Tag: politics

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Living in Society

Weekly Journal 2024-03-24

First Starbucks purchase in many years.

Last week was a time of planning, events, and appointments. Because I had fasting labs before blood work on Thursday, I had a headache after the appointment. By the time I arrived at a local grocer and bought Starbucks at their in-store kiosk it was 9:22 a.m. That’s the longest I’ve gone without morning coffee in years.

Coffee cost $2.81 for a tall, which with tip came to $4. Expensive, yet I had to have it… immediately. No typical pleasantries discussed at Starbucks, things like unionization, Palestine, Ukraine, approach to supply chain management, workers’ rights, human rights, political activities, anti-social finance, tax conduct, palm oil sourcing, factory farming, or animal rights. Just coffee, any coffee. I was feeling better after getting groceries and driving home.

Rural Political Gathering

Also on Thursday, I attended a meet up at Shuey’s Restaurant and Lounge in Shueyville. It was one of a series of informal political happy hours held throughout the county. This one had a number of public office-holders and candidates, including the mayor of Shueyville, the county sheriff, and one county supervisor. In fact, folks up for election and their entourages outnumbered us locals.

The reason I went was to meet our state senate candidate Ed Chabal, promote an event we seek to hold in the City of Solon before the primary election, and get caught up with friends and contacts. I had not been to the venue previously and found it modern and perfect for a gathering of this sort. I believe they recently remodeled after a fire.

In Johnson County the primary for supervisor is usually more important than the fall general election. There are five Democratic candidates for three supervisor positions this cycle with incumbents Rod Sullivan, Royceann Porter, and Lisa Green-Douglass facing newcomers Mandi Remington and Bob Conrad. Green-Douglass and Remington were present at the event. I keep hearing echoes of problems with the group dynamic at supervisor meetings, yet haven’t paid enough attention to what’s going on.

There was an action initiated by some elected officials for the county central committee to censure the county attorney for following the law in the prosecution of some protesters. That went nowhere, except to make a kerfuffle. However, the bigger issue, one on which I believe the primary should be decided, is about building a new jail.

Johnson County has needed a new jail for a long time. The current jail opened in 1981 with a 46-inmate capacity. With doubling up prisoners, capacity is 92. We have more prisoners than space, and spend more in housing excess prisoners in other county jails than it would cost to build a new jail. With jail diversion programs and other initiatives between the county attorney and sheriff, the overall jail population reduced substantially. The condition of the jail is not what is needed.

In this you have the rift on how county funds should be spent. There are two supervisors who seem likely to oppose any initiatives by the sheriff. If the election yields a third… well, that would be that regarding a new jail. The supervisor race is still germinating in the primordial soup from which campaigns will emerge. Stay tuned.

Good Health

Over the weekend it began sinking in that my glucose level and LDL cholesterol number are within normal range. That’s the first time since I began seeing a practitioner for my condition. My A1C remains below seven, so that’s good, too. Diet and exercise is helping prevent diabetes in my case. Aging is inescapable and we do the best we can.

Check in tables at the county convention.

County Convention

The county convention was held at City High, an old, well-maintained school which I don’t recall previously visiting. Democrats are getting better at conventions as this one finished up before 2 p.m., platform and all.

There continue to be a number of old-timers in attendance. At the same time there are many younger faces. I had not planned on doing so, yet I signed up to be a delegate to the District and State conventions. The District convention is just across the lakes from me, and my spouse can visit family in Des Moines while I am at the convention there. We fell one short of the allocated number of delegates to these conventions so I’m glad I volunteered.

This week is Good Friday and my potatoes are cut and cured. There will be exercise involved with planting them: more than I am used to experiencing. Make it a great week!

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Reviews

Book Review: Attack From Within

We need information that will help us cope with the 2024 political campaigns and facilitate Democratic wins. Barbara McQuade’s new book has the potential to do that.

McQuade is a law school professor and legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. A former US Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, she was appointed the first female in that position by President Obama. She possesses legal bona fides. She also co-hosts a podcast called Sisters In Law.

She is one of several combination authors/lawyers/talking heads/podcasters I follow. Her new book, Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America, comes at a perfect time for this presidential election year. It is relevant, engaging, and necessary. What is it about?

