Winners

Select Iowa cattle producers have reason to rejoice with the news that Japan has finally agreed to begin importing U.S. beef, after a two-year ban. Critical of American beef-inspection procedures, Japanese agriculture officials implemented the ban after the first U.S. bovine tested positive for the disease in 2003. The ban weakened the already-struggling U.S. export market to the tune of $1.4 billion. However, Japan is not unconditionally throwing open the gates: It will accept products only from 34 U.S. producers that it deems up-to-snuff on mad-cow prevention techniques. The news is surprising on several fronts: First, the USDA recently announced a 90 percent reduction in mad-cow testing, worrying not only foreign countries that accept U.S. meat products, but also consumers here at home. Unlike Japan, the U.S. has so far failed to implement "Country of Origin Labeling" for beef, which requires a sticker on beef products that lets shoppers know where the meat came from. And finally, one of the processing operations approved by Japan is Tyson Foods in Dennison, Iowa (the other was Iowa Pacific Processors). Clearly, the Japanese haven't sampled Tyson's Steak Fingers in a bag. That might scare them off for good.

Iowa's working-class plebes are finally catching a break this weekend: This Friday and Saturday, we'll celebrate the annual sales tax holiday. There's no sales tax on shoes and clothing purchased between 12:01 a.m. Aug. 4 and midnight Aug. 5, as long as each item is less than $100 retail.

Losers

In yet another symptom of the city of Ames' misplaced priorities, the fiercely independent and local retailer Big Table Books announced that it would close its doors for good on Aug. 26. Managers at the bookstore, a downtown mainstay since 1993, told the Ames Tribune that they cannot compete with chains like Borders, which opened a location in Ames a few years ago. Thanks to certain developers and council members who seem to value quantity over quality, Ames is trading the very places that make it unique for mono-cultural, sprawl-inducing projects that draw traffic away from the city's gems, Iowa State University and the downtown district. The news of Big Table's closing comes less than three months after a massive mall proposal from an out-of-state developer was all but given the go-ahead by council. You don't have to read between the lines to realize that Ames' poor planning won't pan out.

Funny how America's richest, most well-connected people keep finding ways to profit from the suffering of the working class. At a time of increasing public frustration over the growing gap between the obscenely rich and the rest of us, presidential wanna-be Hillary Clinton decided to make political hay by introducing a Senate bill that would slowly raise the minimum wage to $7.25 over the next two years. Realistically that's just empty rhetoric, since U.S. employers are already forced to pay that much to find entry-level burger flippers who still live with their moms. There are plenty of Democrats cashing in on this opportunity for some grandstanding: Co-sponsoring henchmen on this bill include Iowa's Sen. Tom Harkin. But the limousine liberals look flaccid standing next to the shameless Republican whores in the House, who say they'll raise the minimum wage if they can give another tax break to multi-millionaires. Seriously. The current minimum wage is a whopping $5.15 an hour, before taxes. This is ludicrous: Some cities, as well as Oregon and Washington states, already have local minimums of $8 per hour. The two dominant political parties are proving that they don't give a rat's ass about ordinary Americans. It's hard to think of a reason we shouldn't just line up the politicians and shoot them all. CV

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