Off to Chicago with the family for the day tomorrow. YAY!!

Des Moines band, Parlours in Chicago. Source: Band webpage.

At least at an intellectual level I understand the GOP fixation with “reducing the regulatory burden on businesses,” and how that leads to wanting to slash environmental regulations. But that doesn’t explain some of what’s going on here.

A Henry County corn field inundated with flood water. Source: Flickr user boodie131. Creative commons non-commercial, attribution.

Also thumbs up to the Senate for passing 49-1 (Chelgren voting against) providing tax credits for the installation of small solar and wind production facilities for homes and businesses. The bill will provide tax credits of up to $3,000 for homeowners and $15,000 for businesses. This bill is awaiting action by the Republican-controlled House.

But the trend at the highest level both in Iowa and in the nation is one of distinct hostility by Republican governors and legislatures not just for onerous regulation but for environmental protection at large. Oh, it is always sold as a brand of fiscal prudence or streamlining of government. Those are smoke screens. The trend is to sell back to industry decades of progress on environmental protection, safe drinking water and clean air.

Witness Iowa Senate File 500, a bill that would remove responsibility for water quality regulation from the Department of Natural Resources to the Department of Agriculture. Consider that agricultural sources contribute to the great majority of Iowa water quality issues. Saying that an industry can regulate itself is about as realistic as trying to convince teenagers not to have sex. It might sound good if you live in a bubble of religious or political dogma, but out here in the real world where everyone actually lives, it is knows as a crock.

This is nothing more than a sneaky attempt to kill water quality enforcement in Iowa. Of course no one would support repealing water quality regulations. So, let’s just “transfer” the responsibility for those regulations to a department that has largely been captured by the industry which it primarily regulates.

Or how about the bill that would ban people from investigating conditions at agricultural facilities? The bill essentially suspends the First Amendment with regards to writing or reporting on the agriculture industry. HF 589 passed the House 66-27 and stands before the Senate.

Iowa is not alone in this. The New York Times outlines efforts by the GOP in many states to undo environmental protections. In Maine, Tea Party Governor, Paul LePage, announced that he wants to open up 3 million acres of north woods protected wilderness area for development and to suspend laws that protect children from toxic products in their toys. That’s an effort that is getting some pushback even from his fellow party members, by the way. ‘Cause you know, that’s just crazy on its face.

In Florida, another Tea Party favorite, Governor Rick Scott, wants to dismantle (by starving this joint state-federal effort of the state share of funding) the program to restore the Everglades. This program was negotiated by both the Clinton and Bush II administrations with industry, real estate and environmentalist support.

Taken together, all of this is just more evidence — if such were needed — of the capture of the GOP by intellectually and spiritually deluded factions that aren’t just advocating smaller government, but actively hostile to all government.

Naturally, I zoomed right into Clinton, IA. Lots of interesting things to see. This will probably be a multi-part series.

One thing that few people fail to realize but that jumps right out at you when you start to compare the data in a visualization tool like this is that Our Fair City is huge. I mean that the geographic area of the city limits is very large. Take a look at these side-by-side images at the same scale of Clinton and Chicago. The dots are population, each dot represents 500 people.

Clinton Population Density, 2010 Source: NYT

Chicago Population Density, 2010. Source: NYT

Click an image to show larger size. Hit the back button on the browser to return to the post.

For anyone wondering why Clinton struggles to maintain and repair its infrastructure, there is your answer. We have a city laid out roughly the size of the North Side of Chicago with barely 1/100th the population. The entire population of the City of Clinton could fit comfortably in Chicago’s West Town, that encompasses my old neighborhood of Wicker Park.

Chicago's West Town, 2010. Source: NYT

Although the federally mandated improvements to our sewage treatment and storm water systems have forced on the City a financial burden it didn’t really need, the bright side is that it will provide the city with a modern infrastructure for growth and infill.

This data leads to two fairly obvious conclusions. One, the last thing Clinton needs to be doing is encouraging any kind of major housing development at its periphery (e.g. west of 18th Street in the middle). Policy efforts should focus incentives, planning and zoning on keeping the city as compact as possible. Second, the only way out of this trap is population growth, and population growth means aggressive economic development incentives.

I propose a goal: 30,000 population by 2030. Round numbers; has a nice ring, 30 By 30.

This can be easily achieved in two ways: new economic development and through the growth of Ashford University.

With the completion of Phase I of the Lincolnway RailportK in mid-2011, the stage will be set to book the first tenant there. It is hoped that one of the wind-industry component manufacturers will chose to locate there and have a facility in place by sometime in 2014-15. Several large manufacturers have expressed interest.

The manufacturing of wind turbine equipment requires large facilities and a fairly large work force. Just building such a facility will be a much-needed shot in the arm for local businesses once ground is broken. The folks at the CRDC are targeting 900 – 1,200 jobs when the facility goes operational with wages well above average.

