The ten year old ran to the greenhouse to tell us, “There’s a lamb! I’m not kidding. She went to get the towel!”
The shepherdess left behind her power drill and rushed to the barn.
So began my eighth spring helping at Local Harvest CSA. More lambs dropped that evening and the goats are due soon. I’ve been around animals enough to recognize their pregnancy.
My job is to make soil blocks. I made enough for 3,120 seedlings. Once the seeds germinate and are established they will be transplanted in the high tunnel for a spring share of greens and lettuce. One of the farm partners was present planting flower seeds as well.
Yesterday had a couple of challenges. The hydrant outside the greenhouse was frozen so I carried water from another in buckets. The soil mix was frozen and required breaking up with a garden rake as I mixed it with water. Compared to previous February activities everything proceeded easily.
The seeding crew moved in and out of the greenhouse. There were a total of eight of us happy to be there and looking forward to spring.
Turn-Style Department Store, Davenport, Iowa. Photo Credit – Davenport Iowa History Facebook Page
I yearn to live a normal life. I’m not the only one.
Raised in a community of a hundred thousand people, I found something new was always going on. I didn’t discover the half of it. My craving for discovery continued with our move to a rural community in 1993.
In the context of yearning and discovery I ran errands on Saturday.
I had a list. Citirizine from the pharmacy, organic celery from the supermarket, a cup of coffee from the coffee shop, writing supplies from the office supply store, furnace filters, canning jar lids, 4-ounce canning jars, and a big tub for soil mix from the home, farm and auto supply store… milk and eggs from the warehouse club so I wouldn’t have to shop there next Wednesday. I also got a much needed haircut before heading home across Coralville Lake.
Two things I had to do were pick up the keys to the meeting room for a Sunday political event, and post flyers about the Food Policy Council’s event next week on community bulletin boards in the grocery store, the library, the coffee shop, a restaurant, the home, farm and auto supply store, the gas station, and the pharmacy. These bulletin boards are ubiquitous, and are seen in the community. Not everyone has one but those who do know why they exist.
The trouble started at the food cooperative where my spouse has had an account since before we were married. They remodeled, and according to a cashier, “couldn’t find a place” for the community bulletin board which was now gone. Seriously? I get that the cooperative has changed since the days of bulgar wheat piled in burlap bags, ready for distribution. However, one hoped some sense of community would persist as the shelves filled with organic versions of processed food.
As long as I was there, I found the Tofurky brand Italian sausages I use when making red beans and rice.
Nearby I encountered “Beyond Burgers.” O.M.G. Two quarter pound “fresh” patties of the meat substitute cost $8.99. The ingredients? “pea protein isolate,” “methyl cellulose,” “bamboo cellulose,” and 19 others. I knew the product came from a lab, but Z.O.M.G. To make matters worse they were heavily packaged.
The packaging appeared to be foam and I looked it up. “Beyond Burger packaging is made up of almost five different types of substrates, including low density polyethylene, polypropylene, cardboard, paper, and wood products.” Not only is the packaging diversely made, how would a recycling company sort it if it even made it there?
Understood that a growing number of people don’t want to eat animals… but not like this.
I am mostly veg., that is, most of the time our diet is ovo-lacto-vegetarian. I’ll have the aforementioned Tofurky a couple of times a year to make a dish filled with memories of how I learned to cook. A staple in our household is Morningstar Farms soy-based burgers and recipe crumbles. At $1.25 each they are more affordable than Beyond Burger. They seem less processed, less engineered as well. We have fallen off the tofu bandwagon and carefully consider how we get our protein. The end game is I don’t see how highly engineered and processed food is an adequate replacement for beef cattle, hogs or chicken in our diet. Somewhere there is a middle ground and if red meat makes me feel queasy, I need to find something else to balance nutrition with a yearning for cooking the way Mom did. Beyond Burger is too special for that.
