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Noise, safety issues make rail merger a rotten deal for eastern Iowa
By Ann Geiger There are issues flying under the radar in our neck of the woods. Last year, Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern launched a corporate merger under the purview of the Surface Transportation Board (STB), a totally autonomous federal agency. As a result, the two railroads will triple their traffic through eastern Iowa […]
More Midwest banks see opportunity to finance solar, energy efficiency projects
By Frank Jossi, Energy News Network Smaller, regional banks and credit unions are increasingly looking to help homeowners finance solar installations in a sign of growing recognition of the opportunities in clean energy finance. In the Midwest, Iowa-based Decorah Bank & Trust is among the latest to begin marketing loans for solar and other clean […]
Merger of Sanderson Farms and Cargill is a bad deal for farmers and consumers
By Tim Gibbons Why conspire with your competitors when you can just merge? Over the last two years, giant corporate meat companies have been settling lawsuits to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars that allege they conspired with each other to fix prices, lower workers’ and farmers’ pay and raise the price of […]
Missouri Independent, Midwest Newsroom co-hosting community discussion on lead
By Staff Reports, Missouri Independent A study released last year found that more than 80% of Missouri children had some level of lead in their blood. Across the Midwest, in Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, the data painted a similar picture — children with elevated levels of lead in their blood far above the national average. […]
General Mills boosts D.C. lobbying presence as Congress reviews food policy
By Emma Loop WASHINGTON — The Minnesota-based food manufacturing giant best known for its sugary cereals and snacks is slowly expanding its lobbying operation in the nation’s capital as a Democratic-led Congress reviews sweeping food policy legislation. General Mills spent $360,000 on lobbying in the first quarter this year — nearly half of what it […]
Where’s the meat? Solving a bottleneck in the meat supply chain vital to farmers’ profitability
By Paul Sobocinski COVID-19 brought a lot of hard lessons, one of which is that it’s not a good bet to put all of our meat processing needs into the hands of just a few large processing plants. When COVID infections soared, many large processors in our region had to shut down for a few […]
Do to guns what we did to cigarettes — make them culturally repellent | Opinion
By Sheldon Clay Maybe you’ve wondered how much innocent blood needed to get spilled to finally convince Senate Republicans that gun violence has spiraled out of control, and we need to do something. The back-to-back mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde gave us the unhappy answer. One month later Congress presented President Joe Biden with […]
Brother and sister recount ‘very traumatizing’ Amtrak derailment in Missouri
By Lily O’Shea Becker A mother aboard a train derailment in Mendon, Missouri, on Monday climbed on top of the wreckage and went from train car to train car, yelling into each window while searching for her three children, according to her son, Dax McDonald. The Amtrak train was traveling from Los Angeles to Chicago […]
State courts from Oregon to Georgia will now decide who – if anyone – can get an abortion under 50 different state constitutions
By Stefanie Lindquist The U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of abortion rights under the federal constitution is leading pro-choice advocates to seek other legal pathways to protect reproductive rights. Just one week after the court’s June 24, 2022, ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, there’s a flurry of litigation in state courts. New lawsuits in Idaho, Utah, Kentucky and Florida all […]
Juneteenth celebrates just one of the United States’ 20 emancipation days
By Kris Manjapra The actual day was June 19, 1865, and it was the Black dockworkers in Galveston, Texas, who first heard the word that freedom for the enslaved had come. There were speeches, sermons and shared meals, mostly held at Black churches, the safest places to have such celebrations. The perils of unjust laws […]
We may never see police accountability in the Texas school shooting. This is why | Opinion
By Matthew T. Mangino The first 911 call from Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas came at 12:03 pm. on May 24. Seventy-eight minutes later, a U.S. Border Patrol tactical team killed the 18-year-old gunman, who had by that time, killed 19 children and two adults. A teacher, Eva Mireles, spoke to her husband, an […]
Should we protect nature for its own sake? For its economic value? Because it makes us happy? Yes
By Bradley J. Cardinale As spring phases into summer in North America, with trees flowering and birds migrating, nature seems abundant. In fact, however, the Earth is losing animals, birds, reptiles and other living things so fast that some scientists believe the planet is entering the sixth mass extinction in its history. This fall, the […]