In part, the book is an explainer. McQuade pulls commonly known information from the media ecosphere and relates it to the concept of disinformation, demonstrating the potential and real consequences for American Democracy. She presents a coherent narrative that includes how disinformers gain power, disinformation tactics, why disinformation works, the danger of emerging technologies, and more. For those parts of the book alone it is worth reading.

What I found most engaging was the chapter “We Alone Can Fix It: Proposed Solutions.” Dealing with disinformation and misinformation can be daunting. McQuade compares this task to the moon shot during the Kennedy administration and wrote:

The tandem threats of authoritarianism and disinformation can seem overwhelming, but we as a nation have solved big problems before. The stakes for democracy are simply too high to ignore them or surrender to despair. Unless we take action, democracy in the Unites States seems destined to fail, and our sovereignty as citizens will perish with it.

Attack From Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America by Barbara McQuade, page 249.

In this chapter, McQuade turns from describing the problems with disinformation to potential solutions. Free speech protections are not absolute in the United States, she said. We should be seeking regulatory solutions to misinformation and disinformation rather than simply banning content. She asserted this can be done without implicating censorship concerns. That may seem like a difficult needle to thread, yet it is the approach taken by other western governments like Germany and the European Union.

Another idea is related to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. I have frequently bemoaned loss of enforcement of the Fairness Doctrine under President Reagan, yet there may be a different solution. “Making online media companies legally responsible for the content on their platforms would force them to remove posts that endanger the public,” McQuade wrote. This issue is at the heart of the Supreme Court case Murthy v. Missouri for which the high court heard oral arguments on March 18. This approach is not without problems. A discussion is needed to discover a way to balance stripping some protections from legal liability while continuing to make reforms in how online content is regulated. It doesn’t have to be a free-for-all. My sense is the high court will decide this case on narrow grounds and throw it to the legislative branch of government to be addressed. The days of having discussions like these at the Supreme Court, as was done in deciding Roe v. Wade, are over with the Roberts Court.

My advice? Secure a copy of the book, by buying it or asking your public library to get a copy, and read it. I’m missing some things in a short book review, but believe me, you are going to want it all from Barbara McQuade.

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Living in Society

Driveway Politics

Rural Polling Place

I’m supposed to be taking it easy. When I retired during the coronavirus pandemic I knew outside activities would wind down as I age. I still care about our politics, yet in a different way from before the pandemic.

It began April 28, 2020 when I gave up a part-time job at the home, farm, and auto supply store. I also left work at a friend’s farm, and at the orchard. I gave up my veterans group and all my volunteer board memberships. The only activities remaining are this blog (which I’ll keep for now), writing letters to the editors of newspapers, and politics. I’d prefer to dump politics as an active concern, yet it doesn’t seem possible because it runs in my blood.

My cohort of local political activists is diminished through deaths, infirmities, aging, and people moving away. I am reluctant to engage my nonagenarian friends who have been mainstays in campaigns. Octogenarians get similar consideration. Younger people moving into our precinct lean conservative. Republican candidates won federal and statewide campaigns here beginning in 2016. Democratic politics as I have been practicing it since 1987 is fading away.

I continue to do things.

A friend returned from a trip to Thailand and we had a driveway conversation about it. We first worked together on a political campaign in 2004, so I’ve known them 20 years. We looked at photos and videos on a handheld device. One video had them swimming in a river with a five-year-old elephant. It was good to catch up.

The reason for the reunion was to collect signatures on an Iowa House candidate’s nominating petition. We have been working together so long, we speak to each other in shorthand about politics. Between us, on short notice, we collected 11 signatures. The candidate had more than the 50 required by the Secretary of State.

Later that day, another friend stopped by to pick up the petitions and deliver them to the candidate. We had a long conversation in the driveway. I know his father and the three of us all worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Those were heady times. I wrote a post about this in 2008. We talked about the House District and who we might pull in to work on the campaign. This cycle, I plan to be a worker bee, not an organizer. I think people have heard just about enough from me. There is interest in doing better in the new district.

