Take the poll, and elaborate on your opinion in the comments section if you like.

Take the poll, and elaborate on your opinion in the comments section if you like.

Now that the legislative session is over, it’s time to put up another set of these leadership polls.

Take the poll, and elaborate on your opinion in the comments section if you like.

I was for Ed Fallon in last year’s gubernatorial primary, and one big reason was Ed’s advocacy of an economic development strategy that did not rely on corporate welfare.

With that in mind, I was relieved that Chet Culver beat out Mike Blouin in the primary. Blouin in the governor’s mansion would have meant four more years of stressing the “Iowa Values Fund,” with exaggerated claims about the jobs created by the large corporations that got the money.

I was further reassured about Culver’s stance on economic development when he put Mike Tramontina in charge of the Iowa Department of Economic Development and called for a $1 million increase in funding for the the Main Street Iowa Program. The Main Street Program involves relatively small grants that help revitalize city and town centers.

The Iowa Senate reduced the budget increase for the Main Street Program to $500,000, and on the final day of the session the House Appropriations Committee further reduced that figure by another $100K. Still, we ended up with a $400,000 increase in funding for the Main Street Program, and I can’t imagine that would have happened under a Governor Blouin.

That said, Culver’s emphasis on the $100 million Power Fund to promote renewable energy did concern me. Not because I am against renewable energy, but because I feared that most of the money would go to subsidize ethanol and biodiesel at the expense of other technologies, such as wind, solar, and geothermal power. Culver has touted the economic benefits of the Power Fund mainly in connection with biofuels.

But this great letter to the editor published in the Des Moines Register’s Sunday edition indicates that the biofuels industry is not creating nearly as many jobs as we have been told.

The author of the letter is ISU economist David Swenson. He takes issue with the claims of the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), a trade association promoting ethanol and biodiesel. Culver has claimed that the biofuels industry has created 53,000 jobs in Iowa, and it’s the RFA that has been pushing that number.

Swenson objects that this number is misleading because it includes 21,700 corn and soybean production jobs:

To claim that they were “created” is quite odd since they were already here. Biofuels does not “create” new farmers.

Also, that figure includes 22,300 temporary construction and related jobs (a very optimistic figure at best) and it treats those jobs as if they were part of the annual economy. They are temporary, and when this industry is fully deployed in its current corn-based manifestation, they will evaporate.

The true net gain in jobs to the state is likely somewhere less than 7,000 if we are simply auditing what is new to the Iowa economy during this decade and measuring those impacts with conventional economic impact procedures.

Investing in renewable technology makes sense for Iowa, but before we put all our eggs in the biofuels basket, we need a realistic idea about the economic benefits that industry brings to Iowa.

Thanks to Professor Swenson for reminding Register readers that we can’t take numbers produced by the RFA at face value.

I feel compelled to defend Chris Dodd after reading this post on Radio Iowa. (Hat tip Deeth).

Radio Iowa notes that Dodd keeps telling the same joke at every campaign stop about being the only guy in the race who gets mailings from both the AARP and diaper services. After seeing Dodd speak before a group of young Democrats, Radio Iowa had a chance to ask a question:

As Dodd was walking out of the restaurant where he had just given his 20-minute speech, followed by about 20 minutes of answering questions, I began asking about the joke.  “You always tell that joke about the AARP and diaper services,” I started.

“They hadn’t heard it,” Dodd quickly interrupted, referencing his noon-time audience.

“But I’m wondering how a guy tells a joke like that, obviously exhibiting that he has the coin for a diaper service, and how he squares that with his discussion of how the middle class is being pinched,” I continued.

“It was a joke,” Dodd said.  He laughed and walked away.

Cut the guy some slack–every candidate gives basically the same stump speech, including the same jokes, at every campaign stop.

I must have heard Chet Culver’s joke about his daughter and the letter-carriers’ endorsement half a dozen times last year. (Short version: Chet is tucking in his daughter, going through the bedtime ritual of talking about something nice that happened that day. Chet mentions that he got endorsed by the Letter-Carriers’ association. Daughter asks what that means. Chet says it means the people who deliver the mail are going to vote for him. Daughter asks, “Even the guy who delivers Nussle’s mail?”)

