Author: Paul Deaton

Categories
Living in Society

Middle East Protests

Photo by Hurrah suhail on Pexels.com

War has always been devastating yet the devastation of the Israel-Hamas war is unprecedented. What makes this war different is it is occurring in the ever-present media-influenced eyes of a populace unfamiliar with the long relationship between Israel and Palestine. People young and old are being activated by this public war: donating money to relief funds, protesting, and more. There are a lot of moving parts.

That said, I don’t know what else to say, other than there should be an immediate, permanent ceasefire; humanitarian aid should have unfettered access to the Palestinians; and both sides should release any hostages or unlawful detainees. At yesterday’s Democratic district convention, we passed a resolution saying those things.

Some friends with family ties in Palestine were present at the convention. One spoke during debate over the resolution. He pointed out the plight of children in the war zone. What heartless fool could not be affected by this?

I read about the use of artificial intelligence in generating military targets. Computers find targets, which may or may not be reviewed by a human before striking. What algorithms often find is the best place to target someone is in the evening when they are at home. Often the whole family is present when the bombs hit.

On-campus protests have drawn an undue amount of attention. The varying responses by school administrations and law enforcement has been both appalling and comforting. The temptation is to compare it with my own campus protests over the Vietnam War in 1970-1973. That is the wrong impulse. Things have changed on campus in more than 50 years.

Another temptation is to blame the U.S. administration for the war. President Joe Biden is an easy scapegoat. While exerting public pressure for him to change tactics is acceptable in a democracy, it is of itself, no solution. When it comes to the Mideast, there will unlikely be consensus in an approach to peace-making.

It feels hopeless some days. I contribute to relief funds as I can, write my congressional representatives, and pray for resolution. There is no assurance there will be a resolution in the Mideast, and that’s part of the problem.

Categories
Environment

Al Gore Receives Presidential Medal of Freedom

With Al Gore and Company in Chicago 2013.

On Friday, May 3, Al Gore was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden. Al Gore is deserving of this recognition.

Here is the announcement. Al Gore was one of 19 people to receive the medal yesterday:

Al Gore is a former Vice President, United States Senator, and member of the House of Representatives. After winning the popular vote, he accepted the outcome of a disputed presidential election for the sake of our unity. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for his bold action on climate change.

My decision to associate with Gore through the Climate Reality Project was a game changer, introducing me to climate activists all over the planet. Joining Climate Reality upgraded my understanding of the climate crisis and everything around it.

What is next for the Climate Reality Project? I don’t know yet presume succession plans are already in place for Gore’s retirement.

Categories
Living in Society

Politics Beyond the Expected

Apple blossoms.

Absent live performances during the coronavirus pandemic, the comedy troupe The Capitol Steps, whose periodic radio shows were called “politics takes a holiday,” turned off the lights and folded. It turned out they could not survive without live performances, and as many believed, no one wanted to attend a live performance if one of the side effects was infection with the coronavirus. We learned politics never takes a holiday during a pandemic as Republicans dominated the elections in Iowa.

On Wednesday, I participated in a video conference with about 35 others with former Congressman Dave Loebsack asking First Congressional District Democratic candidate Christina Bohannan a series of softball questions. It was an okay hour, yet we’ve heard almost everything Bohannan said before. Democrats need new ideas, new approaches. Considering the alternative, I’ll support Bohannan with my time and financial resources.

Like with the now defunct Capitol Steps, live performance is everything in politics. A candidate cannot win elections without in person live events. What does that mean?

A county supervisor candidate sent an email this week, asking for help. Specifically, they asked for help doing things related to voters: door knocking, making phone calls, and placing yard signs. They also asked for a financial contribution. The primary election is four weeks away, so their needs are pressing. I’m supporting other candidates for supervisor, so the request fell on deaf ears.

Just before Bohannan’s event I received a text message from the Democratic National Committee asking me to participate in video conference training on how to be more active in the national campaign. If all politics is local, why would I work under direction from the national party? I wouldn’t.

