A common theme I've been hearing in my office and on the campaign trail  is, "Where's our stimulus?"  People in Iowa are still not back to work.  Nobody I've talked to so far has received a stimulus check promised by Pres. Obama.  Businesses are still laying off good, hard working folks, and shutting their doors, and when businesses go bad, these very same people are out of a job, and many times out of their homes.  It restricts Iowan's abilities to provide food, shelter, health care, and other essentials to their children and other loved ones.  The stimulus is supposed to be working, but it isn't as far as the Average Iowan goes.  People are still out of work, out of money, and out of their minds with worry about their future.

Here's my Stimulus Plan for Iowans if I am elected to Congress.

• 40% of every dollar we send to Washington for Medicare goes to other states.  I'm going to bring that 40% back to Iowa.
• Reducing payroll taxes will free up operating income for business, increasing purchasing and hiring power of business
• Introduce a graded flat income tax that will reduce red tape and increase the ease of filing
• Increase funding for green tech firms who do business in Iowa
• Increase tax breaks for Iowans who use green tech, especially if they utilize an Iowa company
• Loosen requirements for refinancing your home or car, so everyone can benefit.  No more "loan to own" from banks
• No Cost Health Care Reform
• Make it easier to create international markets for Iowa's products
• Increase funding for our schools and colleges to retain our future citizens, and reverse our "brain drain"

If this sounds good and reasonable to you, please donate to keep the message strong!
It's important to support the people you believe in.  If you would like to contribute to my campaign, volunteer, or want to spread the word with yard signs, bumper stickers, flyers and other campaign materials, write, call, or email me.

Bullet Points:

• Continue reasonable farm subsidies, and make all farming available for subsidies.
• Increase grants for cellulosic technology
• Let's make some Iowa Corn Sheiks!

I am in support of giving farmers subsidies to grow crops given the tremendous variability of the futures market.  The vagaries of weather, the high cost of farm equipment, seed and fertilizers along with herbicides, the total cost of getting a crop in is really astronomical.  If you couple that with rising cost of farm land to record levels, it means that it is almost impossible for new farmers to break into the business.  Essentially you have to inherit your land or start with a very small piece of land and work your way up piecemeal.  And, of course, if you’re starting out as a farmer and the futures market tumbles like they did in pork several years ago, you can wipe out many farms and farmers because one crop did not pan out the way you had anticipated.
 
However, most subsidies go to soybeans and corn, so that’s what most farmers produce.  I believe that if you want to declare yourself a farmer, farming must be your full time occupation and that any crop that you raise should be considered for subsidy status.  I would also link subsidies to the impact your farming methods have on the environment.  I believe that the subsidies should be given to farmers who don’t destroy wetland, but encourage its natural progression and the use of no till, terracing, and raising live stock in a humane way.
 
Coupled with this, I would encourage cellulosic ethanol technology which can produce up to 32 times the amount of energy than an equivalent amount of oil.  If we switch to cellulosic technology, we’re not actually using the human consumable or animal consumable part of the plant.  We are using the extraneous parts of the plant that gets left behind on the fields.
 
I also would reward farmers for utilizing organic technologies to control weeds and pests and remote growth of their product.
 
Americans are obsessed with “bigger and better”.  And the problem is that most live stock is fed hormones and antibiotics in order to ensure that they become the biggest they can be.  And I am not entirely convinced that is a “healthy for humans” approach.  I do believe that utilizing ethanol from the human and animal consumable parts of the plant will drive up food prices.  However, using the non-consumable parts of the plant and developing cellulosic technology would be a great first step on the way to complete energy independence for all Americans.

Bullet points:

• Utilizing plant waste for energy is available
• We MUST fund research
• Cellulosic tech will benefit all Iowans (jobs, grants, cash flow)
• It creates several products for a high demand market
• It's a technology that reduces greenhouse gases and does not contribute to Global Warming
• Developing cellulosic technology takes money away from the terrorists, making us more secure

Cellulose is a constituent of plants as one of the basic building blocks of plant cell structures. It has a lot of useful properties. Some of the properties include stiffness, which is why trees can stand upright, and flexibility, which is why plants can move when the wind blows against them. It is also responsible for the durability of plant material.

With modern technology we are able to break down this basic structure and manipulate it to fit our needs. One of the ways we can manipulate it is to be able to produce fuel. If we produce cellulosic fuel it can be up to 32 times more energetic than an equal amount of oil.
You can also synthesize lubricants from it to have the same performance value as the oil based lubricants we utilize now in our vehicles. It could also be used in hydraulic fluids and other viscous applications.

It could also be manipulated to produce a plastic type substance that is biodegradable. This substance is currently being produced here in Iowa, mostly privately, with some grants from public and private donors. It is biodegradable and breaks down in about 5 to 8 years at about the rate that it would decompose naturally if it were not manipulated into plastic.

