Iowa’s Largest Utilities To Slash Energy Efficiency Programs

Posted on September 6, 2018 by Trish Nelson

Action Alert from CCI – Iowa Citizens for Comunity Improvement

Right now, Iowa’s two largest, for-profit monopoly energy utilities, MidAmerican Energy and Alliant Energy, are developing their next 5-year energy efficiency plans. These plans will be reviewed and approved by the Iowa Utilities Board in the coming months.

We’ve seen their plans, and they aren’t good.

Both companies are proposing to slash popular energy efficiency programs.

Why? Because if we use less energy, they make less money.

Sign our petition to the Iowa Utilities Board: Don’t let MidAmerican and Alliant gut energy efficiency!

This is happening because of the disastrous energy bill the legislature passed and Gov. Reynolds signed earlier this year.

MidAmerican and Alliant fought hard for this bill. Not only does it slash popular energy efficiency programs, it also cuts public oversight, threatens 20,000 green energy jobs, and legalizes eminent domain for natural gas pipelines. All for the sake of more money.

And, MidAmerican and Alliant aren’t hurting for profits. By law, they are guaranteed an 11% annual profit. In 2015 and 2016, MidAmerican’s profits totaled over $1 BILLION paid for by their ratepayers.

Please take two minutes to help us push back against these greedy energy giants, and stand up for energy efficiency, customer savings, and a 100% clean energy future.

We want to deliver at least 500 signatures to the Iowa Utilities Board September 13 – the initial deadline to file comments on MidAmerican’s plan.  

Add your name to the petition here: Tell the IUB to stand

Thanks for all you do.

Let’s put people and planet first,

Matt Ohloff,
Climate Justice organizer

Posted in Blog for Iowa | 1 Comment

Bill Clinton and Chaka Khan Honor The Queen of Soul

Posted on September 5, 2018 by Trish Nelson

Farewell, Aretha.

ICYMI – Watch this incredible performance by Chaka Khan. Watch all the way to the end.

Posted in Blog for Iowa | Comments Off on Bill Clinton and Chaka Khan Honor The Queen of Soul

Loebsack Questions To EPA On Hardship Waiver Remain Unanswered

Posted on September 4, 2018 by Trish Nelson

Congressman Dave Loebsack

After 4 Months, EPA Fails to Fully Respond to Loebsack Questions on RFS “Hardship” Waiver

Washington, D.C. – After four months, Congressman Dave Loebsack finally received a response from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the specific questions he had asked regarding the agency’s use of the small refinery exemption program. In April, then EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt testified in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which Loebsack serves on, about the small refinery exemption, also known as a ‘hardship’ waiver. During his testimony, Pruitt was unable to answer many of the questions posed to him at the time. After the hearing, Loebsack submitted detailed questions for the EPA to provide answers.

In a recently received letter, four months after the hearing, the EPA again failed to fully answer many of the questions that Loebsack had submitted. The full request Loebsack submitted to the EPA in April for additional information is below.

“It is disappointing that the EPA took four months to respond to inquiries regarding the demand destruction done by small refinery exemptions. In fact, many of the questions I submitted still remain unanswered,” said Loebsack. “These giveaways, so called hardship waivers, need to stop before more irreparable harm is done to our farmers and rural communities across the country.”

Congressman Dave Loebsack Questions for the Record for Administrator Pruitt

Administrator Pruitt, as I indicated to you at the hearing, I have a lot of concerns about the way in which the small refinery exemptions within the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program have been handled by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). There needs to be much more transparency and public accountability in the with respect to the small refinery waiver exemptions. Please provide responses to the following questions regarding small refinery exemptions within the RFS.

