Category: Living in Society

Politics mostly social commentary.

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Living in Society

Coming Around (To A Presidential Pick)

Hillary at Benghazi Hearings
Hillary Clinton at the Benghazi Hearings

From my earliest awareness I believed in free will and in joining together with others to accomplish common good.

Self-reliance, natural freedom, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idea that “the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody,” have been a part of me for as long as I can remember.

A poor disciple of these ideas, I stumbled through college, wandered into military service, became distracted in a 25-year career, and have been working to sustain a life in a turbulent world after cutting the cord on financial security. Between youth’s vigor and the infirmities of age there is a lot to accomplish before the final curtain.

I had better choose wisely.

This summer I wrote about the Democratic presidential primary and the Iowa caucuses. My purpose was to say something meaningful in public, and to pick a candidate to support.

Even though Vice President Joe Biden may enter the race, and there are literally scores of lesser candidates, the choice reduces itself to one of three people: Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley or Bernie Sanders.

I support Hillary Clinton for these reasons:

As a society there is little value in aging white men asserting leadership. It is time for this woman to be president.

Of the entire field of Democrats and Republicans, Clinton is most qualified to faithfully execute the office of president. Her resume is well known and stands above what any other candidate offers. In terms of her experience, her engagement in international conflict, in weathering controversy, she has been in the arena for a very long time… she’s still there and thriving.

Her advocacy for women and children, around the globe over three decades, not only made a difference, it was the right thing to do and still is.

Lastly, I trust Hillary Clinton to appoint Supreme Court justices who reflect the values of common men and women like me. The four oldest justices are or will turn 80 before the end of the next presidential term. We need a president who’s watching out for us when it comes time to appoint a replacement.

This cycle is not about issues or about whatever paid punditry raises in clamor. It’s about picking a president who can stand above the noise and stake a claim to help the American people realize their potential. For me, that person is Hillary Clinton.

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Living in Society Sustainability Work Life

Thursday Trifecta

Photo Credit - Misty Rebik
Photo Credit – Misty Rebik

Yesterday brought a truckload of news on three important issues: nuclear non-proliferation, the Iowa caucuses and local worklife.

Democrats in the U.S. Senate blocked a vote on legislation intended to derail the process of bringing the Islamic Republic of Iran into compliance with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. By signing and ratifying the NPT Iran is entitled to a peaceful nuclear program in the areas of medicine and electricity generation as long as they comply with treaty terms. They weren’t in compliance.

How did Iran get to the point where developing a nuclear weapon became imminent? Thank the George W. Bush administration and its laissez-faire attitude toward Iran’s uranium enrichment program. Bush wouldn’t talk to Iran, or do much to enforce its obligations under the NPT. The Obama administration changed all of that, talked to Iran, and together with the P5 +1 nations forged an agreement to bring Iran into compliance.

Republicans howled that the deal was struck. Now that the political process has run its course, they shouldn’t have much to complain about. However, they do despite the administration’s cooperation with the Congress. Or as Laura Rozen, reporter for Al-Monitor posted on twitter,

In a survey of 832 likely Iowa Democratic caucus participants, Bernie Sanders closed the gap with Hillary Clinton to within the margin of error in the new Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday. People feeling “the bern” were quick to state Sanders now leads Clinton, but it’s early and one poll doesn’t mean as much as they may hope on Sept. 10.

Nonetheless, it is good news for Sanders to poll leading Clinton, even if it is within the margin of error. Already his campaign is raising money from the poll although the long odds continue to favor Clinton as the Democratic nominee. Steve Rattner of the New York Times posted the following analysis:

In a unanimous vote, the Johnson County Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance to raise the county-wide minimum wage to $10.10 by 2017. It was cause for celebration for the Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa which helped organize a demonstration supporting the ordinance prior to the vote. The first $0.95 per hour increase is effective Nov. 1, although cities within the county can nullify terms of the ordinance, which they have been waiting for the county to finalize.

