Tag: politics

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Living in Society

Who Has Standing on Military Affairs?

Mariannette Miller-Meeks on the Iowa State Fair Political Soapbox on Aug. 13, 2010. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

The Republican approach to oversight of our military is curious and ineffective. On the one hand they vehemently criticize the administration’s handling of our country’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. On the other, Senator Tom Cotton sponsored legislation ending U.S. funding for Afghan refugees brought here as a result of the withdrawal, something they said they wanted. Cotton was joined by the 49 other Republican senators, yet their measure failed.

Republicans, and some Democrats, don’t think twice about spending $7.7 trillion on the U.S. military over 10 years without scrutinizing details of where the money goes. They reject an audit of the Pentagon. At the same time, Republicans reject the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act which would help everyday Americans at half the price.

Cotton appeared with Second District congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks at her re-election announcement fundraiser in Iowa City.They then co-wrote an op-ed piece for the Des Moines Register in which they laid out their grievances about the Afghanistan withdrawal. It was pure politics in our red state. As far as I’m concerned, Senator Cotton should resign and return to Arkansas to peddle snake oil. Apparently that’s what he might be good at.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks was an ophthalmologist during military service. How does that qualify her to evaluate the Biden administration on military and foreign affairs? It doesn’t.

Unlike Democrats who are held to a higher standard of truth, Miller-Meeks can spew anything that comes to mind without regard to accuracy. If what she says is unhinged from reality, she thought it, asserted it with confidence, and therefore among Republicans it must be right. As a freshman in congress she’s proving to be little more than a parrot for what the moneyed class seeks: destruction of American democracy.

Whatever flaws the administration may have in military and foreign affairs, Joe Biden himself doesn’t have many vulnerabilities going into the midterm elections. First of all, he’s not on the ballot. More importantly, the man got the most votes of any candidate for president ever, 81,268,924 votes and 7,052,770 more than the next closest candidate. Despite the mad raving of pillow merchants and such, it was the most secure election ever. The results are not in doubt.

What galls me about members of congress like Miller-Meeks and Cotton is they have no respect for the authority embodied in the presidency that transcends administrations. We all get it. When they grandstand, it’s to make some political point rather than solve any of our pressing problems.

Neither respects the chain of command in civilian leadership of our military. They daily disrespect the president. Chain of command is a lesson both should have learned while serving in the Army. They assert what they present as factual about the military when the fact is they spin a yarn that ventures from the truth from its beginnings. Life in the military and management of foreign affairs is more complicated than the sawdust laden beef they peddle as hamburger.

A majority of Americans like Biden’s policies. The American Rescue Plan Act, which Miller-Meeks voted against, provided needed relief during the run up to distributing a viable vaccine for the coronavirus. Miller-Meeks did her part to add to quackery about the vaccine, including support for hydroxychloroquine treatment and misstatements about children getting sick with COVID-19.

We need members of congress with a grip on reality. Not those like Miller-Meeks who would say anything that comes to mind without regard for truth and logic. If she wants to opine about military and foreign affairs, that’s her right. She should stop taking talking points from conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, do her own homework, and level with the American people.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

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Living in Society

School Board Campaign Conventions

Conventional wisdom in the Solon Community School District board election is there is a certain way of doing things. Call it a “Solon way” if you need a name for it.

From the filing deadline on Sept. 16 until election day on Nov. 2 there is not a lot of time. Candidates have to contact voters in a way that convinces about 500 of them they are the best person for the school board.

For the most part, conventional campaigns go something like this:

  • Planning, including finance and yard signs.
  • Strategy, including web presence, alliances with other candidates.
  • Filing.
  • Voter outreach via personal networking, U.S. Postal Service, in-person, and internet.
  • Submit information to organizations via questionnaire: League of Women Voters, Solon Economist, and others.
  • One large candidate forum, this year on Oct. 20.
  • Get out the vote.

There is an economy to conventional wisdom in that energy can be focused on a limited number of tasks. If one performs them all well, they have their best foot forward. If they don’t win, they can say they did their best and garner some satisfaction for having run.

