If you live in central Iowa, you’ll have a lot of fun events to choose from this weekend:

1. Saturday, April 21, “Blues for Greens” event at Water Works Park, Des Moines–10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Water Works Park is west of Fleur Drive and north of George Flagg Parkway.) 

The Iowa Department of Natural Resource, in association with the Iowa Clean Cities Coalition, and the Iowa American Lung Association, is planning an event that will feature E85, electric, hybrid, diesel, propane, natural gas and flex fuel vehicles at Waterworks Park in Des Moines, Iowa on Saturday April 21st, 2007. 

“Blues for Greens” features environmentally friendly organizations, with blues music and ethnic food vendors acting as the backdrop for this family-friendly event.

2. Sunday, April 22: Earth Day at Greenwood Park ( 4500 Grand Ave., Des Moines ), 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. Several activities that incorporate nature through the arts have been planned for people of all ages.

Go here and click 2007 Earth Day: A Greenwood Experience for more information about this free event sponsored by Metro Waste Authority, Des Moines Parks and Recreation, Polk County Conservation, Metro Arts Alliance and Open Arts.

3. Sunday, April 22: Earth Day in the Junction, Historic Valley Junction, West Des Moines. Click here for more information about this event.

5K Run ~ 10 am

Kids’ Fun Run ~ 11:30 am

Earth Day Celebration ~ 12 – 5 pm

Below are some of the activities planned:

An Inconvenient Truth will be played throughout the afternoon.

Rasmussen Bike will be providing free bike check ups to anyone who bikes to the event.

Heard Gardens is going to be doing a planting demonstration.

Toyota of Des Moines will be bringing hi-bred cars to the event.

Plus…local exhibitors, live music, kids’ activities and food vendors.

Feel free to post information about Earth Day events in your area.

Here’s a link to Trippi’s blog post announcing the move.

And here’s a link to a Daily Kos diary with more background and discussion of this hire.

The former Deaniacs I know in Iowa are largely undecided, with some leaning toward Edwards and others leaning toward Obama. I don’t think anyone will make up his or her mind solely based on what Trippi does, but I think the move sends a positive signal about the change Edwards wants to bring to America.

What are your thoughts, and what have you been hearing from the people you know who caucused for Dean in 2004?

House Democrats are moving forward with a landmark piece of legislation to bring the debate about limits on greenhouse gas emissions to the State of Iowa.  Senate File 485 is being floor managed by Representative Donovan Olson.  This bill creates a “greenhouse gas registry” similar to those found in other states and requires the Environmental Protection Commission and the director of the Department of Natural Resources to quantify the potential for emission of greenhouse gases by applicants for permits for electric power generating facilities.  The registry is considered the first step towards creating a system for carbon emission permit trading in the State of Iowa.

I rarely check in with the conservative blogosphere, but for some reason I clicked on the Cyclone Conservatives link at the right and I found a post proclaiming that for the second month in a row, former Libertarian and Republican U.S. Congressman Ron Paul has won the site’s presidential straw poll.

And he didn’t just win–he crushed the field, getting 44 percent of the 984 total votes. Wingnut Duncan Hunter placed second with 17 percent and Multiple Choice Mitt Romney placed third with 13 percent.

At first I thought that one person must have voted over 400 times for Ron Paul, but the organizers claim that you can only vote once per month per IP address. Presumably there must be some way to stuff the poll despite this restriction.

Alternatively, nearly half of Cyclone Conservative readers think the Iraq War was a colossal mistake. Ron Paul was one of very few, perhaps the only, Republican serving in the U.S. House who voted against the Iraq resolution authorizing the use of force in 2002.

Or is there some other reason why Ron Paul is dominating the field?

Another fun fact from this poll: anti-immigrant crusader Tom Tancredo got 8 percent of the vote, nearly twice as many raw votes as John McCain (3 percent) and Rudy Giuliani (1 percent) combined.

Think the wingnut base is a little unhappy with the GOP frontrunners?

The organization American Rivers has released its list of America’s 10 most endangered rivers, and the Iowa River is number 3 on the list, thanks to “weak enforcement of the Clean Water Act.”

Here is the short explanation for the ranking:

The Iowa River and its tributaries provide a boon to local economies, offering drinking water to nearby communities and wonderful recreational opportunities. Yet a host of polluters inundate the river with toxins and untreated sewage. Unfortunately, the state of Iowa trails far behind the rest of the country in implementing and enforcing the federal Clean Water Act. Unless the state wants water quality in the Iowa and other rivers to deteriorate even further, Iowa must adequately implement key provisions of the Clean Water Act and provide its Department of Natural Resources sufficient funding to enforce these regulations.

