American democracy is in trouble, and things aren’t likely to get better anytime soon, a range of academic and professional experts lament. All the while the 24-hour cable news media enables fringe elements that drive gridlock, they add.
By Center for Investigative Reporting and The Bay Citizen [http://www.iowawatch.org/?s=CIP&submit.x=0&submit.y=0&submit=Go] Iowa response times included in interactive map, shared with public affairs journalism newsrooms
Agribusiness political action committees contributed more than $18 million to federal candidates this election season, according to the campaign spending watchdog group Open Secrets.
Farmland in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota and Nebraska are among the nine states in the country that sell 50 percent of the U.S. agriculture products while netting nearly $100 billion in total produce sales, according to U.S. Census data.
Because of billions of dollars in overpayments, direct payments to agriculture producers should be reconsidered by Congress and possibly stopped, a federal report stated.
Despite the prominence and importance of agriculture to the Midwest, newspapers in the region do a poor job covering the industry. A recent study revealed dwindling staffs and the increasingly technical nature of agriculture are cited as reasons for the low level of rural coverage on farming.
Beef Products, Inc., a South Dakota producer of lean finely textured beef filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News in September seeking $1.2 billion in actual damages. The lawsuit is based on what BPI legal counsel called a “long-term, sustained, vicious attack” by ABC against BPI’s product.
The U.S. Supreme Court has set the stage for a David vs. Goliath confrontation pitting a 74-year-old Indiana farmer against Monsanto Co., the genetic engineering giant. The court agreed on the first day of this year’s term to hear Vernon Hugh Bowman’s challenge to the reach of Monsanto claims for it
