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.
(Commentary) CARROLL — Iowa’s top economic development official made a provocative observation here the other day.
Iowa Department of Economic Development director Mike Tramontina had strong comments for what he believes is the prevailing mindset at the state’s research colleges, which he says are more interested in research grants than entrepreneurship.
At some prestigious U.S. coastal schools master’s students in the sciences and business are walking around with dreams of “making a billion dollars” by launching the next Google or Yahoo. They are interested not just in creating intellectual property but transitioning it to wild wealth, Tramontina said.
“At Iowa State, that is not cool,” he said. “We do research. We need to spur entrepreneurship at our universities.”
I asked Tramontina more about this after his presentation to the Carroll Area Development Corp., because his remarks hit on something I’ve observed for decades here: Iowans think more about working hard than smart.
“With the pace of change in technology places that are succeeding today are really able to shorten the time from a discovery until something is actually a company and that is producing jobs,” Tramontina said. “That is something other places have had to do and we need to do, too.”
Perhaps some of Iowa’s answers with entrepreneurship can be found in Northern Ireland, a nation where, thanks to a raft of tax policies and incentives, start-ups are “flourishing,” according to The New York Times.
This emphasis in Northern Ireland is new and took hold like wildfire. We have had various prescrptions to improve, for example, venture capital investment here in the state. But perhaps we need something more audacious.
Here is some of what The Times reports is going on in Northern Ireland:
Income tax rates in Ireland today are 20 percent on the first $50,000 of income and 41 percent on income above that. But there are value-added taxes of 21 percent levied on all goods and transactions, with the exception of health and medical services, children’s clothing and food. The tax on corporate profits, though, is 12.5 percent, which is an incentive to own a business.
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