Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Doug Burns at Iowa Political Alert has an interesting post on how Gov. Chet Culver’s proposed $700 million infrastructure plan could mean the end of Iowa’s six-month-old state smoking ban.
In laying out his plan, Culver said he would use $56 million annually from gaming tax revenues to secure the $700 million in bonds over the next 20 years. Burns hypothesizes that tying the state’s future to gaming money will mean it must protect the industry from possible losses, which brings us to the smoking ban.
But should a court case rule the Iowa casino exemption as out of line, lawmakers, who had tied the state’s finances to casino money, may have to opt to just kill the entire ban rather than add gaming houses to it and risk the financial fallout.
Burns then points to a Chicago Tribune story that says revenues at Illinois casinos dropped 20.2 percent between November 2007 and November 2008, and the industry points squarely to the smoking ban that went into effect a year ago. Smoking ban opponents point out that neighboring states without smoking bans have not seen nearly that kind of revenue drop.
Now not everyone buys that theory, as the country has also experienced a bit of an economic downturn since their smoking ban was issued. But that’s hardly the point. Would the fear of a possible downturn in revenues at casinos push legislators to rethink the smoking ban?
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