Another contact that day was a telephone call from a local county party organizer. They have a short regimen of door knocking work to reach out to voters and see where they are. To me, door knocking is about one thing: identifying which voters will support a given candidate, then getting them to cast a ballot. I declined the opportunity to take a shift.

All of this is expected, and as you can see I rejected it out of hand. In the meanwhile, incumbent Republicans shape how the general election will proceed. Since they are in power, they have a strong platform to frame the debate. They are framing it. It will be difficult to avoid becoming enmeshed in their verbal construct.

I accepted an invitation to help our state house candidate organize for the election. About a dozen of us were invited. He has no primary competition so we can focus on the general election. He’s new to politics so we can begin with a fresh slate and build upon our core competencies. I’m looking forward to the possibilities of such a campaign.

Our state senate candidate is also new to politics. He is the chief financial officer of the Mount Pleasant school district, and hasn’t run a campaign before. As he organizes, there will be possibilities to get involved with what I hope is a unique and vibrant campaign full of new energy.

Saturday is the district convention, precursor to the state and national conventions. I’m a delegate and will use the time to explore possibilities for organizing with other attendees. Since there is only one statewide candidate this cycle, 2024 will be a cycle of local politics, focused on my state house representation. Hopefully those campaigns will roll out in an unexpected way.

Categories
Writing

Blog Book Changes

My 12-inches of blog books through 2020.

I use a service called blog2print to make a paper copy of my blog. That is, I used them until Tuesday. In an email, they wrote,

All good things must come to an end

After delivering hundreds of thousands of blog and photo books over the years, it’s time for us to say goodbye. Before we close our digital doors on May 15th, stock up and save 50% off everything!

I ordered books of my 2023 posts plus everything through April 30 this year. I like having matching sized, similarly styled books of what I posted. That won’t be possible going forward, at least through this company. The books are for the inevitable day when I make my exit from the online house I built.

I renamed this blog Journey Home on January 20, 2020. On March 11 that year, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Also that year, I made the last payment on our child’s student loan, and ended a long career of working for someone else to retire. 2020 was a year of change.

On Feb. 3, 2022, the governor extended the state’s Public Health Disaster Emergency Proclamation on Feb. 3, announcing it will expire at 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 15. After that, she said, the coronavirus became normalized in daily, routine public health operations. Whatever she said, the coronavirus lingers in society today.

It is time to re-brand this blog, not only to put the pandemic in the rear view mirror as much as is possible, but to mark a new purpose as I write. As I work in the garden this May, hopeful consideration will be given to what is next. The expectation there will be something next is the human condition. A gardener has confidence spring work will produce a fall harvest, and so it is with my writing.

I relish the changing patterns of life. It is possible to get too comfortable, so whatever the source of change, I expect and embrace it. While I don’t like changing how I save my work, I am also ready for the future… and to get the next garden planted.

Categories
Reviews

Book Review: Minority Rule

A decent history of American politics in the post-Obama era has yet to be written. One can’t rely upon any of the conservative principals to author one, because they have been drinking at the well of minority rule for too long. A Trump autobiography? He didn’t even write The Art of the Deal.

Enter Ari Berman’s new book, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People–and the Fight to Resist It, published in April. It provides a well-researched and relatable history of an issue that has been at the heart of modern conservatism since Pat Buchanan worked in the Nixon White House.

In a 1995 National Press Club address, Buchanan, then a presidential candidate, said, “If present trends hold, white Americans will be a minority by 2050.” This underlying fear mongering became endemic to Republican politics and drove the ascendancy of the 45th president. Irrational fears the United States would transform from a First World Power to Third World status drove conservative voters to the ballot box.

In my reading of books about the rise of Donald Trump as president, Berman is the first author to tell a clear, coherent, and relatable story of that time. Minority rule is at the heart of current Republican policy and behavior and Berman lays it all out for the reader.