It could be formed into all kinds of things. It could be used to replace many of the oil based plastics that we utilize now. If the "greenies" were serious about making changes and becoming ecologically friendly, there would be a lot more money being spent to produce these kinds of technologies instead they focus much more on making us drive itty bitty electric cars that are "economical". Economically usually means crappy. The problem with electric cars is that you will still use fossil fuels, generating the same pollution, and most likely you will see no ecological gain. The difference will be that instead of the cars polluting it will be power stations polluting. Plus, if you increase the demand for electricity, prices go up. You will still be paying the same amount to drive, it will just be to a different company. In addition, Obama has promised to "bankrupt" power companies using coal. That drives costs up even more.

The other problem is battery disposal. We’ve all bought rechargeable batteries, thinking that we wouldn’t have to buy any more batteries after that. Those of us who have bought rechargeable batteries know that you can only recharge them a certain number of times before they will no longer hold a charge. That’s the same problem with electric cars. The batteries are expensive to replace, and you need to dispose of the old ones. The processing and reprocessing of these parts is toxic, not to mention the costs of these batteries. So not only do you have the problem of a marked increase in the utilization of the power plants, you’re going to have increased risk of contamination from the battery producers and re-processors. The problem with our power stations having increased demand is that most of them utilize fossil fuels, which is still going to cause greenhouse gases to be emitted. It’s still going to increase the heat that we humans are responsible for putting in the atmosphere. It doesn’t matter if we take stored energy in the ground and process it and release it as gasoline or diesel fuel or if we take it and process it and release it into the atmosphere as coal or oil at these power plants, the results are the same. We will be taking stored energy and carbon and releasing it into our atmosphere.

If we could utilize cellulose technology to replace oil based technologies, it would be a win-win situation for everybody.

Even if we did away with all the cars in the United States tomorrow and everybody either walked or biked to work, it still would not stop the global warming that is going on. Global warming is multi-factorial problem that science has been able to prove has been a recurrent problem, even before humans. It’s a cycle we go through. It doesn’t mean that we don’t try to minimize our impact upon our world, but it does mean that at some point you have to have some reason about it.

The other problem with Obama and the liberals’ solutions to global warming is the Chinese and Indians. Since 2002, they have produced 80-90% of all carbon released in the atmosphere. The liberals want to hamper our productivity and ability to compete in a fair market by placing unreasonable burdens on us, the American people, and expecting us to pay happily for a problem that is no longer ours. We have a chance now to lead the charge into creating cheap alternative fuels. The liberals are taking a pass on this world leadership role by focusing on a massive power grab, and trying to engineer a shift to socialism/communism. Unless we get China and India on board, what we do won’t really matter.

The Obama grab of the financial markets as well as GM and Chrysler illustrates this very well. Americans don’t buy electric cars and hybrids because they don’t want to buy electric cars and hybrids. They’re not as powerful. They’re not as fun. Overall, they’re not as economical. They are more expensive and for the most part, they are much smaller than what we’re used to. We are the heaviest people in the world. If you’re going to try to wedge a big 300 pound man or a 200 pound woman into a Toyota Prius, people just aren’t going to be comfortable and they are not going to want to buy the car. There are many more people built like me than there are built like Obama.

When Ford built its first vehicle, it ran on ethanol. When Diesel built his first engine, it ran on soybean oil. Those are ancient technologies compared to modern day technologies. They are basic. They are simple. We need to increase that knowledge and start expanding the use of these fuels in vehicles. Obama has determined that gasoline powered vehicles are the problem and wants to switch to another fossil fuel burning energy, electricity. That is akin to a person trying to go on a diet and his doctor tells him to quit eating hamburger, and instead eat bratwurst. It is different, but essentially it’s all going to be the same.

So the problem with these vehicles is not the vehicles themselves, but the fuel. I do believe that we need to start utilizing ethanol as soon as we can and in fact, immediately because it’s the technology we have. We just have to be able to ramp up production combined with major increases in research and development in cellulose technology.

The less oil we use the less money the terrorists have. It’s a very simple equation that would stimulate mid-America’s economy, particular Iowa’s economy. It would make us corn sheiks, it would keep money domestic and therefore, we would be building palaces here in central Iowa as opposed to sending all of our money to Iran and Saudi Arabia and other countries that hate us, and support terrorism against us and our allies. If we don’t use oil, we starve the terrorists of the means to attack us.

Other countries have found unique solutions to their oil problems have been on the one hand very unique and on the other hand are somewhat troubling. In the Ukraine, for instance, they have made a deal with Libya that they will let Libya lease so much farmland from them in exchange for so much oil for the Ukraine. I don’t know the details, but apparently, according to their prime minister, it’s enough oil that they don’t have to negotiate with the Russians at all for it. They had also done the same type of agreement with Turkey, but it’s with natural gas. So, essentially, they have bartered their land for oil, which in my opinion creates even more dependence on a terrorist system that wants to see democracy in all its forms fall.
It’s nice to be able to talk about freedom if you’re in the United States. It doesn’t matter what you do. Basically, you’re going to be able to eat, have a home, and have a decent job. Whereas, in these other third world countries, simply the fact that you’re able to eat is the goal of the day. If you can create alternatives that are cheap, a system that will help with their energy needs, and create policies that will enhance the lives of people in need then it’s in our best interest to try to further those policies.