ANF, Impossible Burgers, and Exalt the Librarians
$50k>$250k
So many have recently written here and elsewhere about the gang of fools and fascists that comprise the Iowa legislature that I’ve tried to avoid the topic if only for my own peace of mind. Twothaches, however, have displaced this year’s Des Moines Debacle as my least favorite thing to think about, so I started to think I should write about it. So here goes.
We’ve heard a lot about bills related to “Water Quality” and calling them such is as oxymoronic as the deafening silence from the media to call them what they are—Water Pollution Bills. Their objective is not to improve water quality but rather enable the polluters and allow state government and Big Ag to more effectively soft pedal the pollution. One of these bills would allow livestock operations to apply manure prior to DNR approval of manure/nutrient management plans. To me this seems like petty retribution for environmental groups’ opposition to the Clayton County Supreme Beef cattle confinement located mere yards from Bloody Run Creek, Iowa’s highest quality stream over the past 25 years. Supreme came close to overtopping their 39-million-gallon lagoon because a judge’s order prevented application of the manure until Iowa DNR corrected errors made in their initial approval of the Nutrient Management Plan. OF COURSE the bill was proposed by House Agriculture Committee Chairperson Mike Sexton, whose wife Becky in her capacity as owner of the cleverly-named Twin Lakes Environmental has consulted for Supreme Beef’s owners. Shameless conflict of interest is now de rigueur for Big Ag and the legislature.
Another bill appears intended to hand complete control complete of Iowa’s Watershed Management Authorities (WMAs) to Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig. In gentler times (2010), Iowa lawmakers passed legislation authorizing the creation of WMAs as a mechanism for cities, counties, Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCDs) and stakeholders to cooperatively engage in watershed planning and management. Politically it was a middle-of-road idea to improve water quality without regulation that might pinch farmers and agribusiness. Although clearly a good-faith idea, the WMAs have not been game changers for water quality because the Ag ‘partners’ have not always or even usually been of a good-faith nature. The North Raccoon WMA became a near laughingstock for trying to exile its urban counties into a separate entity, firing its coordinator, and because watershed farmers refused to adopt conservation practices that would have been 100% funded with public dollars.
The new proposed bill would put the WMAs through a finishing school that would teach them to be subservient wives to Boss Hog and Kingston Corn. No longer could WMAs spend money on water monitoring (accountability is not part of the Water Pollution program for Naig and other Agrepublicans) and funds would have to be spent on practices approved by the Nag that Naig has ridden to near-death these past several years, the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy. The bill would also change ‘Authority’ to ‘Partnership’ because, you know, people in agriculture are so insecure that words like authority threaten their sense of manhood, even in cases like this where the word conveys no actual ‘authority’ to force anybody to do anything.
Iowa Democrats and environmental groups should very carefully contemplate this power play on the WMAs, which have long been considered a virtue signal sent out by liberals and environmental groups that they were willing to forgo regulation of farm pollution for this cooperative and voluntary approach. Much like the Batch and Build scheme conjured up by Democrat John Norwood (which was never a very good idea in the first place), Mike Naig and Republicans have rustled the WMAs out of the Democratic corral and will bastardize them to funnel more money into the pockets of farmers while using them as a PR tool to sling even more bullshit about the success of the state’s nutrient strategy. This does not bode well for the Iowa Water and Land Legacy Act (IWLL), passed by a solid 63% of voters in 2010 but still left unfunded by the legislature. Most Democrats and conservation groups are still calling for Republicans to honor the will of the voters and fund it with a sales tax increase. But it’s as clear as desert daylight that if Republicans ever agree to fund IWLL it will be a disaster for Iowa. They surely will dishonor the spirit of the vote and rework the voter-approved funding formula so it becomes an exercise program for Harold Farmer, i.e. walking back and forth from the house to the mailbox to collect checks. I guess the upside is that Harold might shed a few ellbees (lbs) in the process.
Democrats and the environmental NGOs should abandon ship from USS IWLL now, and quit talking about it.
The legislature’s enthusiasm for stroking agriculture doesn’t stop with the environment and another proposed bill (Senate Study Bill 3162) “prohibits the Board of Regents from conducting research into the production or use of manufactured protein products.” If you think this mauling of freedom of speech and academic freedom is an impossible burger going forward, think again. Republicans reticent about such things might miss the opportunity to get a brown shirt and jackboots on uniform day at the capitol if they don’t go along with the rest of the Agryan Nation.
If you also think the universities might muster the courage to even say ‘boo’ about this or any similar future bills, you are sadly mistaken. Thanks to Republican divestment in public education, the state’s contribution to student tuition has been going south on a Fast Train to Georgia the past several decades, and the Unis are only too happy at this point to suckle up to the Big Ag teet and just let them run the show lock, stock and barrel. They’d have named Hilton Coliseum the Corn Palace a long time ago if the name hadn’t already been taken. And rumor has it that the UI football program is trying to schedule a second ANF game, this one with the University of Alabama to be billed as the America Needs Fascists Football Classic. The Hawkeye punter will definitely get a workout in that one.
I’m done with being alarmed at how the universities in this country (and Iowa) have decided to lie down and abdicate their role as purveyors of the truth in order to secure their cozy den (and their $250k salaries) in some back corner of the ivory tower. Orwell wrote repeatedly 80 years ago about how the supposedly liberal intelligentsia was only too happy to go along with Fascism when it made sense for them to do so, and so we should’ve known it was coming. Elliot Cohen recently wrote a piece in The Atlantic about how the Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn commented similarly: “Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad.” Cohen himself said “One is hard-pressed today to name more than a handful of truly courageous professors, deans, and university presidents willing to jeopardize their careers and their social standing by taking unpopular stands.”
We hear a lot these days about how Republicans are out to end university tenure. If the best we can hope for from scholars is that they act as if they’re civil servants like the meek little mice that populate the Wallace Building, and as long as they can be counted on to put their big salaries and other parochial interests ahead of the common good, then by god yes, get rid of tenure and pay them like public school teachers instead of corporate executives.
Finally, EXALT THE LIBRARIANS!, who are now the true guardians of truth and knowledge in Iowa. Every one of them has more courage than any ten university faculty and any 100 university administrators when it comes to standing up to the fascist legislature. There’s never been more proof that $50k buys more bravery than $250k.
Those who love how Trump "tells it like it is" should read your stuff. No one else in Iowa is doing this, that I know of.
"Democrats and the environmental NGOs should abandon ship from USS IWLL now, and quit talking about it." I agree. The words of Einstein come to mind: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.