I don’t run errands that often any more. We get by on less. When I lived in Germany I had scant leisure time but when I was off duty I yearned to go shopping at the rail station, the post exchange, and across the Rhine River at the box stores in Wiesbaden. Today shopping trips like Saturday are a couple times a year thing. I wish it engendered less outrage. I don’t want to be that cranky old man of which one hears tell.
All the same, running errands is a way of engaging in society. I’m grateful for conversation with cashiers, sales associates and hairdressers because it breaks up the isolation of aging. I like getting away from society, yet have the same basic need to join with others… even if that means complaining about stuff that doesn’t make sense.
It’s all part of sustaining our lives in a turbulent world.
Two new people, one man and one woman, decided to represent Big Grove Township on the county Democratic central committee. I’m thankful and moving on to new engagement in society beyond politics.
The presidential selection process this cycle was tainted by a bad finish. The caucus results reporting system failed. This weekend the Iowa Democratic Party is re-canvassing some of the caucus results twelve days after the event. It is a futile effort because we know the result. We had many great candidates and a few clinkers. The number of candidates continuing to March 3 Super Tuesday has been winnowed, and for the most part the best survived Iowa. There are really only four who seem viable: Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Today’s re-canvassing won’t change that.
Big Grove Township went Obama – Obama – Trump during the last three general election cycles. In the caucuses those years, we advanced Clinton, Edwards and Obama in 2008; Obama in 2012; and Clinton, O’Malley and Sanders in 2016. This year we advanced Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Warren with Klobuchar and Warren each having 39 people, Buttigieg 35, and Biden 29, with everyone getting a single delegate to the county convention. Sanders was not viable here, his support from 2016 was cut roughly in half.
The best comparison in presidential campaigns is between 2008 and 2020. Both years we had a significant field of candidates with an unpopular president. We came out of 2004 with a new understanding of how to run a campaign thanks to the ground-breaking work of Howard Dean and his campaign manager Joe Trippi. Dean wasn’t viable in our precinct caucus that year but the lessons stuck, particularly around fund raising, use of databases to target specific voters, and what they called open source campaigning — using the internet to expand a campaign’s voter base. Trippi wrote about his campaign innovations in his underappreciated book The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything.
The campaign techniques pioneered by Trippi in 2003 and 2004 were consolidated, refined, and advanced by David Plouffe who managed Barack Obama’s successful campaign. In The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Win, Plouffe details the process which included integrating diverse databases to micro-target potential voters. He re-booted how traditional door knocking was done, changing from the knock every house process my father followed during the 1960 John F. Kennedy election to a specific and highly targeted list of potential voters. The results showed it worked in 2008, less so by Obama’s re-election campaign when locals were feeling some buyer’s remorse.
Beginning in 2016, with wide adoption of social media, campaigns changed again and produced an environment where media personality Donald J. Trump thrived. Hillary Clinton had a strong background in policy development and relationships with key figures in the Democratic Party. She also had a vast donor network from her family’s long history in American politics. It turned out those things didn’t matter as much, and in retrospect, she had those advantages in 2008 and Obama was able to catch up and pass her. Trump won the election in the electoral college, which is the win that mattered.
In 2020 campaigning changed again. I focused my work on assuming responsibility for running our caucus for the first time since my neighbor who was previously caucus chair moved out of the precinct. I canvassed fewer voters this cycle than I had since 2008 and 2016. The presence of a large field of candidates and my understanding of and maturity in the precinct led me to believe door knocking was not as important. The solid turnout at caucus validated my belief, or maybe confirmed my bias.
The lack of a clear winner in the Iowa caucus is evidence of a breakup of Democratic support. Campaigns bought access to the party voter database and those who used it mailed campaign literature, phoned me, or knocked on our door. Not only has the electorate been divided by repeated computer profile targeting such as I experienced, the campaign process supported more candidates being viable beyond the precinct than in previous cycles. This had two tangible effects: it made the Iowa caucuses less relevant by advancing five candidates, (Biden, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Sanders and Warren) and it created division that needs mending for the electorate to join together long enough to support the nominee at the Democratic National Convention, at least through the general election.