John Edwards has talked about being the son of a mill worker so many times that he added a joke to his stump speech about how the audience may have heard once that he is the son of a mill worker.

Now, if Radio Iowa’s complaint is that people in Iowa don’t use diaper services and can’t relate to the joke, that’s partly true, at least concerning young voters. As a mom of two kids in cloth diapers, I can confirm that there are no cloth diaper laundry services in Iowa (only some cloth diaper sellers, like this one and this one).

If Radio Iowa’s complaint is that someone who can afford a diaper service may seem out of touch with middle-class concerns, I disagree. People who remember the days of diaper services could tell you that they were affordable for middle-class families. It wasn’t a luxury service that only the wealthy used.

On the contrary, wealthier people were among the first to start using disposable diapers when they became more widely available in the 1960s. Plenty of parents from an older generation have told me that they couldn’t afford disposable diapers when their kids were babies.

But I digress. Please don’t hassle candidates for telling the same jokes over and over this year.

And if you’ve got babies or are planning to have babies in the future, be aware of the environmental and health benefits, not to mention the cost savings, of using cloth diapers. If you want to learn more, click here for the Real Diaper Association website.

Or, if you live in central Iowa, e-mail me at desmoinesdem AT yahoo.com and I will tell you when and where the monthly “cloth diaper crowd” meets.

I already posted information about Biden’s town hall meeting in Ankeny this morning, Here are more details about his scheduled appearances in Iowa over the next couple of days:

Saturday, May 5

10:30 AM  SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING WITH ANKENY AREA DEMOCRATS

  Ankeny Area Historical Society
  301 SW Third Street

  Ankeny, IA

1:30 PM   SEN. BIDEN TO ATTEND HOUSE PARTY IN FRANKLIN COUNTY

  Home of Mildred and Ben van Hove
  121 Windsor Boulevard

  Hampton, IA

4:30 PM   SEN. BIDEN TO ADDRESS IOWA BROADCAST NEWS ASSOCIATION’S SPRING CONVENTION

  Best Western Holiday Lodge

  2023 7th Ave. North

  Clear Lake, IA

7:00 PM   SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING IN CERRO GORDO COUNTY

  Borealis Gourmet Ice Cream Palace
  316 North Federal Ave

  Mason City, IA

Sunday May 6, 2007

12:00PM  SEN. BIDEN WILL ATTEND A HOUSE PARTY FUNDRAISER WITH STATE SEN. JEFF DANIELSON 
  IN BLACK HAWK COUNTY

  Home of Nick Powers

  3335 Santa Maria

  Waterloo, IA

2:30 PM  SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING WITH STATE SEN. BRIAN SCHOENJAHN AND  FAYETTE COUNTY DEMOCRATS

  Dancing Lions Dance Hall

  110 S. Fredrick

  Oelwein, IA

5:30 PM  SEN. BIDEN TO HOLD IRAQ TOWN HALL MEETING IN LINN COUNTY

  Longbranch Hotel

  90 Twixt Town Road
  Cedar Rapids, IA

Monday May 7, 2007

6:15 PM  SEN. JOE BIDEN TO ATTEND BBQ DINNER HOSTED BY STATE SEN. JOE SENG

  Home of State Sen. Joe Seng

  901 Treemont

  Davenport, IA

If you attend any of these events, please consider putting up a diary afterwards with your impressions, or just attach your thoughts to the comments section below this post.

The Des Moines Register reported on Friday that Florida’s decision to move its primary to January 29 (the same date that the South Carolina primary is scheduled) may prompt New Hampshire to schedule its primary a week earlier.

Since Iowa and New Hampshire have agreed that the Iowa caucuses will be held eight days before the New Hampshire primary, that means the caucuses would be held on January 7, instead of on January 14 as tentatively scheduled.

As a precinct captain, I hope that this does not happen. You can’t do any serious GOTV work during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. People will be returning home on January 1 or 2, or going back to work, or recovering from holiday stress. It’s a hectic time, and I don’t imagine it being a time that people would welcome phone calls or door knocks from volunteers trying to get them to vote.

