Tag: politics

I got my interest in politics from my late father. He canvassed our Davenport neighborhood for John F. Kennedy. Kennedy lost Iowa yet won the general election.

My first campaign was for Lyndon Johnson when I was 12. I delivered newspapers after school and one Saturday after paying my bill at the newspaper office I volunteered for the Democrats stuffing envelopes. They gave me a campaign button for my time. When Johnson won in the historic landslide I figured Democrats would win every future election like that.

I’m no longer 12.

In 2020 I’m voting for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominees for president and vice president. Prominent national Republicans announced they are planning to vote for Biden-Harris too. I have little idea who will win the election in Iowa or nationwide. To an extent what matters more than the Nov. 3 vote is what we as a nation will do about it.

Presently people can’t agree what our most pressing problems are. If we can’t agree on that, we will never solve any of them. Some days it seems difficult to have a reasonable discussion about things that matter in this country. Nevertheless, we must persist.

If people were more like we are in the Solon area we’d have a better chance at solving problems. I look back on my time on the Solon Senior Advocates board and believe we got good things done. It didn’t have a thing to do with our politics. As a society we need more of that.

I hope readers will vote on or before Nov. 3. Biden is building an inclusive tent where all are welcome. I invite you to join us. We are stronger together as a society when we participate in our democracy, regardless of for whom we vote.

~ Published in the Sept. 3, 2020 edition of the Solon Economist.

Every farm kid knows you should card wool before spinning it into yarn.

Joni Ernst’s campaign has spun some yarns about Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield and it’s clear they didn’t get things straightened out beforehand.

They don’t intend on getting the story right. They cast aspersions on their opponent’s character with disregard for facts and reasonable discourse.

On Monday, Aug. 24, Ernst released this statement on her campaign website:

“The American Dream is to own a home, which is why it’s so sad that while she was the President of Rottlund Homes, real estate executive Theresa Greenfield’s company was sued in Polk County for fraud, negligence and reneging on property purchase agreements,” said Joni Ernst spokesperson Melissa Deatsch. “For Greenfield, it’s always about looking out for herself. Once Rottlund Homes went bankrupt, Greenfield quickly jumped to Colby Interests and continued to put herself before others.”

Deatsch is saying: 1. Greenfield “quickly jumped” from Rottlund Homes to Colby Interests, and 2. she is implicitly guilty because Rottlund Homes was sued.

That’s a lot to swallow. Let straighten this the way we would card wool.

Let’s start with the LinkedIn profile Ernst wrote they accessed May 14, 2019. Here is the relevant part:

Greenfield wrote she was unemployed from December 2011 until March 2012. She has been quite open about her experience with Rottlund Homes and how she lost her job during the real estate crash of the Great Recession. She told me earlier this year,

“From there I went into home building and eventually became the president of a small home building company in Iowa. That was fun through the recession, until it wasn’t any more fun. We sold the assets at the end of 2011. I became unemployed like a lot of people in the recession, then hired on with a commercial real estate company.”

For Deatsch to say Greenfield “quickly jumped” from job to job simply isn’t true. It was a recession caused in part by turbulence in the real estate business for Pete’s sake. With 100,000 Iowans out of work during the coronavirus pandemic Ernst is criticizing Greenfield for being laid off almost ten years ago? Now that Ernst is a U.S. Senator what is she doing for Iowans who are unemployed? That’s not a rhetorical question.

Let’s talk about the three lawsuits Ernst raised. It is part of business life that companies get sued. How responsible was Greenfield for these lawsuits? Ernst mentions people sued Rottlund Homes but says little else. The plaintiff is not always right and regular people know that. If you look at what happened, much of the basis for the lawsuits was out of Greenfield’s control and all three were resolved through legal process. What’s the beef?

James and Sheryl Moon: A deal between the Moons and Rottlund occurred in 2005, before Greenfield joined Rottlund Homes of Iowa in 2007. The Moons dismissed their case against Rottlund with prejudice and both parties waived claims for attorney fees.