As we turn toward November, what is the role for someone like me? I see these things:
I’m done with targeted voter lists. There is a bad assumption that there is not enough time to contact everyone, so the list of targets is reduced. We have to contact everyone we can about this election because winning it will not be based on party affiliation, but on person to person contact. We must change our thinking as some candidates already did this cycle.
If we elect a Democratic president, the work is only a third done. Democrats must retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives and flip the U.S. Senate to Democratic control. In Big Grove precinct this means getting people to participate in the process and turn out for the June 2 primary. I favor Rita Hart for congress in Iowa’s second district and the best of five Democratic U.S. Senate candidates. There will be more work to be done on this front.
As a writer I have a platform, and I will use it to promote Democratic and progressive causes. Here I mean Blog for Iowa which gets better traffic than this space.
I’ll volunteer with the county party, especially after the national convention when we expect to have a full slate of candidates.
I’ll donate what I can to favored candidates. It seems unlikely I’ll hit the federal maximums.
The election of two neighbors to the central committee is a positive development for me. It frees me to think differently about our future and to put politics on a lower shelf in the pantry. That may be the best outcome of the 2020 Iowa caucuses.
To prepare for my first meeting as a member of the Johnson County Food Policy Council, I read council recommendations for the Uniform Development Ordinance. There were two things:
Ag-Exemption should be available for local farmers with less than 40 acres.
Agritourism enterprises need zoning regulations that allow for innovation and creativity on farms in the unincorporated areas of the county.
After what seemed like a never-ending series of public hearings, comments, and input gathering from multiple constituencies, the Board of Supervisors accommodated these recommendations in the UDO, if not in a way county farmers expected or fully appreciated.
A group dissatisfied with accommodation on the 40-acre rule sought relief from the legislature in the form of preemption of local control on the ag-exemption. This landed in the Iowa Farm Bureau’s lap where it remains for the time being. The first agritourism application was heard in Planning and Zoning Feb. 10. The idea of chip and sealing two miles of gravel road to improve access was predictable, but unexpected by the land owner. The same group introduced HSB650 for state preemption of local control regarding agritourism. That bill cleared subcommittee Feb. 12.
These things will work through the legislative process, but having made the recommendations, having the board of supervisors accommodate them as they saw fit, and now with bills being proposed in the legislature and agritourism applications working through county departments, what is next for the Food Policy Council? That is my question.
After one meeting I’m not sure. Answering that question will be part of what the remainder of my term, which ends in June, will be about. If we come up with good answers, I will apply for a full, four-year term. If not, I have a garden.
The recent example of Grinnell Heritage Farm, which withdrew from wholesale grocery store sales and from a community supported agriculture project, is instructive about the needs of local food producers. Farm operations are a balancing between producing enough to meet customer demand and finding customers who are willing to do business at levels that meet the realities of harvest, quantity, delivery, and seasonality. Andy Dunham of Grinnell Heritage Farm provided the following to Cindy Hadish who blogs at Homegrown Iowan:
The reason for scaling back is primarily due to the lack of any larger retail and wholesale outlets. We have tried for years to get into Hy-Vee stores with very limited success. When individual stores do buy, they usually only take $30-50 in product, which doesn’t even cover delivery costs in most circumstances. We have had more than one instance in which the store would buy a case of kale, put our name on the produce case, and then stock conventional kale out of California under our name. Whole Foods is still buying, but at lower prices than five years ago. New Pi is shrinking. Food hubs are folding or not scaling up fast enough. We were in the strange position of being able to grow more than the market seemed able to bear; a position that I would have laughed at as being impossible five years ago.
What policy should the 15-member Food Policy Council recommend and support this year?
We need to return to the reasons we even make policy. Maybe the council has been doing that already.
