AdvancePierre Foods Plant (Iowa) To Close, 300 Will Be Laid Off

There were not many details included with this mass layoff story from EasternIowaOnline.com:

ORANGE CITY, Iowa - An Ohio-based company has told employees that its northwest Iowa meat plant in Orange City will close by the end of the year.

Shuttering the AdvancePierre Foods plant will eliminate an estimated 300 jobs.

Mayor Les Douma says the plant manager told him about the closing late Tuesday.

A representative from the Cincinnati, Ohio-based company didn't immediately return a call Wednesday from The Associated Press.

Douma says the plant has "a great economic impact on the entire region."

The company supplies meat products and sandwiches to food-service, school, retail, club store, vending and convenience store markets.

And so it goes.

Slimeball Defends Pink Slime For $45,000

The headline above was my best New York Post imitation. Anyway, here's the story from Think Progress:

The meat industry has been hammered for the weeks after it was revealed that some companies had been controversially using beef scraps mixed with ammonia hydroxide, called “pink slime”, as hamburger filler. This week, one passionate defender of pink slime emerged: Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

As we know, King enjoys touting his carnivorous habits while beating up on people who don’t eat meat. But meat producers have also been major financial backers of King, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, throughout his political career. A cursory glance at King’s fundraising records shows more than $45,000 in campaign contributions from the meat industry during his time in Congress. This cycle alone, two prominent PACs, the National Beef Cattleman’s Association and the National Council of Pork Producers, as well as Lynch Livestock, have already maxed out their contributions to King’s reelection campaign.

That money appears to have been well-spent. All this week, King has been defending pink slime — or “lean finely textured beef” as he calls it — to his constituents. Indeed, in every one of the half dozen town halls that ThinkProgress attended, King talked up pink slime unprompted. In Emmetsburg, for instance, he said pink slime was actually a “supplement” and an “enhancement.” In Algona, he pledged to hold congressional hearings not into pink slime, but into the “smear campaign” against pink slime.

How much do you want to bet that despite his meat obsession, asshole Representative Steve King has never in his life ever eaten Pink Slime? What's the matter with Iowa? How do you keep electing this fucking slimeball?


Bonus: Instead of Pink Slime, how about some Pink Floyd?

Thanks for Your Service, Guardsmen, Now Give Us Back That Tuition Assistance

On May 29th of last year, I wrote a post called "Fear and Loathing in the Illinois Army National Guard (or How I Managed to Pay My Way through College)," in which I recounted among other things how I was able to take advantage of the State of Illinois's tuition assistance program for National Guardsmen to complete my Bachelor's degree. Back then, of course, very few of us who served in the National Guard or military reserve ever got sent off overseas to fight in America's imperial wars. That obviously has changed in recent years, so you would think there would be greater incentive to protect the benefits promised to those who have made that particular sacrifice and risked their lives doing what the children of the elite would refuse to do. Sadly, you'd be wrong about that. Here is the story from a local television station in Iowa:

People join the National Guard with the expectation that their education will be paid for.

You've seen the ads and heard the line, "If you join the national guard you can get up to 100% tuition assistance."

Due to budget cuts, the Iowa National Guard's tuition assistance has gone from 90% down to 50%.

One Guardsman told me it's absurd.

Corey Duckett wanted to serve his country, but what sold him on joining the army national guard in 2007 was the benefit of having his college paid for.

"That is what I signed up for. It's in my contract actually," said Duckett.

This summer Duckett returned from 9 months in Afghanistan, and he's currently studying business at Morningside College.

He just found out about the tuition assistance cut two weeks after it was announced.

"There's always a lack of communication sometimes when it comes from way up high. I mean, I'm the little guy, so by the time it gets to me it's like hmm you should've known. Am I supposed to look this up on my own, am I supposed to just know this," said Duckett.

He's now on the hook for an extra $4,000 a year to study at Morningside, but there are ways to make up for the lost assistance from the state.