  1. What is the total number of refinery waiver applications that EPA received in each year from 2013 through 2017?
  2. For each year from 2013 through 2017, how many waivers did the EPA grant?
  3. What companies have received waivers for each year from 2013 through 2017?
  4. What is the total volume of biofuel obligation represented by the waivers granted for each year 2013 through 2017?
  5. What is the EPA process for confirming that each applicant falls beneath the 75,000-barrell throughput capacity?
  6. Please confirm how the gallons waived under the small refinery exemption process are handled.  Are the gallons reassigned to remaining obligated parties for blending?  Are they reassigned within the same compliance year?  If they are not reassigned to the remaining obligated parties, what is the disposition of those gallons relative to the overall renewable volume obligation set in the annual rule?
  7. Did you inform President Trump or White House staff of the unusually large number of small refinery exemptions EPA was granting and of the potential effects on the renewable fuel market of exempting additional gallons and facilities and the fact that these actions would not be well received by the agricultural community?
  8. EPA claimed recently that the Agency did not change the criteria for granting exemptions from those used in past years.  Yet, numerous press reports indicate the Agency has granted almost double the amount of waivers than have been granted in past years.  What is your explanation for the Agency’s granting of an unusually high number of waivers under this program as compared to past years?  If the Agency is applying different criteria, please provide  a an explanation of the changes and the justification for initiating the new criteria.
  9. Did EPA consult with the Department of Energy on each of the applications for a small refinery exemption for 2016 and 2017?  For how many of the applications reviewed by DOE for these two compliance years did EPA disagree with DOE’s recommendation to grant or deny the exemption?

CONNECT WITH DAVE

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Will This Labor Day Mark The Beginning Of The End Of The Trump Debacle?

Posted on September 3, 2018 by Trish Nelson


Huge thanks to Paul Deaton for taking over as BFIA weekday editor for July-August. 

Happy Labor Day!

“Labor Day is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”  – Department of Labor

But for me, this year, Labor Day has another meaning.  Labor Day is the unofficial start of election season.  This November is one of the most important elections in our lifetime, even though it is a “non-presidential” year.  Pundits say it will be a symbolic referendum on Trump. But beyond mere symbolism, it will be our one shot at containing the daily harm he and his fellow Republicans are doing to the country.

When Donald Trump took office in 2016, everyone I know held off pure panic by telling ourselves, “If we can survive the next two years and elect a Democratic congress in 2018, it may be possible to save the country from ruin.”  That was the singular hope back in November of 2016, to avoid taking a deep dive into the depths of despair. And that is the hope that we’ve been hanging onto for the last two terrifying years.

The time has now come to get serious about throwing every single Republican out of office, because they are all enablers of Donald Trump, the pussy-grabber-in-chief,  who somehow became the accidental president.

There is a lot of work to do in addition to calling and door-knocking, if that’s not your thing.  You can donate to campaigns, help with mailings, register voters at events, volunteer to work the polls on election day, post a yard sign, talk to your friends and neighbors, attend fund raisers, have a house party, write a letter to the editor.

If you are already involved and active in politics, you have probably been writing to your Republican senators, members of congress, and state reps, telling them what you think about their horrible policies.

It is now time to stop doing that.

The Iowa Republicans are unpersuadable.  That is the reality in today’s political climate.  It is an exercise in futility contacting Grassley or Ernst or Blum or Young or King or any Republican. Whatever you want to say to them, put it in a letter to the editor of your local paper instead, where they will see it – because they do pay attention to media that is about them – and where other voters who are persuadable, will see it.  Speaking to them through the media is way more effective than writing directly to this current batch of Republicans who lie anyway, and say they are not even hearing from us, and that they are only hearing from constituents who just happen to support their views.

To illustrate how effective one letter can be, read this excellent letter to the editor in the Cedar Rapids Gazette last Monday exposing Joni Ernst for lying about receiving NRA money.

If everyone who writes letters to their representatives would instead or also write a letter like this to their local paper, that would be a winning strategy.

Well done, Tyler Juffernbruch of Indianola.

###

In regard to Sen. Joni Ernst’s falsehood that she has never received dollars from the NRA, she owes her constituents an apology and clarification.

When asked if NRA donations affect policymaking, she claimed, “(The NRA does) not give us money. That would be illegal and I would be driving a nicer car.”