In the end this ordinance does little to alleviate the issues driving poverty in our county. According to Pew Research Institute, increasing the minimum wage benefits what Pew calls “near minimum wage earners,” or people who earn less than $10.10 per hour. “The near-minimum-wage workers are young (just under half are 30 or younger), mostly white (76%), and more likely to be female (54%) than male (46%). A majority (56%) have no more than a high-school education,” according to Pew.

The Iowa Policy Project uses the Economic Policy Institute data on minimum wage. Pew says 20.6 million people nationwide would be impacted by an increase in minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. EPI puts the number at 27.8 million. It is prudent to look at both numbers, but as low wage workers understand, the primary impact of public policy is on individual lives, more than broad statistics.

I favor the analysis of local author Paul Street who used the EPI family budget calculator to break down the impact of a minimum wage increase in Johnson County. He said, “considering all this, I can be forgiven, perhaps, for not showering praise on the Johnson County Supervisors for moving forward on a proposal that would raise the county’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour by 2017.”

Read Street’s guest opinion in the Sept. 7 Iowa City Press Citizen here.

Thursday was not a bad day for those paying attention. I drove to the county seat to pay my property taxes. Coming straight from the garden, I wore rolled up blue jeans, sandals and a T-shirt, funding the government for another six months.

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Living in Society

Back to a Non-partisan School Board

Southwest Corner of Main at Market
Southwest Corner of Main at Market

Voter turnout in yesterday’s Solon school board election dropped from 834 votes in 2013 (18.4 percent of registered voters) to 281 votes (8.18 percent).

What happened? The district is moving on after a 10-year cycle of electing politicized and mostly conservative board members to finding a less political, middle ground focused on doing what’s right for district school children.

2013 was arguably the high water mark for this change when the community rallied around former Solon mayor Rick Jedlicka to ensure his place on the school board.

It is telling that there were virtually no political yard signs for school board candidates on display this year. The change from previous years indicates an emerging lack of interest in political aspects of the school board.

Adam Haluska, a former University of Iowa basketball player, and Jim Hauer, a small business owner, got the most votes, with Hauer edging incumbent Dan Coons by three votes for the second seat on the board. From a talent perspective, the race between the two winners was a tossup. The community voted for the future by electing them both.

There are issues with the school board. They spend money like they have it, but that is a complaint I have about most governmental entities. The bigger problem is how to deal with growth in the district.

Will population continue to move to communities like Solon? For the time being, new families are attracted by the perceived quality of district schools and the proximity to amenities found in nearby Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. A significant amount of new, single family home construction has taken place over the last 25 years. The housing is a bit pricey, but comfortable for a family, and not over priced in the market.

The community is centrally located to enable working in Cedar Rapids or Iowa City. A significant number of people commute to work in the Quad-Cities. It is fair to say there will be incremental growth. Accurate projections—the kind needed to plan infrastructure—are harder to come by.

With the build-out of the new middle school and the performing arts center, the district should reach caesura as the community finds its way. The task of the new school board is to finish the current construction plan and work with the newly hired school superintendent, Davis Eidahl, to set a plan for the future.

Based on yesterday’s voter turnout, most people take the idea there will be progress for granted.

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Living in Society

School Board Election

Vote June 3Figuring out for whom to vote in today’s school board election has been a puzzle. I’ve voted against two of the individuals running—Dan Coons and Amber Marty—in previous elections.

At 4:39 a.m. it looks like I’ll vote for Coons and Adam Haluska.

After reading the limited information available about this race, I changed my mind about Coons. He lists among his reasons for running the idea of providing continuity while the district completes current construction projects and the newly hired superintendent becomes acclimatized to his job. There is something to be said for that.

The other pick is where the puzzle comes in.

It’s between Adam Haluska, who’s lived in the district the last five years, and Jim Hauer who has lived here eight years. Both have children in district schools.

Haluska is a financial adviser for Edward Jones, originally from Carroll. In college he played basketball for the University of Iowa and continued professionally for a couple of years. He believes the district is hiring the right people to educate its children and said he doesn’t want to make waves with drastic changes. His father worked as a high school principal.

Hauer is from West Union where he started a commercial roofing business. He has 37 years experience owning and operating the business and has attended school board meetings and workshops over the last six months. He said he believes Solon schools are on the right track.

