iowa underground blog

Iowa Underground is active discussing nearly everything under the sun on the forums.

There’s discussion on who will be the next president of the University of Iowa on the forums today. TH privied us to a discussion being broadcast over WSUI.

Sousy chimes in with the following distillation:

I’m listening off and on.

The things I’m gathering:

1) The U of I community is not happy.
2) There seems to be a split of opinion in terms of ‘where to go next’.

and…

3) While it seems that the panel members have stated ‘all the candidates we selected would have made an outstanding president’, it doesn’t sound like there was a lot of enthusiasm for “the candidates” themselves. Most of the anger here seems to be that the University of Iowa faculty/staff representatives were not allowed to simply choose their own candidate.

It’s obvious that there is a difference of opinion over the type of candidate that the University staff committees want, and the type of candidate the board (or “Michael Gartner”) wants to hire… and a lot of frustration.

The only thing that baffles me: the seeming silence (for the moment) on the part of the Board of Regents in terms of the ‘reasoning’ for rejecting the slate. I’m sure there were good reasons – but I’d like to know what they are, and what happens next.

See also: UI faculty, students move ahead
on ‘no confidence’ votes

• pdx

K-I-S-S-I-N-G

...or so the L.A. Times would have us believe. Okay, so they’re not really kissing. Truth be told, how these two men have conducted their campaigns is a somewhat refreshing show of adulthood and civility, especially so considering what we’ve seen coming out of the fear-and-smear GOP for the past several years. I’ve always liked Leach’s temperament, if not the way he casts votes. Nevertheless, he’s had a good run and it’s time for one of Iowa’s most progressive districts to be represented in Congress by someone who doesn’t vote with the GOP 60+% of the time, don’t you think?

I’ll be the first to cast a vote for Jim Leach as the new President of the University of Iowa, however – not that my vote matters in that regard, mind you. Mephistopheles, are you listening? I’m ready to broker a deal here.

A few excerpts from the aforementioned L.A. Times article on Dave and Jim…

Both of the candidates in one tight House race refuse to go negative.
By Richard Simon, Times Staff Writer
November 4, 2006

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA — Dave Loebsack believes in giving credit where credit is due. Believes it so much that he recently bought an ad on television here declaring, among other things, that his congressman, Republican Jim Leach, is a “good man.”

When a reporter asked what had prompted Loebsack to say that, the bearded college professor replied: “Congressman Leach and I truly like each other. We respect each other.”

What’s odd about all this is that Loebsack is the Democratic candidate challenging Leach. And Leach, who is facing serious opposition after having held his House seat for 30 years, is treating Loebsack in the same gentlemanly fashion.

Recently, when state GOP strategists sent negative ad mailers to district voters attacking Loebsack, Leach made them stop. Then he apologized to his rival.

Welcome to Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, scene of what may be the most unlikely campaign in the 2006 midterm election cycle.

Almost everywhere else — in the campaigns that will decide who controls Congress before the 2008 presidential contest — candidates in both parties are spending millions of dollars trying to demonize their opponents. In appeals aimed at rousing voters’ fears and passions, many are scaling new heights of nastiness.

...

“I can’t imagine that there is another race in the country like it,” said Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Iowa. “As long as the national parties stay out of the race, voters in the 2nd District can enjoy that rarest of American political experiences: a competitive yet civil campaign.”

Although Leach knows it’s a tough year for Republicans, he has refused to go negative. When state GOP officials sent out that attack mailer, Leach asked them to stay out of the race. When they did it again, he warned Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman that he would refuse to caucus with his party when the new Congress convened in January if the negative tactics recurred. Mehlman promised to put a stop to it.

Then Leach called Loebsack and apologized.

“It has been my practice in my campaigns and in my public life over the years to accentuate the positive and run on my record,” Leach says.

For Loebsack’s part, it was in one of his own TV spots that he described his opponent as a “good man.” About the worst thing he’s said is that Leach’s party membership facilitates GOP control of the House.

...

A recent poll of 1,055 likely voters showed Leach ahead, 50% to 48%.

So close.