To clarify: Ernst may not be receiving money directly from the NRA, but as a PAC, that money is “indirectly” streaming into her re-election fund. Whether that comes in campaign contributions or independent ads in support of Ernst, it’s still dollars going her way. Further, her claim attests to the dishonesty and half-truths current elected officials are willing to commit in order to maintain their re-election appeal.

We must hold elected officials accountable. Unequivocally, money impacts policy. As Ernst’s constituents, we should demand she sever ties with the NRA or openly admit the money she received.

We deserve honesty, free from half-truths or deceiving claims. She owes her constituents an apology.

Tyler Juffernbruch
Indianola

The Iowa Republicans have been instrumental in Trump’s success. And they are standing by their man. So they have to go. We have four representatives in the U.S. congress and two senators. Of these six, five are Republicans. Republicans currently hold the Iowa governorship, the Iowa Senate, and the Iowa House. It would be a blow to Trump if Iowa were to turn blue. So let’s do our job and turn Iowa blue.

photo/Bloomberg

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Rob Sand Is The Watchdog Iowa Needs

Posted on September 2, 2018 by Paul Deaton

Rob Sand and Family

It’s time to wake up the watchdog by electing Rob Sand as state auditor.

State auditor is a low glamor elected office responsible to audit the books, records and accounts of every department of state government annually. Iowans should want someone who is competent and knows how to go after irregularities in our state government. Iowa needs the watchdog we don’t have in incumbent Republican Mary Mosiman.

Sand has prosecuted more public corruption and major financial crime than anyone else in Iowa over the last decade. He has been a watchdog for Iowa, holding insiders accountable when they abuse their power and violate the trust of others — a perfect work experience for a state auditor.

The current occupant of the office has been asleep at the wheel. A local municipality tried her office for a mandatory annual audit. The experience was not positive. They had been getting audits from a CPA firm trained in state accounting procedures and everything went well. They tried using the state auditor’s office for the annual audit and there were so many issues the city returned to using a CPA firm the following year.

Mosiman claims the auditor should be a certified public accountant, although there is no constitutional requirement, and past auditors have not been CPAs. Here’s Sand’s response, posted in response to my query on Twitter:

The state auditor does Iowa’s public corruption investigations. My opponent has a “cpa only” mindset: refuses to hire anyone w/ law-enforcement experience for law enforcement investigations! Having only cpas is like a football team w 11 QBs playing at once.

When Sand was hired to be Attorney General Tom J. Miller’s assistant attorney general in 2010, he spent much of his time in office investigating and prosecuting tax credit fraud related to Iowa’s film making tax credit program, according to his campaign website. Next, Deputy Attorney General Tom H. Miller, a Republican, recruited Sand to Area Prosecutions, a small group of prosecutors who take on many of the state’s toughest cases. There, he became the youngest prosecutor in the division and Iowa’s first-ever Assistant Attorney General focused on prosecuting financial crime. This is what’s needed in the state auditor’s office.

Take a look at Rob Sand for state auditor and vote for him on Nov. 6. Sand is the watchdog Iowa needs.

Check out Rob Sand’s campaign website here.
To donate to Rob Sand for Iowa, click here.

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Tim Gannon on Iowa Press

Posted on September 1, 2018 by Paul Deaton

A message from the Tim Gannon for Agriculture campaign:

Were you able to watch the first Secretary of Agriculture debate on Iowa Press last weekend? If not, check it out by clicking below.

The entire time, Tim’s opponent twisted himself into knots to avoid criticizing the current administration’s anti-agriculture policies. Unlike him, I know that Tim is ready to stand up for Iowa’s small towns and farming communities.

In the remaining days of this race, I know that Tim will continue fighting to make farming more profitable, work to improve our soil health and water quality, and support increased funding for public ag research. There is too much at stake in this race to sit this one out. Help in our fight to renew rural Iowa by contributing to our campaign today!

Jack Segal
Gannon for Iowa

Learn more about Tim Gannon and the campaign, or donate on their website.