My husband pointed out that very few college students would be back in time for the Iowa caucuses if they were held on January 7. That’s got to be bad news for Barack Obama, but possibly also for John Edwards, since he is likely to have strong support on college campuses as well (I expect Ed Fallon to help his campaign with this crowd).

Of course, even on January 14 there may be quite a few college students who are not back from their winter breaks.

I’m sympathetic to Chris Bowers of MyDD, who has advocated this calendar instead:

December 10th (Monday): Iowa

December 18th (Tuesday): New Hampshire

January 19th (Saturday): Nevada

January 29th (Tuesday): South Carolina, Florida, Michigan

February 5th (Tuesday) National Primary

He sees the advantages as follows:

New Hampshire and Iowa placated. They still get to go first–in fact, they get to go a lot earlier relative to other states in the current calendar. There is no way any state moves into a window that includes the holidays.

New Hampshire and Iowa reduced. The two “traditional” states will take place so much earlier than any other state, that whatever “momentum” candidates derive from those states will be significantly muted over five weeks later.

Diverse groups play important, early role. Nevada, South Carolina, Florida and Michigan will effectively function as a second set of early contests to immediately precede Super Tuesday. This will allow for significant, early state voting representation for African-Americans, Latinos, union members, Jews, and ever region of the country.

Frontloading significantly eased. In this calendar, the primary / caucus season lasts for fifty-eight days, instead of twenty-three. This will give voters more time to decide, and give candidates more time to build up a national operation. In 2004, Kerry was severely lacking in nationwide staff after his early victories, including in states like Ohio and Florida, and this deficit might have cost him the election. At the same time, the primary season was over pretty much the same day it began in 2004, but with this calendar, from the start of the campaign until Super Tuesday voters would have a lot more time to make up their minds.

Almost everyone gets a voice: The national primary on February 5th will give more people a real say in determining the nominee than at any nomination process in two decades.

Nominee still decided early. With nine months between Super Tuesday and Election Day, there is plenty of time to rally around the eventually nominee.

This has a lot going for it, except that I wouldn’t look forward to working my precinct right after Thanksgiving. People get so busy in December with shopping, holiday parties, kids’ programs and recitals. I think it would be even harder to talk marginal voters into coming out for an hour on a Monday night.

It’s too late to fix this cycle, and perhaps Iowa will never get to go first again, so it won’t matter. But I would support pushing the start of the primary season way back to mid-February, like it used to be in the 1980s. I don’t like the idea of holding the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary during or shortly after the holiday season.

It’s not Iowa political news, but since all of us here use computers, I thought this Greenpeace campaign would be of interest to the community.

Greenpeace has been ranking mobile and personal computer manufacturers on “on their global policies and practice on eliminating harmful chemicals and on taking responsibility for their products once they are discarded by consumers.”

Click through to read more details about the criteria Greenpeace uses for their rankings. The idea is to get the corporations to remove the most toxic chemicals, such as PVC, from their products:

Substituting harmful chemicals in the production of electronics will prevent worker exposure to these substances and contamination of communities that neighbor production facilities. Eliminating harmful substances will also prevent leaching/off-gassing of chemicals like brominated flame retardants (BFR) during use, and enable electronic scrap to be safely recycled. The presence of toxic substances in electronics perpetuates the toxic cycle – during reprocessing of electronic waste and by using contaminated secondary materials to make new products.

After hearing from 20,000 people, Apple became the first company to respond to the Greenpeace campaign, announcing plans this week to produce a “greener” Apple:

Apple has declared a phase out of the worst chemicals in its product range, Brominated Fire Retardants (BFRs) and Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) by 2008. That beats Dell and other computer manufacturer’s pledge to phase them out by 2009.

Click through for more information; Apple could still do much more to promote recycling of the company’s products, especially outside the U.S.

If you want to join this Powerbook user in taking action on this issue, or if you want to learn more about Greenpeace’s online campaigns, click here.

I got an e-mail from the central Iowa chapter of the Sierra Club publicizing several upcoming volunteer opportunities, nature hikes and other events.

Join me after the jump if you care to learn more.

We don’t turn on the tv until after kids are in bed, so I’ll need to watch later.

Who screwed up?

Who did well?