While the 1965 Voting Rights Act broadened access to the ballot, conservative white folks were aghast and feared they would become a racial and political minority. During the Johnson administration, an emphasis on immigration of whites was transformed to a broader band of global populations. Enter Trump to both fan the racist, anti-immigrant flames, and get elected as a supposed fire fighter for the fires he started.

Berman outlines the constitutional and legal structure that enables minority rule in the United States. The conduct of the U.S. Census, having two U.S. Senators per state regardless of population, the growth of the filibuster, the electoral college, and drawing political districts in a way that disenfranchises non-white voters, all play a part in enabling minority rule, according to Berman.

While it may sound easy to keep the U.S. Census above politics, it was politicized during the 2020 census by the administration. Having two U.S. Senators, combined with the filibuster enables senators representing a minority of the population to set policy and block majority-favored laws they don’t like. Political gerrymandering, especially in states like Wisconsin and Michigan entrenched minority rule and blocked attempts for political districts to represent the people in the state. There is no magic bullet to fix any of these issues. Entrenched, minority rule makes it more difficult.

In Minority Rule, Berman outlines the role of The Heritage Foundation’s sister organization, Heritage Action, in our politics. Heritage Action is a 501(c)4 nonprofit conservative policy advocacy organization founded in 2010. The Heritage Foundation was restricted from advocating policy, so they created this offshoot, which has become one of the most powerful political lobbying groups in the nation. Iowa is one of the states where these dark money groups have been active.

Ari Berman gets a thumbs up for this book, and I recommend you read it yourself. Minority rule is endemic to the problems of politics in 2024. Berman helps us get a grip on it. He also provides hope the electorate can address the problem and embolden democracy going forward. He presents evidence such a movement has already started.

I also recommend Berman’s previous book, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America.

Categories
Living in Society

April Showers

Volunteer cilantro from the garden.

April is ending with rain showers. As hot as the atmosphere and ocean have been, I expect an abundance of rain in 2024. Our local newspaper wrote there will be “bouts of record-challenging high temperatures throughout the nation and the possibility of the hottest summer ever observed.” Call it the climate crisis, call it a lot of rain, call it whatever you will yet these are crazy times and the weather became crazy along with it.

A friend and I organized a political meet and greet at the public library so voters could meet candidates before the June 4 primary election. As mentioned yesterday, the primary election may as well be the November general election for county supervisors: The county electorate is liberal compared to many Iowa counties and Republicans on the November ballot don’t stand a chance.

It is no surprise there is discontent among the electorate. That is the county Democratic resting happy face. Two new candidates challenged three incumbents for county supervisor. I spent time at our event with each of the five, including the ones I am just getting to know. They are all good people with a set of manners one expects from a candidate for public office. Incumbency is difficult to overcome unless someone did something terribly wrong. There is no evidence of that among these incumbents.

The state house races are just beginning and neither the state senate nor representative candidate was ready with campaign literature or yard signs. April politics is a parade gathering in a field waiting for the grand marshal’s signal to start. There is a lot of milling about. All eight candidates at the event, including the county sheriff, are solid.

Inside the front entrance to the library is a stone wall with the chiseled names of original donors who built it. Our public library used to be under the bandstand in a city park, then moved to the former fire station. Both spaces were incredibly small for a library in a city and surrounding community of more than 10,000 people. Many take for granted having a well-built library with a robust staff. Not every small community can afford it. The original community donations, in money and sweat equity, set the path for a great local resource we use for our political meetings and many other things.

Morning sunlight is drying the driveway as I type these words. No rain is forecast so it should be a decent day of outdoors work. Soon it will be time to get cabbages in the ground.

Categories
Writing

Weekly Journal 2024-04-28

Onions Curing in 2010.