If you click through, you can download a pdf that has more detail about this assessment, and you can watch a video of Susan Heathcote, Water Program Director of the Iowa Environmental Council, explaining why the river is considered “endangered.”

At first I worried about this report, but then I remembered that Iowa is an agricultural state and anyone who doesn’t like it can leave in any of four directions.

I support Public Campaign, which is pushing for “clean elections” (voluntary public-financing) nationwide.

Today I got this e-mail from the Public Campaign Action Fund:

Just a reminder that Voter Owned Iowa is holding a rally tomorrow, Wednesday, at 12 p.m. at the Capitol in support of the Voter Owned Iowa Clean Elections (VOICE) Act that would bring full public financing to Iowa’s legislative races.  After the rally, we’ll be lobbying individual members of the General Assembly on the VOICE Act.

Sign up here to join us at the rally!

The VOICE Act (introduced in both legislative chambers as House File 805 and Senate File 553) would allow candidates in Iowa to seek office without having to appeal to wealthy special interests for campaign contributions.  Once elected, the legislators who ran using the VOICE system would be accountable only to the voters who elected them, not well-heeled contributors who would have otherwise funded their campaigns.

We need to show our support for VOICE at the capitol  – RSVP here to attend the rally and lobby afterwards!

I hope you’ll be able to join me, and others from Voter Owned Iowa tomorrow.  We have a good chance to make the VOICE Act law this year, with just a few days left in the legislative session, your support can make all the difference in passing this bill.

Look forward to seeing you there,

Jeannette Galanis

National Field Director

If you can make it to downtown Des Moines over the lunch hour, they could use your support!

If you can’t attend the rally but would like to contribute financially to Public Campaign’s effort to pass Voter Owned Elections in Iowa, you can click here.

Obviously Christopher Rants is the biggest impediment to extending the civil rights code to cover the GLBT community, but there isn’t much we can do about him (other than send even fewer Republicans back to the state house next year).  There are some legislators that need to hear from concerned Iowans about their opposition or indecision on the bill currently bottled up in the house.

These Democrats are either currently planning to vote no or refuse to take a stand one way or the other:

Dolores Mertz

Dawn Pettengill

Brian Quirk

Paul Shomshor

These GOP representatives are believed to be supportive:

Chuck Gipp (Retiring in 2008)

Linda Miller (Voted for it in committee)

Bill Schickel

Tami Weincek

You can call all of them at (515) 281-3221.

This is urgent – if anything is going to happen on this bill, it is going to happen in the next couple of days.  GLBTers have been a model team players for Iowa Democrats, supporting our candidates without hesitation and with very little demanded in return.  While Democrats have been successful in the minority at stopping a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, now that we are in the majority we ought to be working to make Iowa a more equal state.

It’s not like gay activists are being unreasonable here.  They aren’t asking for gay marriage, or even civil unions.  Just one tiny change that says that it is wrong to discriminate against someone based on their sexual orientation.  The fact that there is any difficulty at all getting Democrats to vote for that is depressing, and the fact that not one single Republican is willing to stand up for the principle is appalling.

On Saturday I talked to a woman I know who is involved with the effort to get anti-discrimination language regarding gays and lesbians into the State Civil Rights bill.

The Iowa Senate overwhelmingly passed this bill. There are plenty of votes in the House to pass it, but Republican leader Chris Rants won’t let any Republicans vote for it until at least 51 of the 56 Democrats say they will vote for it.

The Des Moines Register’s David Yepsen heard the same thing and wrote about it in the Sunday paper:

This Legislature has yet to approve anti-discrimination protections for gays and lesbians in housing and employment because of a political game House Republicans are playing.

They want Democrats to put up 51 votes from their members before any GOP lawmakers will vote for it. (This is being done so Democrats from conservative districts are on record casting a tough vote that will then be used against them by conservative Republican challengers in the 2008 election.)

John Deeth put up this post on Friday about GLBT activists in Iowa City who are angry with House Majority leader Pat Murphy about this. I don’t blame them.

The bottom line, though, is that the House Democrats need to hear from lots of people on this issue. They’ve been raising money from the GLBT community, and those who favor equal rights for gays and lesbians, for years. It is wrong for Democrats to run scared on this issue, but if they think that our side is going to give them a pass on it, they might be more inclined to play it safe.

I encourage everyone to contact the House leadership (Pat Murphy and Kevin McCarthy) about this. I have heard that Geri Huser of Altoona is also on the fence, so if you live in her district, give her a call or send an e-mail. I don’t know who the other wavering House Democrats are. If you know, please leave that information in the comments section.

You can call the House Switchboard at (515) 281-3221 and ask to be connected to any of the representatives.