Who scared you?

Who made you roll on the floor laughing?

Updated with more information about Chris Dodd’s campaign events.

Friday, May 4

8:30am  Ottumwa Community Kitchen Table
  Location: Riverside Family Restaurant
  1317 E. Mary Street

  Ottumwa

12:00 Noon   Mt. Pleasant Community Kitchen Table
  Location: Hy-Vee Lunch Counter
  1700 E. Washington

  Mt. Pleasant

2:30pm  Tour of the Tri-City Energy Biodiesel Plant
  With Mayor David Gudgel

  Location: Tri-City Energy
  410 Johnson Street

  Keokuk

5:30pm   Jobs and Energy Town Hall Meeting
  Location: Iowa Hotel
  Common Room

  401 Main Street
  Keokuk

Saturday, May 5

9:00am   Burlington Community Kitchen Table
  With Senator Tom Courtney
  Location: Laura’s Restaurant and Dairy Bar
  1717 Summer Street

  Burlington

12:00 noon  Cinco de Mayo Celebration
  Location: Ron-De-Voo Park
  Third Street (Downtown)

  West Liberty

1:15pm   Renewable Energy Town Hall
  Location: Hoover House
  102 W. Main Street

  West Branch

4:15pm   Meet & Greet
  With Representative Nate Reichert
  Location: Strawberry Farm Bed & Breakfast
  3402 Tipton Road

  Muscatine

A while back I linked to noneed4thneed’s call for people to ask the candidates where they stand on permanent bases in Iraq.

Tim Tagaris of the Dodd campaign sent me this link, which contains a write-up from an interview with Dodd, as well as an audio link. Dodd is firmly against permanent bases in Iraq.

So if you get a chance to ask him a question this weekend, you might want to focus on a different issue.

John Deeth says he will probably cover one of Dodd’s events.

If you are able to attend any of them as well, please put up a diary afterwards. First-person accounts are always interesting.

Just got this e-mail from the Biden campaign.

Town Hall on Iraq with Senator Joe Biden

Senator Biden will be making his fifth trip to Iowa since announcing his candidacy for President in January, and as part of this trip he’s coming to Ankeny this Saturday, May 5th for a Town Hall with local Democrats. All of the details are below, and hopefully you will be able to attend.

Senator Biden Attends an Iraq Town Hall

Hosted by the Ankeny Area Democrats

Saturday, May 5, 2007

10:30am-11:45am (Doors Open at 10:00am)

Ankeny Historical Society, (515) 965-5795

301 SW Third Street, Ankeny

They’d like RSVPs either by phone to Gary Schmidt, (515) 333-4184 or by e-mail to TimEmrich AT JoeBiden.com.

If you live near Ankeny and can attend this event, please put up a diary afterwards. My Saturday is packed already.

I hate it when journalists ask politicians stupid questions. No matter what they pick, journalists will try to make it fit whatever script they are pushing about the person (too elitist, too dumb, too wonky, whatever).

However, this was too amusing not to pass along.

The Associated Press asked the presidential candidates what item he or she would most like to have if stranded on a desert island. Political Wire has the candidates’ answers here.

I won’t spoil the punch line, but I have to agree with Kevin Drum, who writes, “Oddly enough, Tom Tancredo gave the best answer.”

I’d put in a word for Brownback’s answer as well.

We environmentalists have been pretty downbeat about the 2007 legislative session. Even with Democrats in power, there was no action on local control over the siting of CAFOs and little progress on other issues related to water and air quality.

Some good news arrived in my in-box today, however. I had not realized that on the last day of the session, the legislature had approved and funded the Farm to School program, which will make locally-produced, nutritious food available in more Iowa schools while increasing the market for farmers using sustainable methods.

Stephanie Weisenbach, program coordinator for 1000 Friends of Iowa (website under reconstruction), fills us in on the details:

Senate File 452, introduced by Senator Joe Bolkcom from Iowa City, was stalled out for many weeks at the  legislature but ended up being amended onto other legislation at the end of the session last week.

Policy language creating the program and establishing a Farm to School Council was added to the “standings bill,” SF 601, the last bill of the session. An $80,000 appropriation to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) was added to Agriculture and Natural Resources budget bill, Senate File 551. IDALS will administer the program with two full-time staff.

