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.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s white paper on energy and the looming climate crisis was a long time coming, but at least one Iowa environmental activist believes it was worth the wait.
“I thought the speech was great,” said Mike Carberry, a regional field director for Iowa Global Warming, after listening to Clinton’s remarks on Monday. “She pretty much covered the questions that we ask the presidential candidates on all different levels of renewable energy and on global warming reduction.”
Carberry, who has attended events for nearly all the presidential candidates and focuses on their energy and climate change policies, said it was important for Clinton to come out on this issue.
“I think that Hillary has been lacking in some of her policies in regard to global warming reduction until this point,” he said. “But she hit a home run today because she covered all the bases. Whoever wrote this policy obviously knows what he or she is doing and talking about. If everything she talks about today gets implemented with her as president — or if anyone as president enacts those policies — it would go very, very far into helping us find those global warming solutions that we need.”
For the first time, according to Carberry, Clinton stopped talking about energy policy as if she was a Republican.
“Hillary, up to this point in the campaign, has been talking a lot about just energy independence,” he said. “Now, energy independence is something that is a very worthy goal. Energy independence really doesn’t address global warming because you can find more fossil fuels domestically, you can burn more coal and you can build nuclear power plants. Up until this point, a lot of her talks have been similar to the way a Republican talks about global warming reduction. [Republicans] really don’t [address it]. So, now she’s really risen up and is on par with the rest of the Democratic candidates on these issues.”
While Carberry believes Clinton’s energy speech today at Clipper Turbine Works, Inc. will most likely prevent her from being discounted by environmentalists based on her energy policy, her Democratic opponents were quick with criticism.
“Ambitious goals are laudable, but without an honest discussion of how you achieve those goals, it’s nothing more than empty rhetoric,” said Hari Sevugan, communications director for Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd’s campaign. “I don’t know how it would do in a public poll, but leading experts agree that a corporate carbon tax targeted at polluters is needed to reverse the effects of global warming. That’s why the chairman of the Clinton White House Climate Change Task Force calls Dodd’s plan the gold standard in the field.”
The campaign for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama typically doesn’t issue statements based solely on another candidate’s speeches. Today, however, was an exception and the campaign’s Iowa spokesperson spoke sharply in reference to Clinton’s voting record in the Senate.
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