Being on the school board doesn’t come with financial consideration, i.e. no pay. Most candidates have lives filled with work that needs doing to support themselves. There is not a lot of time for nuance in a campaign. Conventional wisdom supports busy people in that campaigns run by it have a well-worn path to conclusion, if not to winning.

Because of conventional wisdom, it is difficult for a candidate to break out from the herd. This year there are seven candidates, Billerbeck, Brown, Coons, Edmonds, Neuerburg, Munson and Rochholz. Brown and Coons are incumbents, each of whom was elected multiple times. The opening for a non-incumbent was created when Rick Jedlicka decided not to run for another term. In a calcified school board election environment, the competition would be for that one seat, assuming Brown and Coons would dominate because of their incumbency. It doesn’t have to be that way.

As I do the work to understand the seven 2021 candidates, I reflect on the campaign of Jami Wolf, who I view as a breakout candidate among six who ran for two seats in 2019. More than others, she devoted time and resources to networking throughout the community. She had a natural connection with school board election voters in that she volunteered at the school. She is outgoing and friendly. Her career in real estate reinforces qualities needed in a campaign: realism, public speaking, and poise. She was open to meeting with almost anyone. While she had a Facebook page, it appeared to me her focus was on person-to-person contact. She won the open seat on the board.

Who will be the breakout candidate in 2021? I don’t know. What worked for Wolf may not work for candidates with a different personality style. Effective voter outreach will make the difference on Nov. 2.

A lot has been made of the district’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic. Little in conventional wisdom about campaigns covers a public health crisis during a pandemic. Some like what the school administration has done. Others do not. It seems unlikely that the single issue of number of instances of COVID-19, managing outbreaks, and communication about COVID-19 cases in the schools will be the deciding factor in this election. Cassie Rochholz and Erika Billerbeck were quoted by KCRG on Sept. 29 in reaction to the district experiencing 67 positive COVID-19 cases in a single week. Their comments typify the division around the pandemic:

Some parents in the school district think the rapid increase in cases is a direct result of not requiring masks for students or staff.

“That’s in a population of about 1,500 students. And when you compare it to a system like Iowa City where they are requiring masks, right now I believe they have 36 active cases in a school system that’s 9 times the size of Solon,” Erika Billerbeck, a school district parent, said.

Billerbeck said, at the very least, she wants better communication from the school.

“I won’t find out until Monday evening what the statistics were for the previous week,” Billerbeck said. “So as a parent trying to make a decision day-to-day, we’re not receiving that information to make a good choice for our kids.”

Other parents, like Cassie Rochholz, say families and students should have a choice when it comes to mask-wearing.

“Parents need the option to choose what is best for their child, and no child fits squarely into a box, no child is the same as one another,” Rochholz said.

KCRG website Sept. 29, 2021.

It is not hard to line up the candidates for and against administration policy and its practice regarding the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

If conventional wisdom makes it easier to manage a campaign, it does not assure winning. Innovative strategies and effective outreach to voters beyond one’s personal circle will be what decides the election. If the electorate is of a mood to replace the current board, three newcomers could win. We’ll see the mood of the electorate in the coming four weeks.

Click here for all of my coverage of the Solon School Board Election.

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Living in Society

Solon School Board Election Update

Typical of off grid communications that go on during a school board election, I found out by happenstance the Solon Economist will host a candidate forum for the Solon School Board election on Wednesday, Oct. 20, at 6:30 p.m. at the Solon Center for the Arts. If you can, please attend. Thankfully the forum was moved to a larger venue than in 2019. This is the only announced forum to date and it’s typically the big one.

This blog is planning to cover the forum, and I expect will get to press before the larger, more clunky news organizations with printing presses, cutoff times, and such.

The significance of the date is this: Oct. 18 is the last day to request an absentee ballot from the Johnson County Auditor’s office. When candidates and their canvassers are talking to voters, they shouldn’t wait until the forum to get an absentee ballot. Request one now. The completed, mailed ballot is due into the auditor’s office by 8 p.m. on election day.

The auditor’s office indicated a petition was received for satellite voting at Solon High School. Details to come once it is announced. Monday, Oct. 4, is the deadline for petitions for satellite voting.