Posted in 2018 Election Campaign | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Gardening In End Times

Posted on August 31, 2018 by Paul Deaton

Japanese Beetles Enjoying a Pear

(Editor’s Note: Trish Nelson will return  from summer break next week. Thanks for all the likes, clicks, views and comments while I’ve been filling in.)

I’ve been a gardener since we got married.

We planted a few tomatoes near the duplex we rented in Iowa City the spring after the wedding. As we lived our lives, raised our daughter, and sought economic stability, we either planted a garden or harvested what was there. When we owned a home, first in Merrillville, Indiana, and then in Big Grove, the garden got bigger and I became a better gardener. There is evidence in this year’s abundant harvest.

It didn’t come naturally even though gardening is elemental. The brief narrative of my gardener’s life.

As I step back from the working world to focus on home life what seems clear is society is moving at a startling pace toward disaster. Our industrial society consumes everything useful in nature, leaving us with foul air and water, depleted soil, polluted and acidified oceans devoid of marine life, and a warming world with all the consequences that yields. The earth will survive as it has. We people seem to be on the downside of our prominence. In multiple ways these are end times.

The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek asserts there is a chance for a new beginning in the terminal crisis in which human society finds ourselves. His arguments are not convincing to us regular humans.

What do we do?

What we have done is argue about approaches. Should we have a carbon tax? Should we ban abortion? Should we ban plastic straws? Is wind, sun, nuclear or natural gas a better source of electricity? Should we cut taxes and reduce government’s role in our lives? Should we become socialists, or even worse, democratic socialists? Should we let go of Hillary’s emails? Should we all just try to get along? Approaches don’t work and we should let go of them all.

The better question to ask is what story do we want to tell? As others have said, notably author Joan Didion, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” What narrative will take us out of the current crisis?

For me it’s “I’m becoming a better gardener.”

Regardless of pending social collapse we must go on with our lives. Partly to keep our sanity, and partly — importantly — to take steps toward a more livable world. We will never go back to the Iowa of 1832 before the great division and clear cutting began. What we can do is plant the seeds of a better life where we live. Our forebears left us a disaster. What can we do about it? Make the best of it with forward-looking narratives for the next generations.

I get it that many people don’t have means to do more than survive. When I see the abundance of our garden it’s hard to believe people go without a meal. Yet they do, in large numbers. We can feed a couple of them, but is that enough? It’s something.

The essence of the narrative is the verb to become. “I seem to be a verb,” R. Buckminster Fuller wrote. I seem to be that verb. We are not predestined to anything except our human span of nine decades, and that only if we are lucky. We live in an imperfect society that beckons engagement. I’m not sure working toward perfection is as good as doing something positive is. Knowing what to do requires a better narrative. One that hasn’t been invented for the 21st Century and beyond.

I plan to work on a better narrative, although garden in end times doesn’t seem too bad.

~ First Posted at On Our Own: Sustaining a Life in a Turbulent World

Posted in Climate Change | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Hard Road To Winning

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Paul Deaton

My first election campaign spoiled me.

I stopped at the Democratic headquarters in Davenport, Iowa in 1964, after paying the bill for my newspaper route, to stuff envelopes during Lyndon Johnson’s re-election campaign. Other campaign workers gave me a campaign button as a reward for helping out.

Johnson won that year in a landslide which became a formative expectation about Democratic politics. However, with the 1968 Democratic national convention in Chicago, Hubert H. Humphrey’s loss, and the election of Richard Nixon my attitude changed. I didn’t understand what happened.

Since then, Democrats have never had an easy go of it. It wasn’t until the 2006 election of Dave Loebsack to the U.S. Congress that I experienced electoral jubilation similar to 1964. I’d gone home after the polls closed to watch the returns on the T.V. When it became clear Loebsack had a chance to win I drove to the county seat and joined in the celebration as 30-year incumbent Jim Leach conceded the election to Loebsack. That election didn’t just happen. My work to replace Leach began the previous election cycle and was regular and persistent. The same can be said of the many local Democrats who helped Loebsack win. Winning demanded a lot of hard work.