Our county’s local food system, including a robust network of local food producers, a food hub, farmers markets, and wholesale business with restaurants and grocery stores, is not well organized. Our policy doesn’t exist that I have been able to find. It is too similar to the de facto national policy, which according to Ricardo Salvador, director of food and environment for the Union of Concerned Scientists, goes something like this: “Exploit people and nature for agribusiness profit.” We are better than that now and need to improve.
Any policy recommended must serve the public interest. There are significant issues that could be addressed, including policies related to hunger, obesity and Type II diabetes, environmental degradation for food production, land stewardship, labor exploitation, fair compensation, and appropriate farm labor regulation. The council must learn from best practices of local operators and consider a broader source of input that includes public health, preventive medicine, dieticians, other communities with a local food system, and accommodation for residents who need it.
People hate government folk and volunteer councils like ours telling them what to do. A friend advised me to, “avoid colonialism.” Where I come from, that means “putting on airs of superiority.” I’ll do my best as we discover what the council wants to do.
~ The author is an appointed member of the Johnson County Food Policy Council. Opinions herein do not represent the council.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper wants to end federal funding for Stars and Stripes and re-purpose the $15.5 million to support the “Warfighter.”
Whatever.
When I worked for a logistics company we used the word “Warfighter.” It seemed a synonym for an ATM to me.
Esper’s reasoning is a joke because those funds represent 0.002 percent of the Defense Department budget. Elimination of federal funding represents about half of the news organization’s annual budget, according to Stars and Stripes.
One has to believe Stars and Stripes’ Congressionally mandated editorial independence from the Defense Department is the unspoken problem under the current commander in chief. Esper is a former Heritage Foundation chief of staff and Heritage is the lead agency in implementing movement conservatism in our government. It’s not hard to connect the dots.
I suggest defense money be diverted from development of new nuclear weapons we don’t need to maintain financial solvency of a newspaper first published during the Civil War. Stars and Stripes has been in continuous publication since World War II.
I ask politicians to audit the Pentagon as a first step toward fiscal accountability. I keep asking. If the president can gin up billions in defense budget excess to build the Mexican border wall, there is surely $15.5 million for an independent newspaper to be found in some boondoggle project.
Stars and Stripes was not a big deal to me when I served. We could buy it at the Post Exchange and received free copies only irregularly — mostly when we were on extended maneuvers in the Fulda Gap. If I wanted news, I listened to Armed Forces Radio, or walked down the hill from my quarters to the Mainz main railway station to buy France Soir, Le Monde, or the International Herald Tribune. Of those, only Le Monde survives in print edition today.
Esper’s military service occurred after mine and to be honest, I don’t know the role Stars and Stripes plays in military life today. Our military has access to the internet, and to some extent are able to access information like I can from my Iowa writing table. Our information infrastructure changes constantly, and Stars and Stripes should not be insulated from change.
If Stars and Stripes is a piece of nostalgia, I agree it should be tossed in the bin of history, something the proposed budget cut will ensure. The issue is the squelching of independent voices in our government. The relentless and systematic purging of differing opinions is a problem for us all.
We know the tune, but it is changing to Stars and Stripes Forever For a While under this administration.
~ A version of this post appeared in the Feb. 20, 2020 Solon Economist
I’d just secured the last part of my barter share from a local CSA — a large bag of heads of garlic. I put seven or eight of them into a lunch bag and headed along Highway One toward Iowa City to meet with U.S. Senate candidate Michael Franken.
Franken is running for the Democratic nomination in the June 2 primary. He has a plan.
He believes he can address three key aspects of incumbent Senator Joni Ernst’s appeal: (1) He was raised in rural western Iowa and said, “We were as rural as they get.” (2) As a general grade officer he has a different kind of military experience from Ernst. (3) He had plenty of experience in castrating hogs during his farm upbringing, and worked a stint in a slaughterhouse. He believes these three things address Ernst’s popularity and provide him a good chance to win in the general election.
On Feb. 8, I had my third conversation with the retired Navy Vice Admiral at a coffee shop near Interstate 80. The first two were the result of his fundraising call time. The third was on assignment for Blog for Iowa. I presented the bag of garlic as a gift and began the interview.
