Editorials: Cruelty hurt Trump

President Trump displayed his incoherence and indifference when he acknowledged during an interview that his immigration crackdown hurt him at the polls, while promoting the architect of his terror campaign to chief of staff. “I think it might be too tough, yeah,” Trump told “60 Minutes” in an interview taped on Friday, just as he installed policy czar Stephen Miller as chief of staff.

Trump said he deserves an A-plus for securing the border and shipping out bad hombres. Actually, Mexico played the biggest part in securing the border by stopping the flow of migrants from Central America. Trump acknowledged that a lot of people with good jobs got swept up just for being undocumented, which he implied was regrettable — though Trump never expresses regret. He said he wants to work with Democrats to help long-term workers gain legal status.

This is hard to square with the elevation of Miller, who drafted the Machiavellian mass deportation effort resulting in multiple shooting deaths that included peaceable US citizens. Yes, murdering law-abiding citizens might be too tough. Trump and Miller set the posture. They made clear from the gitgo that they intended to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible, criminal or not. They had no compunction about locking up a five-year-old in a concentration camp. We can’t forget the image of the old Hmong freedom fighter being hauled out, shirtless, into the Minnesota winter and wrongfully detained. Horrible stuff of nightmares.

Trump says he wants an immigration deal but he is duplicitous to the core. Miller is a schemer whose aims are malicious. They are not to be trusted. If Trump and Miller believe that an immigration deal will benefit them directly, something could happen. Losing Texas was real. Arizona is turning blue. Republicans lost whatever ground they previously gained with Latinos on economic issues in a massive wave that inundated the Rio Grande Valley.

You would like to think that Trump’s comments about going too far would help folks in Storm Lake sleep a little easier but they should not. We are living in a police state. Miller keeps his foot to the accelerator, with perceived full immunity as chief of staff. ICE has quotas to meet. None of that has changed. Trump is a convicted fraudster. His comments should be taken in that context. None of it makes much sense viewed from the outside. It’s the familiar Trump technique of dominating through confusion.

Democrats should call his bluff and put the Dream Act on his desk for signature first thing in January, and make those young people citizens. Force him to veto it. Attach to it a provision that gives workers with no crimes a permanent resident visa with a path to citizenship. No detours. Sen.-elect Josh Turek says he wants to work with Trump on immigration. No negotiation is necessary. Force the bill. Stop victimizing hard-working immigrants and their communities.

RFK2 is right about this

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is goofy. He is a lawyer, not a doctor who should not hold sway over vaccines or anything like it. But every once in a while the blind squirrel finds a nut, as RFK2 was found last week in North Dakota touting the virtues of conservation agriculture on a ranch near Bismarck. Kennedy said that soil health is directly linked to human health, and that we are killing the soil with chemicals. Credible science at Iowa State University tells us that he is right about this.

“If we can keep that healthy, we can maintain public health. It’s hard to keep it healthy if the nutrients that are supposed to be in the soils are not making it into the plants, then onto our tables or our plates,” Kennedy said. “Anything that we can do to reduce the intensity of chemical agriculture is just going to be good for the farmer all around.”

The nutrients, in the form of nitrate and phosphorous, are lost to the air and water. We lose about a third of our applied nitrogen by putting on too much at the wrong time. Again, ISU can tell us the right amounts. Nitrogen must be that cheap.

Kennedy saw how rotational grazing can restore soil health, improve pasture productivity and promote cleaner water. He said the Trump Administration is providing “off-ramps” to our wasteful chemical excesses if farmers choose them. He is not talking about necessary regulations. Few people are, which is a big part of the problem. A lot more folks would be grazing goats if that’s where the money was.

It would appear that Democrats have something to talk about with the Trump Administration on promoting conversation agriculture. We all want clean air and water. That leads to healthier communities. Again, the scientific research is in. Trump has said he is open to working with Democrats. This is a leading issue in Iowa. Sen.-elect Turek should seize the opportunity for real action in a comprehensive farm bill. He could restore nutrition programs along with it. This is what voters expect: clean air and water, healthy food and rural communities, affordable living.

Transparency, at least?

Gov.-elect Rob Sand has indicated that he will retain all state agency directors except for education and management. That suggests more of the same from Des Moines if you keep the same cast of characters who have driven Iowa backwards so hard, so fast. Such is centrism that tastes like Reynolds Lite.

At least, the incoming governor who campaigned on honesty and transparency could give us a clue what’s going on with that steel mill in Lee County — no precise location yet, folks — to which the legislature committed $1.5 billion that we do not have. It would be nice if Sand could find out from Economic Development Director Debi Durham, who presumably will remain on the state payroll, where the steel mill will go, if it is actually happening, and how much additional corporate welfare will be necessary (roads, rail, barge facilities, power infrastructure) for a Minnesota company owned by a petrochemical company from India.

We should be privy to this information by now. That is not how Gov. Reynolds and Durham have done things. We trust that Sand does things differently.

SAND ALSO SAID THAT he is drafting plans to cut the state budget deficit from over $1 billion to half that amount. He has said he wants to legalize marijuana to generate more tax revenue (maybe over $100 million). He also wants to impose limits on school vouchers for the wealthy. He will need Republican support in the legislature. Sand also supports generating 3/8ths of a cent on the state sales tax for natural resources — approved by voters 15 years ago in a constitutional amendment but ignored by legislators ever since. At the time, voters believed this would be additional funding for natural resources, not replacement funding to finance income tax cuts. Voters did not intend to cure a budget deficit when they voted for clean air and water. Sand has not suggested it, and we hope he can guard against that money evaporating into the ether of deficits.

Comments from Sen. Lynn Evans, R-Aurelia, and Rep. Megan Jones, R-Sioux Rapids, indicate that they are eager to work with Sand on better fiscal policy. We trust that is not just generosity during a honeymoon that ends with his inauguration. Sand has already made serious overtures to solicit Republican support and deserves reciprocation. Voters are pretty clear that they want politicians to work together.

IOWA WAS AMONG THE LEADING states in the swing of male voters under age 45 from red to blue. The shift in the Tall Corn State was at 33%. Results included three pro-choice women getting elected to the House, a Democratic senator and a Democratic governor. Lack of economic opportunity drove the shift. Young people voted in droves against a weird sort of Puritan politics ushered into Iowa from some think tank in Virginia. Younger voters elected a former Presbyterian seminarian to the US Senate from Texas, a Methodist minister to the US Senate from Kansas, and two ordained pastors in Iowa’s congressional delegation (Presbyterian and ELCA Lutheran). These young people are not godless communists after all. They just want a fair shot at a decent life in a safe community here in the Bible Belt.