Author: Paul Deaton

Categories
Reviews

Book Review: Presidents of War

The Mason City and Urbandale school districts have both been in the news because of their efforts to comply with the new Iowa law which restricts what school children can read in class or in the school library. While this is a specific initiative driven by a small number of conservative groups, it seems appropriate to ask what should adults be reading? I submit it is books like Michael Beschloss’ 2018 history Presidents of War.

Presidents of War is a history of the use of presidential power conducting our nation’s wars beginning with the War of 1812 through the Vietnam War. Beschloss points out repeatedly our war presidents did not closely follow the intention of the framers of the constitution or the words in the document. They took liberties to accomplish their various objectives, some of which were needed, some political, some deceptive, and some flat-out ill-advised. Even the revered Franklin Delano Roosevelt weighed political considerations in his conduct of World War II.

In his review on Gates Notes, Bill Gates brought home why the book is important:

The richest insights for me came from the fact that the book’s broad scope lets you draw important cross-cutting lessons about presidential leadership…

[…]

Beschloss didn’t unearth much new material about any of these wars. But looking at each president and each conflict with a similar lens is what makes the book a worthwhile read.

Gates Notes, Bill Gates, May 20, 2019.

The barrage of misinformation and outright lies in our daily lives is non-stop. The technique is to drop a factoid, then pivot to an argument that has a political or commercial point to make. The point often isn’t rational or based on the asserted fact. It is hard to believe folks will summarize the complexity of World War II , or any of our wars, in a brief social media post to perpetrate a lie. Yet they do. We should be able to agree to leave World War II out of the pitch to buy life insurance. If we can’t, society has bigger problems.

Beschloss spent more than a decade writing this book. In the acknowledgements he wrote parts of the book were 40 years in the making. The reason to read Presidents of War is it equips us to deal with misrepresentations and lies in social intercourse. “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” Winston Churchill said in a 1948 speech in the House of Commons. By presenting historical truth in the book, Beschloss enables us to call foul when someone misrepresents it.

In our political discourse, we spend a lot of time assessing our presidents. Presidents of War, and others like it, give us incontrovertible information about which presidents messed up and which didn’t. We should consult such information before blurting things out about Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and others like a loose cannon.

One aspect of Michael Beschloss’ package is he is active on social media and a historical consultant to news organizations. Room Rater consistently gives him a 10/10 for his presentation of self in video commentary. I mean, those are not really credentials we used to consider. As a historian, he became a participant in popular culture and this contributes to the book being readable and understandable. Presidents of War demonstrates proficiency in historiography as well as being relatable.

School boards are banning books and that makes it important for parents to be active readers. If you wanted to start reading again, or just need a good next book, President of War would be a great starting place.

Categories
Living in Society

It’s Official: Bohannan Is In

Christina Bohannan

I want you to hear it directly from me:

I’m running for Congress against Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks. In a moment I’ll ask you to endorse my campaign, but first I want to tell you why I’m running for Congress:

When I think about why I want to represent Iowa’s 1st district, I think of my dad. Dad worked construction – and I can’t think of anyone who worked harder. But when my dad got sick, we almost lost everything, staying afloat thanks to Social Security and Medicare benefits.

My dad isn’t alone. The Iowans I know value hard work, but they’re struggling under the weight of rising health care costs and lower pay. I’m running because Iowans like my dad deserve dignity.

My opponent, Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks, puts her extremist agenda above everyday Iowans. She blames rising health care costs on seniors using their hard-earned Medicare benefits, she supports a national abortion ban with no exceptions, and she stands with the big pharmaceutical companies over Iowa’s working families who are struggling to afford drugs. That’s unacceptable.

In 2022, we came just short of what we needed to win this race, but my dad didn’t raise me to back down – not when our communities are at stake.

If you’re fed up with Washington politicians who shut us down, count us out, and leave us behind, join us. I know the struggle because I’ve lived it. I will be your voice. I will be your champion. Always.