Driveway conversations don’t occur in a vacuum. If anything, they generate more interest and activities. Now that the filing deadline for state and federal offices passed, there is a sense the campaign has begun. It truly has and that means doing more things. For example, this week there was an informal political meet up in our House District and today is the county convention. This was a lot more talking than I have done in a very long time. Partly I welcome it. Partly, I am wary of it. The reasons are complicated.

The 2020 campaign was a bitch because of the coronavirus. The Sunday before the general election a neighbor held an event for Rita Hart who was running for the Congressional seat Dave Loebsack left open after retirement. She was standing right next to me and I didn’t recognize her. We were both wearing face masks. As we talked, it didn’t occur to me she was the candidate. That was one more wacky thing during the coronavirus campaign. The pandemic changed campaign operations dramatically. In a sense, there is no going back to the pre-pandemic methods. Hart lost in a close race.

It is early in the 2024 campaign, so we’ll see how Democrats roll. Today’s county convention should be a bellwether. As long as I don’t get too far from our driveway, I keep my wits about me. When I do leave for an in real life event, my only imperative is to recruit volunteers so we stand a chance to turn Republicans out of office in our district and beyond. Also, I continue to hear the siren song of Democratic politics.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Categories
Writing

Weekly Journal 2024-3-17

Pizza at breakfast.

A friend returned from a trip to Thailand and we had a driveway conversation about it. We first worked together on a political campaign in 2004, so I’ve known her 20 years. We looked at photos and videos on a handheld device. One video had her swimming in a river with a five-year-old elephant. It was good to catch up.

The reason for the reunion was to collect signatures on an Iowa House candidate’s nominating petition. We have been working together so long, we speak to each other in shorthand about politics. Between us, on short notice, we collected 11 signatures. The candidate had more than the 50 required by the Secretary of State.

Later that day, another friend stopped by to pick up the petitions and deliver them to the candidate. We had a long conversation as well. I knew his father before him and the three of us all worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Those were heady times. I wrote a post about this in 2008. We talked about the House District and who we might pull in to work on the campaign. This cycle, I plan to be a worker bee, not an organizer. I think people have heard just about enough from me. There is interest in doing better in the new district.

Living with a vegan makes for strange breakfasts. Any dairy products I consume happens mostly in the morning. Missing home made pizzas, I made one for breakfast. It is not a big change to cook a pizza for one. Instead of a cup of water I began with a generous half cup. It made a pie just the right size.

Since garlic was up, I dug around in the mulch to make sure the leaves were penetrating the straw. I planted about 100 head of garlic in October. I lost maybe two head under the mulch. Bodes well for the July harvest.

On Thursday I used my Merlin Bird ID app outside the garage. In a short time it identified these birds: Northern Cardinal, American Robin, House Sparrow, Blue Jay, White-throated Sparrow, American Crow, Red-winged Blackbird, House Finch, Tufted Titmouse, Eurasian Tree Sparrow, and Canada Goose.

Since I downloaded the app, I’ve taken to standing on the steps in front of our house each day and letting it record for a couple of minutes. It’s a way to see who is in the neighborhood and for what I should look when I start working outdoors. This is the most fun I’ve had in a while.

The week seemed productive yet I’m losing perspective. It’s like that Lynda Randle song Cousin Al used to play each day on the AM radio across the Alabama-Georgia line when I lived in Columbus, Georgia:

One day at a time, sweet Jesus
That's all I'm asking of You

Just give me the strength to do everyday
What I have to do

Yesterday's gone, sweet Jesus
And tomorrow may never be mine
God help me today
Show me the way
One day at a time
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Living in Society

Open Border Blarney

Image of 5th Century Bishop of Ireland.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to those who celebrate! It is hard to celebrate anything these days with all the Republican fear-mongering. In any case, Saint Patrick’s efforts to convert the Pagan Irish does not rank very highly in the life of this descendant of people who lived in North America since before the United States was a thing.

