Dave Murphy

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama returned to Iowa for an official "grassroots event" at the Iowa State Fair in an effort to fire up his base in the state where he unexpectedly won the first in the nation caucus in 2008, launching him on the road to the White House....

Right now all eyes are once again on Iowa. While the 2012 Republican candidates are scrambling to make last minute efforts to get ahead in the polls, another movement is in full swing to make...

The recent carnage to the American people's way of life began more than 30 years ago when the Reagan administration crafted deliberate policies that stopped enforcement of antitrust laws at the Department of Justice, encouraged an orgy of corporate mergers and launched a three decade assault on common...

Open, transparent and competitive markets are allegedly the bedrock of the American free market system. The idea that any individual can go to market and sell their goods and not face discrimination, be forced to sign unfair contracts or experience deceptive practices is enshrined in more than 235 years of...

This week President Obama returned to Iowa, where he launched his successful bid to the White House, to speak about "jobs and economic security" in rural America. According to the White House, his bus tour is not a campaign trip, but veteran political observers...

If Iowa is considered the belly of the beast of industrial agriculture, then the Iowa state capitol is the part of the animal that drains the swamp. After all, Iowa is the place where Iowa legislators have made it possible to produce 11.3 hogs per person annually and...

A few weeks ago Iowa's Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad opened his state's longest festering political sore when he responded to a question asked by a family farmer on a campaign stop if, as governor, he would improve the state's regulatory policies regarding industrial animal confinements.

According to the

For most Americans the current egg recall of seems like another strange accident. When people wake up in the morning they don't spend a lot of time thinking about where their food comes from. As massive food safety outbreaks like the half a billion DeCoster egg recall become more common...

Farmers Met with Fear, Threats, Intimidation and Hope in Alabama

For America's remaining 30,000 poultry growers, the Department of Justice and USDA's joint workshop on competition in the poultry industry held last Friday in Normal, Alabama has been a long time coming. For some, it arrived too late....

Once again rural America stands on the Edge of Hope

Ankeny, IA - There are moments in a nation's history that define it. For America's remaining 2 million farmers (less than 1% of the population) and the more than 300 million eaters, the recent joint Department of Justice and Department...

How is it that the United States can put a man on the moon, but can't seem to feed its children school lunches that are no healthier than the food served at McDonald's or Jack in the Box?

In the past 10 years, more than 23,000 children have become sick...

The health care reform debate has provoked any number of crazy opinions, including the far-right fantasies of death panels or that Medicare isn't a government-funded program. Two weeks ago, Whole Foods founder and CEO John Mackey added his own musings to the list with an editorial in the...