Rove Bars Recording From University of Iowa Lecture

Karl Rove will speak at the University of Iowa on Sunday, but under conditions that inhibit media access.



The compromise reached between Rove and the university's lecture committee was that reporters could use recording equipment and flash photography only during the first five minutes of the lecture.

Rove, former deputy chief of staff for President George W. Bush, originally did not want media personnel to attend the event at all, said Sharon Benzoni, student and co-chairwoman of the lecture committee at the University of Iowa.

However, she said, the lecture board informed him that excluding the media simply was not possible at a public event on a university campus.

She said it took some time for the lecture committee and Rove to work out a contract.

"We have some very strict guidelines about what we require from our speakers," she said.

One of these guidelines, she said, was that there has to be a classroom discussion or question-and-answer session with the student body.

Rove is fulfilling this requirement by having a question-and-answer session during the last part of the event that follows an interview with Frank Durham, associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Iowa.

Benzoni said part of Rove's appeal was that he is a well-known conservative and the college has been getting calls to bring in more conservative speakers.

"This is a fairly liberal college, and we tend to have a fairly liberal lecture committee," she said.

So, she said, when they started looking for someone to speak, Rove seemed like a good choice because he was part of the Bush administration and has played a role in shaping current American politics.

Durham, the professor slated to interview Rove, is known to be on the opposite end of the political spectrum, Benzoni said. But he said that, as a journalist, he will be able to be objective and still ask the tough questions some members of the audience will want to hear.

Pat Miller, director of the lectures program at Iowa State, said a lot of speakers have restrictive contracts and this type of stipulation is not new, but it is strange that Rove would not allow recorders during the question-and-answer portion.

"I've been doing this for 27 years, and this is unique," Miller said.

She said a concerns many speakers have is that their material will be used out of context.

Rove will be paid $40,000, which will come from student activities fees at the University of Iowa and private funding from the F. Wendell Miller Fund.

Benzoni said University of Iowa TV is supposed to be recording the whole presentation for broadcast at a later date, but there are still some issues with contractual obligations that need to be worked out.

Rich Adams, staff member at UITV, said he wasn't sure if they had worked anything out with Rove, so they may not be able to record the entire lecture.

Lyombe Eko, associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Iowa, wrote in an e-mail that he believed "Rove was using the media-control reflex that he honed so well in the White House."

Eko wrote Rove could also be benefiting commercially by controlling what parts of his speeches can or cannot be broadcast to media.

"He wants to commercialize his experience in government," Eko wrote.

"He will soon probably sign a multimedia deal for his memoirs. He does not want the juiciest tidbits in the media before the book is out.

"Rove has no qualms putting his contract above free speech. To him, copyright and contract law take precedence over the First Amendment, at least in this instance."

Hillary Clinton Vows Regular Pullout of Brigades

The New York Times blog reports:

Iraq doesn’t come up on the presidential campaign trail as much as it once did, but Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was asked here Wednesday afternoon when she would “bring the boys home” – and gave a blunter and less conditional answer than usual.

“I think we can bring home one to two combat brigades a month,” she told an audience member who posed the question. “I think we can bring nearly everybody home, you know, certainly within a year if we keep at it and do it very steadily.”

One of Mrs. Clinton’s main competitors in Iowa, Senator Barack Obama, has been proposing the one-to-two-brigade pace for many months now; her other chief rival, former Senator John Edwards, as well as Governor Bill Richardson, have argued that they would remove all combat troops more quickly than that.

Mrs. Clinton has said for months that, as president, she would begin removing troops as quickly as her team could put plans in place, and that she would move at an orderly and safety-conscious pace. But she has also said that she would leave a number of forces in the country for specific missions, such as fighting al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, protecting the Kurds, and acting as a bulwark against Iranian forces.

Asked in August if troops could be out in 2007, Mrs. Clinton pointed to experts’ estimates that only one to two brigades could be evacuated each month. There are now 20 combat brigades in Iraq.

She also said this year, “The best estimate is that we can probably move a brigade a month, if we really accelerate it, maybe a brigade and a half or two a month. That is a lot of months. My point is: They’re not even planning for that in the Pentagon.”