The week began with planting onions: Patterson (yellow) and Blush (red). In a kitchen garden one cannot grow enough onions to support meals. In my case, the garden has been hit or miss in producing a good onion crop. After planting six rows, I threw up a temporary fence before heading indoors for the rest of the day.

Legislature Adjourns Sine Die

By 4:25 a.m. on Saturday, April 20, the Iowa legislature adjourned and could do no further damage to regular folk. Shortly afterward, the Governor issued a press release touting their accomplishments. What stood out to me was this paragraph about charter schools,

Charter School Expansion: Adjusts per pupil funding to support educational freedom opportunities and allows vacant or underutilized public school district facilities to be available for lease or purchase by nonpublic or charter schools. (SF 2368)

Gov. Reynolds Statement on 2024 Legislative Session, April 20, 2024.

If there were any clearer message Republicans are going after public schools, I don’t know what it could be when they make provisions for disposal of public school property.

Blog for Iowa

Wrapped up my work filling in for Dave Bradley at Blog for Iowa while his family moved to a new home. During this tenure, I wrote 38 posts on a range of topics. Most of them were cross-posted here so readers wouldn’t miss any. It felt good to write on a regularly scheduled basis. It also feels good to be free of the commitment as garden planting ramps up and my work on an autobiography enters a new writing stage.

A Late 50th High School Class Reunion

Our high school graduating class missed our 50th reunion because of the coronavirus pandemic. We decided not to wait any longer and are holding it this July. I volunteered to work the interface between the reunion planning committee and our fellow high school classmates. From my previous experience, it is the best job. I’m enjoying reading the emails with RSVPs and the contact it brings. In this role, I am privileged to interact with almost every classmate engaged with the school, whether they plan to come or not. I expect to attend the main event in July.

Political Event

On Saturday, the Solon Area Democrats hosted a Meet and Greet at the public library. Eight Democratic candidates who attended are running in the June 4 primary. In our county, the supervisor primary is usually the determinant of the general election outcome. There are five supervisor candidates for three seats this cycle. They are all decent people. This was our kick off event for the November election. I’ll have more comments about politics as the campaigns progress.

The pressure to get plants in the garden soil is on. On a related note, I’m running out of indoors places to put seedlings. Here’s hoping for a productive time between now and Memorial Day.

Categories
Environment

Nuclear Power Isn’t It

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Pexels.com

Little has changed to make nuclear power a safe and affordable option to produce electricity. That didn’t stop Iowa Republican members of congress, all four of them, from voting for H.R. 6544, the Atomic Advancement Act of 2023. They were not alone, the bill passed on Feb. 29, 2024 (365-36-1). It awaits action in the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. What were they thinking? They were thinking they would take care of big business first.

In a sneaky, self-serving way, the bill revised the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s mission statement to emphasize the “public benefits” of nuclear energy instead of protecting human life and health through regulation. In other words, it promotes more nuclear power over safety.

Using questionable wisdom, the U.S. House of Representatives pushed more of the cost of recovery from a nuclear disaster upon tax payers. The bill calls for renewal of the Price-Anderson Act, a 1957 law which caps the industry’s liability for nuclear disasters at only $13 billion. H.R. 6544 extends it for 40 more years. The Price-Anderson Act makes US taxpayers liable for the full costs of nuclear disasters – which could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars – and exempts the insurance industry from covering homeowners and businesses for damages from those disasters. We regular folks never have it that good from our government.

Construction costs for new nuclear power are more than ten times those of comparable solar capacity. There are similar cost issues around fuel sourcing, waste disposal, safe operations, and escape of radioactive pollution from a power plant, none of which have been resolved. There can be agreement we’d like to use a method of electricity generation that minimizes pollution. Nuclear power isn’t it.

Entrepreneur Bill Gates is working to make nuclear power more cost effective and safe. When he decided to make nuclear power generation one of the projects in his post-Microsoft life, he said he wanted to solve its problems so it could replace more polluting methods. Gates believes nuclear power is an important part of solving the climate crisis. That may be, yet not until we solve the problems of cost and safety. Read about his effort in Kemmerer, Wyoming here.