The Villas at Berkshire Hills: The Villas at Berkshire Hills were built in the 1990s, well before Theresa Greenfield joined Rottlund Homes of Iowa in 2007. The Villas at Berkshire Hills Home Owners Association and Rottlund Homes of Iowa settled and the case was dismissed.

The Reserve Homeowners Association: The Reserve was built around 2005, and the neighborhood started to experience water pooling problems in 2006. Both occurred before Greenfield joined Rottlund Homes of Iowa in 2007. The Reserve Home Owners Association trial against Rottlund was cancelled because Rottlund was put into receivership in Minnesota to liquidate their assets and all pending litigation was stayed. The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice after both parties agreed to dismiss the case.

Did Theresa Greenfield become president of Rottlund Homes of Iowa? Yes, she did, in 2007. Were there lawsuits? Yes, there were. Are those lawsuits long resolved? Yes, they are. How about we quit changing the subject by casting aspersions on Theresa Greenfield’s character and do something for the thousands of Iowans who are jobless because of the coronavirus pandemic?

While Joni Ernst claims to be fighting for Iowans, Monday’s attack shows how out-of-touch she is during the current and greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression. The Ernst campaign is criticizing and casting aspersions on Theresa Greenfield’s character at a time when: over 100,000 Iowans are unemployed, Iowa had record unemployment of over 10 percent in April, the GOP-led Senate, where Ernst as part of leadership, failed to renew needed extended unemployment benefits, and earlier this year, Ernst sought lower unemployment payments in COVID relief.

A person can spin from the lock but who would want to wear the garment, all lumpy and itchy? While Joni Ernst remains a Senator she should quit distracting, get to work for Iowans, and quit trying to persuade us her lockspun is cashmere.

Iowans are just going to shake it off.

In 1964 I had thoughts about politics.

One Saturday morning, after riding the city bus downtown to pay my newspaper bill, a friend and I stopped at the Democratic office to stuff envelopes in exchange for an LBJ campaign button. The same day, on a lark, we went to the nearby Republican office and did the same for a Goldwater button. Our family was Democratic yet I must have felt there was a choice about politics.

When Johnson won the election in a landslide I figured Democrats would prevail in all future elections. I was 12 years old.

Being a newspaper carrier was a formative experience. It taught me a lot about people, that some were honest and others would try to bilk me out of the cost of their subscription. When I threatened to stop deliveries for non-payment people would blame me when they pleaded with my supervisor to continue the paper.

People were mostly home when I made collections. When they weren’t I made a special trip later in the week. I got to know everyone on my route: who had a barking dog, who kept their yard tidy, who rented and who didn’t. Women were easier to deal with than men. A majority of households took the newspaper.

The street in front of our house dead-ended at a woods near the end of my route. Collecting from that house meant avoiding a dog and finding my way down a long driveway to the old farm house where it was hit or miss someone would be around. Collections taught me a lot about margins in a small business. If you didn’t collect, every penny came out of the margin. Today the street runs through and the farmhouse is long gone.

The years, especially the Ronald Reagan administration, removed any doubt I’m a Democrat. I’m proud to be a Democrat. Our days of landslide victories like 1964 are over so there is work to do in the remaining days before the Nov. 3 election. I plan to vote for the Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They are good people. It requires good people to effectively govern.

I’ve been in enough political campaigns to know time slips away if one doesn’t have a plan to support the election. I made a list of 12 things to do. It ranges from easy — like wearing a campaign button or t-shirt in public and installing an auto bumper sticker — to working with the campaigns to contact voters. We’re on a fixed budget yet we’ll find a way to spare a few dollars for our candidates. I’ve already been working the plan.