Although Ashford University does not issue public statements regarding its goals for growth of its Clinton campus and the number of students enrolled at the brick and mortar facility (as opposed to on line) sources who are familiar with those goals say that Bridgepoint hopes to grow to at least 5,000 on-campus students by 2015.

That would represent a four-fold increase along with an aggressive construction agenda. Bridgepoint/Ashford has already purchased the old Clinton Country Club and built its athletic field on the Northeast end, but has about 3/4 of the land open to it for development.

Adding 3,000 odd students and a requisite number of faculty to the city will create the foundation for some good things to happen. It will provide fertile ground for a number of small businesses; cafes, restaurants, bookstores and music venues that provide cultural benefits for all.

Ashford already owns the downtonwn indoor tennis facility and it should be given all the incentives it needs to take over the old YMCA building as an athletic center and classroom space for the physical therapy and healthcare programs it wishes to emphasize in its curriculum. This will require more investment in mass transportation that can be used by everyone and bring more business to downtown Clinton.

Clinton is in a precarious position; poised between great opportunity but on the brink of collapse. In my next post, I’ll examine the census data as it relates to income, education and housing prices. But the data is pretty clear. Clinton will either grow or die. Through a combination of vision and accident the City has been provided with some magnificent opportunities to grow out of its problems. But it will take deft management and hard bargaining to ensure that the growth happens on terms that the City can handle with benefits that accrue to everyone.

It is expected that she will endorse Clinton attorney, Mary Wolfe to replace her. Ms. Wolfe is expected to make an announcement soon.

Hah! Scoopage! Power to the Internets!

Also, look for our takes on the State-of-the-State message tomorrow by Noon on the website and on Wednesday in the print edition of the Register.

Just by virtue of comparison, other Iowa lib/progressive blogs recent average daily hit counts look like this:

• Iowa Independent 900
• Bleeding Heartland 350
• Century of the Common Iowan 34

Color me shocked about Common Iowan. So, I guess I’m a middling playa in the Iowa blogosphere. Perhaps later in the month I’ll do a more substantial survey to satisfy my curiosity about Iowa political websites in general.

Please feel free to post comments on the blog. I have my spam shields up to maximum. So, commenting requires registration and approval of comments. But I am pretty, um… liberal and really only bin spam. Behave and show good manners and we’ll all be cool.

Lastly, I would like to welcome the small influx of readers from Iran. The prayers of me and my family are with you. Your struggle is having an effect world-wide and forcing people to reevaluate how they think about Iran and Islam here in the heartland. A short anecdote:

Last night I was invited to a local men’s club. This club is probably as good a cross-sample of the male population of Eastern Iowa that you will find outside a tightly controlled focus group. Last night I heard from a number of people who I knew either by reputation or personally to have what I normally would consider pretty simplistic ideas about Iran and Islam… much influenced by the fear-mongering of the Bush years. (Caveat: I don’t know all of these people all that well, but I’m just going by baseline male 20-40-something, Iowan attitude and knowledge level gleaned from living here most of my life.) But from these people I heard a number of statements along the lines of, “I hope they can get it done.” “They look like normal people.” “Who knew Iran had elections?” and so on. This is a pretty profound shift. For most of these people two weeks ago if they thought about Iran at all it was probably in the mental context of “rag-heads,” or “bomb the fuckers,” or something along those lines.

Admittedly these are small steps. But the first thing one needs to do in a war is to dehumanize the enemy. For a long time in this country certain segments of the media and political actors have worked hard to dehumanize the Iranian people specifically, and Arabs and Muslims generally. The events of the last week and-a-half (and also to a certain extent the sufferings of the Pakistani’s this spring also) have begun to tear down that wall of ignorance and fear. In that sense then the people of Iran have already achieved a great victory for themselves and for the faith as well.

Pax Vobiscum

Now to finish my 1200 words and then off to San Francisco for a few days.

Values: +.950 are Scandinavian levels, 900-949 are Western European rankings, 850-899 puts one in company with Argentina Cuba(!) Uruguay and Eastern Europe, 800-849 is Russia, Albania, Brazil and Panama country, 750-799 is China, Thailand, Iran and Turkey.

So, Iowans you are in company with Denmark, Spain and Austria. Mississippi you are right in there with Turkey.

H/T The Daily Dish. Full List at Map Scroll

Update, 5.21.09:John Deeth in Iowa City picks up on the map and takes it to its logical conclusion vis a vis voting trends. But Andrew Gelman over at FiveThirtyEight takes issue with the map. He says that there is no substantial state-to-state differences in two of the key factors in determining the HDI — life expectancy at birth and education — and thus the differences that emerge are pretty much along per-capita gross domestic product.