Letters to the Editor: Lucy’s football is in the Iowa Senate

Every year, for 71 years, Lucy has pulled Charlie Brown’s football away at the last minute, just as he was about to kick it through the goal post. “Aaugh!” “Wump!” Charlie Brown’s kick failed again. This iconic scene from Peanuts reminds me of a less-than-humorous situation in the Iowa Legislature where bills about the use of eminent domain for CO2 pipelines pass in the House but die in the Senate.

This is the fourth year that landowners facing eminent domain for Summit Carbon Solutions’ CO2 pipeline have turned to the legislature for help. Last week, two of our bills passed overwhelmingly in the House. HF943 bans the use of eminent domain for CO2 pipelines on agriculture land, and HF639 addresses liability insurance and reforms at the Iowa Utilities Commission.

The bills have, as usual, been assigned to the Senate Commerce Committee. Predictably, this is the point where Lucy pulls the proverbial football. In the past three sessions, no landowner bills have received so much as a subcommittee hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee.

Why is that? Why is the Governor not supportive of property rights reform? Why do Senate leaders assign our bills to the hostile Commerce Committee? Why does the chairperson of the Senate Commerce Committee stonewall our requests for a hearing and run down the clock until it’s past the funnel deadline?

We can only speculate, but the facts are clear. During the past three years, our legislature failed to pass any laws to protect the property rights of Iowa landowners. During that time, Summit threatened us with eminent domain, hounded us to sign easements, and surveyed our land without permission. Summit also received a conditional permit for Phase 1 from the IUC to exercise eminent domain authority on more than four hundred landowners and applied for permits to condemn the land of hundreds more on Phase 2 of the project.

There are valid reasons for eminent domain reform in Iowa. Both the federal and state constitutions allow for the use of eminent domain by the government with just compensation, but only in cases of public use and necessity. There is no provision for a private entity to use eminent domain to take another’s private property for profit without any public use or need. Unlike water or natural gas, no one anxiously waits to access a CO2 pipeline.

Summit’s Midwest Carbon Express is not “just another pipeline.” It will transport supercritical CO2 which is an asphyxiant. Landowners, rightfully concerned about the proximity of a dangerous pipeline to their homes and businesses, should not be forced to agree to it through eminent domain.

Legislators in South Dakota and Minnesota understand this. Eminent domain cannot be used for CO2 pipelines in either state. The law does not ban CO2 pipelines in those states. It simply means they can only be constructed where landowners voluntarily choose to engage with the project.

It’s time to level the playing field. HF943 and HF639 passed overwhelmingly in the House. If Senate leaders once again try to railroad our bills, it’s time to make an end-run around them. The bills could be punted to a more favorable committee or moved to the floor with a Discharge Petition approved with a bipartisan team effort. There are more plays in the book that can make a touchdown with this political football before the buzzer ends the session if our legislators work together.

Good grief, Charlie Brown. After four years, it’s time to change the game plan and win protection for property rights in Iowa.

Bonnie Ewoldt, Milford, Crawford County land owner

Trump and Vance are embarrassing us

When I was a smart aleck teenager getting ready to go out at night with my friends, my mom and dad (who were Goldwater Republicans) would tell me: “Behave yourself in public, and don’t embarrass us in front of the neighbors.” As a fun-loving youth, I dismissed what they were telling me. But now, as a parent and grandparent, I see it as sage advice.

I thought of my mom and dad the other day when I read news stories about Donald Trump and JD Vance trying to bully Greenland and Denmark into submission. Watching Vance’s 23-minute press conference at a U.S. military base made me cringe. I was thoroughly chagrined, and outraged. Why are Trump and Vance doing this? Who else are they trying to threaten? I don’t remember Greenland being a big issue in voters’ minds last November.

Trump and Vance would do well to heed my parents’ wise counsel: Behave yourself and stop embarrassing us in front of our global neighbors.

Hugh Espey, Des Moines

MAGA hypocrisy

Here is the MAGA hypocrisy of the day. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik recently complained about fraud in Social Security, saying “Fraudsters always make the loudest noise.” Mr. Lutnick, you are describing your boss, who is always screaming “Witch hunt.”

Here is a thought for the day. Why would Chief Justice Roberts take the time to shelter the President from prosecution for crimes committed during his administration if the President wasn’t planning to commit some and the Chief Justice wasn’t expecting him to commit some? There would be no need for immunity if both these characters were expecting #47 to run an honest and legal operation, right? John Roberts knew what was coming and he wanted to enable it.

Now we are seeing presidential immunity being extended to cabinet members and White House staff, like those responsible for the “bomb Yemen” group chat war plans leak. This was the plan all along. The Chief Executive and his Chief Justice bootlicker John Roberts want to provide legal cover for any and all misfeasance, malfeasance, nonfeasance, and violent, anti-American behavior committed by anybody who takes on the sacred name of Donald Trump as savior of the world.

Kimball Shinkoskey, Woods Cross, Utah