Franken returned to Sioux City in 2017 after serving a distinguished naval career. His last assignment was as Deputy Director of Military Operations for the United States Africa Command. If one names a significant military action since 9-11, Franken was most likely involved. His work included military operations in Libya, Mogadishu, Somalia, and combating pirates near the Horn of Africa. Unlike Ernst, Franken has a diverse portfolio of command experience, the gold standard of military service.
Of the primary candidates in the race, Franken has the longest resume of experience working on legislation in the Congress. In 1996 his legislative work began with an assignment as legislative affairs for Senator Ted Kennedy. It continued in between other assignments, totaling ten years in legislative affairs, with his most recent assignment finishing in 2015. He believes his work as a legislative assistant gives him a sound foothold to get things done for Iowans should he succeed in the primary and defeat Joni Ernst.
The unique story about his opposition to the 2003 Iraq War was highlighted in his announcement video which can be found here.
According to Open Secrets, the campaign has raised a total of $333,719, spent $208,934, and has cash on hand of $124,784 as of Dec. 31, 2019.
BFIA: Name two or three of the major naval operations in which you participated.
FRANKEN: I’m very unique in terms of after 9-11 I only served operationally in the Navy one time. The rest of the times were all joint. Due to my exposure early on, due to my relationships developed mostly in Washington, D.C., and at U.S Central Command, and U.S. Pacific Command, I was acceptable replacement for often-times Army officers, U.S. Seals, Marines, etc. There have been eleven, as I recall, named operations since 9-11. I participated in nine of them.
BFIA: Why Iowa after military service?
FRANKEN: As you get more senior in life you’ve got options. What was reasonably apparent was I’ve worked for every president and been in the military since the Carter administration. I just didn’t care as a three-star going back to Washington D.C. with the expectation that I would have a position that close to the administration. I just didn’t want to do that. My prerogative after 36 years of active service.
I requested to retire and (it was) granted by the Trump administration. I came back to a consulting business in Washington D.C. (Chartwell Strategic Advisors, LLC.) where my wife and I owned a home. We have a special needs daughter whose treatment happens in Washington.
When it got to be after the 2018 election I wanted to ensure that the Democratic party had someone who negated the items which got Joni Ernst elected so that it was a level playing field for an aspirant in the Democratic Party. When I saw that not unfold to my liking, I gathered a team together, submitted my nominating papers, and embarked on a run to represent the State of Iowa as best I can.
BFIA: Why does your experience best qualify you to be the Democratic nominee?
FRANKEN: The prime objective is Joni Ernst rode three horses to her candidacy, a. the ruralness, b. the military, and c. the pig thing. So first of all ruralness.
BFIA: Have you ever castrated a hog?
FRANKEN: Hell yes! I can castrate a hog with my eyes shut. I worked three years in a hog-kill plant — stick pen, rendering, chitterlings table, head table, floor… four months, 2,500 hogs a day. I can do it with my eyes shut. Thank you very much young lady I know the difference between the curly end and the snouty end.
My father planted a machine shop. The nearest town was Hudson, S.D. He did it specifically so there would be a long distance between him and any city for implement repair. We got running water in our bathroom just a couple of years before I was born. I’m the youngest of nine.
I mean, I know how to make soap. We had home made soap. We all knew how to sew. We butchered animals in the back. I mean we were as rural as they get… Don’t tell me about Iowa values… piling in the station wagon all of us to go to church on Sunday morning. When I took a bath the water was the color of tea and was tepid because I was last. I’m pretty rural. All those rural homonyms, I got you on that.
BFIA: Ours is a progressive blog. What is your message to our readers?
FRANKEN: Job number one is to congeal around a presidential candidate who can win in the general election against President Trump. Step number one. When the party, when the machinations happen and we congeal around a candidate, fall in, build up your voting base, get those, convince those who are on the fence that four more years of this will not be beneficial to the State of Iowa. All they need to do to see whether I’m right about that is to look in the rear view mirror.