Who would you like to see liveblogging at Bleeding Heartland later this year?

It could be someone from the Iowa Democratic Party, an elected official, a strategist, a presidential candidate, a likely candidate for a different office in 2008, anyone you’d like to hear from directly on this site.

Also, if we ever had a political bigwig liveblogging at Bleeding Heartland, when would you be able to join in the conversation? Would it be better to schedule this in the morning, afternoon, evening?

Consider this an open thread for your suggestions to the authors on this site.

First-term members of Congress generally take one of two paths: they keep their heads down while learning the ropes, or they make a splash. Looks like Bruce Braley is taking the second path.

Not long after his hilarious grilling of GSA administrator Lurita Doan got linked to all over the liberal blogosphere, Braley is making the news again as the most assertive member of the Iowa delegation when it comes to getting answers from the Pentagon.

Join me after the jump to see Braley getting praised by Des Moines Register columnist John Carlson, of all people.

Seriously, it’s great news that Johnson County Republican Chairman Sanders finds Google useful.

We all know that he is the frontrunner in Iowa, but it turns out that Edwards is popular all over the midwest.  Obama is surprisingly strong in the west (anyone have any idea why?), while Clinton is weaker in these two regions.  That’s unfortunate, since those are the two swing regions in the country.  We’re going to win the northeast for sure in 2008.  We’re probably going to lose most of the south, no matter how big our overall victory.  It’s states like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and, yes, Iowa that are going to make the difference if I’m wrong and it does turn out to be a competitive race.  And in that kind of a fight, it looks like Hillary would be our weakest candidate.

There is nothing more satisfying than looking at the current field of Republican candidates.  Cyclone Conservative has a great list on his blog – my favorite is Millie Howard, whose website is like a bad myspace page and who has apparently been running since 1992.

It’s hard for me to get too worked up about who gets the Democratic nomination, because any one of them is going to win in a landslide.  Jesus, people – the Republican’s best candidate is a cross-dresser and proud adulterer whose (third, if you count the time he married his cousin) wife murders dogs.  This is their best guy!  It’s going to be a fun cycle.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way!! I know how to get the money for Iowa’s clean elections bill. And is it ever SWEET!

Look here: Plug the Wal-Mart Loophole

It’s real tax money that now gets slyly siphoned out of the state and turned into tax-free profits for Wal-Mart and other devious corporations who operate in many states. They shift their money around, turning Iowa profits into “expenses” that they “owe” to their other pockets in other states where the money is not taxed. Eventually it becomes untaxed profits.

The fix is a reform known as “combined reporting” and it could have brought us $99 million in the year 2002. That’s FAR MORE than the ten million that we supposedly can’t find for VOICE.

We know where it is and we know how to get it. What are we waiting for, more campaign contributions to Patrick Murphy from Wal-Mart?

cross posted at http://iowavoters.or…

LATE UPDATE: I posted more about my background here and here. A better e-mail for contacting me: desmoinesdem AT bleedingheartland.com

Desmoinesdem is the pseudonym of a woman who has been interested in politics since she took on the role of John Anderson for a 5th-grade class debate. She wonders whether there are any other Bleeding Heartland registered users old enough to remember John Anderson.

She first participated in an Iowa caucus as a Paul Simon supporter in 1988. She wonders whether there are any other Bleeding Heartland registered users old enough to remember Paul Simon.

Now she is a mother of two in the Des Moines suburbs. She was a precinct captain for Kerry in 2003/2004 and for Edwards in 2007-2008. Aside from electoral politics, her interests include a wide range of environmental issues and attachment parenting.

The best way to contact her is to comment in one of her diaries, but she can also be reached at desmoinesdem at yahoo.com.

This started out as a quick reply to Mark Laggin’s post on Technology and 21st Century Caucus Ops.  It basically turned into a post in its own right.  Cross posted to (as opposed to from) my blog.

The paradigm shift we are starting to see is in the decline of one-to-many “broadcast” communications methods as an effective voter contact and voter persuasion tool.  Mark talked about phones.  Phones are especially vulnerable for two reasons.

One, the proliferation of cell phones, Internet telephony and the lack of centralized directories for both begins to limit traditional phone campaign methods to the a diminishingly useful or relevant legacy PoTS (plain old telephone service) universe. 

The second factor is linked to the first.  The inability to reach additional voters outside the PoTS universe leads to more intense competition for those voters using the tried-and-true methods campaign staff know.  This leads to what we saw in 2006 which is the almost complete alienation of voters to any phone contact and utterly diminishing returns on phone contacts

I know, I know.  That’s a pretty grand title for a blog post.  Yet, it’s a topic that really gets me going from time-to-time.  I think that the impact of new technologies related to wireless technology, GPS, computers, and the internet are just beginning to be realized and we have a long way to go.

