U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack revealed yesterday that schools will be given greater “flexibility” to meet the new school lunch standards, in particular caloric limits designed to combat childhood obesity.

Iowa State University President Steven Leath is trying to restrict the kind of agricultural research that can be conducted at the Harkin Institute of Public Policy, I learned from a must-read article by Hannah Furfaro for the Ames Tribune. The dispute over academic freedom may prompt U.S. Senator Tom Harkin to sever ties from the institute established last year.

More than 1,100 people attended the Governor’s Bullying Prevention Summit in Des Moines yesterday. To his credit, Governor Terry Branstad stayed all day to listen to speakers like Sioux City Superintendent of Schools Paul Gausman and Rosalind Wiseman, author of the book “Queen Bees and Wannabes.” The governor also announced a new hotline and website designed to help young people targeted by bullies.

I was unable to watch the livestream from what sounds like a fantastic event. After the jump I’ve posted a bunch of news and links about the summit as well as background on Iowa’s anti-bullying policies.  

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida addressed a full house last Saturday while helping Governor Terry Branstad raise about a half-million dollars for his re-election campaign. Since Rubio is a likely presidential candidate  

He should have quit while he was behind, but Mitt Romney stepped in it again this week during a conference call with major Republican donors.

Given how much money Democratic and Republican leaders are spending on advertising in the Iowa Senate races, it’s unfortunate that so few of the television and radio commercials are available online. Both of the candidates in the battleground Senate district 30 (Cedar Falls/Waterloo) continue to set a good example for transparency, though.

The final tv ads supporting Senator Jeff Danielson and his Republican challenger Matt Reisetter are after the jump, along with other recent news from the campaign. Bleeding Heartland discussed these candidates’ previous ads here and here.

Democratic candidates for the state Senate haven’t fared well in western Iowa lately, so the new Senate district 6 hasn’t been on my radar, even though it’s an open seat. However, campaign finance reports indicate that Democrats are not conceding this district, so I decided to post a profile of the race. Background on both candidates is below, along with a district map and some of the campaign rhetoric voters have been hearing.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? More posts related to Tuesday’s elections are going up today and tomorrow, so after the jump I’ve enclosed a few links on stories not related to any political campaigns.

This is an open thread. Don’t forget to turn your clocks back one hour before you go to sleep on Saturday night.

When tea party favorite Jane Jech defeated former State Senator Larry McKibben in the Republican primary to represent Iowa Senate district 36, I expected smooth sailing for Democratic incumbent Steve Sodders. Now this race looks like a tossup. Neither candidate’s advertising is educating voters about meaningful differences on real issues.

New research published by psychologists at the University of Iowa suggests that “infants who have a close, intimate relationship with a parent are less likely to be troubled, aggressive or experience other emotional and behavioral problems when they reach school age.”

In addition, “a young child needs to feel particularly secure with only one parent to reap the benefits of stable emotions and behavior, and […] being attached to dad is just as helpful as being close to mom.”

Although Iowa’s unemployment rate is below the national average, and state government closed out the 2012 fiscal year with a record surplus, a growing number of Iowa children live in poverty and are hungry or malnourished at least some of the time. The Des Moines Register recently launched a series of reports on “unprecedented challenges for Iowa kids.” Follow me after the jump for some depressing highlights.

In a striking contrast to the $16 trillion federal debt so frequently mentioned in political advertising, the state of Iowa “officially closed the fiscal 2012 ledger with a $688.1 million budget surplus after its cash reserve and economic emergency funds were filled to the statutory maximum of nearly $596 million.” That’s the largest surplus in state history, according to David Reynolds, a fiscal analyst with the Legislative Services Agency.

Governor Terry Branstad (who wrongly claimed Iowa could not afford to give public employees a 3 percent raise) is already using the surplus to justify deep income tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals, in addition to a major commercial property tax cut. An earned income tax credit that would benefit hundreds of thousands of low-income workers will be a bargaining chip again.

Meanwhile, children in thousands of Iowa public schools have been dealing with larger classroom sizes and program cuts, because the governor and Republican state legislators insisted the state couldn’t afford any allowable growth for K-12 budgets in the 2012 fiscal year, and just 2 percent allowable growth in the current year. (In past decades, Iowa legislators routinely agreed on 4 percent allowable growth for school district budgets.) For statehouse Democrats, the record surplus shows that Iowa doesn’t need to “starve” state programs, especially education and human services.

This is an open thread. All topics are welcome, particularly any comments on state budget priorities.

