Tag: Iowa

An Iowa farm county seeks answers amid cancer rates 50% higher than national average

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.thenewlede.org/2024/05/an-iowa-farm-county-seeks-answers-amid-cancer-rates-50-higher-than-national-average/

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Excerpt:

Palo Alto’s [County, Iowa] 2022 tally of 842 farms generates nearly $800 million in annual market value. But nearly 400 small farms have been absorbed into bigger operations or otherwise stopped operating over recent decades, and Palo Alto’s population has dropped by 4,200 people since 1970.

Today’s Iowa farms are largely focused on raising hogs and growing corn, both of which are linked to numerous environmental problems. Farmers growing corn, for example, often rely heavily on applications of toxic pesticides and fertilizers, while livestock operations generate millions of tons of manure annually. The chemicals and manure pollute food and water consumed by people even far from farm fields.

When nitrogen from fertilizer and manure combine with oxygen they create nitrates, which routinely drain from farm fields into groundwater, streams, and rivers, contaminating water sources. Babies can suffer severe health problems when consuming nitrates in drinking water, and a growing body of literature indicates potential associations that include an increased risk of cancer. Exposure to elevated levels of nitrates in drinking water has been linked by researchers to cancers of the blood, brain, breast, bladder and ovaries.

As well, there are years of research showing that many herbicides and other pesticides applied to farm fields are linked to cancers and other diseases. The National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences have been funding research to investigate the links between disease and farming for more than 30 years, focusing their work on people in Iowa and North Carolina. Among the findings are links between pesticides and malignant brain tumors, multiple myeloma, pancreatic cancer and certain breast cancers.

Concerns about connections between the farm pollutants and cancer have been mounting, particularly in Palo Alto County, which had the highest incidence of cancer of any county in the state and the second-highest incidence of cancer among all US counties, with 83 new cases of cancer on average each year, in a population of 8,996, according to a 2023 report by US News.

Author(s): Keith Schneider

Publication Date: 7 May 2024

Publication Site: The New Lede

Republicans ride ESG backlash to state financial offices

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://rollcall.com/2022/11/17/republicans-ride-esg-backlash-to-state-financial-offices/

Excerpt:

Republicans picked up state financial officer positions during the midterm elections amid a campaign against environmental, social and governance investing.

Five positions — in Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada and Wisconsin — flipped from Democratic to Republican in races for state auditor, controller or treasurer. Of the 50 directly elected positions, Republicans won 29 and Democrats won 19, according to an analysis from Ballotpedia. Two races remain uncalled.

A handful of Republicans’ campaigns for state financial officers focused on ESG, echoing sentiments from GOP officials at statehouses across the country and in Congress who say ESG investing is harming capital markets and domestic energy production and reject the case made by Democrats, major investors and other proponents.

At stake is a suite of legislation and rules that would curb ESG as a material consideration, along with other financial factors, for investors. The proposals include policies for states’ pension funds to divest hundreds of millions of dollars from financial institutions that incorporate ESG — and especially climate — in their investment decisions.

Author(s): Ellen Meyers

Publication Date: 17 Nov 2022

Publication Site: Roll Call

Iowa’s Bold Tax Reform

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/iowas-bold-tax-reform-kim-reynolds-11642614230

Excerpt:

Gov. Reynolds is proposing a bold tax reform that would increase the incentives to work and invest in the Hawkeye State. Her proposal unveiled last week would reshape the state income tax, gradually consolidating brackets en route to a flat 4% rate by 2026. “When the bill’s fully implemented,” she said, “an average Iowa family will pay more than $1,300 less in taxes.”

The flat 4% levy would drop the state’s top rate by more than a third. Under current law Iowans are set to pay 6.5% on earnings above about $80,000, a threshold that catches much of the middle class. That and three other income-tax brackets would be swept away by Gov. Reynolds’s reform.

The plan would also slash the state’s corporate tax, which is even more punishing. Iowa-based companies pay 9.8% of their earnings above $250,000 in state tax. Ms. Reynolds’s reform would gradually reduce the top rate to 5.5%, capping corporate-tax revenue at $700 million a year and using excess revenue to offset annual rate cuts. An immediate rate cut would be better economically, providing more clarity for corporate investment decisions. But the revenue target should be met if the economy continues to grow.

Author(s): WSJ Editorial Board

Publication Date: 19 Jan 2022

Publication Site: WSJ

Illinois and Iowa – the Mutt and Jeff of ‘balanced budgets’

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.truthinaccounting.org/news/detail/illinois-and-iowa-the-mutt-and-jeff-of-balanced-budgets

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Iowa (the blue line) maintained positive net revenue in 15 of the 16 years. Illinois, on the other hand, did so in only three of those 16 years.

The frequency of truly-balanced-budgets, as indicated by “Net Revenue,” provides significant explanatory power (in econometrics-speak) for two important measures of state government performance – Truth in Accounting’s “Taxpayer Burden” measure of overall financial condition and rankings of the states on the latest Gallup results for a survey of trust in state government. 

In our latest (2021) Financial State of the States report on state government finances, Iowa ranked 9th, while Illinois ranked 48th. And in the latest Gallup poll on trust in state government, Iowa ranked 8th, while Illinois ranked 50th (dead last).

Author(s): Bill Bergman

Publication Date: 28 Sept 2021

Publication Site: Truth in Accounting