Why Biden – Harris? They are our party’s nominees. In addition to being good people, they have a coherent plan to address the coronavirus pandemic and the economic collapse it brought. There’s plenty more but unless we get through the pandemic and have a chance at restoring some of our previous life, our lives will become a worsening hellscape. Already it is clear there is no going back to how it used to be before the pandemic.

My life has been about people: getting to know them, working with them in a business environment, and doing things together because it is fun and rewarding. All that is on the line in the election because of the pandemic.

Yesterday CNN reported there is an asteroid heading toward Earth to arrive at the time of the election. The scientists at NASA say the chance of it hitting us is just 0.41 percent. The incumbent president has more chance of being re-elected than that. It’s time to get to work to reduce his chances to closer to zero.

The election will be here before we know it, the results known. In the meanwhile I’ll continue living — cleaning up after the derecho, conserving financial resources, learning how to cook from a kitchen garden, and doing things with people how and when I can. I’ll continue to strive to be a better writer and a decent human being. In 2020 preserving those abilities means supporting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for president and vice president. That’s what I plan to do.

The first thing I did upon waking was view Michelle Obama’s speech at the on line Democratic National Convention. She did her job.

Obama said just what we needed to hear: there is a different vision of the United States from that of the incumbent president.

This morning I viewed Senator Bernie Sanders’s speech. He did his job too. “Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs,” he said.

I was too tired to stay up for the convention broadcast. A day of derecho cleanup, chores and kitchen work had me tired by 8 p.m. Because of the on line format convention content was posted soon after it occurred. That’s how our politics is becoming: an on-demand, personalized experience shared with friends and neighbors. I don’t like it as well as past campaigns yet with the coronavirus pandemic what other good choices are there?

When an issue is clear, it can be resolved. It was a mistake to elect Donald Trump president because he is not prepared to do the work. People are suffering because of his incompetence. Because there is agreement about this among a significant part of the electorate, voters of all stripes can come together to elect Joe Biden the 46th president. With the problems created or exacerbated by Trump since he’s been in office it’s not that easy.

There is no consensus around our most pressing issues. We lack a plan to resolve the global pandemic and the United States is trailing the rest of the world in addressing it. Last week’s derecho is only the latest example of extreme weather events caused by climate change. Racism and social injustice revealed themselves as issues that were never resolved. Income inequality increased during the pandemic with the richest Americans doing well while the rest of us wonder how we will survive. Why is it anyone in the United States has to worry about going broke if they get sick? These issues smolder like the burn pile I made after the derecho to return minerals from fallen branches to our garden soil.

No political party is perfect and a case can be made that the success of our country relies on two-party politics. The national conventions kick off the fall campaign and it seems more people will be a part of it. I hope so. No speech is going to resolve our biggest issues. Only political action in the form of voting can do that.

As Joe Biden and company build an organization to defeat Donald Trump part of its energy comes from active Democrats. That’s to be expected. At the same time, the coalition Biden built is broad and more diverse. It has to be to bring in the votes needed to assure victory. Democratic votes alone won’t win the Nov. 3 election.

Democrats are a distance from being able to claim victory over Trump and his enablers.

The deciding factor may well be that much energy to defeat Trump must come from people with little connection to Democrats. Their allegiance is to something else — not politics — and their activism is energized by how the administration negatively impacts them personally. There are also Republicans unwilling to shed Republican values yet who believe electing Trump was a mistake and he must be removed through the ballot box.

With such a coalition, if the president is re-elected we haven’t worked hard enough. A lot can and will happen before the election. The hurricane of information is just forming to wreck havoc on our political life. To win we have to set aside our personal causes and follow the lead of our candidates. We must give up part of our individualism to work toward a greater good. If Angela Davis is on board with Biden almost any liberal should be too.

What does that mean?

Don’t shed a bucket of liberal tears over the current disaster in governance. Is current policy bad? Yes, it is. Are Republicans corrupt? Yes, some of them are. Can it be fixed? I don’t know and the only path to finding out is to hunker down and elect Democratic candidates from Biden on down the ticket to soil commissioner and dog catcher. Liberal tears are a distraction from the fundamental fact that Democrats, and most Americans, are good people with a desire to improve our common life.