I would like to have read Haluska had been attending school board meetings. He hasn’t, although I’m not sure there is as much benefit in that as others suggest. There is plenty of continuity on the board even if Coons doesn’t win the election. What I’m looking for is level headedness and the energy and optimism of youth. Haluska appears to have that.

I reached out to some friends about the election and barring any shockers I’ll head to town and do my civic duty after the polls open.

School board elections are important and few people are talking about it this cycle. Turnout in our community trends higher as a percentage of registered voters than the gigantic Iowa City Community School District, so I’ll look forward to reading the returns on the county auditor web site after the polls close.

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Work Life

Two Things About Labor

At Sunset
At Sunset

As a child Dad would take us to the Eagles hall for a Labor Day event sponsored by his union. There were speeches and socializing, food and beverages, and one year I won a canned ham in a raffle which I proudly brought home to Mother. A lot of people attended and I got to know some of them after joining the union to work at the meat packing plant for a couple of summers while I was an undergraduate. It was an open shop, but I joined the union and still have my union retirement card.

After college, I joined the U.S. Army and was assigned to an infantry company. In the military, and in a number of government and private jobs, I was occasionally a worker, but mostly have managed people and resources over a 40-year worklife. I’ve viewed unions from multiple perspectives, with a personal stake in the union-management relationship. Two things seem most important about the changes in worklife over the years.

Work is not valued adequately. The rise of management consulting firms—that purport to help companies drive profitable growth through the effective use of compensation—have methods of assigning value to work. What they do is help companies optimize and reduce human resources costs. Private business has been working to shed people-costs for years and some believe there is an application for these skills in government as well. The growth of outsourcing, temporary job agencies and part time workers are all part of this successful-for-business movement.

What is the value of food security, a livable homelife and a strong social support network? People who do the work to provide these things are taken for granted.

Compensation is a murky endeavor at best. At a job interview in 2014, the district manager of an international service organization emphasized there were no benefits in his company which employed more than 20,000 workers. The work was part-time, and under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, companies who employed people more than 30 hours per week are required to provide health insurance. The company kept employees under 30 hours per week.

The starting hourly wage was above average for the kind of work in the area. To get health insurance mandated by the ACA, people who worked there when I did often turned to the ACA health exchanges for coverage and subsidies. My policy through the exchange costs about $1,200 per month without subsidy. There are stories of much higher premiums for families. If you take the premiums divided by the number of hours worked, it amounts to a $9.89 per hour subsidy of my worklife.

Businesses have methodologies to understand the value of benefits packages. Workers often don’t. While some appreciate the fact that an employer will provide a benefits package, few workers I know put a pencil to it. The focus is almost totally on wages that can be spent and this distorts the value of working for a company. Too, it is hard to define the value of benefits like disability insurance, life insurance, paid time off, and employee appreciation days. People who focus solely on hourly wage rates often don’t understand the broader context in which wages exist in society.

It’s a personal tradition to work on Labor Day. Even when I worked for an oil company, I drove to the office on Labor Day. Besides security, I was often the only person in the high rise office building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.

These days the jobs I work are part time and temporary. Working on Labor Day now means finding my way to a home writing table to work on a freelance article, or making a trip to the garden to pull weeds. All of this has value, just not monetary value. Maybe that’s my point.

What is the value of living a reasonably secure life? It’s a lot higher than it feels for working people.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

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Work Life

Wages and Private Sector Unions

Working the Garden
Working the Garden

As we approach Labor Day, the lockout of United Steel Workers at six Allegheny Technologies plants is a sad commentary on the state of affairs of public sector unions.

“Management has locked out more than 2,000 workers in an effort to extract concessions on health and retirement benefits from union members,” according to Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times.

“ATI is demanding steep increases in out-of-pocket health care expenses and the elimination of pensions for new hires, essentially creating a two-tier wage and benefit system. In addition, ATI wants to expand the use of outside contractors and impose work rule changes that would turn workers into casual laborers, with irregular and unpredictable shift times, less access to overtime pay and worse working conditions,” according to Evan Winters of the World Socialist Web Site.

