Note:  Many of these links are not created by ShrinkIowaGov or the Libertarian Party of Iowa.  We are not responsible for their content.

Civil Liberties:

Real ID [1]-ACLU-"The Real ID Act creates a federal identity document that every American will need in order to fly on commercial airlines, enter government buildings, open a bank account, and more."

"It creates huge administrative burdens for state governments, while providing no federal funds for implementing its onerous requirements. At the same time, it does nothing to combat terrorism, and puts us at greater risk for invasions of privacy and identity theft."

NSA Wiretapping [2]-USA Today-"The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY."

Economy:

Growth of Government in Iowa [3]-Jake Porter-"According to an August 8, 2001 report from The Gazette (Cedar Rapids-Iowa City), “Why your property tax bill is so high,” “for every 10,000 Iowans there are 601 state or local government employees.”

Audit: Millions Spent on Failed Job Projects [4]-Associated Press-"The program has borrowed $38.5 million on behalf of businesses who
promised to move to Iowa or expand their operations in the state.

The audit shows that the companies either closed, went bankrupt or failed to create more than 15,000 planned jobs."

Federal Budget [5]-Concord Coalition-"Budget deficits are back for as far as the eye can see. This alone is a very serious development. Of more concern, however, is that politicians in Washington are not even working on a plan to bring the deficit under control. Instead, they have indiscriminately cut taxes, increased spending, allowed budget enforcement rules to expire and ignored the long-term dangers of large chronic deficits."

Subsidies:

A Look At Farm Subsidies Over Time:

[6]
[7]

SOURCE: Washington Post analysis | GRAPHIC: By Sarah Cohen, Dan Morgan And Laura Stanton, The Washington Post - July 2, 2006

Farm Program Pays $1.3 Billion to People Who Don't Farm [8]-Washington Post-"Nationwide, the federal government has paid at least $1.3 billion in subsidies for rice and other crops since 2000 to individuals who do no farming at all, according to an analysis of government records by The Washington Post."

PDF File: Over $1.1 Billion in Farm Susidies Go To Dead Farmers [9]-Government Accountability Office-"For 1999 through 2005, USDA paid $1.1 billion in farm payments in the names of 172,801 deceased individuals (either as an individual recipient or as a member of an entity). Of this total, 40 percent went to those who had been dead for 3 or more years, and 19 percent to those dead for 7 or more years."

Taxes:

Touchplay and the Iowa Cigarette Tax [10]-Nick Weltha-"In 2001, state legislators of the Administration and Regulation Appropriations subcommittee requested that the Lottery look for new sources of revenue that would not require a change in statues in order to help balance the State budget. The declining Iowa economy,mimicking the rest of the nation, was clearly impacting the state's tax revenues."