Ask some basic questions. From a national security perspective are you more assured of your future? Is the sanctity of the family farm better? Is education better? Is health care better? I’m sure your stock portfolio is better but how many people does that pertain to? Tell me if you like the national discourse that’s presently going on. Do you think it’s going to improve? Step number one, do that.
I’m that guy that talks about sacrifice. If you are 85 percent for candidate such and such, and 95 percent for something and you’ve got your nose bent out of line because the guy or woman got 85, then frankly be happy that we have such great candidates that you even can choose from more than one. If you look at the cast of characters from 2016, the Republicans weren’t so blessed. Yahoos versus professionals. Let’s march forward.
Step number two. We need to control the senate from the Supreme Court designation to controlling the unhelpful tendencies of a potential second term. First and foremost we need to control the senate.
When you march forward to the general election and you look at the primary. Look at the primary in terms of ties, not who is nice, who they know, who they think would be fine. “Fine” is a bad word. Who’s going to win? Don’t think in four letters think in three letters, “win.” Who can beat Joni Ernst? Who can sit toe to toe, debate her, expose her voting record, pick it apart, corral a national effort behind the person to beat her.
She will have all of the strength of the Republican party behind her. Money will be no object for the Republicans to maintain that seat. You need to win her on the essence of the discussion. You need to punish her in every debate. She needs to whimper in the corner because she’s been supporting special interests in this state, at the behest of special interests and corporate greed, and been hammering the citizens of this state into the rich soil.
If you can’t choose which candidate is that, can do that, then let’s have a debate among the Democratic candidates well before the primary. in every county we can. I’m game. I sign up.
~ Editor’s note: The garlic presented to the campaign was appreciated as some were experiencing cold symptoms. Admiral Franken posted his garlic cold treatment the next day. During the interview he provided responses to addressing the climate crisis, the national debt and the deficit. Any errors in transcription belong to the author. His campaign website is frankenforiowa.org/about.
January and February are usually months to read books. I’m working on my fourth but it seems like I’m running behind.
Political work has taken a bite out of my time.
Ambient temperatures have been warm. Absent a cold spell of temperatures below zero, I’m planning to prune our fruit trees this coming cycle of days off. As I lean into retirement I work two days at the home, farm and auto supply store with five days in a row to do what I please. The days are filled with activity.
Sunday I’m scheduled to soil block at the farm, the first time this winter. I bought a small soil blocking tool for home use and planted onions and shallots. It’s the first time doing it at home and what the future holds as I wean myself from greenhouse use over the next few seasons.
Our ice box is getting down to carrots, turnips, bread, dairy and pickles. There are mostly jars of things. Light permeates the glass shelving, revealing what’s in the bottom drawer. Growing season is a couple of months away.
Our cooking is from the pantry and freezer. We have storage onions and potatoes and lots of garlic. Apples from our trees and the orchard have been gone a few weeks. There are plenty of canned goods. We have enough to last us until spring arrives, supplemented by weekly trips to the warehouse club and grocery store.
Winter in Iowa has changed. It’s weird. It’s not consistent from year to year. I try to adapt and still find the new experience a bit sucky. Are you winter or not? No response.
As I finish this post, a prelude to getting ready for work, I feel ready: ready for what’s next, ready for something different, ready to move on. In this winter morning I’m ready to emerge from my book-lined writing space and ascend to the kitchen, and all that happens there, midst a winter lament.
I had a chance to introduce myself to a new group of people last night, so I thought I would share it here before the paper goes into the shredder. Here’s what I said to the Johnson County Food Policy Council last night:
I am:
Native Iowan living west of Solon.
Ten years since retiring from a 25-year career in transportation and logistics.
Two terms on the county board of health with four years as chair. Familiar with air and water compliance issues.
Blogger with 234 posts tagged “local food.”
