Word: iowa
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...paper these days without reading about Barack Obama courting the right. On Wednesday, his Inauguration committee announced that the non-partisan but socially conservative Evangelical Rick Warren would give the invocation Jan. 20 when Obama is sworn in as President. Bloomberg reports that moderate Republican Jim Leach of Iowa has been representing Obama at White House talks on the economy. And last Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Obama is being advised by foreign policy heavyweight Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser under the first President Bush and described by the Times as "an old Republican Realist...
Adding another former rival to his administration, Barack Obama has nominated former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack to be the next secretary of agriculture. Vilsack was not an ideal choice for advocates of sustainable agriculture, who had hoped Obama would choose someone less connected to powerful agribusiness interests (Iowa's economy is dominated by huge corn and pig farms). But Vilsack has shown an ability to think independently and some critics are hoping his credibility with Big Agriculture could help him bring about radical changes in the Department of Agriculture without looking too far out of step with the mainstream...
...baby and adopted by local parents. While earning his bachelor's degree in history at Hamilton College in upstate New York, he met his future wife, Christie. He went on to earn a law degree from Albany School of Law and the couple moved to her hometown in Iowa...
...here and food riots in the Third World. In fact, a climate-change task force Vilsack co-chaired for the Council on Foreign Relations recommended that "the United States phase out domestic subsidies for mature biofuels such as conventional corn-based ethanol." That wouldn't go over big in Iowa...
...January, I chatted with Vilsack about biofuels after a Hillary Clinton campaign event at a soy-biodiesel plant in Newton, Iowa. The theme of the day was that biofuels produce jobs, and Vilsack was pushing Iowa as "the clean-energy capital of America." But he was clearly aware of the new research suggesting that biofuels in general - and corn ethanol in particular - created more carbon emissions by accelerating deforestation than they saved by replacing fossil fuels. "It's definitely something we need to study," he said. Vilsack suggested that second-generation biofuels like cellulosic ethanol manufactured from switchgrass could solve...