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The new president of the Iowa Board of Regents, Robert Cramer, thinks that our state universities are too liberal. Cramer earned an engineering degree at Iowa State University, and does not appear to be impaired with a liberal point of view. The engineering faculty in Ames is not populated with anarchists or socialists; it is mainly engineers. If the agronomists are radical, be assured that nobody is listening to them complain about soil stewardship.
In fact, despite long suspicion of subversives among us, Iowa remains stuck in its conventions. With Republicans in control of everything, including the college restrooms, there is little fear that Marxists will seize College Hill in Cedar Falls. The wrestlers will not allow it.
Still, the conservatives are vigilant. They recently held a conference in the belly of the beast at Iowa City for a new center for free speech, at which the participants said that order must be enforced. Gag Professor Longhair or threaten his tenure before he forces your kid to read Emily Dickinson or others of that ilk. Not that the engineering students ever paid attention to socialists like Carl Sandburg or other Chicago left-wingers.
Cramer comes to us from the board of the Family Leader, evangelicals with dark money who unseated three Iowa Supreme Court justices for ruling that the state cannot discriminate against homosexuals as a class. His zeal now guides our higher education. Politics should have nothing to do with cancer trials and research at the University of Iowa, but Cramer and Crew will make certain that it does. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to to elect a new governor next year.
It’s a money game, after all. Matt Campbell left as head football coach at Iowa State where he earned $5 million per year to take over at Penn State where he can double his money. We are just a bunch of farmers and this business is too rich for our taste. Admit it.
You have to admit that $5 million won’t take you very far in Story City or Gilbert. You have to hope that the family can get by on $10 million in State College, Pa. For the kind of money we pay we thought the young man might hang around. We’re naive. The players packed it in and bailed on a bowl game (Iowa State must pay the Big 12 $500,000 for that offense).
It’s become a racket, especially football. It was better back when Iowa played Grinnell. It wasn’t about money. It was about athletics complementing education, the way it is at Buena Vista today. Matt Campbell may look back wistfully someday, sitting on his mound of money, to his days coaching Mount Union of Ohio to the D3 non-scholarship national championships. That’s a whole different game.
The Storm Lake City Council is well-satisfied with rising property taxes and potholes, so it appears as it laid a 3.5% raise to $168,000 on City Manager Kari Navratil. The city is digging a hole deeper than six feet with its lawsuit against Buena Vista County over lost tax increment financing revenue, such that the only ones benefiting so far are lawyers in Des Moines. The city is reducing services and blaming it on the legislature.
The status quo is the way to go: Spend more and get less. Negotiate in secret, then emerge with a plan for water rate increases until the wells run dry. This is our course. Raise taxes and fees until your teeth crack, but the kids get an ice cream cone and the manager gets a raise.
President Trump last week called Somalis “garbage” and sent his agents to Minneapolis to round them up and deport them. He said all the Somalis do is complain. They are ruining America, Trump said. “We don’t want them here,” he declared.
Here’s the problem: Nearly all the Somalis living in the Twin Cities are US citizens. That does not stop the terror machine.
The point is fear. If you are Black in the Twin Cities or Brown in Storm Lake, beware. Keep your head down. Don’t assert yourself. You can be a target of the government, citizen or not. Compliance is the order of the day in the Land of the Free. Follow the orders of the men wearing masks. This way to the gulag.
This is how fascism asserts itself. It is underway. Citizens become targets of the thugs. Racism thrives. Ignorance rules. We are in its throes. The government is terrorizing the people.
Thank goodness the people are fighting back. They have had their fill. Republican legislators from Minnesota are telling Trump to lay off. Trump with his blatant ignorance is unwittingly strengthening the position of Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, for defending his citizenry. People can take only so much abuse before they stand up to assert their rights.
As Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minneapolis, said, when things are going badly for Trump, cue the racism. Trump inadvertently elevated her by calling her out as “garbage.” She was the picture of composure and grace all over TV while the president looked like a buffoon defaming these people.
It was a shocking new low for Trump and for America, to call fellow citizens and a member of Congress “garbage.” He means it. What a loathsome statement. We must elect a Congress that will join Rep. Omar in resisting these thugs.
Farmers can take a measure of relief in President Trump’s announcement on Monday that he will dole out $12 billion in emergency relief for agricultural trade losses due to his tariffs. The problem is about four times the size of the bailout and promises to extend into 2026 as net income drops from poor commodity prices.
This is likely the first of several cash injections as Trump tries to hold on to Congress in the midterm elections next November. Trump larded more than $70 billion on farmers and agribusinesses when he started his trade war with China in his first term. The need is probably as acute as it was then as China has pretty much stopped buying US soybeans. China says it will resume purchasing our soy (when it is good and ready, and the price has dropped low enough). Those sales have not materialized.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered assurances that China is ready to get back to buying our products. The bailouts are needed as a bridge until then, he said.
Net farm income is not expected to be much better next year. More economic disaster payments are likely. As usual, the concern is that the money will not reach the producer but will get sucked up by the supply chain in rent and input costs.
This all plays out in the absence of a farm bill that is three years overdue. Ad hoc disaster payments were supposed to be a thing of the past. That was one reason we subsidize crop insurance.
"The current problems facing our agriculture system have been decades in the making due to failed policy that prioritizes commodity crops for export," said Joe Maxwell, president of Farm Action. "Without addressing the root causes... farmers will be left to continue relying on government assistance into the future."
China does not trust us as a reliable food supplier. China is investing in Brazil. We should adjust to that new reality as bridges to new markets look like a mirage. Meantime, the check should be in the mail.
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