Republicans cannot help themselves about the border and immigration. After President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address, Governor Kim Reynolds released a statement that included, “Three years of Joe Biden has led to an open border…” among other things. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks says in a recent social media advertisement, “The crisis at our southern border poses a serious threat to our national security.” My Republican State Senator Dawn Driscoll gave the border a mention in her most recent newsletter, saying, “Every state is a border state now.” She explained,

Immigration reform remains a critical issue that concerns many across our nation, highlighting the urgent need for effective solutions to address the challenges at our borders. These challenges have led to increased human trafficking, the spread of illegal drugs, and other crimes, affecting communities far beyond those directly on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Driscoll Dispatch by Senator Dawn Driscoll, March 8, 2024.

Scary. Driscoll is not as scary as my State Representative Brad Sherman who was working on legislation titled, “A Resolution affirming the state of Iowa’s support for the state of Texas and condemning the federal government’s immigration policies.” What a waste of time.

To counter Republican claims, the U.S. Congress, in which most responsibility for immigration reform lies, has done little to address it since the Reagan era. They recently negotiated a bipartisan immigration reform bill that was rejected out of hand by the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Which is it? Open border, or lack of Republican political will to do something meaningful about it? Biden clearly pushed the Congress to do something about the southern border, and I’d wager he is not done.†

Art Cullen pointed out in his Feb. 12, 2019 column in the Washington Post, “Here in Storm Lake, Iowa, where the population is about 15,000 and unemployment is under 2 percent, Asians and Africans and Latinos are our lifeline. The only threat they pose to us is if they weren’t here.” Rural Iowa needs immigrants, he said.

The point of Republicans like Governor Reynolds is that immigrants are scary, not that we should do anything about the so-called “open border.” The duplicitous, political nature of Republican positioning is enough to make a person’s head spin. I may have to find a glass of green beer today and have some me time. Even so, I doubt that will make them stop.

We need to vote Republicans out of office at every level. Not only to work on real solutions to the immigration problem, but for everything else they do to stir up irrational fear before the November election. In this, I may have discovered why Americans favor an alcoholic drink on Saint Patrick’s Day.

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Living in Society

In Defense of Katie Porter

Katie Porter in an Aug. 10, 2020 advertisement Photo Credit – Progress Iowa

I was pulling for Barbara Lee to win the March 5 California primary to replace the late U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein. I followed Lee diligently and it looked like she had a chance. She was doing the work. At the same time, I know how to read polls and saw Democrat Adam Schiff was the clear leader with Republican Steve Garvey and Democrat Katie Porter behind. Lee didn’t make the top three, although she would have been a great U.S. Senator.

In California, all candidates for voter-nominated offices are listed on one ballot and only the top two vote-getters in the primary election – regardless of party preference – move on to the general election, according to the California Secretary of State.

Team Schiff was accused of sneaky tricks during the campaign. As the Washington Post put it, “Rep. Adam Schiff and his allies are spending $11 million in the all-party primary to try to elevate a GOP candidate and box out Rep. Katie Porter from the general election.” The premise was Garvey would be easier for Schiff to beat in the general election. Is this illegal? No. Katie Porter did not care for it one bit, calling the practice “cynical.” She followed in suit, spending half a million dollars to promote another Republican candidate, but it was too little, too late.

Schiff and Garvey advanced to the general election.

Barbara Lee acknowledged the impact of money being spent in this campaign and made multiple statements to the press on election day, saying we need public elections to take the money out of politics. She then skipped her campaign watch party, boarded a plane, and flew to Washington, D.C. to get back to work. We are fortunate to have people like Lee in the Congress.

Katie Porter made a big splash after the votes were counted. Her remarks to supporters are worth watching:

This is the Katie Porter Iowans have come to know. What people picked up on was her later statement about “(the) onslaught of billionaires spending millions to rig this election.” When she suggested the election was rigged, some felt she had gone full MAGA the way Trumpies denied the results of the 2020 election for president. A media brouhaha ensued. Poppycock, I say!

Katie Porter would agree with Barbara Lee, and most progressives, we need to get special interest money out of politics. Indirectly, that was her point. Media personalities never miss an opportunity to tear down progressives and the “rigged” comment was their impetus to pile on. Porter seems likely to finish her Congressional term and after that, who knows. If she has the smarts and commitment I believe she does, we haven’t heard the last from Katie Porter.