If you’re ready to endorse this campaign and join this movement, please sign here. There’s strength in numbers, and your support early in this campaign will help build our momentum.

Yours in the fight,
Christina Bohannan
Categories
Living in Society

Biden Is Doing The Work

President Joe Biden at the signing ceremony for creation of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni national monument.

On Tuesday, Aug. 8, President Joe Biden created Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, a national monument encompassing almost a million acres surrounding the Grand Canyon. At the signing ceremony, Biden said,

America’s natural wonders are our nation’s heart and soul. That’s not hyperbole; that’s a fact. They unite us. They inspire us. A birthright we pass down from generation to generation.

The White House, Remarks by President Biden, Aug. 8, 2023.

In part, the three-state trip to Arizona, New Mexico and Utah was to promote the Inflation Reduction Act, a piece of necessary campaign work.

On August 16, 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, marking the most significant action Congress has taken on clean energy and climate change in the nation’s history. With the stroke of his pen, the President redefined American leadership in confronting the existential threat of the climate crisis and set forth a new era of American innovation and ingenuity to lower consumer costs and drive the global clean energy economy forward.

The White House, Inflation Reduction Act Guidebook.

We, as a society, must act to address the human causes of the climate crisis, and Joe Biden is doing the work.

The risk we have in establishing this national monument is another president with differing views could undo this work as Donald J. Trump did with Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, created by President Obama a year prior to Trump assuming office. Fact is there is no consensus about creating national monuments which in turn, steers the rudder toward partisanship. Biden’s lofty remarks on Aug. 8 sound universal, yet are not commonly enough believed for Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni to endure when political seas shift.

There are characteristics of the new national monument that make them ripe to be overturned, at least in part. The first is grazing rights on public lands. According to the White House, “(The) monument designation protects these sacred places for cultural and spiritual uses, while respecting existing livestock grazing permits and preserving access for hunting and fishing.” It seems clear that won’t be good enough for ranchers and herders who rely on public lands to feed their livestock at low or no cost.

More significantly, the new national monument is home to some of the most easily accessible deposits of uranium in the country.

The Grand Canyon is too important to not protect. And yet there are hundreds of mining claims, and several active uranium mines in the proposed monument area that threaten to poison the landscape and destroy this sacred land. We know from firsthand experience the damage that can be caused by yellow dirt contaminating our water and poisoning our animals and our children. We are thankful to President Biden and the Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition for their efforts in pushing this initiative to protect our people from the adverse effects of uranium mining.

Navajo Nation President Nygren, Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition Celebrates Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument Designation Aug. 8, 2023

The hope among tribal leaders is the national monument designation is permanent. It is hard to believe that mining interests won’t exploit their political power to gain access to uranium deposits there. They have already begun framing arguments that uranium will be needed to power the displacement of fossil fuels in our energy grid. As I’ve written on several occasions, nuclear power is not the answer to addressing climate change.

We should celebrate the moment of creating this national monument. Local groups have been working on its designation for decades and we should stop, take a breath, and appreciate what determined, long-range political action can accomplish. We must also be vigilant of those who would undo Biden’s work.

Categories
Writing

Take Your Medicine, Watch Iowa Press

Johnson County Democrats at the 2022 Solon Beef Days parade.

In an email exchange with a friend, I asked whether they would attend the Iowa State Fair on Saturday when the two Democratic candidates other than Joe Biden were scheduled to appear at the Des Moines Register Soapbox. They said yes, and would bird dog some of the Republicans as well.

Had I known Semafor journalist Dave Weigel would be there, I might have driven to the state capitol for a chance to meet him.

Thursday, on their way to the state fair, Iowa Democratic Party Chair Rita Hart and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz stopped by Iowa Press to record the following episode.

In my last two posts, I wrote about whether the abortion dog would hunt in Iowa. The topic came up when Stephen Gruber-Miller of the Register had this question:

Stephen Gruber-Miller: Iowa republicans this summer passed a ban on abortion at about six weeks into a pregnancy.