It is no secret that American business has been working to shed pension and health insurance liabilities, and for the most part has been successful during the post-Reagan era. If they had their way, companies would seek to eliminate most operational liabilities from having employees by outsourcing and using temporary, part-time workers without benefits.

That the company (through a third party) is able to offer temp workers as much as $3,000 per 84-hour week without benefits – plus a guaranteed layoff if a new contract between labor and management is signed – is a demonstration of the power of capital in this capital intensive industry. The average annual wage for a USW worker at Allegheny Technologies is $90,000, which includes mandatory overtime.

If $90,000 per year plus benefits seems like a lot, the work is physically demanding, dirty, repetitive and resoundingly dull. For long-time steel workers, it is a way of life, fraught with injury and physical deterioration. On a scale of wage justice, steel workers should be at the higher end of the range.

Yet the company can, and likely would pay a premium rate to keep the plant operating, albeit at a lower rate of efficiency, until the union contract is settled – or when the temporary workers are made replacement workers. Hiltzik called it a “race to the bottom,”  and friends of labor would agree.

The union is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. On the one hand, some members believe USW leaders are too cozy with Allegheny Technologies management, according to Winters. Rank and file may or may not accept a deal presented for a vote. On the other hand, if there were no USW, management would long ago have made the changes they seek in this new contract.

In 2014, 6.6 percent of private-sector workers in the U.S. were union members, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Iowa, it is slightly higher at 6.9 percent, or 84,791 union members. As a right to work state, there are another 7,500 private-sector workers who are not union members, but work at a company where the pay and benefits are set by a union contract.

The Allegheny Technologies lockout is a case where each contract negotiation has become an opportunity to break the union, rather than to make adjustments in pay and benefits to serve both employees and the company. Because of the capital intensive nature of the steel industry, labor is required to keep plants operating. Just not workers represented by a union.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

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Living in Society Social Commentary

Letter to the Des Moines Register

Net NeutralityTo the Editor of the Des Moines Register

In her Sept. 1 Des Moines Register opinion piece, “Congress must protect net neutrality,” Clayola Brown gets it exactly wrong.

She wrote, “the FCC’s approach to net neutrality is a serious mistake,”  adding, treating the Internet as a common carrier utility could “dramatically cut back the new investments needed for the next phase of the Internet economy.”

What a bunch of bunk.

Title II protections were authorized by a bi-partisan vote of the U.S. Congress, giving the FCC authority to protect net neutrality. What the FCC did was restore these protections after millions of people urged the agency to do just that.

The rules set in February haven’t hurt investment and there’s no plausible reason to suspect they will. On the contrary, companies like Comcast, Google Fiber, Verizon and AT&T have made new investments in their Internet networks since the ruling.

For example, Comcast is rolling out new gigabit fiber services, called “Gigabit Pro” to 18 million locations.

What the FCC rules have done is provide a regulatory framework upon which Internet service providers will have to compete for business. The result has been investment in infrastructure.

As Brown asserted, “investment means jobs,” so what’s the problem?

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Living in Society

Hillary At Summer’s End

Hillary PrideHillary Clinton continues to lead the Democratic field in recent Iowa polling. Simply put, the remaining contenders seem unlikely to close the gap between summer’s end and the Feb. 1 caucus.

It’s possible, but unlikely, even if something new about Hillary comes up.

She has a proven ability to shed Republican faux scandals. The form they take once debunked is of distorted sound in the mostly right wing echo chamber. Rank and file Democrats aren’t listening, even if Democratic elites are. To the extent Clinton’s Democratic rivals bring them up, their campaigns are the less. Read Greg Sargent’s take on the elites here.

Media reports this week revealed “there was no policy prohibiting the use of a private email account at the State Department.” Like it or not, her State Department emails are expected to persist in the Republican lexicon, and real people will spend substantial resources working to gin up some trouble for Clinton, even though the State Department said she did nothing wrong.