This is a good time to mention other election deadlines. These are copied and pasted from the auditor’s website:

Dates and deadlines
  • Tuesday, August 24: First day auditor’s office can accept requests for mailed absentee ballots, 70 days before election day.
  • Tuesday, October 5: There will be no City Primary Election in Iowa City or University Heights. (Other cities do not have a primary requirement.)
  • Monday, October 11: Johnson County does not observe the federal Columbus Day holiday and our office will be open.
  • Wednesday, October 13: First day absentee ballots can be mailed and first day in person early voting is allowed by state law. Note that ballots are not required to be ready by this date. More information on when voting will start will be available closer to Election Day.
  • Monday, October 18: Voter pre-registration deadline and deadline to request mailed ballot, 5 PM. In person early voting and election day registration are still available after this deadline.
  • Monday, November 1: Last day for in person early voting at auditor’s office.
  • Tuesday, November 2: Election Day. Polls open 7 AM to 8 PM. Vote at regular polling places. All domestic mailed absentee ballots must arrive at auditor’s office before the polls close at 8 PM in order to be counted.

Click here for all of my coverage of the Solon School Board Election.

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Living in Society

Sprawl is Coming Our Way

View of Trail Ridge Estates on Thursday, Sept. 30, 2021.

It was two weeks before the local newspaper published an explanation of heavy equipment activity on a 130-acre farm field off Highway 382. On Sept. 15, the Watts Group received unanimous approval of a developer’s agreement and preliminary plat from the Solon City Council. The city annexed the area and approved residential zoning this summer, according to Margaret Stevens, editor of the Solon Economist.

The population of the City of Solon grew from 2,037 in 2010 to 3,018 in the 2020 U.S. Census. The new subdivision proposed 220 parcels and 2.43 people lived in an average American household during the Census. Trail Ridge Estates, as it is called, will add population of roughly 535 people once it is built out. I expect the subdivision to be built out quickly.

The farmer who previously owned the field grew commodity crops, mostly corn and soybeans. That agricultural production won’t be missed. The challenge of building rural subdivisions like Trail Ridge Estates is they presume residents will drive for jobs, provisions, church, school and social activities. They further the culture of automobiles.

There will be a multi-use concrete pad installed for basketball and possibly pickle ball, according to the plans. There will be a fenced dog park. The subdivision has access to the state park trail from which I took the photo. Children could conceivably walk to school along the trail, but I predict busing and individual vehicles will provide most of that transportation.

I believe people will spend more time indoors and build generously-sized homes to accommodate indoor activities. Two and three car garages will be popular. The parcels could average about a half acre, which is plenty of room for a vegetable garden. Whatever sociologists call the current pattern of “nesting,” there would be lots of that going on.

The point of describing this subdivision is to say old-style urban sprawl is ongoing. While larger cities slowly work toward sustainable buildings, in rural cities, old-style, inefficient housing continues to be built. There is clearly a market for it. The amenities of a well-maintained K-12 school infrastructure, three churches, a large sports and recreation complex, and proximity to Big Ten sports, an airport, and diverse shopping make it attractive to certain types of young conservative couples. With relatively low gasoline prices ($3.09 per gallon today), commuting for work to Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, the Quad-Cities, and even to Des Moines is affordable if one can tolerate the windshield time.

The area is turning from Democratic to Republican as it grows. That’s true of Iowa’s Democratic enclaves more generally. There is a culture of civic engagement in which people do not discuss party politics, even if it is constantly in the news that comes in from Cedar Rapids, cable television, radio, and beyond. Plenty of Democrats, Republicans, and No-Party voters work side-by-side in organizations that support a variety of social engagement activities. Politics is considered something to discuss only with family and like-minded others. We’ve become insular in our politics and that reinforces a culture that gives rise to urban sprawl like Trail Ridge Estates.

Among the causes to which I dedicate my time, urban sprawl is low on my list of priorities. If farm field owners insist on growing commodity crops and livestock, then one farm more or less doesn’t matter. The better question is whether lives lived in insulated islands like this are worth living. One assumes people who pay a quarter million dollars and more for a home on half an acre would say they are. I guess that’s the reality we have to accept before social change is made.