Corn Farms Prosper, But Subsidies Still Flow

The Washington Post reports:

Corn farmer Jim Handsaker has found a slew of ways to ride the heartland boom in biofuels that is reshaping the economy of rural Iowa.

He sold some of his 2006 crop this year for more than $4 a bushel, the highest price in a decade. His stake in two nearby ethanol plants brought in several thousand dollars more in dividends. Meanwhile, soaring farmland prices have pushed the value of the 400 acres he owns to around $2 million.

Even so, come October he will get a subsidy check from the government, part of a $1.6 billion installment that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will send to corn farmers.

Those annual automatic payments to Handsaker and thousands of other prospering corn growers have long been controversial. But coming at a time when taxpayers are already subsidizing the ethanol industry to the tune of $3 billion a year, the double-barreled support system for those who grow corn and those who turn it into fuel has begun to draw fire in Congress.

"Federal farm subsidies are already narrowly focused on certain crops and are excessive," said Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), a farmer and former chairman of the Senate agriculture committee. "They become ridiculous given the exploding possibilities to grow crops for biofuels production."

So far, Congress has shown little inclination to adjust the subsidies to account for the new energy-driven rural economy.

A House-passed farm bill would give corn growers $10.5 billion over the next five years, even if prices stay high. These "direct payments," a kind of annual allowance, are set by formula and go out automatically, regardless of prices, profits, yields or weather.

At the same time, a Senate-approved energy bill would double the federal requirement for the use of ethanol from corn -- a move that should further buttress corn prices.

Handsaker, a Republican who keeps a framed picture of President and Mrs. Bush in his office, argues that such farm subsidies help keep agricultural land in the hands of family farmers and away from corporate monopolies.

Handsaker is not banking on the ethanol boom lasting. "We've all been down the road of price plateaus," he said.

But he acknowledges that justifying the payments is not easy in the midst of an energy renaissance in the heartland. Country roads are dotted with signs advertising "ethanol corn" -- genetically engineered seeds with the high starch content ideal for making 200-proof, high-octane ethanol.

Just weeks before the October harvest, Hardin County, Handsaker's home in central Iowa, was a sea of corn rolling southwest from Iowa Falls. Handsaker once grew a mix of corn and soybeans on the farmland he and his brothers own or rent. "Now we're 100 percent corn," he said.

On a once quiet highway west of Iowa Falls, a constant stream of tractor-trailers pound the road, hauling corn to the Hawkeye Renewables ethanol refinery and soybeans to Cargill Inc.'s biodiesel plant.

To celebrate a banner year, Hawkeye founder and chief executive Bruce Rastetter pulled out the stops for his annual midsummer bash. Several hundred politicians, businessmen and farmers mingled at his richly landscaped hilltop estate, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) made his entrance in a wagon pulled by Rastetter's team of Percheron draft horses.

"It's a great country," said Rastetter, a Hardin County native who started with a few acres of farmland and a small feed business 20 years ago. He recently pledged $1.75 million to Iowa State University. In addition to his Iowa Falls plant, he operates a second one in a nearby county and has two more under construction.

The boom has helped push shares in Iowa ethanol plants to double or triple the initial price. Bill Couser, a corn grower and cattleman who was a driving force behind a new ethanol plant in neighboring Story County, says a grateful local school bus driver who bought shares "waves and honks every time she drives by."

"That's the secret of this ethanol industry," Couser said. "It's keeping the dollars at home."

In July, Pine Lake Corn Processors, the second Hardin County plant after Hawkeye's, announced profits for the previous eight months of $3,800 a share, more than the $3,250 cost of the initial investment. "It's worked out better than my wildest dreams," said Pine Lake President Larry Meints, a corn grower who pushed for the new plant after becoming fed up with hauling grain to distant elevators.

The new market means corn-rich Hardin County has to import the crop even though it grows 35 million bushels a year. The county can't supply its two ethanol refineries and its thriving pork, beef and poultry industries.

"Things are good here," said Howard B. Wenger, president of Iowa Falls State Bank, who reviews the balance sheets of hundreds of farmers.