UPDATE:

• pdx

What with the popularity of you-tube, disseminating your own self-styled campaign spots has never been easier, and with the advent an open-source application by the name of CamStudio – actually making the videos has perhaps never been simpler. The folllowing ad was pieced together simply by opening a few files up in photoshop – manipulating the images while the RECORD button in Cam Studio is pushed, then hitting PAUSE for the frame break. This is a pretty rudimentary example of what can be done – tap your own creative juices and slap something together that will help push Iowa back into the blue, what say you?

Thanks to profo, on the Iowa Underground forums, for the concept.

• pdx

From the transcript:

BILL MOYERS: But if reform has to come from the people who are benefiting from the system, are we going to get reform?

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: We’re going to get reform if and when they believe that the public will have the tar cooking and the feathers waiting if they don’t do reform. We’re not there yet, Bill.

THOMAS FRANK: Can I say two things about this question? First of all, the people who are in charge now have a vested interest in increasing our cynicism. They are the party of cynicism against government. And when they do these things, that’s just an added benefit that they’ve managed to get the cynicism numbers up where they have. That’s good for the Republican Party, the party that tells you that what? Remember what President Reagan used to say about government, you know? It was a joke, the idea that they were here to help you, all that stuff.

The second point I want to make is go back to the 19th century, the sort of parallel experience to what we’re going through now. You had a series of reformers come up in the 19th century. And every single one of them from, you know, Horace Greeley all up to the 1890s failed miserably, you know, were rejected in huge sweep. I mean, the corruptionists just whipped these guys. It was a piece of cake. It was easy. The only thing that—what really changed it is when reform became a broader thing, when it became Progressivism. And when it became, you know, look at society as a whole. We’re going to change the entire direction that we’re moving in. When—I’m talking about here people like Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. That’s when this stuff started to abate. Not before that.

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: You know, one problem we have here is what we really need is politicians. Politicians understand the nature of politics and the importance of the institutions. How to do give and take and compromises in an effective fashion. What’s happening now is where this flame of cynicism in the public, somebody pops up and says, “I’m not a politician.” And we say, “Okay, great. We’ll elect you.” And what we get are people who are on an ideological crusade, people who have a contempt for politics and believe that it is all sleaze, everybody does it. So bribery is a way of life.

BILL MOYERS: Is there hope when money trumps everything else today?

THOMAS FRANK: You don’t want to ask me that. I’m, you know, I’m a very pessimistic guy. And I don’t think there is because, you know, earlier we were talking about the Democrats and their reaction to all this, and I think their reaction has been lukewarm to feeble. No, they want that money, too. You know, they want to turn this around—-

BILL MOYERS: I saw the other day a very powerful House member, Democrat, saying, you know, “We’re going after some uncharted sources of money in the financial community. And we’re telling them that the next majority leader might be a Democrat.”

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: Yeah. You know, we’ve had a telecommunications bill that’s been up and pending in Congress for a long time, and they’re going to keep it pending for a long time. And every once in a while they say, “It’s going to pass, going to pass.” So then each side keeps throwing more money into it. Some of this stuff is difficult to deal with. It’s an ages-old problem. We have to constantly be at it to keep the money system from careening out of control.

In the short run, we’ve got a big problem here. We have a sharply polarized political system. We called the book The Broken Branch because Congress is thoroughly dysfunctional. It isn’t going to change overnight. We need new leadership, including a presidential campaign that may bring it. But we’ve got a process that’s going to take us years to reconstruct. I have long-term hope. We’ve always done it before. But short term, I’m very pessimistic.

BILL MOYERS: Does history, Mr. Historian, give us any reason for hope?

THOMAS FRANK: Sure. Absolutely. But in the very long term, I’m sorry to say.

BILL MOYERS: George Bush came to office in 2000, vowing to clean up Washington. And I just looked at one of his speeches this morning. “We’re going to clean up Washington,” he said. What happened?

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: They cleaned up in Washington.

More discussion on the forums.

