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When I saw Mike Delaney’s apples in Iowa Letter to the Editor it brought back so many memories. I grew up on a small farm near Paton until I was 10 years old. By then I could milk cows, slop hogs, walk beans and corn, gather eggs, drive a small Ford tractor to pull wagons, tend a big garden and yes, pick apples. We had a small orchard, maybe five trees. Loved that apple pie. We had a small cream separator in our small basement. We did live off the land. We had a one story house, a machine shed and a chicken house. Do you know what’s there now? Another unneeded corn field.
In 1957 our what I call despicable, landlord doubled the rent. Yes he didn’t raise it, he doubled it. I heard it was to drive us off so his brother could get in. I so wish he could have found another way to help his brother. The old man wasn’t having it so we moved to town. I loved that place so much that I took some rocks off the driveway and bark off some trees when we left. I think that was the first prod towards being a grumpy old man I am now. I also think working for a couple companies that both got sold to bigger companies a couple times finished off the process.
Mike, that’s what happened to that hardy family farm. The rich people drove us off just like they do now. We grew beef, pork, eggs, vegetables and yes, apples, and now it’s only corn they can’t get rid of. Humans seem intent to finish ourselves off. But we can help ourselves with a revolution at the ballot box this November and vote the Democrats in who actually care about people or we can continue to go down, down, down.
Do you care about your kids? Which is smarter?
Dave Haynes, Duncombe
P.S. “If you’re afraid to offend you can’t be honest.” — Thomas Paine
With Election Day (Nov. 3) quickly approaching, I keep thinking about a yoga class I frequented in Costa Mesa, Calif. John Childers taught that class and after putting us through an hour or so of contortions, he would talk to us in savanna about this ancient Iroquois philosophy stating, “In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.”
What is the meaning and origin of this quote? I would like to apply it to our choices that will be coming up at the ballot box. These leaders we choose, are they able to promote choices that leave a sustainable, healthy world for their and our descendants? Are they aware that our current resources are only borrowed from the future? Can they use their power to facilitate community welfare and stewardship of the land?
The office of Iowa Secretary of Agriculture is not usually one that gets a lot of attention, but this year it deserves our unrelenting focus. We have Mike Naig, who has occupied that office for the last eight years, and has our water quality improved? Has he rocked some boats, and spoken up against the special interests? Not really, just some Band-Aid attempts to the tune of more than a billion dollars. It’s time to consider Chris Jones for our next Iowa Secretary of Agriculture.
My family obtained land in Wright County in the mid 1800s, and I lived my first 18 years on that farm. My grandfather Jim retired around 1948 so two of his sons could farm if they chose to, and they did. They were industrious, inventive and when they could they acquired more land. I have such vivid memories of being in the car with Mom taking them coffee and some snack mid afternoon in the fields. They were doing what they felt was the best for their farm and families. And our little town of Rowan, and all the couples they socialized with mostly were also farmers. They followed the rules, but were not scientists, agronomists.
This trajectory now that we are on is not sustainable. Chris Jones has reasonable practical solutions that will turn us toward a better more sustainable direction. It will not happen overnight. But if he doesn’t get in, my concern is it might not happen, probably won’t.
Mary Louise Burt, Ames
Justin Smith Morrill, the impetus behind land-grant universities like ISU, supported progressive taxation.
When the income tax was created to fund the Civil War Morrill wrote each man should pay taxes “proportionate to his ability to pay.” Polls show Americans still share that belief; our current number one concern about taxes is the low amounts paid by wealthy individuals and large corporations. Warren Buffet famously noted that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary.
Nonetheless, despite a long-standing concern for tax fairness, legislators in Iowa placed on the ballot a proposed constitutional amendment that would in essence guarantee wealthy individuals and large companies no future adjustments to our unfair income tax structure. When Iowa’s progressive tax was replaced with a single flat rate last year, the 10,000 Iowa households making more than $500,000 received a $340,000,000 tax break. This proposed amendment is designed to make it very difficult to stop that special interest tax break.
Currently, Iowa faces a seemingly permanent annual budget deficit of over a billion dollars. The state is avoiding bankruptcy by spending down Covid funds and rainy day reserves and those will be depleted fairly soon.