Okay, the state is broke and budget cuts need to be made. I get that if anybody does. But didn't any of the so called "leaders" running The Hawkeye State consider whether it might not be more advisable to limit the change in the tuition assistance program to new recruits and grandfather in those already serving, particularly if they already had to go to one of the war zones? Silly me, apparently not.

The only thing I would say to Corey Ducket is that he is now learning a much more valuable life lessen than any he's is going to learn while attending Morningside College. America has become a Me First Nation, particularly for those who constitute the 1%. They want theirs and don't want to pay their fair share in taxes, and they don't give a fuck about you or your service to your country even though none of them would ever deign to serve themselves. They may wave a flag, stick a yellow ribbon magnet on their car and blow patriotic smoke up your ass, but talk and little magnets are cheap.

That's a hard lesson, I realize, but a valuable one nonetheless.


Bonus: No, in case you forgot, this song was NOT actually appropriate for that flag waving, faux-patriotic, God damned jeans commercial

Candidates tiptoe around trade

An unusual story from Bloomberg's Hans Nichols and Julianna Goldman this morning. Unusual how? Well, for starters, it treats trade as a complex issue with wide-ranging, and by no means uniform, consequences.

Democratic presidential hopefuls are tip-toeing around an inconvenient economic fact: Iowa and New Hampshire, the states hosting the 2008 campaign's first contests, benefit from free-trade policies that many residents nonetheless blame for lost jobs. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are seeking to avoid alienating workers from agriculture and other export- intensive industries while appealing to those from U.S.-focused businesses that have fallen behind, especially union members.

In the past I have accused presidential candidates from both parties of engaging in "Campaign Protectionism." I have also offered an explanation for the unsettling phenomenon of declining support for free trade in the U.S.. Namely, the benefits are disguised while the costs are highly visible. Opportunistic politicians have often exploited this perception gap to great advantage. Hillary Clinton, especially, has wavered on support for free trade, giving the appearance of a naked play for labor union votes. Along with Obama and Edwards, she opposed the U.S.-South Korea free-trade agreement. Now, in this Bloomberg report, some nuances emerge.

"You have winners and losers from trade,'' New York Senator Clinton said at a Dec. 13 debate in Iowa. People "are gaining because we're exporting,'' she said, while others have lost jobs.

The location of this remark is significant. Support for Edwards is strong in Iowa and he is known as a union favorite. Could this be the beginnings of a navigation back towards the center in anticipation a general election campaign?

Sometimes, as in New Hampshire, trade's 'winners and losers' live side-by-side, making it difficult to tailor the message to the audience. Moreover, the unique juxtaposition of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries presents a difficult challenge to a candidate's desire for consistency. Nichols and Goldman cite poll numbers showing the two states are mirror images on free-trade: New Hamphire in favor, Iowa against.

WSJ: More bad news for free trade

Free trade sure could use a little good PR. This page one story in the Wall Street Journal underlines my fear that the election season will drive another nail into the free trade casket. Deborah Solomon and Greg Hitt document the growing ambivalence over trade in a state, Iowa, considered a "big winner from global trade."

...over the last couple of years, workers and voters in this blue-collar manufacturing outpost -- and throughout Iowa -- have grown decidedly downbeat about globalization. Trade has become such a hot subject that Democratic presidential candidates seeking support in Iowa's influential Jan. 3 caucuses are turning into trade skeptics, and the issue is splitting traditionally free-trade Republicans.

It's impossible to factor out how much of this trade skepticism can be attributed to Iowa's unique place in the US electoral calendar. But anti-trade sentiment is undeniably gaining steam nationwide despite reports that the falling dollar is stimulating exports. Peter Goodman, writing in the International Herald Tribune this week:

As the United States heads into what many economists predict will be a substantial economic slowdown, the success of U.S. companies in building sales in countries around the world may cushion the blow. It could help prevent the economy from slipping into a recession.

So which presidential candidate is prepared to make the argument that what the US needs is more trade, not less?