%)

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If you don't have plans for this weekend

You might want to head to Cedar Rapids for the Iowa Network for Community Agriculture’s 13th annual local foods conference on Friday and Saturday. Click the link for more details about the event.

Alternatively, if you like being out in the freezing cold, you could ride your bike from Perry to Rippey on Saturday. Click the link for info on events planned in both communities, or check out the websites for Bike Iowa and the Iowa Bicycle Coalition.

Local control and VOICE activists, swarm the Capitol tomorrow

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (ICCI) is holding its lobby day at the State Capitol on Tuesday, January 29.

The main issues on the agenda are local control over siting of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and the Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections bill, which would create a voluntary public-financing option for state elections.

Here is the agenda for the day:

10:30-11:15 – Rally and Legislators addressing crowd

11:15-12:30 – Lunch and individual lobbying

12:30-1 – Head over to Wallace Building

1-1:30 – Meeting w/ DNR Director Rich Leopold

1:30-2:30 – Other meetings/events

2:230-3 – Meeting w/ Gov. Culver’s Chief Policy Adviser, Jim Larew

“People Matter More, Money Matters Less”

If you attend this event, please put up a diary afterwards to let us know how it went.

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State of the Union open thread

I won't be tuning in, but if you watch the address, document the atrocities here (as Atrios would say).

Lucky break for Obama, as Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius will give the Democrats' response, raising her national profile just after she announced that she will back Obama's presidential bid. 

UPDATE: Todd Beeton, the MyDD front-pager who supports Obama, didn’t think much of the response by Sebelius:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008…

I wasn’t watching, but I am surprised if she did not do well. When I saw her speak in person a couple of years ago, she was fabulous. Of course, she wasn’t reading a script of someone else’s talking points on that occasion.

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