• sousy

With a ‘thanks’ once again to A.V. Krebs comes this opinion piece from the New York Times:

THE ULTIMATE AGRICULTURAL EFFICIENCY
Editorial New York Times
September 23, 2006

Any American history of pork—- the meat, that is—- shows a steady concentration of more and more hogs in the hands of fewer and fewer producers. That is what modern agricultural “efficiency” looks like. It’s good for the bottom line of the big industrial players, but bad for farmers, hogs, the environment and, ultimately, consumers.

That history took another step in the wrong direction when Smithfield Foods—- the biggest pork packer—- agreed to buy the second biggest pork packer, Premium Standard Farms.

This is a deal that deserves to be closely examined by antitrust regulators. It would mean fewer markets for farmers and fewer choices for consumers. Already, packing giants like Smithfield and Premium Standard Farms use their market power, when buying hogs, in ways that violate the spirit of the 1921 Packers and Stockyards Act, which prohibits undue price discrimination. Their power in the marketplace allows them to negotiate price premiums that smaller packers can’t offer.

The public should also understand what the deal would mean for the future of American farming. It would push farmers still farther down the road to becoming nothing but contract laborers.

There is little or no role for the independent farmer in this landscape. The logic is simple: Why bother to buy pigs from farmers when you can own them yourself? If this deal closes, more than half the pigs Smithfield kills would be pigs it already owns, a percentage that is sure to increase.

The hog farmers’ job would no longer be farming. They would be janitors in confinement barns across rural America where the packers’ huge herds of pigs are crammed in stalls to live out their short lives.

And that would be the ultimate efficiency of American agriculture—- doing away with the farmer by doing away with competitive markets.

Most independent pork producers have already discovered this fact: if you don’t have a ‘semi-load’ to sell…. you don’t have a buyer. Independent sale barns have closed nearly everywhere and the ‘free market’ for pork is dwindling in favor of contract growers that promote a certain type of industrial efficiency. Packer ownership of livestock will only further industrial efficiencies as a way of life dwindles to a final generation.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article detailing the issues that mass food production has caused – in this case, the easy spread of a single E. Coli outbreak from a local contamination to a national outbreak:

TECHNOLOGY, EATING HABITS HELP TO SPREAD E. COLI
By Erin Allday San Francisco Chronicle
September 23, 2006

In the spring and summer of 1982, McDonald’s held a special promotion—- two burgers for the price of one—- that led to the first reported outbreak of a food-borne bacterial infection that now sweeps the nation with some regularity.

That year, at least 47 people in Oregon and Michigan, most of whom took advantage of the promotion, fell ill with severe abdominal cramps and bloody diarrhea. Doctors and public health investigators were spooked—- they’d never seen anything like it.

A year later, after months of investigation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, investigators were able to identify the infection. It was a common bacterium, one that microbiologists had long known to live in human intestinal tracts with mostly harmless, and sometimes even helpful, results.

The bacterium was E. coli, but this was a rare strain that had mutated. It had attached itself to a virus, and that virus made people very sick. Today, that same strain, called 0157:H7, sickens hundreds if not thousands of Americans every year, and is the source of the latest epidemic linked to bagged fresh spinach that has sickened 166 people so far, one of whom died.

“At the time of that (1982) outbreak, there was no knowledge that E. coli could cause a disease like this, so nobody believed it,” said Lee Riley, a professor of infectious disease and epidemiology at UC Berkeley who was one of the lead investigators for the CDC in the McDonald’s case and an author of the first paper published on E. coli in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“The outbreak occurred because the restaurants were having these promotions and going through a lot of hamburgers,” Riley said. “It’s the mass consumption of meat and the way it’s processed and delivered and distributed that made it possible for this E. coli to spread.”

Escherichia coli is found in everyone’s body. It can be helpful—- it kills off other harmful bacteria, for example—- but mostly it just sits there and doesn’t do much. Certain less-benign strains of E. coli are known to be the most common cause of urinary tract infections among women.

The first noted case of 0157:H7 actually dates back to 1975, when a woman at Alameda Naval Air Station became mysteriously sick. Doctors at the time couldn’t diagnose what ailed her, but they noted the rare E. coli found in her body and sent a sample to the CDC. When the 1982 outbreak occurred, investigators used that sample as further proof that E. coli was responsible for the sickness in the McDonald’s cases.