What will happen if this amendment passes is predictable. Sales taxes, which are highly regressive, and have already been raised multiple times are not protected by this proposal. They will be raised again, as will other smaller, regressive taxes like the gas tax. And services we rely on and value, such as quality public education, public safety, libraries, and so forth, will decline. I’m voting no on the proposed amendment.
Why agree to higher sales tax and fewer services just to allow wealthy individuals and corporations to avoid income taxes proportionate to their ability to pay?
Sue Ravenscroft, Ames
Are you tired of the smear, fear and often outright lies from the commercials of candidates vying for your votes in this election? Zach Lahn says “you can look it up.” Please do. It’s easy to Google someone’s voting record and background. Don’t rely on social media or cable and tv news outlets for your information as they have been bought by billionaires too, and only tell you what they want you to hear.
Elon Musk has pledged over $100 million to help maintain the GOP’s control. Does that mean Musk will help Iowa with out problems with contaminated water, rising cancer rates and a failing economy? I think we know the answer to that. Don’t let billionaires like Musk buy your vote.
Pat Grassley says his priorities in this election are expanded healthcare, water quality and cancer research. Where has he been the last 20 years (elected in 2007)? Now that the Democrats are prioritizing clean water and rising cancer rates as top issues in our state, Grassley is jumping onboard. It’s too little, too late.
Imagine how many lives might have been saved if the legislature would have taken seriously the warnings they received from water monitors the last 20 years. Articles from the Des Moines Register, Waterloo Courier and Waverly paper starting in August 2006 warned us about water issues and rising cancer rates. And “you can look it up!”
It’s it time we elected a cancer scientist, Dr. Shawn Ellerbroek, who has researched cancer his entire career to work for us in Des Moines? Let’s put our state and country above party in this election. New people, new ideas and a new direction. It’s time to rotate the crops and send the incumbents home.
Kathy Folkerts, Waverly
The current controversy over artificial intelligence reminds me of the response to another technological breakthrough. In 1975, the breakthrough tech of the day was recombinant DNA (rDNA for short). It clearly showed great promise but many were scared that scientists would create “superbugs” that would kill us all.
One researcher was planning on putting a gene from a cancer-causing virus into a common bacterium that lives in our gut. The biology community came together to rein in rDNA until more was known. In February 1975 a group of biologists, lawyers and physicians held a conference in Asilomar, Calif., to adopt guidelines for rDNA experiments. They came up with a very detailed set of safety guidelines tailored for experiments with low, moderate and high risk, and banned altogether some thought to be quite dangerous.
The field policed itself, with minimal government involvement, and the guidelines were followed voluntarily and essentially universally. As more experience was accumulated, the rules were gradually relaxed — but not eliminated — over the next years. rDNA has more than lived up to its promise and it has allowed large numbers of treatments, cures, diagnostic tests, crops resistant to pesticides and insects, and basic knowledge of life. It has caused no disasters; claims that Covid is an artificial virus are unproven and very unlikely.
A similar conference should regulate AI, but this will be more difficult. The players in AI are big corporations trying to make huge fortunes, and corporate research is done in secret. The players in early rDNA research were individual scientists pursuing truth and prestige, and their research was done more or less openly. Companies nearly always put profits over ethics, while scientists’ most important goal is to be well respected by their peers.
The conference to set rules for AI should involve computer people, neuroscientists, lawyers, ethicists, psychologists, sociologists and experts in computer control of infrastructure. As with rDNA, let AI proceed, but with safety rules. Given lack of corporate morals, the guidelines need to be made into laws. As we learn more, those laws might be relaxed, just as the rDNA guidelines were.
Another side of this issue is the infrastructure needed to operate the technology. Biology labs are generally small with minimal impact on the community, and even industrial scale bioindustry is not very disruptive. Data centers to run AI use lots of land, enormous amounts of electric power and lots of cooling water, putting large stresses on community resources. I think data centers should be ok if 1) they get no tax incentives, 2) they make their own power using renewable energy, 3) they reuse their water and have minimal net water expenditure after setting up, and 4) the local community allows them through zoning ordinances.
Yet another concern is that AI will cause many jobs to become obsolete and disappear. This happens with every technological advance; we don’t have many blacksmiths anymore, But new and different jobs will be created, and overall productivity will increase.
If we regulate AI well, it can fulfill its promise and not pose an existential threat. And AI can help us do that.
Jim Eliason, Storm Lake
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