I’m curious, as you’re talking to members of the Democratic Party around the state who are recruiting candidates, who are trying to encourage people to run for office, is that something that comes up as a motivator for people to run for office?

Hart: Well, absolutely.

I think always when you are recruiting for candidates and as people are considering running for office, it’s the issues that often drive them.

And this is an issue that is a great motivator not only because of the fact that this law is unpopular, that people recognize that it’s not very workable, that to have a law where decisions are made at six weeks where most women don’t even know they’re pregnant, that that just does not work.

And so, issues are really important to people and they will step up accordingly because it’s far reaching.

It affects how many OBGYNs are attracted to work in this state when we already have a shortage.

It affects women’s health care in general.

And so, these are issues that are important to people and motivate them to run.

Iowa Press Transcript Aug. 11, 2023.

Whenever our Democratic leaders appear on Iowa Press, we should tune in. Not because it’s great television (it often isn’t) but because if we ever want to dig out from Republican dominance in the state we have to have a common platform from which to make our campaigns. Watching the party leader, and a Democratic governor in Iowa to stump for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is the kind of boilerplate information we must assimilate.

Make sure you caffeinate before watching this program.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Peak Gardening Season

Not enough sugar for cider to make vinegar, so apple sauce.

I’m left alone to attend to the house while my spouse is helping her sister. She’s been gone three weeks, and a return date is uncertain. I made a care package of garden produce, a couple boxes of rags, and my labor for some heavy lifting last Wednesday. We had a good conversation about life after the work was done.

The main August activity centers on the garden. There is a lot of food to bring in and preserve for the future. It never seems a straight line on getting things done.

Apples are dropping at the rate of one every minute from the Earliblaze trees. I picked a bucket full, yet there is not enough sugar in them to make cider for vinegar. I guess I’ll sauce them. If it is a bit tart, we can add a sweetener when we open the jars and serve. This was not a good variety of tree to plant back in the 1990s and I have two of them. The Zestar! apples, from a tree planted a couple of years ago, made a great-tasting sauce. That jar is in the refrigerator for immediate eating.

The first round of hot peppers is in and needs processing. The goal is to make at least one quart jar of Guajillo chilies with garlic, maybe two. There are also Serrano peppers for eating fresh and another kind of refrigerated chili sauce. Jalapenos will be eaten fresh. Anticipating a fresh salsa, I bought a bag of organic corn chips at the wholesale club. Once we get past the hot times, there will be a surge of hot peppers.

There is a small patch of celery to bring in. These get sliced thinly and frozen in one cup batches for soup. The leaves are abundant. I put them in the food processor to chop them and then freeze with water in small batches in a muffin pan for soup flavoring. Nothing is so good as home grown celery.

Tomato canning is on deck for the weekend. There are a dozen quarts left from last year and it looks like I’ll need them to get through the year. I’ll have a separate post later about the tomato crop. The ones that are coming in from the vines have had excellent flavor.

It is more difficult to cook for one. I made a big cut vegetable salad and it lasted for days. A person can only eat so many vegetables. I’ve been donating to the food pantry, so that helps alleviate the backlog. Still, there is a lot to process this weekend before the vegetables deteriorate. Better get after it soon.

Categories
Living in Society

Bohannan To Run For Congress Again

First district Democratic congressional candidate Christina Bohannan

One of the worst kept secrets in Iowa’s First Congressional District is that Christina Bohannan intends to run against Mariannette Miller-Meeks again in the 2024 general election.

All Spring and Summer I’ve been pointing out at in-person political meetings there was no declared candidate for the Congress. Half a dozen different times I was rebuffed, with folks saying there was a candidate. Finally, at a July 6 event at a Mexican restaurant in Solon, someone named Bohannan as a candidate.

The soft launch of her campaign was confirmed Wednesday, Aug. 9, at 1:31 p.m., when they sent an email request to sign a petition with the following footer:

So Bohannan is in and one presumes there will be an official and more formal launch this month.