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Living in Society

Let’s Meet the Candidates

Photo by Tara Winstead on Pexels.com

The field of candidates for federal and state offices is shaping up after the Friday, March 15, filing deadline. Once the filings are known, it’s off we go to November! It is an exciting time for those interested in our politics.

Democrat Christina Bohannan was to file her nominating petitions for U.S. House in District 1 at the Secretary of State’s office this week. She will face the winner of a two-way primary between Republican candidates Mariannette Miller-Meeks, and newcomer David Pautsch. We won’t know the final match up until after the June 4 primary.

Democrat Ed Chabal, chief financial officer of the Mount Pleasant Community School District, filed his petitions for State Senator in District 46 on March 5. Incumbent Republican Dawn Driscoll filed for re-election in February.

House District 91 is an open race with two Republicans in the primary so far (Mayor Adam Grier of Williamsburg and Lawyer Judd Lawler of Oxford). As I posted this, Democrats were collecting petition signatures for a candidate, with plans to file before the deadline. There is a lot to learn about these candidates.

How do we learn about candidates in 2024? For me, living at the far eastern border of the legislative districts, it is all about shaking their hands and getting to know them with a short conversation. I expect civility and concern for the needs of everyone in the district. Here’s hoping we have a chance to see all these candidates throughout the districts before the June primary.

~ Published as a letter to the editor in the Hometown Current on March 14, 2024.

Categories
Sustainability

Meaty Issues In Late Stage Republicanism

Beef Cattle. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Another week and Republican state legislators stuck in my craw. Why do they hate plant-based food? In the end, all our food is based on plant life, including beef, hogs, and sheep which all eat plants.

Ty Rushing of Iowa Starting Line reported the following from Republican Rep. Mike Sexton: “If it was up to me, I believe I would outlaw fake meat in the state of Iowa, and I would make it illegal to transport it across the state of Iowa.” Perhaps someone should inform Rep. Sexton many fake meats are made from soybeans, which is a major Iowa crop. Sexton is like the guy in a bar, who two hours after the game finished is telling wait staff clearing tables his opinion about a long past and obscure referee call. Legislators are not serious people when they raise issues like this.

Diners who converted to a plant-based diet sometimes want the home-cooked flavor of a burger like those offered by Morningstar Farms and Beyond Meat. People with common sense know processed food is not particularly good for us. If the choice is eating a fast food meal or going hungry, there is no choice: stave off hunger until we can improve our diet. The traditional wisdom is “all things in moderation.” We should take it easy on processed food.

The point missing in this excerpt from life in late stage Republicanism is we, as a society, should be cutting the size of our livestock herds. In her book Not the End of the World, author Hannah Ritchie explains her beef with beef and other livestock.

Raising cattle is a very resource-intensive way to make food. Cows need a lot of food, water, emit a lot of greenhouse gases, and need a lot of land. When it comes to how much land is needed to produce a kilogram of food, beef and lamb are miles ahead of any other food.

Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie.

Globally, we don’t need to use so much land for food production, Ritchie asserts. While not impacting overall food availability, reducing livestock herds could significantly reduce the amount of agricultural production needed to feed everyone on the planet. Take away livestock, and more soy produced as animal feed could be converted to human foodstuffs. We could reduce deforestation and let some land used for livestock grazing revert to forest, grassland or other wilderness. We would all be better for this.

The thing about late stage Republicanism is it is not about logic and common sense. This is about the GOP Culture Wars. I visited our public library last week and there is an entire 30-foot row of shelves containing books about health, diet and cooking in a city of 3,000 people. The culture of food is all around us. When it becomes politicized, like Sexton made it, there are no winners. What? You want me to make my own fake meat burgers? Well fine. They will be better than tolerating the sh*t show Republicans put on every day as their party is grasping at straws. Democrats are on the cusp of something big when drones like Sexton have their say.

If you want to learn about the bigger picture of sustainability, I recommend Hannah Ritchie’s new book, which can be found here. In the meanwhile, the dithering Republicans in the State House haven’t banned your recipe crumbles… yet.