Like many, I don’t like the build-out of the area to which we moved in 1993. It wasn’t inevitable although the growth is welcomed by the city. The three convenience stores in town do a booming business. The local grocery store has made it thus far, despite big box store competition nearby. We have a vibrant restaurant scene and there are loads of school-related activities. The Catholic and Methodist churches have little risk of consolidation. The annual town festival turns out hundreds of people to watch the parade and hay bale toss.

With the cultural life of Iowa deteriorating under Republican leadership, I know few who would seek out this new subdivision. Maybe I’m just out of touch with that segment of society. As I adjust to post-pandemic life, assuming the pandemic will eventually end, I’ll have to work harder to stay engaged with diverse people. In the meanwhile, observing new construction is an activity as old as human civilization and I’m there for it.

Observing updates in the new subdivision gives me a reason to take my daily exercise walking to town. It’s a longer walk, although sometimes I need that.

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Living in Society

Solon School Board Candidates on Facebook

While working on my election coverage, I found six of seven candidates for three positions on the Solon School Board are campaigning or have pages devoted to school board on Facebook.

Incumbent Dan Coons does not have a public Facebook page, so readers can watch for coverage of his campaign in the Solon Economist or at the upcoming public forum.

Here is an alphabetical list of candidates and their Facebook pages:

Erika Billerbeck: https://www.facebook.com/Billerbeck-for-Solon-School-Board-100985075683571/

Tim Brown: https://www.facebook.com/TimBrownSCSD

Dan Coons: No public Facebook page.

Kelly Edmonds: https://www.facebook.com/Edmonds4Solon/

Stacey Munson: https://www.facebook.com/Stacey-Munson-for-Solon-School-Board-108708788241054/

Michael Neuerburg: https://www.facebook.com/MikeforSolonSchoolBoard/

Cassie Rochholz: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100055956696963

Give the links a click and learn more about the candidates.

Click here for all of my coverage of the Solon School Board Election.

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Living in Society

Participate in the School Board Election

Editor’s Note: The plan for Solon School Board election coverage is to post at least one weekly article on Saturdays until the election. I am looking at data provided by the county and will have an analysis soon. I’ve been told there will be a candidate forum and like in 2019 I plan to attend and cover it. Both the Solon Economist and Iowa City Press Citizen indicated they will provide some coverage of the campaigns. All of my posts about the 2021 school board election can be found here.

I encourage readers to participate in the Nov. 2 Solon School Board Election. In 2019 we had record voter turnout. It would be great if voter turnout improved this year.

The seven candidates are Erika Billerbeck, Tim Brown, Dan Coons, Kelly Edmonds, Stacey Munson, Michael Neuerburg, and Cassie Rochholz. Their addresses, emails and telephone numbers were posted on the Johnson County Auditor’s website. We increasingly live in a do-it-yourself news environment so I recommend if you have questions about policy, go directly to the candidates.

The main controversy in the district has been handling of the coronavirus pandemic by school administration. The board hired Davis Eidahl as superintendent in 2015 and renewed his contract at least once. Eidahl and his predecessor Sam Miller spent time together as principals in the Davis County school district near Ottumwa. Based on their common background it is clear continuity has been important to the school board. COVID-19 threw administration a curve ball and the fallout has not finished. Will this be a change election? That depends upon participation.

What the school board does is important whether or not we have children of school age. One thing is certain: Solon cares about school board elections.

~ Published by the Solon Economist on Oct. 7, 2021.

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Living in Society

Do Better Democrats

Lettuce harvested Sept. 29, 2021 from the row covered plot.

Democrats either don’t know how or haven’t the will to make Governor Kim Reynolds pay a political price for outrageous and sometimes false statements she makes. As the recent Selzer poll illustrated, Reynolds’ approval rate continues to improve. Democrats sit back and watch the numbers move up while wringing their hands. We can do better than that.

By pay a political price I mean hitting her where she lives among her Iowa political constituencies. I don’t mean posting a mean tweet or writing a blog post for limited circulation. Complaining about the governor’s latest outrage to friends may make us feel better but does little to impact her popularity. We tend to believe no one could support this governor. The fact is many do, enough to re-elect her.