I look at this post as a forum to talk about ways technology will play in Iowa during the run to the 2008 caucus.  I think this post from the Hotline blog can serve as a jumping off point.  It’s discussing the Romney caucus operation:

A walk provides a window into the soul of the Romney campaign: efficient, high-tech, friendly, driven. The rows of tables are ready for phone bankers. Where are the phones? There aren’t any. Collins decided to buy dozens of cell phones. They’re cheaper, don’t require a deposit, and can be easily transported to, say, Ottumwa for multi-purposing. They can also be tracked. They don’t break as easily. And Collins can avoid haggling with the local phone company.

Many people have taken the 2004 Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary results as proof positive that the candidate winning here will develop enough momentum to carry him or her through the entire nominating process.  While that obviously happened with John Kerry’s dramatic turnaround in New Hampshire following his win here, it is by no means a rule.

Historically, Iowa and New Hampshire have almost always differed in their choices.  Not counting sitting Presidents or Vice Presidents, Jimmy Carter was the last time that Iowa and New Hampshire agreed on anyone for either Democrats or Republicans (and technically Iowa voted for Undeclared over Carter).  If anyone other than Kerry had won the Iowa caucus in 2004, that streak would almost certainly have remained intact.

No, what 2004 taught us was that soft support in New Hampshire never really goes away.  Kerry was the default frontrunner there for half of 2003, with Dean eclipsing him around the middle of the year.  Even after moving all of his resources into Iowa, Kerry was still polling in second place.

After winning in Iowa, those 25%-30% of people who supported him earlier in the year suddenly remembered that they still supported him.  That, combined with an important but not overwhelming general boost from winning the caucus, led to his win there.

If John Edwards had won the Iowa Caucus, Howard Dean would have probably picked up New Hampshire, and the 2004 nomination fight would have been a lot more interesting (I’m just going to say for fun that Edwards probably would have ended up winning – he’s just a better all around candidate than Dean).  Instead we saw that Kerry rebounded, and took the combined momentum of back to back wins into a dominating performance throughout the rest of the season.

What does this tell us about 2008?  Right now Hillary Clinton is the John Kerry of New Hampshire, with high natural support that is persisting even with other campaigns active in the state.  If she exceeds expectations in Iowa, she should recapture those voters even if they stray in the meantime.  She is also much less likely than Dean to dramatically underperform in Iowa, which means that her New Hampshire supporters won’t be as shaken as Dean’s no doubt were.

2008 is going to be a lot different than 2004 though, with all three first tier candidates regularly polling in the double digits in early primary states.  Both Edwards and Obama have the potential to string together back to back wins, though it seems unlikely right now that a surprise Iowa showing by any of the second tier candidates would lead to dramatic movement in New Hampshire.  It’s still early, but with the campaigns moving as fast as they are this kind of analysis is appropriate now when it wouldn’t have been in February 2003.  Al Gore would shake things up, but other than that, or someone (probably Obama) making a dramatic gaffe, it looks like our field is pretty well set.

Does anyone else think that it is a big mistake for Obama to not release his numbers, given that everyone else has?  He is more or less being cut out of the discussion right now, and unless he has actually beat Hillary he’s not going to get a huge boost when he does (and even then he would get the same boost now and drown out her positive press.)

If Iowa is any indication, the bumbling Obama campaign likely has no idea how much money they raised this quarter, and won’t know for sure until the deadline or even after.  The checks are spread all over someone’s desk – on top of their list of important phone messages, no doubt.

I am also surprised that the media has accepted that $26 million figure from Clinton uncritically, when a healthy chunk could be useful only in the general election.  Mitt Romney may end up being the highest fundraiser of all the candidates on either side.  He should also see a more dramatic second quarter drop than anyone else.

Winners:

John Edwards – He stays in the first tier, when bad fundraising could have knocked him out of the competition.

Bill Richardson – Raises the most by far of the second tier candidates.  This guy is doing everything right, and has a good chance if one of the top candidates stumbles.

Losers:

Chris Dodd and Joe Biden – Come on guys, you have some sort of national networks, and you’re getting killed by the governor of a tiny state?  You might as well drop out now, because neither of you are going anywhere.

Obama – For not having his shit together.  Not getting talked about is as good as not raising money.

Hillary (maybe) – We’ll know better on the 15th, but her inability to put serious distance between her opponents and herself in fundraising means that the whole “inevitability” thing is disappearing fast.  As far as I’m concerned, general election money raised at this point is gimmickry.  It’s not like people who max out to you in the primary aren’t going to go back and donate to you in the general anyway.