Public health officials say it’s impossible to know how long E. coli 0157:H7 has been around. People probably were sickened by it for years, or even decades, before doctors identified it.

But the reason outbreaks have become more common in the past 25 years, health officials agree, is because technology has been developed to identify and connect strains of bacteria and because the nation’s eating habits have changed—we eat mass-processed foods that make it easier for contaminated products to reach more people.

Over the years, technology has become increasingly complex as federal health officials searched for ways to identify outbreaks more quickly. The technique used today, known as PulseNet, allows microbiologists to track the “paternity” of a unique strain of 0157:H7, and, thereby, tell if isolated cases that appear around the country are connected, said Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer with the federal Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration.

The first E. coli outbreaks in the United States were in ground beef partly because E. coli bacteria live in cows, and partly because ground beef was among the first food products to be highly processed and mass-distributed via fast-food outlets. Beef from one tainted cow could be mixed with beef from hundreds of healthy cows, and the resulting hamburger patties would all be contaminated.

The nation has endured a handful of outbreaks since 1982—- including one notable outbreak involving hundreds of people who ate at Jack in the Box in 1993—- but the meat and fast-food industries have adopted policies over the years that make such cases more unusual now.

But in the 1990s, the source of the outbreaks spread to fruit and vegetables. In the past decade there have been 20 such outbreaks, including the most recent one. The last nine outbreaks involved leafy greens that were packaged into salad mixes.

Those salad mixes have become increasingly popular as Americans, told they need to eat more vegetables, jumped at the convenience of prewashed lettuce and spinach. But the problem with those mixes is the same problem the meat industry ran into—- a very small amount of contaminated vegetable can spread the E. coli bacteria to hundreds or thousands of packages when it’s mixed in a processing plant. That was the case with bagged spinach.

“Spinach is brought in from many, many farms,” Riley said. “So you have an opportunity for a lot of bagged spinach to become contaminated. It’s just a massive spread of E. coli, even if the original contamination was limited to one farm.”

With meat, solving the problem meant simply cooking it at a high enough temperature to kill the bacteria. But raw vegetables may prove more challenging because there’s not a lot that can be done once the produce has been contaminated. Washing produce isn’t necessarily enough to get rid of E. coli.

For now, federal and state investigators are searching farms in the Salinas Valley for clues as to what caused the contamination in spinach. But they may never know the answer. And to some degree, bacteria are always going to be living in our food supply.

“We live in a microbial world,” said Sam Beattie, a food safety extension specialist at Iowa State University. “Any time you go out into an agricultural field, can you really expect it to be a sterile environment? I don’t think so.”

The consolodation of the food market into the hands of one or two players – in this case, most of the nation’s spinach being produced in Salinas Valley, CA - can lead to massive outbreaks. It does need to be stated, however that federal inspection agencies have little to no power to halt such outbreaks before they happen.

(Thanks to A.V. Krebs’ Agribusiness Examiner #458.)

• Sousy

Okay, so I open my Sunday NY Times and find this piece of actual reporting:

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final

Then I open my DSM Register the next morning, and this is how the newspaper Iowa Depends on covers the story:

Dems jump on report linking war to terrorism
WASHINGTON – Democrats yesterday seized on an intelligence assessment that said the Iraq war has increased the terrorist threat, saying it was further evidence that Americans should choose new leadership in the November elections.

The Democrats hoped the report would undermine the GOP’s image as the party more capable of handing terrorism as the campaign enters its final six-week stretch.

That’s the way the Des Moines Register works. They don’t cover the story; they cover the spin. After all, what Democrats say about the report is far more important than, um, national security.

$%#@*&!

Not that I am accusing the Register of bias. I certainly wouldn’t do that after the paper lead last Saturday with the results of a mock poll that had McCain and Guiliani outpolling John Edwards by a few meaningless mock points over two years before the election. And that’s LEAD, as in this completely non-news story is the most important thing of the day. And I certainly wouldn’t accuse the paper of spinning instead of reporting when last week it LEAD with a poll showing Iowans had upped their approval ratings of Bush by a few meaningless percentage points (which were well within the poll’s margin of error).