Reynolds does not write her own talking points. She recycles frequently updated Republican political buzzwords. Reynolds now beats the word “inflation” like a drum.

“We have a crisis at the border, a disaster in Afghanistan, and inflation is soaring,” Reynolds said in an Aug. 19 press release. “President Biden is failing on each of these issues… I have had enough, and I know Iowans have too.”

She name checks the president, associating “inflation” with the Biden administration, along with two other talking points. Inflation! Disaster! Crisis! She wasn’t the first to do this.

The Koch network-backed Heritage Foundation rolled out the “inflation” attack seven days earlier in an opinion piece in the Washington Examiner.
“Diminishing the paychecks of the average person with inflation and weak growth will only advance the Chinese narrative that they are outpacing the U.S. free enterprise system,” wrote Jessica Anderson and The Heritage Foundation’s Vice President James Carafano.

Not so fast!

It is not credible to say there is inflation when personal experience doesn’t reflect it. My weekly expenses for groceries and sundries remain unchanged in 2021 compared to 2020. Yes, fuel prices are higher but for Pete’s sake there were two recent hurricanes in the Louisiana-Texas oil patch on the Gulf Coast. Of course this disrupted petroleum product supply and prices spiked. Meat prices are up, yet is that market manipulation among the small number of meat packers? Congress believes so and is investigating. Are these things inflation? No, they are not.

The last paragraph is a perfect example of what Democrats do wrong. We use logic in a culture war. We also set ourselves up to lose.

How do we make Governor Reynolds pay a political price for crying “inflation” along with other right-wing inspired parroting of Heritage Foundation’s current framing? Like most Democrats, I don’t know what will work. What I do know is it is time to figure it out.

Our response cannot be there is no inflation, no crisis at the border, or no disaster in Afghanistan. When we do this the effect is to reinforce Reynolds’ framing of the issues and help her gain popularity. We’re not supposed to be helping her!

The first thing we have to do is accept reality. Three headlines appeared in the Iowa City Press Citizen on Sept. 23:

“Grassley has big lead in possible matchup.”
“Sen. Ernst’s job approval ticks upward slightly.”
“How much longer can we keep doing this?”

The first two refer to politics and the third to employee burnout at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics during the coronavirus pandemic. These reflect realities many Democrats seek to dismiss. We must embrace them and work to change the underlying reality.

We can’t use Republican framing to try to advance our causes. A hot topic in Iowa today is mask mandates in schools. Reynolds’ familiar refrain on wearing face masks can be found in a Sept. 13 press release, “…parents’ ability to decide what’s best for their child.”

Don’t get me started. Not because I can’t logically explain the ways this statement is wrong, but because I can. In a culture war we need a different approach from logic because it serves Reynolds more than Democrats.

I hope Democrats will find their way to make Reynolds pay for the misrepresentations and outright lies. If we don’t have the will, we may as well kick back and take it easy while Republicans dominate the state’s politics.

~ First published in the Fall 2021 issue of The Prairie Progressive, Iowa’s oldest progressive newsletter. Prairie Progressive is funded entirely by reader subscription,  available only in hard copy for $12/yr.  Send check to Prairie Progressive, Box 1945, Iowa City 52244. Click here for archived issues.

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Living in Society

Miller-Meeks: Get a Grip

Mariannette Miller-Meeks on the Iowa State Fair Political Soapbox on Aug. 13, 2010. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks was an ophthalmologist during military service. How does that qualify her to evaluate the Biden administration on military and foreign affairs? It doesn’t.

Unlike Democrats who are held to a higher standard of truth, Miller-Meeks can spew anything that comes to mind without regard to accuracy. If what she says is unhinged from reality, she thought it, and therefore among Republicans it must be right. As a freshman in congress she’s proving to be little more than a parrot for what the moneyed class seeks: destruction of American democracy.

Whatever flaws the administration may have in military and foreign affairs, Joe Biden himself doesn’t have many vulnerabilities going into the midterm elections. First of all, he’s not on the ballot. More importantly, the man got the most votes of any candidate for president ever, 81,268,924 votes and 7,052,770 more than the next closest candidate. Despite the mad raving of pillow merchants and such, it was the most secure election ever. The results are not in doubt.