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Living in Society

New Work Ahead – Re-elect Joe Biden

On Super Tuesday, March 5, the Iowa Democratic Party released the results of their mail-in presidential preference “caucus” that replaced first in the nation. Most news outlets did not recognize this was a thing to watch before it happened. After four attempts, Biden won Iowa, securing all 46 delegates to the national convention. I don’t recall him visiting the Hawkeye State to campaign this cycle. I’d wager he had already shaken many of the Democratic hands that marked the oval next to his name.

At the public library used book sale last weekend I bought a copy of Pete Souza’s Obama: An Intimate Portrait for a free will donation. Souza was chief official White House photographer for all eight years of the administration. Many of the photos in this 352-page book have been widely published. After returning home from the library I started reading it and couldn’t stop until I had turned every page. We are hungry for the kind of presidency Obama had. It is incomprehensible to me the country followed Obama with Trump.

Why does the Obama administration pull on my heartstrings? It’s because almost everyone I know had some connection to what they did. Friends traveled to D.C. for the inauguration. Members of my groups reported on high level meetings they attended. Nearly every Democrat I knew worked on his campaign. Combine that with the fact I met the guy in 2006, before he ran for president, and had a comfortable, personal conversation with him. Obama was as real as a politician can be. That means something and I miss it.

Obama ran into an obstacle when Republicans took the U.S. House majority in 2010. It was as if the electorate said, “Whoa Nellie,” and backed off from the work Obama was doing. I found it frustrating, as did he. Obama navigated through it as best he could. Another obstacle appeared in 2014 when Republicans took control of both the House and Senate during the midterms. In Souza’s book there is a photo of Obama and Biden working on Biden’s announcement he would not run for president in 2016.

Few Democrats I know caucused for Biden during the three times he competed when Iowa was first in the nation. When he defeated Trump in 2020, he became the kind of Democrat we missed. With his long experience in the U.S. Senate, and as Vice President, he learned how to get bills passed, and he did. He doesn’t get the recognition he deserves. As I wrote previously, “(under Biden) it is government acting as it should be and therefore if nothing seems broken, no worries. No credit for elected officials either.”

Those of us with living memory of LBJ know what it means to hit the ball out of the park in an election. When I was a kid, I expected all elections could be like the 1964 Democratic landslide. Biden hasn’t come close to what Johnson did in his first three years in office. Like with Obama, Biden’s first two years with a Democratic House and Senate were his best. We could return to that if Democrats do well in 2024. A lot depends on every Democrat activating during the fall campaign, recapturing some of the Obama essence. It seem there will be no more Democratic landslides for the time being.

Having Obama and Joe Biden as presidents has been positive. I also recognize how quickly the past fades.

I put the Obama book on the table in the living room so my spouse could spend time with it. Eventually it will go on my bookshelves until I’m ready to reflect again on those years. Despite the challenges, they were good years. There is new work ahead that requires focus. Re-electing Biden will be a formidable task. It will be worth the work if we can get it done.

Editor’s Note: If you are on social media looking to get involved in a campaign, I recommend following Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin and Resistance Live. She is on Threads and YouTube. She will get your energy level UP!

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Living in Society

Super Tuesday 2024

The Iowa Democratic Party reported unofficial results of our mail-in caucus. Joe Biden won with 11,083 votes out of 12,193 tallied (91 percent). Since no other candidate got 15 percent of the vote, Biden receives all 46 Iowa delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The convention process kicks off with our county convention on March 23, 2024. I am a delegate from my precinct.

Among the races to watch last night was the North Carolina Republican primary where election denier/holocaust denier/Trump supporter Mark Robinson won and will face Democrat Josh Stein in the general election. In the California race to replace U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey advanced to the general election.

There were 16 state results, plus American Samoa. Biden and Trump dominated their parties and are expected to win the nominations. This sentence could have been written before Super Tuesday. Unless your state was voting/caucusing, there was little reason to pay attention to the results. Once Iowa was called, I went to bed and read the rest of the results in the morning.

This week Greg Sargent wrote about the results of a Democratic poll which showed a small percentage of voters surveyed are familiar with Trump’s most overt authoritarian outbursts. One hopes Democrats will tune in and soon. The article suggests the electorate is tuned out at the moment.

A lot depends on the results of the general election.