The U.S. Congress is getting ahead of itself in advancing this bill. My House Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks was out with a statement shortly after voting for it, “The Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy held a hearing to discuss nuclear energy expansion. I believe nuclear energy plays a key role in the future of American energy and am proud to support it.” I have been writing about the representative’s affection for nuclear power since this post on Dec. 11, 2010. I wrote, “As a proponent of nuclear power to control toxic emissions from coal fired power plants and concentrated animal feeding operations in the state, she is expected to kick the ball down the road for the decades it would take to bring adequate megawatts of nuclear energy on line.” One decade down, how many to go?

It is obvious the nuclear industry has made little progress toward improving safety in operations and affordability as measured in unit cost of electricity produced. They hang their hat on the likes of Bill Gates, instead, and pray he solves the problems. I didn’t know those folks spent that much time in church.

Categories
Living in Society

Abortion Heads Back to the Supreme Court

U.S. Supreme Court Building, Washington, D.C. Photo Credit – U.S. Supreme Court Website.

When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 22, 2022, it was a matter of time before abortion would have another hearing in the high court. On Wednesday this week justices heard oral arguments on whether the State of Idaho’s abortion ban is constitutional in Moyle vs. United States. Alice Miranda Ollstein and Josh Gerstein reported on Politico:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday will consider — for the first time since it overturned Roe v. Wade —whether an individual state’s abortion ban is constitutional.

The justices will hear arguments on whether federal law requires emergency room physicians in Idaho to perform abortions to stabilize pregnant patients experiencing a medical crisis despite the state’s near-total prohibition on the procedure, which only allows doctors to end a pregnancy when the mother’s life is in danger.

It’s the second major abortion case of the term, following last month’s arguments over the FDA’s regulation of the widely used abortion pill mifepristone, and the latest example of how overturning Roe and returning abortion rights to the states did not keep the courts out of the fray, as some justices had hoped. Decisions in both cases are expected in June.

The Idaho case homes in on the clash between red states’ desire to ban nearly all abortions and President Joe Biden administration’s efforts to preserve some access to the procedure, and the arguments come amid a roiling national debate on the issue. And it comes as doctors around the country plead for clarity on the parameters of the medical emergency exemptions to state bans, warning that vague definitions of “life-threatening” and the prospect of criminal charges are creating a chilling effect that deters them from providing needed care in patients’ most vulnerable moments.

5 questions about the Supreme Court’s next major abortion case by Alice Miranda Ollstein and Josh Gerstein, April 24, 2024.

Read the entire article here. I recommend following Alice Miranda Ollstein’s work at Politico.

The irony in 2024 is that Roe Vs. Wade was the compromise on what was then, and continues to be, the controversial issue of abortion. It is unlikely times have changed in that regard since Jan. 22, 1973, when Roe was decided (7-2). Despite talk about “letting the states decide” on abortion, given diversity of opinion among the states, combined with Republican efforts to have government control women’s bodies and health care, SCOTUS will inevitably have to re-decide Roe or something like it. When that will be is anyone’s guess, yet I submit, that day is coming.

Based on the boiling-over outrage I heard from three female justices during oral arguments on Wednesday, Idaho seems unlikely to prevail in this case. I mean, if one is arguing a case before the Supreme Court in support of your state’s extreme abortion ban, you might need Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett on your side. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explained on Slate:

Justice Amy Coney Barrett famously provided the crucial fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. So if you are arguing in favor of an abortion ban, you probably don’t want to alienate Barrett—by, say, condescendingly dismissing her concerns when she points out that your legal theory doesn’t make any sense. Yet that is what Joshua Turner did on Wednesday while defending Idaho’s draconian abortion restrictions, and much to Barrett’s evident irritation. Turner—who represented the Idaho solicitor general’s office in the second major abortion case to come before the high court after it promised us in its Dobbs opinion that the court was out of the abortion business in 2022—might just have lost his case by repeatedly mansplaining his self-contradictory position to Barrett and the other three women justices. In his toneless, dispassionate telling, his entirely incomprehensible position was just too complex for them to understand. And so he just kept repeating it, over and over. These justices, including Barrett, sounded increasingly fed up with his chin-stroking dissembling on an issue that’s literally life-or-death for pregnant women in red states.