UPDATE: Rest in peace, George McGovern. After the jump I’ve enclosed a famous passage from his book, What It Means to Be A Democrat. John Deeth recalls meeting and interviewing McGovern in Iowa. SECOND UPDATE: Added statements from Senator Tom Harkin and Iowa Democratic Party Chair Sue Dvorsky below.

Last time Bleeding Heartland discussed the Iowa Senate district 30 race, two-term Democratic incumbent Jeff Danielson and his Republican challenger Matt Reisetter had just launched their first television commercials in the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area. Both candidates have followed up with advertising that I’ve enclosed after the jump.

I applaud the openness of both campaigns in Senate district 30. Most of the Iowa House and Senate radio and television commercials from last cycle were never uploaded to YouTube, and I expect the same lack of transparency this year.

As for content, Reisetter’s third tv ad includes one of the most ludicrous interpretations of an Iowa legislative vote since the infamous “heated sidewalks” of 2010.

A report on alleged misconduct by three football coaches on suspension from Lincoln High School in Des Moines put bullying on my mind this weekend. After the jump I’ve posted background on the football coach story and on the statewide bullying prevention summit that Governor Terry Branstad and Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds will host in late November.

All topics are welcome in this open thread.  

Following a month-long summer recess, members of the U.S. House and Senate worked for less than three weeks before adjourning in late September until after the general election. Congress will hold only “pro-forma” sessions for the next month, presumably to prevent President Barack Obama from making recess appointments.

Follow me after the jump for a review of how the Iowans voted (or did not vote) on the most significant legislation that came up during the past few weeks.  

Although the Harkin Steak Fry took place last weekend, the Jewish new year interfered with my plans to write a post immediately after the event, and the rest of the week flew by. I’ve posted some notes from the steak fry after the jump, along with other links about the featured speaker, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. That won’t be his last speech in front of a crowd of Iowa Democratic activists.

This is an open thread: all topics welcome.

Voting for the so-called “failed stimulus” has become a stock phrase in Republican attack ads against Congressional Democrats. But as Bleeding Heartland has discussed many times before, the “Great Recession” would have been more devastating without the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

State budget cuts are a huge drag on the economy. Follow me after the jump for a picture that’s worth a thousand words on how a favorite conservative punching bag helped soften the recession’s impact in Iowa.

President Barack Obama held a campaign rally in Ames today, drawing a crowd of approximately 6,000 on the Iowa State University campus. I enclosed the transcript of the president’s remarks at the bottom of this post. As in all his campaign speeches, he framed the election as a “choice” between two paths, rather than as a referendum on his performance. Obama also emphasized his administration’s efforts to make college tuition and student loans more affordable.

The president will need strong turnout in places like Ames this November, because yet another Iowa poll shows the gap between Obama and Romney within the margin of error.

Luther College in Decorah has built the largest solar array in Iowa, which will power the state’s first college housing facility to be “net zero” as a greenhouse gas emitter.  

The non-profit organization Campus Pride has been assessing LGBT-friendly policies at U.S. colleges and universities for the last decade. Seven Iowa schools are among the 341 institutions of higher education scored on the latest edition of the LGBT-Friendly Campus Climate Index. Follow me after the jump for details on how they stacked up.  

A report compiled by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has uncovered huge waste of taxpayer money and poor educational outcomes at for-profit colleges across the country. Senator Tom Harkin led a two-year investigation of the for-profit higher education industry and has been publicizing the report this week.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled this month on three cases balancing the public’s right to know with an entity’s right to keep certain information confidential. In two of the majority rulings, justices found other considerations outweighed the grounds for disclosure, but three justices dissented from each of those decisions.

The U.S. Department of Education has approved “one-year freeze of the target increases that schools are held to under the federal No Child Left Behind Act,” Iowa Department of Education Director Jason Glass announced on July 2. Iowa had requested the one-year freeze last week, shortly after federal education officials denied Iowa’s application for a waiver from No Child Left Behind requirements.

After the jump I’ve posted statements from Glass with more details and comments on the latest development, along with reaction from Iowa Senate Education Committee Chair Herman Quirmbach. I also added the statement announcing members of the new Instructional Time Task Force, created under Senate File 2284, the education reform bill approved at the end of the legislative session.

What’s on your mind this weekend, Bleeding Heartland readers? Many laws approved during the 2012 legislative session go into effect today. After the jump I’ve posted links about some of the new laws and the end of the road for the Malcolm Price Laboratory School in Cedar Falls. I also included excerpts from a good article by Steve Gravelle, who examined the impact of Iowa’s public smoking ban four years after it became statewide law.

This is an open thread.