That’s LEAD, mind you; that’s splash a poll result all over the front page and call it news. That’s report a story of national importance as if it were so much partisan squabbling while elsewhere the paper’s editors hypocritically dole out a rose to an Iowa candidate who resigned his party rather than engage in partisan squabbling.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: you can learn a lot from a newspaper if you read it with the proper contempt, but the Register is sadly beneath contempt anymore. It’s now just a hack paper floundering to get suburbanites to read it by covering football tailgating parties, drunken bike rides, and Oprah-esque abuse stories.

Yeesh.

• profo

Thanks to Rising Hegemon (Hi, Scooter!) – is a good example of what’s wrong with the American media. Which of these things is not like the other?

• Sousy

Via Confined Space is an example of why companies fight hard to continue hiring illegal employees – and lobbying to avoid responsibility for doing so.

He broke a rib and injured a kidney, and his right lung collapsed. He also hit his head on the floor, severely injuring his brain’s frontal lobe, which controls language, memory and motor function.

Ruiz was in a coma, able to breathe only with a ventilator.

His younger brother, Jose, left his wife, two young children and his job in Mexico and rushed to Charlotte.

Ruiz’s wife followed, with a temporary pass to enter the country, leaving her three children behind. When she arrived at Carolinas Medical Center, she found the Virgin of Guadalupe medal in her husband’s hand.

Nurses were hoping for a miracle, but at Belk Masonry, a counterattack had begun.

The Companion Property & Casualty Insurance Co. paid his initial medical bills, but adjusters wanted to know all about Francisco Ruiz. When they discovered his illegal work status, they rejected his claim.

The law in North Carolina, as in most states, says that illegal immigrants who are hurt on the job are entitled to compensation. Companies, the law says, must pay injury benefits to “every person engaged in employment … whether lawfully or unlawfully employed.”

But officials at Companion Property & Casualty questioned the law’s intent. Why should they pay an alien who lied about his immigration status to get his job? How could an illegal worker technically be considered an employee?

Mr. Ruiz took the company to court and won. Of course, the workers comp company president defended the refusal to pay for medical care:

The company was disappointed but not surprised.

“We’re always viewed as the deep pocket,” said Companion President Charles Potok. “If you’re talking about paying somebody or cutting someone off cold, we typically lose.”

Of course, there is no mention of responsibility on the part of the Belk Masonry Co. – Mr. Ruiz’ employer.

Thom Hartmann comments on why companies fight to hire illegal immigrants in the first place.

• Sousy

It seems that the Iowa GOP leaders in Des Moines decided to “help” with a campaign in southern Iowa – in a way so disgusting that it forced their canddiate to drop out of the party and declare himself to be an Independent.

Kevin Wiskus, a candidate for Iowa House District 94, has switched his party affiliation from Republican to Independent following what he said was a “shocking and tasteless” mass-mailed brochure attacking his opponent.

The move, he said, was in response to a brochure from the Republican Party of Iowa attacking current state Rep. Kurt Swaim, D-Bloomfield.

“I do not support any kind of attack campaign tactics,” Wiskus said. “Voters should be able to choose between qualified candidates based on individual merits. At no time should voters have to make a choice based on which candidate can throw the most mud.

“Though I had no prior knowledge of this vicious attack on you, I ask that you please accept my most sincere and humble apology to you and Julie,” he wrote in an ad to appear in the Centerville Daily Iowegian.
...
“You deserve an apology from the Republican Party,” begins Wiskus’ ad in the Daily Iowegian. “Since he will not get an apology from the Republican Party of Iowa, I would like to apologize to Kurt.”

Mr. Wiskus appears to be a rarity in modern politics: someone who values personal integrity over partisan attack politics. The Iowa GOP flyer accused the incumbent Democrat Kurt Swain for being “soft on crime”, highlighting Mr. Swain’s record as a public defender (where he had the duty to defend “sex offenders”) and for voting for a bill sponsored by Republicans, of all things.