The response received from fellow Democrats when I asked, “Why Bohannan?” was, “Who else is going to run?” I point out that Miller-Meeks ran multiple times before being elected. and then won only when Dave Loebsack announced retirement.

Iowa is trending Republican right now, so whoever Democrats nominate to run against Miller-Meeks will be fighting a headwind. I make no judgement about whether Bohannan 2.0 can defeat her. Obviously Bohannan needs to do things differently to be successful this time. One hopes she will hire completely new staff members with new ideas for the second effort.

The subject of the email from the Bohannan campaign was abortion. Likewise, the Bohannan X account became active again recently, with a retweet about the Ohio special election on modifying their state constitution. The special election has been described as a referendum on abortion rights by news media and prominent Democrats. I talk to Iowa voters on a regular basis and from what I’m hearing, the abortion dog won’t hunt in Iowa. I could have a minority opinion, yet I don’t think so.

Now begins the primary campaign for a Democratic First District Congressperson. If there is a lack of interest among talented people to run, the nominee could well be Bohannan. Despite all the blabbermouths in the district, we’ll just have to wait until she makes it official.

Categories
Living in Society Writing

How Do Iowa Democrats Proceed?

State Senator Bob Dvorsky waving at the cameraman in the Solon Beef Days parade, July 2013.

In 2006 I drove from work in Cedar Rapids to the Democratic campaign office in Iowa City once a week to make phone calls for Dave Loebsack. Staffer Tyler Wilson had a stack of papers with the names of people for me to call. That was a time when people would take a phone call from a political canvasser and have a discussion. I fondly recall the flip phone I used to make those campaign calls.

During the calls, I found Democrats had voted for Republican Jim Leach. They had had it after his support for the George W. Bush administration and would vote Democratic in 2006. By doing so, Dave Loebsack was elected to the U.S. Congress where he served from 2007 until 2021. It was a win: clean, pure and simple.

Chet Culver was elected governor that year but it was anything but a clean win. There was dissatisfaction among Democrats over the conservative selection he and lieutenant governor candidate Patty Judge represented. The vast geography, sparsely sprinkled with Democratic voters, had spoken in the primary. They didn’t want some lefty like Mike Blouin, Sal Mohammad, or Ed Fallon as chief executive officer of the state.

The run up to the 2006 election was a heady time for Iowa Democrats. The feeling culminated in 2008 with Barack Obama winning the nomination for president and carrying Iowa in the general election. The sparkle went off those years quickly. Loebsack won reelection. Culver did not when Terry Branstad re-emerged as the Republican gubernatorial candidate in 2010. Obama’s margin eroded by the time of his re-election in 2012. Since then, it has been all Republican in Iowa, culminating in the trifecta they won in the 2016 general election. Since then, they added to their majority.

What lesson does the ten-year period between 2006 and 2016 have to teach us? I’m sure many people have thought about this and have opinions. Here’s mine.

There is no returning to 2006 or 2008. With the rise in campaign technology beginning with the Howard Dean campaign in 2004, how campaigns were conducted changed. Obama brought the technology of campaigns together and we had an edge on Republicans. That didn’t last long.

In the 2012 campaign for Iowa House District 73, I used what I had learned from Obama about targeting voters. I soon discovered our opponent was targeting the exact same voters during canvasses. I noticed Jeff Kaufmann driving his canvassers around Mechanicsville and in other places on multiple occasions during the campaign. Sometimes I waited until the Kaufmann canvasser finished before making my pitch to the same voter. They seemed to get there first.

Technology is no longer an edge for Democrats. If one reads how the Trump campaign used data aggregation during their elections, and how they micro-targeted voters, they surpassed whatever Obama did in that regard. That may be because they viewed campaigns as a money-generating operation more than a traditional political campaign.

The effect of the pandemic is clear: it created isolation as we dodged COVID-19. Isolation served Republican interests. It unified them like never before and people I had known for years as inactive voters now activated as Republicans.

