Category: Living in Society

LAKE MACBRIDE—A friend wrote a letter to the editor politely asking us to boycott the May 26 and 27 appearance of elephants in the Shrine Circus at the county fairgrounds. It was a brief letter, reflective of her ongoing concern with the treatment of animals. Here it is in its entirety:

Wild animals do not belong in the circus.
I was disappointed to learn that a circus that uses elephants and other wild animals is coming to Johnson County. Please do not support this circus. The only way wild animals can be trained and controlled is through abuse and intimidation. They lead miserable lives so some people can be “entertained” and others can benefit economically.
To learn more about elephants, please watch the documentary “An Apology to Elephants.” It is available at local libraries.

Last night a colleague from Washington, D.C. called to discuss a program on which we are working. Basically, I am running behind schedule on my part and he was giving me a nudge. As circuses were already on my mind, the conversation turned to the Iowa caucuses.

All kinds of people will come out of the woodwork to Iowa to advocate for their issues in hope of influencing the 2016 presidential election. Some parts of what they say are worth hearing, and outsiders like my friend are fascinated with caucus chat. I told him about billionaire Tom Steyer’s hiring a friend of mine to work on the caucuses, about U.S. Chamber President Tom Donohue’s Iowa connections, and recent activity of the Heritage Foundation in Cedar Rapids. The spell was cast and I escaped close scrutiny on my tardiness.

A broken clock shows the correct time twice a day, and likewise I find myself agreeing with Republicans from time to time. It was regarding skepticism about the merits of capitalism spoken on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

Yesterday, Arnie Alpert, a program coordinator for American Friends Service Committee in New Hampshire, posted about the visits of Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, where the wingers spoke about the problems with cronyism. The gist of it is that small businesses can’t compete against large corporations and their crony capitalism.

“As the Presidential campaign heats up, alongside a growing movement of citizens concerned about the floods of corporate cash washing through the election system, it will be interesting to see whether populist attacks on Big Business find a secure home in the GOP,” wrote Alpert. Who knows? Might happen, but I doubt it.

In Iowa our caucuses are much like a circus replete with rings of advocacy and a clown car of candidates. It seems unlikely Republicans will bring the caliber of performance they did in 2012, since with Obama subject to term limits, it is an open race, and much of the electorate is wising up to the need for common sense. Plus, faves Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin may stop by, but are unlikely to be major players this cycle.

As far as the Democratic side goes, there will be dalliances with Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Jim Webb and others, but the fundamental question is whether Joe Biden will run a third time, or Hillary Clinton a second.

Thing is, there are expected to be plenty of candidates, especially on the Republican side, and they are not elephants, so my friend’s admonition need not apply.

LAKE MACBRIDE— Honey locust trees are in bloom around the lake country. It is another step in the steady march through the calendar of our awareness. We expect the blooms now, and so they have come.

The newspaper in the county seat announced their endorsements for the statehouse primary elections and picked Dennis Boedeker in Iowa House District 73. I stopped by our local newspaper yesterday, and they are running my candidate comparison articles side-by-side this week. We don’t endorse, but there are clear differences between the two Democratic candidates. Boedeker was recruited by political insiders to run for office, whereas his primary opponent David Johnson is self-activated, making his fourth attempt to win a seat in the Iowa legislature. I have no clue who will win the primary, and don’t care to speculate. From talking to locals, there have been no indications that Johnson’s time has come, and that’s no endorsement.

The Republican incumbent Bobby Kaufmann read Sullivan Ballou’s letter at the legion’s Memorial Day observance. We had a brief chat after the ceremony, before the crowd headed to the legion hall for coffee and kolaches. Kaufmann has been a constant presence in the district if the two Democratic contenders have not.

Rain fell around 3 a.m., beating against the house. Would that the garden were planted. Instead, rain is a hindrance to garden progress. I’ll work a shift at the CSA in the greenhouse instead and hope the ground dries out later today or tomorrow.

LAKE MACBRIDE— Iowa’s first in the nation caucuses have resulted in a type of local media bias that favors Republicans. This became increasingly evident during the 2012 presidential election campaign, when President Obama was without serious opposition among Democrats, and a field of Republican hopefuls found ten candidates garnering votes at the caucuses with the three top vote-getters, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, each receiving less than 25 percent. Corporate media reporting is about selling advertising and newspapers, so I don’t blame the reporters. Except that Republicans have increasingly begun to frame the media discussion in Iowa because media questions turn noticeably to Republican issues.

The framing around Republican issues was evident in the Des Moines Register endorsement of State Senator Joni Ernst for U.S. Senate in a primary field of five candidates.

“Ernst’s conservative credentials are impeccable,” wrote the editorial board. This is a Republican primary, but by choosing Obama 52 percent to Mitt Romney’s 46 percent in 2012, Iowans demonstrated that conservative credentials matter less than the Register’s framing suggests. The rejection of Romney in a state that picked George W. Bush in 2004 is meaningful. Romney received 20,000 less votes that Bush did, indicating the value of conservative credentials is in decline among voters in Iowa. For the 822,544 Obama voters in 2012, conservative credentials were even less relevant. But the Register continues to repeat the phrase.

The Register goes on to cite other issues in a Republican framework, including an absolutist position on Second Amendment rights, conceding that Medicare and Medicaid must be cut to address the federal budget deficit, and application of a Christian litmus test to federal judge nominees. All of these posit a Republican position and compare Ernst to it. Citing Iowa’s open primary process as a reason for weighing in on a Republican primary, what the Register has done is use the endorsement as a platform for confirming the conservative perspective of the editorial board.

The race to fill U.S. Senator Tom Harkin’s open seat looks to be a repeat of the 2012 election, and already we are seeing Republican media framing in the run up to the June 3 primary. Congressman Bruce Braley is running unopposed among Democrats. He has the endorsement of the current senator and is focusing on fund raising and grass roots organizing. If he has been working smart, he should have a substantial advantage over the eventual Republican nominee. He should also be heartened by the framing the Register and others have given the public dialogue about the 2014 midterms.

What Democrats learned in 2008 and 2012 is that media matters less and grassroots organizing will win elections. Let’s hope the Republicans continue to drink the Kool-Aid of a biased Iowa media, while Braley is busy quietly closing the deal.

LAKE MACBRIDE— A few people have asked how I am voting in the June 3 primary, but not many. Having framed the 2014 election process in January, and explained where I stand at the beginning of April, little has changed. It will be a case of playing through.

When the ground dries, I’ll make the first mowing, collect the grass clippings to mulch the garden, and put up my candidate yard signs. I see who is working and who isn’t. Everything leads to Memorial Day weekend and the unofficial beginning of summer. There is a lot of work to be done before then, and politics isn’t on the short list.

What is on the list is adjusting my work activities to generate sustainable economic value. That will be my breviary this morning.