The Lawyer Defending Idaho’s Abortion Ban Irritated the One Justice He Needed on His Side by Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, Slate, April 24, 2024.

Read the rest of the article here. You can’t go wrong reading Dahlia Lithwick. How the case is decided is anyone’s guess after oral arguments.

Democratic Congressional Candidate Christina Bohannan held a round table discussion about abortion on March 26 in Iowa City. 10 people were in attendance to share their personal experiences and thoughts on the state of abortion rights in Iowa, according to the Daily Iowan. Citing a Des Moines Register poll, “61 percent of adults in Iowa believe abortion should be legal in all or most situations, and 35 percent believe abortions should be illegal in most or all situations.” A lot is at stake in the post-Dobbs era. It will take election of Democrats to turn the Republican tide that favors government intrusion into a woman’s health care.

Here is a link to the Iowa Democratic Party to get involved today.

Categories
Living in Society

Sunlight, Birds Singing

Trail walking in April 2023.

A walk on the state park trail is respite from working at home. These days I take the auto off property once or twice each week. The rest of the time is spent working at home or walking on the trail. A person needs sunlight and bird songs for many reasons. It is as close as it gets to feeling a part of nature.

We need respite.

A high school student came to the door seeking cans and bottles to return for the deposit — a fund raising project for the school band. We don’t consume much that comes in containers that can be redeemed for a deposit. I went downstairs and found a case of empty ginger beer bottles and turned them over.

I also found a case of Mexican beer with 15 bottles left from last summer. On hot days, I’ll ice down one or two to drink when I work up a sweat. This is enough to last into June.

These April days are slipping through my hands and there seems to be little to do about it. The garden seedlings are too many for the available indoors space and I haven’t been able to muster energy to assemble the new, portable greenhouse. Been feeling a bit punk, and that’s not helping either.

I spent part of Thursday morning unraveling loose threads that inhabit family lore. Here is how that passage ended.

Family lore is William worked in Mine 74 and in the Cherry coal mine. Other family lore suggests he didn’t mine coal but had an office job from a young age.

Inconsistent and incomplete tales are part of a problem with family stories. It affects how an author writes a modern narrative. In a later chapter, I present two very different stories authored by Mother in the form of a letter and email about the day I was born. We must consider such stories and proceed based on conflicting information, even when both versions cannot be true.

My view at this writing is Grandfather’s declaration of being a miner on the 1910 and 1940 U.S. Census records, my personal experiences with him, explanations from family about how he came to have black lung disease by inhaling coal dust in the mines, and the government awarding Black Lung Benefits based on his health, confirm he worked in the mines. I proceed on that basis.

We tell stories about our lives and repeat them. They harden and become the stuff of legend within a family. Just as Mae told and retold the story of her aunt and the piano, Mother told and retold the story of Grandfather being a communist. By focusing on family lore, and hardened stories, we tend to reduce how much we know about parts of our lives we didn’t directly experience. Expanding the universe of knowledge about our lives is the goal of this book.

Despite feeling punk, behind in the garden, and lacking energy, it felt I got something done. The idea in this passage is to weave explanations about complex and conflicting stories in the autobiography, one in each chapter. It is an improvement in the narrative that is possible. The purpose is to give the reader a guidepost on how to interpret what I write as they read it. I’m not aware of anyone else who writes this way. Will see how it goes.

I will soon need to get outside again for brief respite.