Stay focused. Pick a couple of things you can do to support Democratic candidates. Got a few dollars left over in your bank account after monthly bills are paid? Donate part of it to your favorite candidates. Don’t know who the candidates are? Get a sample ballot from your county auditor and study it. Got friends and relatives? Make sure each of them is registered to vote. Encourage them to vote.

Develop a way of dealing with the noise. There will be a lot of radio, television, internet, and print ads. A lot of friends and neighbors will want to talk about “politics” and repeat awful falsehoods. Listen, consider, and think before reacting. Correct people where you can, tolerate where you must. Engender a sense that we are all in this together because we are.

Deal with the coronavirus. We’re no good to anyone unless we are healthy. The first wave of the pandemic is upon us and there is no easy fix to it. Do all the things health professionals recommend: wear a mask in public, get tested for COVID-19 if you have symptoms or have been with someone diagnosed with the disease, wash hands frequently, sanitize your hands immediately after shopping, and stay home when it’s possible to do so.

Don’t pay attention to the polls. The polls indicate Joe Biden stands a good chance of winning the Electoral College. Act like he is ten points behind and do something to further his electoral prospects. Do what you feel comfortable doing. Then pick something outside your comfort zone and try that too.

Above all else, be part of the solution to the disastrous problems caused by current Republican governance. The opportunity we have today is to elect Joe Biden president. Let’s go do it!

If we can make the change in elected officials then we can talk about the long, hard path to re-inventing America to be better than ever. As they say in sports, leave it all on the field.

~Written for Blog for Iowa

The Nov. 3 general election is 103 days out. Buckle your seat belt. It’s going to be a bumpy ride to the polls closing.

Twitter maven Caroline Orr said it about as well as anyone. Her advice seems solid.

I noticed the number of trolls on my social media posts increased this year. Every day I block some alleged Twitter newcomer with a computer generated name, zero tweets and few followers. I don’t know who creates these bots and encourages the trolls but a basic user lesson is don’t feed them. They are trying to distract us. THIS ELECTION IS NOT ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA ANYWAY. IT’S ABOUT VOTING!

Electing Donald Trump was a mistake. The challenge for reasonable people is answering the question what are we going to do about it? I understand the idea of resisting the Trump administration. It was a natural response to the hell hole of his inaugural address. Three and a half years into his first term it is now time for a counter attack. We must block his path to a second term.

The Trump administration is like riding a Tilt-A-Whirl whose anchoring has come loose. We love the ride for perverse reasons yet for all the crazy he and his enablers are dishing, we’re not the crazy ones. We’re not gullible enough to swallow it, especially after 2016.

During the election campaign, the Republican online goal is to disrupt people using internet applications to build bonds among real people in opposition to the president and his enablers. Chaos and confusion? Don’t get sucked into it by asserting a correction or condemnation to trolls. They want to distract you any way they can. Feeding the trolls with your attention serves their purpose, not ours. According to historian Michael Beschloss FDR said during the World War II national effort, “Lost ground can always be regained – lost time never!” 103 days from Nov. 3 we have no time to spare with trolls or other Republican sourced intended distractions.

The coalition that elects Joe Biden president will be on a spectrum that runs from Angela Davis to Bill Kristol. If we can get over the goal line don’t expect such a coalition to hold together. Republicans will go back to being their normal selves and Democrats can’t rest on our laurels. There will be difficult work to be done re-inventing American society to be better after the coronavirus pandemic and finding our place in the world again.

What we know now is more people acknowledge electing Trump has been a mistake. We are on the crest of a wave of enormous non-partisan energy to vote Donald Trump out of office. We can’t be distracted from our number one task to help build that wave until the general election. After the election results are certified by the Congress we can take some time off. Not much though. There will be plenty of work for everyone to do.