Farm worker. In 2020 on Carmen Black’s farm and at Wilson’s Orchard. Eighth season at each.
Avid gardener with a large kitchen garden integrated with local food producers, grocery stores and other retail outlets.
24 percent of our food dollars are spent on local food, not including my garden.
Mostly ovo-lacto-vegetarian.
These mini-autobiographies are getting easier to write as I age.
If the Iowa precinct caucuses created doubt about the efficacy of our voting process, we are not the only ones with concern.
Thom Hartmann, the number one progressive-talk-show host in the United States wrote the book, The Hidden History of the War on Voting: Who Stole Your Vote and How to Get It Back. It will be released by Berrett-Koehler Publishers on Feb. 11.
Blog for Iowa reviewed the book here and on Jan. 21 interviewed Hartmann about it and his work as a progressive. Hartmann was engaged and spoke freely about his book, about his concerns about voting in the U.S., and about his work as a progressive writer and radio personality.
We will run the interview in multiple posts, beginning with Hartmann’s comments about this book. The interview was transcribed from audio and is presented with only minor grammatical corrections for clarity.
BFIA: Can you tell me about the background, why you came up with this Hidden History series?
Hartmann: I’ve noticed a couple of trends. One is that people have less and less time to read books, and myself included. But I think it’s just ubiquitous. Spread across the culture. You can blame screens, you know, or phrenetic lifestyle, cause of the bite that Reaganomics is taking out of the middle class. I’m sure it’s a whole bunch of different factors but the simple reality is people don’t just sit down and spend ten, fifteen, twenty hours reading a book like they did twenty-five, thirty years ago.
So I wanted to come out with a series of small books that were books that a person could read in a weekend or maybe even in a long afternoon. I also have been just an absolute history fanatic my whole, entire life. My Dad wanted to be a history teacher when he grew up, a college professor. He had to drop out of college because Mom got pregnant with me and that was the end of that. But he had 20 thousand books in his basement; a lot of them were history. And we talked history all my life, you know, until my Dad died.
I proposed this to BK Publishers, said I’d like to do a series about things that are contemporary issues that have historical roots that most people are unaware of the roots. They don’t know where this came from, how this came about.
The first one we did was the Hidden History of the Second Amendment which is kind of self explanatory. The second was the Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America. That is how the Supreme Court basically flipped us into oligarchy in the 1970s and it also takes on the issue of judicial review, something most people don’t know anything about the background of and how angry Thomas Jefferson was about it. The third one was the Hidden History of the War on Voting. I argued it should be titled “Republican War on Voting” because there is no Democratic war on voting. They didn’t want to make it seem too partisan.
It’s fairly evident when you read the book who’s trying to prevent you from voting and who isn’t.
BFIA: Thank you. In the voting book, which is the most recent one I read, is there anything you would like to highlight in particular.
HARTMANN: I think the big aha! For a lot of people who have read the book has been Red Shift and voter suppression. Red shift is something that started showing up around 2000 in the United States.
Around the world exit polls are the gold standard to determine if an election has been fraudulent or not, whether there is election fraud. Historically, and in fact, most countries in the world vote by paper ballot. They don’t vote electronically. As a result it takes a couple of days to count the vote.
Every European Country, Canada, take your choice. I lived in Germany for a year and when they have elections in Germany they call the elections when the polls close because they do it based on exit polls. Exit polls are never more than one tenth or two tenths of a point off, even though it takes them four days to count the vote. We saw this in the U.K. very recently with Boris Johnson.
In the United States our exit polls had always been within a tenth of a point or so of our election outcome. But in 2000 this strange thing started showing up. It got really bad in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008, when what showed up was that in a handful of states, that started out four or five and now it’s more like ten or fifteen, the outcome of the election is anywhere from two to five percent more Republican than the exit polls. And that’s why it’s called Red Shift toward the Republican Party.
And for a long time, and this is not a secret, the exit polling companies were so freaked out about this they didn’t know what to do. I mean this was a crisis for them in the 2004 election, the John Kerry-George Bush election. There was substantial Red Shift, including in Ohio where George Bush supposedly won that election.