A majority of Americans like Biden’s policies. The American Rescue Plan Act, which Miller-Meeks voted against, provided needed relief during the run up to distributing a viable vaccine for the coronavirus. Miller-Meeks did her part to add to quackery about the vaccine, including support for hydroxychloroquine treatment.

We need members of congress with a grip on reality. Not those like Miller-Meeks who would say anything that comes to mind without regard for truth and logic. If she wants to opine about military and foreign affairs, that’s her right. She should stop taking talking points from conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and do her own homework.

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Writing

A Nonpartisan School Board

To run for school board a candidate submits a nominating petition with at least 50 district voters’ signatures on it to the school district office. There is no party affiliation and everyone so nominated is placed on the ballot. I heard on Thursday ballots have been finalized and sent to the printer.

I will analyze the nominating petition signatures when I receive them from the county. They are a public record available by paying a small fee. I won’t be sharing any secrets because nominating petitions aren’t secret.

For now, I have the voter profile for each of the seven candidates for Solon Community School District board of directors. They are Erika Billerbeck, Tim Brown, Dan Coons, Kelly Edmonds, Stacey Munson, Michael Neuerburg, and Cassie Rochholz.

There is a lot of information in these documents, which are also public records. For now, I’m most interested in party registration, the effective date when the candidate registered to vote, and in what recent school board elections they voted. I make no judgment about the candidates by posting this chart. It is data sent by the county, selected and formatted by me.

Data provided by the Johnson County Auditor

Electing someone to the school board is definitely not partisan. More than in other elections a voter seeks the best person for the job. While that seems like an antique idea in a society where everything is politicized, the best board members are not defined by party. Likewise, formal political parties have little influence over school boards.

During the 2019 Solon School Board election there were six candidates for two positions on the board. Three were Republicans, two no party, and one Democratic. Two Republicans won the election, Adam Haluska and Jami Wolf. The dynamic of the race was anti-incumbent because of recently completed collective bargaining between the district and the union. The negotiations drove some to run for school board. I spent as much time as anyone figuring out which candidates would meet my goals for board members. I ended up liking each of the six candidates for different reasons, none of which was party. Party membership played no role in my choice. My sense is it doesn’t for most people voting in a school board election.

Thus far I have spoken with one of the seven 2021 candidates. Like everyone, I’m learning. The dynamic of the election is complicated by the coronavirus pandemic. If the election is a referendum on the school district’s policies regarding COVID-19 and how those policies are implemented, I believe the election favors the two incumbents and another candidate who offers something compelling to voters, the way Jami Wolf did in 2019. It is possible the incumbents could lose the election yet they have broad name recognition within the district and have each been elected multiple times. A challenger will face a steep, difficult summit of the mountain that is incumbency.

Looking at school board candidates through a partisan lens is one factor among many. I don’t recommend making too much of the chart. Do look at it, though, and draw your own conclusions.

Here is a link to the county auditor site where readers can find contact information for the candidates. Do phone or send them an email with your questions. I hope you’ll follow my posts as we learn more about the community and the seven candidates for school board.

All of my posts about the 2021 election can be found here.

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Living in Society

Cleaning Up The Mess

Woman Writing Letter

The debt ceiling is in the news. Once again, for the same reason: a Republican president ran up the debt on the American people and a Democratic president is left cleaning up the mess.

At the same time, Iowa is participating in its decennial redistricting process. Voters in the Iowa Quad Cities aren’t sure who their member of congress might be. Currently it is Mariannette Miller-Meeks. If the first redistricting map is accepted by the legislature, it could be Ashley Hinson.

Both congresswomen have joined the Republican block to say they will not vote to raise the debt limit. Shame on them. They should focus on solutions, not obstruction.

While neither was in office when the 45th president and the Congress ran up our bill, it is clear from this statement by both and from their voting record earlier this year, their interests lie more with Washington Republicans than with Iowans.

Both voted against the American Rescue Plan Act which benefited many Iowans. One expects them both to vote against the Build Back Better Act when it comes up for a U.S. House vote in the near future.

Regardless of the redistricting outcome, they both need to find other work.

~ Published by the Quad-City Times on Sept. 27, 2021.