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.
U.S. Reps. Steve King, R-Iowa, and Michelle Bachmann, R-Minn., will step into the spotlight Wednesday as they unveil their “Declaration of Health Care Independence” at a press conference in the nation’s capital.
The pair are also part of a a group of House Republican lawmakers who have been meeting privately to “foment revolution” within their own party.
All this takes place as Democratic plans for health care reform remain uncertain in the wake of Scott Brown’s victory in a Massachusetts special election for the late Edward Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat, which gave Republicans enough votes in the senate to stall the plan.
“The Declaration of Health Care Independence is a commitment to protect the rights of the American people to make their own health decisions, reduce bureaucratic red-tape, decrease intergenerational debt and includes ten common-sense principles that must be included in future health care reforms,” King said in a statement.
King told the Sioux City Journal’s Bret Hayworth that the idea behind the declaration came from Bachmann, who approached him last week to push the plan.
They quickly handwrote the initial parts, then others in Congress added bits over the next several days.
“The minute (Bachmann) said it, it lit up for me,” King said.
In an interview with the Washington News Observer, King said health care reform is dead unless Democrats “find some way to make this toxic soup that they’ve created palatable to the American people, and they’ve already spit it out.”
Bachmann and King have formed a close relationship in recent months, with Bachmann going so far as to float King’s name as a potential presidential candidate in 2012. In fact, The Iowa Independent’s sister site in Minnesota documented five occasions where Bachmann referred to King as “stunning.”
The declaration will be made public at 1:30 p.m. CST, then posted on the Web sites of congressional members and the Tea Party Patriots.
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