Working a campaign’s voter database is important. The luster of it faded into a drudgery of making calls and knocking doors. It seems like the wrong direction to perpetuate the idea of year-around calling and door knocking. I agree, there are no off years. I don’t agree using the same crooked sawhorse to build the same obsolete operation. Democrats must focus on winning the next election instead.

Leadership is important. Jennifer Konfrst, Zach Wahls, Sarah Trone Garriott, J.D. Scholten, and others represent the future of Iowa Democrats. Yeah, I know Wahls rubbed his fellow elected officials the wrong way while minority leader. That happened yet Wahls retains excellent prospects for leadership. If the future of the party is based on doing known things only, Democrats have no hope. Who else besides younger members of the elected cohort will lead? The correct answer is no one: we’ll get lost in the wilderness. For the Israelites, that was forty years. There is no promised land of politics today.

The electorate has changed and is changing. People are losing interest in politics. Young Iowans appear to be trending conservative. I see a lot of DeSantis support among Iowa Republicans. The open question is whether Iowa will be a decider in their primary contest. We’ll see what happens in 2024, but if it’s a rematch between Biden and Trump, I predict voters won’t turn out like they did in 2020.

The path forward for Democrats is engagement in society. I don’t mean in politics. Being seen on the library board, at K-12 functions, at the town festival planning committee, and other public spaces is exceedingly important. It is where people of differing political views meet and discuss our politics. For me, that is the path forward few are discussing in August 2023.

Would love to hear your thoughts about the path forward for Iowa Democrats. Leave a brief comment on this post if so inclined.

Categories
Environment

Getting To True Net-Zero

It has been ten years since I first attended former vice president Al Gore’s training on the climate crisis. Since then, the organization surpassed 50,000 trained climate leaders located in 190 countries. Every one of them will be needed because there is so much to be done to solve the climate crisis.

July 2023 was the hottest month on Earth since we began keeping records in the modern era. The year 2023 is also tracking to be the hottest. We, as a civilization, must do something to mitigate the human causes of this excess heat by achieving net-zero emissions. The words “achieving true net-zero” are important and there is misinformation about what they mean.True net-zero includes reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced on Earth. Climate Reality works toward achieving true net-zero because once it can be achieved, global temperatures will begin to decline within a few years. Society can avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis by achieving this goal.

Climate Reality has a strategy to achieve true net-zero emissions by 2030 in four primary campaigns with working groups. They are:

Reducing Emissions

This campaign focuses on building a clean energy future by cutting or avoiding emissions and opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure. 

Calling Out Greenwashing

This campaign works to expose the lies fossil fuel companies tell and counter with the truth about the energy transition we need.

Financing A Just Transition

This campaign focuses on mobilizing global finance to build thriving clean energy economies.

Strengthening International Cooperation on Climate

This campaign supports climate action through the Conference of the Parties (COP) which hosts international gatherings to agree to approaches to the climate crisis. The 2015 Paris Agreement is a work-product of the COP.

There is plenty of work for individuals to do to address the climate crisis and avoid the worse effects of increasing global atmospheric and oceanic temperatures. If you would like to learn more about The Climate Reality Project, click here. Not ready to get involved? Here is an inspiring poem by Amanda Gorman suggesting why you should consider it, if not with this organization, then one near you that is working on solving the climate crisis.

Categories
Living in Society

Making Life Harder for Women

Pregnant woman attended by physicians. Image credit – Wikimedia Commons.

When the U.S. Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade in 1973, I was a junior at university. I reread the decision after retirement in 2009, along with dissenting opinions and some of the briefs. I know exactly one thing about House File 732 passed in a special session of the Iowa Legislature this summer: It restricted abortion in the state, yet did nothing, zero, to resolve controversy over abortion.

In 2022, a Republican-stacked Supreme Court overturned Roe which had enabled women with the right to seek an abortion. Discarding legal precedent, the justices ignored what’s best for the common good.