Statehouse candidate denounces brochure

Of course, on WOI radio, the chair of the Iowa GOP referred to the brochure as “voter education” – apparently missing out on the idea that a decision made in Des Moines wasn’t well recieved in the rural counties.

• Sousy

.... or at least, copying them from the political consultants back pocket.

The answers were so good, Republican candidates wanted to use them as their own. The embarrassment was at least seven did.

Republicans in House races copied their party’s talking points and included parts of the answers as their own for an AARP survey. The answers related to Medicare, Social Security, insurance plans and retirement.

Candidates in Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, South Carolina and Texas all submitted the sometimes word-for-word responses, which originated with the National Republican Congressional Committee.
....
Among the candidates who used the borrowed language were Andrea Zinga and Peter Roskam, both running in Illinois, Jeff Lamberti in Iowa, Chuck Blasdel in Ohio and Max Burns in Georgia.

Link: from Forbes Magazine.

• Sousy
  
  
  

From the University of Iowa News Service:

IOWA CITY, Iowa—Dr. James A. Van Allen, U.S. space pioneer and Regent Distinguished Professor of Physics in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, died this morning, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2006 at the age of 91. Arrangements are pending.

Though he retired from active teaching in 1985, he continued to monitor data from Pioneer 10 throughout the spacecraft’s 1972-2003 operational lifetime and serve as an interdisciplinary scientist for the Galileo spacecraft, which reached Jupiter on Dec. 7, 1995.

The highlight of Van Allen’s long and distinguished career was his use of UI-built instruments carried aboard the first successful U.S. satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958 to discover bands of intense radiation—later known as the Van Allen radiation belts—surrounding the Earth. It came at the height of the U.S.-Soviet space race and literally put the United States on the map in the field of space exploration.

Now that the dust has settled on the eminent domain legislation (for now) – another related issue has come to a head in Clear Lake.

State lawmakers can brag all they want about how they protected Iowans from shopping malls, airports and lakes. But when it comes to the property rights fight over hogs, they have nothing to brag about.

Sure, no one is seizing property to build hog confinements. But you don’t have to physically grab property to take its value.

Read the rest of Todd Dorman’s Blog Entry

• Sousy

Three cheers for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. It would appear she of the prodigious adam’s apple has reached a tipping point in her career – and is finally pissing off and offending those to the right of the political spectrum. It’s not quite ‘ding dong, the witch is dead’ yet, but it’s atleast a start, eh?

Via Editor & Publisher

By Sarah Weber

Published: July 12, 2006 5:05 PM ET

NEW YORK Ann Coulter is no stranger to controversy, but her latest adventures have several newspapers questioning whether carrying her syndicated column is worth the trouble. The Shreveport (La.) Times is currently leaving the decision of whether or not to keep Coulter up to its readers. But the first newspaper to officially drop Coulter’s column since the latest uproar began seems to be The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she had appeared for about 14 months.

Opinion Page Editor Doug Neumann told E&P, “Our decision was made before the plagiarism allegations. It did come after the publication of [Coulter’s] book, but I would say it didn’t directly play any role on our decision.”

However, Neumann surmised that Coulter’s incendiary book may have played an “indirect” role in the final decision. “I think it was the book that began to unwind support among her readers,” Neumann explained.

“Liberals have never liked her, and we’ve always gotten complaints [from them]. But the complaints that mattered the most were from the conservative readers,” who felt that their views were being misrepresented.

Coulter’s syndicate, Universal Press, cleared her of plagiarism charges earlier this week.

Though The Gazette may be the first to drop the outspoken conservative columnist in recent months, Neumann emphasized, “It’s not uncommon for opinion pages to change their line-up.” The daily has long published conservative Cal Thomas and replaced Coulter with another conservative, David Limbaugh.

“We’ve always had a rich line-up of conservative columnists,” said Neumann, “and we still do.”

related digg thread
Also, via ‘Crooks and Liars’, Donny Deutsch Shatters the Coulter Myth

• pdx