The Farm to School program was established to encourage and promote the purchase of locally and regionally produced or processed food in order to improve child nutrition and strengthen local and regional farm economies. A seven-member Farm to School Council will seek to establish partnerships with public agencies and non-profit organizations to foster communication between farmers and schools, and will seek financial or in-kind contributions to support the program.

The Farm to School Program is a wonderful starting point that will address many of 1000 Friends of Iowa’s concerns about how we use our land in Iowa and pass the benefits of that knowledge on to our most precious resource…future generations.

Although I know quite a few people in the sustainable agriculture community, I wasn’t following this bill closely. Last I heard, it wasn’t going anywhere. Weisenbach lets us know who helped the most at the statehouse:

Big thanks should go to Senator Joe Bolkcom from Iowa City and Senator Robert Dvorsky from Coralville for getting the policy language in the standings bill. Representative Mark Kuhn from Charles City advanced the $80,000 appropriation and Senator Staci Appel from Carlisle was a persistent supporter during key times in the legislative process.

To thank these legislators, you can e-mail them at:

firstname.lastname AT legis.state.ia.us

I’m posting the relevant language from the bill after the jump, but I want to call particular attention to one point.

The bill establishes a farm to school council with seven members, one of whom has to be an “Iowa organic meat producer.”

Sounds like the Farm Bureau isn’t going to be able to sabotage this program by putting a CAFO operator on that council!

Also sounds like we’ve got a better chance of getting organic meat products in Iowa schools.

I’m still fairly disappointed in the legislative session overall, but this is a great step for farmers, kids, local economies and the environment.

Wonks who like to read legislative text, you’ll find the relevant portions after the jump.

American Research Group has just released new polls of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina .

Click through if you want to read about the results from the other states. The new ARG Iowa numbers are:

Edwards 27 percent

Clinton 23 percent

Obama 19 percent

undecided 16 percent

Biden 6 percent

Richardson 5 percent

Dodd 2 percent

Kucinich 2 percent

Gravel and Clark, less than 1 percent

You may recall that in December and January ARG released polls showing Clinton way ahead in Iowa. No other polling firm ever found Clinton ahead of Edwards in Iowa.

Now ARG’s results are more in line with the other firms. I don’t know if ARG changed its likely voter screen or if Edwards has just gained a lot of ground on Clinton since January.

ARG notes that Edwards leads Clinton among women in Iowa, 32 percent to 26 percent. This is not at all surprising to me.

The undecided figure still “feels” low to me. I talk to a lot of Democrats, and I think way more than 1 in 6 tell me they don’t know yet who they will caucus for.

Click through if you want all the Republican numbers for Iowa, but the highlights are:

McCain 26 percent

Giuliani 19 percent

Romney 14 percent

Fred Thompson 13 percent

undecided 12 percent

Seems like Romney’s numbers are not moving in Iowa, despite his early tv ads and the DVD he mailed out to 70,000 Iowa Republicans. Click the link if you want to read the Cyclone Conservative analysis of that DVD.

UPDATE: Check out rob’s diary at the right for more info about these polls. One figure jumped out at me. ARG’s sample in Iowa was taken from “600 completed telephone interviews among a random sample of likely Democratic caucus goers living in Iowa (475 Democrats and 125 no party (independent) voters).”

Now, we had a few independents change their registration on caucus night 2004 so that they could participate. But does anyone really think that 1 in 5 people attending the Democratic side of the Iowa caucuses next January will be registered independents?

MoveOn.org is holding rallies across the country tomorrow to protest President Bush’s planned veto of the Iraq War supplemental funding bill that sets a timetable for withdrawal. The Des Moines library will be outside the new downtown library between Grand and Locust.

If you don’t live in central Iowa, this message contains a link you can click to search for protests near your zipcode:

Dear MoveOn member,

Congress is about to send an important bill to the White House-it would require the president to start bringing our troops home from Iraq this year. President Bush has said repeatedly he’s going to veto it. It’s outrageous. Most Americans support a timeline and he’s standing in the way.