The U.S. Department of Education recently denied Iowa’s request for a waiver from the requirements of the No Child Left Behind law, which went into effect in 2002. Late last week, Governor Terry Branstad and members of his administration traded accusations with Iowa Senate Education Committee Chair Herman Quirmbach over the eternal political questions “What’s to be done?” and “Who’s to blame?”

Bruce Rastetter “blurred the line” last year “between his role as investor in AgriSol Energy” and his position on the Iowa Board of Regents, Ryan Foley reported yesterday in a must-read piece for the Associated Press.

UPDATE: Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement posted extensive e-mail correspondence related to Rastetter’s involvement in the potential AgriSol Energy/Iowa State University partnership. Details are below.

What’s on your mind, Bleeding Heartland readers? I’m late with this weekend’s open thread, but at least I’m not as derelict in my duties as some central Iowa school board members.

Friday before holiday weekend news dump, part 2: Governor Terry Branstad line-item vetoed a $500,000 appropriation for the Food Bank of Iowa Iowa Food Bank Association (see clarification below). It was a surprisingly heartless play by the politician who said in September 2011, “If we want to be the healthiest state in the nation, we have to confront the issue of hunger in our communities.”

Over the weekend I looked into what an extra half million dollars might have meant to the growing number of Iowans who can’t always buy enough food.  

I don’t write many posts in the “wacky and mean-spirited things conservative say” genre, but I’m making an exception today.

The Iowa Senate and House approved a conference committee agreement on education reform yesterday with bipartisan support in both chambers.

“Local control” has long been a rallying cry for conservatives who oppose taking governing decisions away from school districts, city officials, or county supervisors. However, Iowa Senate action this week rejecting a ban on traffic cameras is the latest sign that Iowa Democratic lawmakers are more likely than Republicans to respect this principle over centralized standards.

Approximately 44 percent of Iowa workers earning less than $10 per hour have at least some college education, according to data compiled by Janelle Jones and John Schmitt of the Center for Economic Policy Research.  

A senior staffer for the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation confirmed this week that plaintiffs will appeal a Polk County District Court’s ruling dismissing their challenge to an important water quality regulation.

The Iowa Senate approved a broad education reform bill yesterday on a party-line vote of 26 to 24. Details on Senate File 2284 and the floor debate in the upper chamber are after the jump.

I’ve also included the latest news on efforts to stop Iowa school districts from starting the academic year before September 1. If state lawmakers don’t act on that proposal, Governor Terry Branstad may try to force the issue.

Governor Terry Branstad doubled down today in support of lean finely textured beef. Not only is he urging schools to keep using the product, he wants Congress to investigate the “smear campaign” by critics of so-called “pink slime.”

Follow me after the jump for the governor’s latest comments and Senator Chuck Grassley’s more measured defense of lean finely textured beef.

Iowa politicians from both parties are speaking out today in defense of finely textured beef product, now commonly known as “pink slime.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced earlier this month that it will give schools the option of buying ground beef that does not contain the product. Several grocery store chains have recently announced that they will stop carrying ground beef containing the product, prompting Beef Products Inc. to suspend production of finely textured beef product at three plants for 60 days. One of the closed plants is in Waterloo. BPI is leaving its plant in South Sioux City, Nebraska running for now.

Iowa political reaction to the controversy is after the jump.

The nice thing about a large majority, like the 60 to 40 Republican advantage in the Iowa House, is not needing every vote in your caucus for every bill. Members can oppose the party line when local interests are threatened without derailing the legislative process. Retiring State Representative Steve Lukan showed how it’s done when he voted against the Rebuild Iowa Infrastructure Fund budget in the House Appropriations Committee last week, because that bill left out $5 million in funding for a major project in Lukan’s district.

This basic concept of representing your constituents is apparently lost on Walt Rogers. The first-term Republican from a district covering parts of Cedar Falls and Waterloo just voted for an education budget that slashes funding for the University of Northern Iowa.

UPDATE: Scroll down for Rogers’ weekly newsletter, which discusses his vote on the education budget.

The Iowa legislature’s second “funnel” deadline passed on Friday, which means that most non-appropriations bills are dead unless they have been approved in one chamber and in at least one committee in the other chamber. It’s time to catch up on the most significant bills being debated in the Iowa House and Senate.

The U.S. House voted yesterday to repeal two regulations enacted by the Obama administration’s Department of Education. Bruce Braley (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02), and Leonard Boswell (IA-03) were among 69 House Democrats who joined a united House GOP caucus in supporting this bill.  

The number of Iowa children living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty more than doubled over the last decade, according to a new report.