Winners

Legislators tend to kiss the smiley-faced ass of Wal-Mart, hoping for a hefty helping of the mega-chain's campaign cash come election season. So we applaud publicly elected officials who have the guts to speak out against the world's largest peddler of cheap crap and GMO tomatoes. That's why state Sen. Jack Hatch deserves a hearty round. He's taking the giant to task for what he calls its "shameful" benefits system. Wal-Mart is one of the biggest employers in the state, and it continually posts earnings in the billions. Yet it fails to provide healthcare for nearly 900 of its Iowa employees, which means the majority of those workers are relegated to Medicaid rosters. Hatch recently held a press conference with Joe Biden, a U.S. Senator from Vermont and a Democratic presidential hopeful, during which the two raked Wal-Mart over the coals. "Wal-Mart's negligence is a growing burden for Iowa's taxpayer, healthcare system and communities," Hatch said, in a later statement. Turns out there are some painful hidden costs underneath all those "everyday low prices."

The New York Times tells us that across the country, people are finding better things to do with their time than attending their states' lame-ass state fairs, which consistently need to be bailed out of debt by their state legislators. But there are a handful of states where state fair attendance has actually been on the rise since Sept. 11, 2001, and deep thinkers have this theory that people in states with good fairs find it comforting to go ride the Ferris wheel and eat a funnel cake because they've been doing those things for so long, the consistency of it all makes it feel like the world isn't spinning quite so fast. Immediately after Sept. 11, in the summer of 2002, gate sales at the Iowa State Fair topped 1 million for the first time ever, and it's been over that magic number every year since. This year's attendance was estimated at 1,013,063.

Losers

The nonpartisan Project Vote Smart does the American public a rare service: Through fair, unbiased questionnaires sent out to candidates in state and national races, Project Vote Smart provides voters with unfiltered information about candidates. Apparently, that's not important to a majority of Iowa candidates. In fact, Iowa ranks among the worst states in the nation in terms of its participation in the survey. According to Project Vote Smart, 95 percent of Iowa candidates refused to answer the questionnaires this year. Six Republicans and one Democrat - out of 190 total Iowa candidates - returned their surveys. Perhaps more disturbing, the candidates had apparently been instructed by the state Democratic and Republican parties to keep mum in order to maintain a vice-grip on their spin machines - er, "campaign messages." In fact, one campaign consultant allegedly told Project Vote Smart, "It's not our job to educate - it's our job to win."

Don't they know what this means to us? Don't they know how much we care? The Democratic National Committee is playing games with the presidential caucus calendar, making Iowans nervous that we might not always be the center of attention once every four years. The problem, it seems, is that national Democrats wanted to do some shifting around so states with stronger minority populations would become bigger players at caucus time; they reasoned that tighty-whitey states like Iowa and New Hampshire don't necessarily show off the party's assets, particularly in those all-important early contests where political careers are made and broken. Don't worry, Iowa is still first in the 2008 cycle with Jan. 14 precinct caucuses. However, the Dems moved Nevada's caucuses up to Jan. 19, before New Hampshire's Jan. 22 day in the spotlight, to cash in on Nevada's strong Latino population. And they moved South Carolina to Jan. 29, ahead of all the other states that must vote Feb. 5 or later, in hopes that South Carolina's black vote can help them. CV

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