This will be a pivotal moment on Iraq-it’s not clear what Congress or the president will do after the veto. We need to make clear that President Bush is really vetoing the will of the American people. And we need to tell Congress to hold firm.

There are already more than 200 rallies planned and it’s really important to turn out in big numbers to get our message across. There is one right near you in Des Moines. Can you make it tomorrow?

Here are the details:

Outside the Downtown Library

Wednesday, May 2 2007, 5:00 PM

RSVP: http://pol.moveon.or…

If this event doesn’t work for you, click below to search for another rally near you:

http://pol.moveon.or…

Four years ago today, President Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. Now there is a plan on the table that will finally start bringing our troops home-but the president is going to veto it. By doing so, he’s vetoing the will of the people.

Congress has two options on how to respond-they can either cave to the president’s pressure or stand strong and demand accountability from him on Iraq. Members of Congress are going to be gauging public reaction in the next few days to decide which path they’ll follow.

There’s also a fun twist to these rallies: We’ll be using noisemakers to demonstrate that President Bush and Congress cannot ignore us any longer-our voices must be heard.

As Senator Feingold recently wrote:

By carrying out his veto threat, the President will mark yet another sad day in the history of this war. But that veto should be seen as a rallying cry for the vast majority of Americans who believe that the time has come to again stand up, and stand together, with one voice, and demand a policy that makes sense-one that puts our country and our national security first. A policy that makes America safer, not weaker.2

Now is the time to take a strong stand against the president’s reckless policy in Iraq. Together, we’ll show the media and Congress that we won’t stand for another blank check for the president on the war. Can you join us?

Click below to search for a rally near you.

http://pol.moveon.or…

Thanks for all you do,

-Nita, Anna, Matt, Justin and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
  Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

Sources

1. “GOP’s Base Helps Keep Unity on Iraq,” Washington Post, April 30, 2007

http://www.moveon.or…

2. An Important Step to Ending the War in Iraq, Progressive Patriots

http://www.moveon.or…

Representative Dawn Pettengill has made it official. She stood next to House Minority Leader Chris Rants today and announced that she is joining the Republican Party.

In a really classy move, she told the press before she told her former colleagues in the Democratic caucus.

Cue gloating from Republicans and hand-wringing from some commentators that the Democrats are allegedly outside the mainstream.

Pettengill said she wants to better represent her district in the House, which is fine by me. If she thinks her political future is safer by hitching her wagon to the Republican Party, we are better off without her.

The Des Moines Register adds,

Even worse for Democrats, Pettengill said there have been talks among some of the half-dozen or so other conservative Democrats of switching parties. She would not give names.

I consider this unlikely to happen with Democrats in control of the Iowa Senate and Terrace Hill, but just to be on the safe side, we’ll all have to work a little harder in 2008 to elect more progressive Democrats to the Iowa legislature.

John Deeth asks some important questions, including will she give back the money she got from Democrats (I doubt it) and how long has she been planning this.

House Speaker Pat Murphy and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy are saying that Pettengill’s move is unlikely to affect their ability to get things done, since

Rep. Ray Zirkelbach, a Monticello Democrat, is expected to return from serving in Iraq next year. That means their majority lead will remain about the same. In addition, they noted that Pettengill frequently voted against the Democratic majority anyway.

“This is more of a shift on paper then something significant that will affect our ability to govern,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy also told reporters today that the Democratic Party spent $250,000 helping Pettengill defeat a Republican incumbent in that House seat in 2004.

Murphy added some fighting words as well:

“The bottom line is, we feel we can win that seat back,” Murphy said. That is a Democratic seat and we expect to win it back. We’re going to go after it very aggressively.”

I’d rather try to win that seat with a real Democrat than be continually trying to placate someone like Pettengill, who clearly does not share the core beliefs of most Iowa Democrats.

Let the recruiting begin! Anyone have any ideas about who would be a good candidate for that district?

When I see that David Yepsen has written another column about Iowans being over-taxed, I usually don’t get past the first couple of paragraphs. These columns show up a few times a year, whenever Yepsen gets hold of a press release from some right-wing think tank. I figure, I know what he’s going to say without reading the whole piece.