Hillary’s polling in other states is not as favorable as it is in Iowa. Bernie Sanders edges her out in his backyard state of New Hampshire. If Sanders is viable in any respect, he should win New Hampshire. If he does not, it’s game over and Hillary Clinton will become the Democratic nominee

Gabriel Debenedette pointed out on Politico Hillary has the resources and more importantly boots on the ground in the Super Tuesday, March 1 states. One expects she will have the nomination wrapped up by then. According to Debenedette, she’s building a firewall there.

I hang out with an informal group of low-wage workers from time to time. One could call it a focus group, but that would be giving it more structure than probably exists.

There is pent up demand to talk about Donald Trump.

The other day someone mentioned his name and the mere mention unleashed comments from almost everyone. It was evidence of Trump’s mastery of popular culture — something that should be no surprise to anyone familiar with his long-running television program.

“Donald Trump is building his Republican presidential campaign staff in Iowa similar to his defunct NBC-TV series ‘The Apprentice’ — and his celebrity is making it easier on some fronts,” Todd Beamon pointed out on Newsmax.

What do members of the group say about Hillary?

“I don’t know if we can trust Hillary,” said one, confirming what the polls say. If Hillary is the nominee, the ones whose politics I know best will still vote for her.

Most only wanted to talk about Trump.

Labor Day will signal the end of summer and the beginning of the next political canvass for candidates working the process. The textbook method is to finish the second canvass in October when the end of year holidays are imminent.

Based on what I’m seeing in rural Iowa, the only Democrats working the process are Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley. Will Iowa Democrats caucus for a party outsider like Sanders? Will Joe Biden make it three?

I don’t know, but as summer turns to fall, Iowa has been all about Hillary Clinton.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

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Home Life

Opening Pandora’s Boxes

Pandora (1879) - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Pandora (1879) – Dante Gabriel Rossetti

The greatest evil for a sixty something is theft of time. There is only so much of it — all here and now. There is also a sense we must create value with this limited resource.

How shall time be spent downsizing?

There are boxes to open — lots of them — each containing artifacts of this life, and potential villainy.

Pandora was the first woman in classical Greek Mythology.

“When Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus,” according to Wikipedia. “Pandora opens a jar containing death and many other evils which were released into the world. She hastened to close the container, but the whole contents had escaped except for one thing that lay at the bottom – Elpis — or hope. That’s what I’m seeking as the downsizing of personal artifacts begins.

Sorting Station
Sorting Station

There are two temptations leading to perdition.

The first is spending time with things that should be discarded. There was a reason to keep each one — such reasons eclipsed by the urgency of now.

The other is to discard something of value, an artifact worth keeping a while longer, with monetary value, or to pass along.

Some small percentage of the artifacts will go to our daughter, but we don’t want to load up her space with our junk. Too, some of the pieces will inspire new writing for this blog or other publication. There are books to read, artwork to contemplate, and relics of past lives wanting to be relived. I’d better make quick work of it or I’ll never finish.

It’s already going poorly as I was up in the middle of the night reading a history of World War I. I should know all of that by now.

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Home Life

Creating a Life

Picked Scarlet Kale
Picked Scarlet Kale

We live in the only home we planned and built. When I arrived in 1993, ahead of the rest of the family in Indiana, the lot was a vacant remainder of the Kasparek farm with two volunteer trees and tall grass.

A deal on another lot had fallen through, and there was an urgency to find a place to settle. This lot, with its proximity to Lake Macbride was to be it.

I remember sitting on the high wall after the contractor dug the lower level from the hillside, before the footings were in. A cool breeze blew in from the lake — the kind that still comes up from time to time.

Like our home, the lives we built here are a construct — decisions made, things accumulated and behaviors played out. As we live each day we make it anew from materials with which we’ve grown familiar. Over the next month, the construct will be under review, with new energy once things are shored up against what is expected to be a tumultuous future.

Some parts of life here were well-decided. The large 0.62 acre lot allowed our garden to grow and flourish, producing more food than we can eat and preserve given a busy life.

Others just happened.

So this week’s pledge is to get started on more conscious creative endeavor in this place we built 22 years ago.