He estimates that most farmers earned between $100 and $400 an acre on their 2006 crop after expenses, depending on whether they owned or rented their land. That translates into profits of $100,000 to $400,000 on a 1,000-acre farm. The USDA predicts that net farm income will be $87.1 billion this year, up nearly 50 percent over 2006.

Iowa farmland values are up 18 percent in the past 12 months, according to Federal Reserve Board surveys, making millionaires on paper out of any farmers owning 200 acres free and clear.

The rural prosperity is due in large measure to billions of dollars in federal subsidies and incentives for corn-based energy. These include a 51-cent tax credit that gasoline manufacturers get on every gallon of ethanol they mix with their blends, and more than $500 million in federal cash to ethanol refiners between 2001 and 2006.

In 2005, Congress required the use of at least 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2012. Then in 2006 came new demand for ethanol as a pollution-curbing additive, along with a jump in gasoline prices that made the corn-based fuel competitive.

"We're harvesting the sun out here," said Handsaker, a genial man who typifies the new breed of businessman-farmer. "We're creating something with sun and chemicals and water and making a renewable product instead of unloading an oil tanker."

When he started in 1971, he recalled, farmers sold their crops to the local livestock industry or sent them "down the river" to volatile export markets.

Prices soared when the Soviet harvest failed or Argentina's corn crop fell short. In between, government payments bridged the gap between solvency and bankruptcy. From 2001 through 2005, Handsaker and his two brothers collected more than $500,000, according to USDA records.

Now four ethanol plants have sprouted within easy trucking distance of their farms and will get about half the 450,000 bushels they produce.

Still, the three brothers stand to collect about $45,000 in direct payments this year, based solely on their previous crop acreage and yields, according to USDA records. Congress created the payments in 1996 as part of a plan to temporarily buttress farm incomes while other traditional subsidies were eliminated. They were supposed to be phased out. Instead, the 2002 farm bill continued them.

"It's a bonus program, not a safety net," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). "Farmers I talk to know it's not politically sustainable to ask taxpayers to make payments to them in highly profitable years."

Durbin plans to offer a farm bill amendment that would gradually replace the automatic payments with a program to compensate growers when statewide farm revenues fall below the norm. The National Corn Growers Association embraces a similar plan. This week, the Senate agriculture committee's chairman, Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), circulated a proposal to cut direct payments by $4.5 billion over five years.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, the country's largest farm organization, opposes any changes, but the National Farmers Union, the nation's second-largest, supports an overhaul of direct payments. "It's the most costly and inefficient method for providing a safety net," said the union's president, Tom Buis.

Lugar, the senator from Indiana, favors scrapping the current farm program and using crop insurance and tax-exempt savings accounts to tide farmers over in bad years.

"A farmer's best friend in Iowa is the energy bill," said Bruce Babcock, a professor of economics at Iowa State. "What do you need the direct payments for? It's money for nothing."

Rastetter, along with most others in the ethanol industry, argues that increasing requirements for ethanol use would do more for corn growers than farm programs would. If the government expands its support for ethanol, he said, "then the market price of corn will support farmers and provide the safety net."

But relying on energy policy instead of the traditional farm program worries many in rural Iowa who remember previous bubbles.

The bank still holds a mortgage on his land, Handsaker notes.

Ethanol prices have been tumbling recently as supply catches up with demand. Some ethanol companies, including Rastetter's, have put plans for new refineries on hold pending action by Congress to expand required use.

But such action faces stiff opposition from the livestock industry, which contends that the added demand for corn could mean higher feed and food costs. Environmental groups say it could jeopardize water supplies and sensitive lands in exchange for only minimal savings in the use of fossil fuels, given the amounts of gasoline and chemical fertilizer needed to raise corn.

Meanwhile, the prices of fertilizer, seed and land have been rising rapidly as landlords and corporations move to capture their share of higher grain prices. "As far as the bioeconomy, I don't think any of us thinks it's the golden egg," said April Hemmes, who owns 1,000 acres of prime farmland near Iowa City.