Along with this decision, male dominance over women is surging. Presently and throughout American history men have sought to dominate women at home, in the boardroom, and notably in legislation. A new generation of women, subservient to mostly male Republican legislators, are taking their marching orders. As Governor Kim Reynolds signed a near total ban on abortion in Iowa, women are faced with a familiar historic uphill struggle.

Along with the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe, abortion restrictions have led to a significant uptick in intimate partner violence, according to PBS Newshour.

Moreover, contraception is also coming under attack.  If Republicans seek to take away abortion rights, effective contraception is the only method to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.  If Republicans don’t agree, I suggest a remedial sexual education course. The United Nations Population Forum states that since 1994 modern contraception has more than doubled. 

The takeaway? If half of humanity is not unfairly burdened everyone will benefit.

“Receiving an abortion does not harm the health and well-being of women,” according to The Turnaway Study by Diana Greene Foster. “Being denied an abortion results in worse financial, health and family outcomes.”

Failure to enable women with bodily autonomy and to make their own health decisions is a human rights violation.

A majority of Iowans can begin to take back rights denied us by House File 732 during the 2024 election.

Categories
Living in Society

Don’t Tell Us What To Read

Shelf of books about Iowa.

A fundamental right in the United States is to choose what we each read, see and hear. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives us this right. Where is the boundary between educating our children and providing them free access to all forms of cultural expression regardless of content?

This is not a new question and society has been answering it in different ways for as long as I can remember. The Iowa legislature decided to codify where the boundary is and passed a law last session. Based on the new law, the Urbandale School District pulled almost 400 books from their stacks and curricula. Most districts are expected to be overly cautious in their approach to compliance. The state has been less than helpful in providing guidance on how schools and libraries should handle the new law. Urbandale reversed course on many of these books. There needs to be binding guidance from the state board of education before districts begin pulling books. State Senator Janice Weiner posted on X, “IMO all districts need to write and demand binding guidance.” In the military my drill instructor would describe this situation as it is playing out in real life a “goat screw.”

Control over which books K-12 students could access at school was evident in the 1950s and ’60s. We didn’t call it K-12 back then. When I was young, teachers kept an eye on my reading and made their opinions known. If they didn’t like a particular book, I read it at home where my parents supervised me. I got my first library card in 1959 and have been reading books from the library ever since.

My first conflict was in eighth grade over a book written by Ian Fleming, one of the 007 series. The priest saw I had it and confiscated it because of James Bond’s interaction with women. I discussed it with my parents and eventually bought another copy from the corner drug store with my allowance.

In high school I heard about J.D. Salinger’s book Catcher in the Rye and wanted to read it. It was prohibited and unavailable in the school library, or even in our local bookstores. I went across the river to a Rock Island bookstore where I bought it, and read that one too. I was free to manage the conflicts between teachers and my reading.

Fast forward from the 1960s and here’s where the controversy over boundaries for student reading seem to be heading, according to the Cedar Rapids Gazette editorial board:

Our public schools will be shackled by authoritarian, politically motivated edicts intended to dictate what hundreds of thousands of Iowa students can and can’t learn in school. State actions that historically have been aimed at improving public schools will be used instead to narrow their educational missions to please a minority of outraged parents whose complaints are being elevated by Republican politicians eager to attack public schools.

It’s called “parents’ rights,” but the rights are only for parents who agree with Moms for Liberty.

We don’t need state lawmakers to intervene in local disputes over books. There are processes in place locally to challenge books. Just because banning a book is not easy does not mean the local process is flawed. And one school district’s decision should not affect other school districts.

Editorial, The Cedar Rapids Gazette, Feb. 10, 2023.

What I can’t abide is the state Legislature regulating which books should be allowed in schools. This decision should be between teachers, librarians, and parents. The claim parents don’t know what books are in schools or somehow don’t have input seems bogus. If the Legislature wants to do something on libraries, fund online access to card catalogs throughout the state. We don’t need lawmakers telling us what to read.