But fortunately, West Des Moines resident John Norwood actually read Yepsen’s latest column on the subject (link no longer available on the free portion of the Register website) and put together a devastating rebuttal that appeared in the Des Moines Register’s Sunday edition:

David Yepsen’s April 17 column once again beats the drum that somehow Iowa’s state and local tax burden is driving our state to ruin (“Lighten Growing Tax Burden”). We’re a state with the 18th-highest tax burden in the nation.

Having grown up in Massachusetts and later having lived 10 years in the San Francisco Bay area, two of the country’s most expensive areas, I have trouble reconciling my personal experience with the conclusions of the Tax Foundation that Yepsen cites.

Even if we take the Tax Foundation report as gospel, the chart presented next to Yepsen’s column notes that there is really very little difference between the 44th most-taxed state, which is South Dakota at 9 percent, and Iowa, which comes in 18th at 11 percent.

The variance in state rates is actually pretty narrow across most of the distribution. Move to Missouri, save 0.9 percent and you’re in the driver’s seat at 34th.

How many Iowans, who have access to superior education and other community services, are ready to leave for South Dakota or Missouri for that 1 percent to 2 percent difference? There’s an old saw, Yepsen, “You get what you pay for.”

Iowa is doing pretty well, if you ask me.

– John Norwood,

West Des Moines.

The idea that anyone is deciding where to live based on a 1 or 2 percent difference in tax rates is laughable. Thanks to the letter-writer for spelling out why.

I’m not the kind of blogger who spends a lot of time on conservative sites, trying to figure out what “the other side” thinks about this or that issue. My time on the computer is limited, and I would rather spend it reading blogs I enjoy and learn from. If Instapundit or Michelle Malkin or some such hack says something particularly noteworthy, I will probably run across it at one of the blogs I read regularly (e.g. Atrios’ “wanker of the day”).

But when John Deeth called attention to the University of Iowa College Republicans’ plan to hold a capture-the-flag game between the “illegal immigrants” and the “border patrol,” it piqued my interest.

Back when I was growing up, Dinesh D’Souza was just an annoying bigot at Darthmouth College, planning stunts and then playing the martyr when people called him on his racism. Seems like College Republicans haven’t evolved much since then, and why should they? Distort D’Newsa and others have parlayed this “victim of political correctness” act into lucrative careers.

So I wandered over to Cyclone Conservatives to see what they are up to these days.

Didn’t find any cheap stunts, but I did find an amazingly ignorant and malicious post whining about Democratic “sob stories.” Join me after the jump if you have any interest in hearing more.

The Iowa Democratic Party will be holding its annual Hall of Fame dinner in Cedar Rapids on June 2, and the award-winners who will be honored that evening are listed below:

Outstanding Elected Official Award

Governor Bob Fulton, Waterloo

Hall of Fame Outstanding Supporter Award

Roxanne Barton Conlin, Des Moines

Edward Campbell, Des Moines

Minette Doderer Award for Outstanding Leadership

Phyllis Thede, Bettendorf

Jim Lodwick Award for Outstanding Democratic State Central Committee Member

Ken Sagar, Des Moines

Bob Creech Award for Outstanding Democratic Party Chair

Cheryll Jones, Bloomfield

Dixon Terry Award for Outstanding Democratic Party Activist

Dori Rammelsberg-Dvorak, Clutier

Warren Yaple, Council Bluffs

Rising Star Award

Megan Simpson, Dubuque (University of Iowa Student)

I like the activist awards because they aren’t limited to those who have vast financial resources. I know someone who won one of those activist awards a couple of years ago, and it was nice for her hard work over many election cycles to be recognized.

As rob reported in a diary last week, so far Clinton, Dodd and Edwards plan to attend this event, and the other candidates are not currently scheduled to be there.

I know that Roxanne Conlin was supporting Edwards last cycle, and I know that Ed Campbell is in the Clinton camp. Ed and Bonnie Campbell were among the few Iowa supporters of Bill Clinton during the 1992 primaries, when Tom Harkin was also running. Bill Clinton also appointed Bonnie Campbell to a senior position in the Justice Department after she lost her gubernatorial bid in 1994.

Anyone out there know if the other award-winners have picked a presidential candidate?