So when we first saw these changes in numbers, how they almost always benefited exclusively Republicans, we concluded and they seem to follow the widespread adoption of electronic voting machines. The first guess of most people was that this was rigged or hacked voting machines.
I think one of the things we have learned in the years since then, particularly over the last ten years or so, that Republicans are more open and up front about their strategies. We’ve gotten access to some of their memos going back 15, 20 years, (showing) that what they have been doing in states where the Republicans control the state they throw hundreds of thousands of people off the voting rolls in the year before an election, in particular they do it in the Democratic cities.
And then when those people show up to vote they’re told, “Oh I can’t find your name on the roll, but here is a provisional ballot you can vote on this.” They don’t realize that provisional ballots are only counted if an election is contested. So those votes literally never get counted, with very few exceptions.
But when they walk out of the voting place and speak to the exit pollster, who says, “How did you vote?” They’ll say “Oh, I voted for John Kerry.” And they write that down as a John Kerry vote, neither the pollster nor the voter realizing that because the voter will be on a provisional ballot that that vote will never be counted.
In most states if you want to your provisional ballot votes to be counted you have to show up at the secretary of state’s office within 48 hours, and prove that you are who you are, and where you live, and you are a citizen, and basically go through the whole process of re-registering to vote, or proving that your registration was inappropriately removed, which most people don’t even know they have to do much less know that they can do.
I think that’s probably a better explanation for Red Shift because the red shifts seem to be the worst in the states that had the most aggressive voter purges.
While the Iowa caucus news cycle lingers, I am already gone.
After a Saturday of political engagement — an interview with Michael Franken of Sioux City who is running for the Democratic nomination as U.S. Senator from Iowa, and a town hall meeting with my state representative Bobby Kaufmann — Michael Wines of the New York Times contacted me about my experience at the Big Grove precinct caucus. I told him the story… which is metastasizing.
The narrative is repeated so much I might resurrect a circus like Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey to take it on the road. As locals know, circuses are an Iowa thing and four of the Ringling brothers were born in McGregor, Iowa. What more fitting outcome for the caucuses?
Nontheless I am pivoting away from politics. I’m in a position to do so because of great caucus turnout. I’m confident our four delegates to the county convention will show up. Two volunteers stepped up to participate as precinct representatives on the county central committee. Despite lingering interest in what we did, the news cycle will eventually move on. It’s time for me to go.
I unsubscribed from the county party weekly newsletter, thanking the public relations chair, and saying, “I have less need to stay abreast of what party insiders are doing.” There is life beyond politics.
Toward what will I pivot? Will a divot of politics follow?
Our big family news is on Feb. 5 we made the last payment on our daughter’s student loan. Including loan interest, our contributions, and her work study and scholarship, the cost of her four-year education was about $140,000. In the box of letters I sent Mom during college, I wrote my monthly bill at the University of Iowa was $50. Add in the scholarship I had and my college expense was about $6,800 for four years.
My freedom from politics will be used to become a better citizen. Monday I start a brief term on the county Food Policy Council. If that proves to be engaging, I’ll volunteer for a full, four-year term. I’m writing more for Blog for Iowa, have written up one interview, two more are done, and there may be more. I hope to have a better garden this year. I invested in an electric tiller, bought some rolls of mulching, and began planting onions on Friday. There are plenty more projects in the works. There are also the farm jobs, which have been reduced from three to two this season.
A group of us were sitting around a table in the break room at the home, farm and auto supply store on Wednesday. The discussion was about retirement as a couple of us have retired but continue to work because of the social engagement a job involves. Our store manager was there and he told me, “If I were you, I’d retire as soon as possible.” Depending on how the next couple of months go, I may take his advice and help on one of the federal election campaigns.
For now, I’m on to what’s next while sustaining ourselves in a repressive national political environment. Life will be better, at least I hope so.
Journey Home 
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