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] One of the more disturbing elements in a king’s ransom of problems with the U.S. war in Iraq is the indisputable fact that rural Americans are doing a disproportionate share of the fighting.
Most of us in western Iowa, regardless of position on the war or political affiliation, just know this. We see it in our small towns, anecdotally — and the Associated Press and other reliable sources have documented it. Does John McCain get it?
According tor recent figures reported in the AP, one in five American soldiers killed in Iraq came from a U.S. town of fewer than 5,000 people.
About half of the American dead hail from places of less than 25,000.
The numbers don’t lie. Rural America is shouldering a disproportionate share of the burden, the blood and loss and grief, in Iraq.
Barack Obama gets this. John McCain doesn’t. I asked them both the same question, and was stunned with the response from McCain, a U.S. senator from Arizona an GOP candidate for the presidency.
“I don’t think the numbers bear out that assertion,” McCain said in an interview in LeMars. “I think they’re from all over America. They’re not from the wealthiest Americans. I will admit that. I have no statistic that indicates they’re mostly from rural America.”
The premise of the question was not that rural kids are doing "most" of the fighting but rather a "disproportionate" amount of it. McCain should be angry about this gulf in sacrifice, which has some roots in a socio-economic status.
The disparity is not lost on U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill, a leading Democratic contender for the presidency.
“One of the things I’ve been distressed about is the way folks in southern Illinois and rural western Iowa, that those are the folks that are disproportionately affected,” Obama told me in interview recently in Denison.
The Associated Press has reported that diminished opportunities are one factor in higher military enlistment rates in rural areas. According to the AP, from 1997 to 2003, 1.5 million rural workers lost their jobs due to changes in industries such as manufacturing that have traditionally employed rural workers, according to the Carsey Institute.
“We’ve got a lot of young people who see the military as their primary opportunity for advancement,” Obama said.
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