There is talk of a Democratic wave in 2018 but I don’t know about that. Our politics seems broken. People have hardened against the 45th president — withdrawn from society. For some the egregious behavior of the president and his marauding troop of grifters has drawn them out to participate in campaigns. Many — I’d say most — want no part of it. People have not only hardened against Trump, but against politics in its many forms. Heaven knows there is plenty to do to live a life, much less raise a family in 2018 without politics. The political dynamics that gave us big wins in the past are irrevocably changed.

I volunteer a few hours a week with a local campaign and will do more beginning in September. Individual actions, while remaining important, are not enough. I attended an event with State Senator Joe Bolkcom of Iowa City where he said we should band together with like-minded people if we want to impact policy. The idea goes against the grain of rugged individualism that characterizes many of our lives. As Hillary Clinton said during the 2016 campaign, “We are stronger together.” What holds true for elections and public policy has broader application.

I don’t know what happened with LBJ’s re-election, except it had mostly to do with JFK’s assassination and continuing the hope he inspired in us as citizens. History has shown us the worm can turn on landslide elections. The re-election campaign of Ronald Reagan serves as the penultimate example, which begs the question, “what’s next?”

There haven’t been any landslides since Reagan and may not be again for a long time. With the rise of the internet, people are more connected than ever and this has served to harden us in silos the way intercontinental ballistic missiles were during the Cold War. There remains an untapped power in the electorate but no one has found the control room in the age of Trump. There’s no clear path to unleashing citizens to rein in the corruption. Just the hard work of building an electorate to vote for Democratic candidates.

As my summer of writing for Blog for Iowa closes, I’m thinking not only of the coming general election, but what’s next. You can’t repeat the past, as Nick Carraway said in The Great Gatsby. The problem with our politics is there are too many Jay Gatsbys and Tom and Daisy Buchanans obscuring the view of our potential. To achieve a progressive future, we have to be able to understand what it looks like. For that we need to step outside politics in the age of Trump for a while.

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Late Summer Reading – 2018 Version

Posted on August 29, 2018 by Paul Deaton

Black Elk and Family Photo Credit – Religion News

If you’re like me, most of what we read is on line articles.

I also read full length books and have a goal on Goodreads to finish 16 this year. Among the ones I’ve finished and recommend are: Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays by Paul Kingsnorth; Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean; Natchez Burning by Greg Iles; A Kitchen in France: A Year of Cooking in my Farmhouse by Mimi Thorisson; and A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore.

A lot of people don’t read full length books, so going into fall, here is a list of five short pieces worth the time to be better informed about progressive issues.

The dairy business is going through significant change with sales prices below the cost of production, farm consolidation, and smaller operators going out of business. For a straight up no humor version of dairy from the farm community, I recommend book marking James Dickrell at milkbusiness.com. His piece on Monday was about trade negotiations with Mexico. Details about the new agreement are sketchy at best, according to Dickrell. Find his article U.S., Mexico Reach Trade Deal Agreement here.

You may have seen Nicholas Pollock’s article in The Atlantic on Monday. Titled
America Soured on My Multiracial Family, Pollock discusses issues related to Americans adopting foreign-born children and points out parents seeking to adopt are disproportionately white and adopted children are not. Parents increasingly face a social ugliness which he explains. You can find the article here.

Kira Lerner reported on Think Progress how a majority black, rural Georgia county decided to close polling places based on their non-compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. “’It’s a diabolical move: citing one civil rights statute (the ADA) as the justification for violating another (the VRA),’ Jim Tucker, who previously worked in the DOJ’s Voting Section, told Think Progress.” The ADA is Being Used to Disenfranchise Voters can be found here.

What Happened in the Dark: Puerto Rico’s Year of Fighting for Power by Daniel Alarcón tells the story of George Bracero, a Puerto Rican power plant operator who was injured just before Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Find the article here.

Kirk Petersen reported about the Vatican’s efforts to canonize Black Elk who was famously interviewed by John Neihardt in 1932. Vatican Considers Sainthood for Lakota Sioux Medicine Man tells how the Rev. Luis Escalante, a Vatican postulator, or researcher for sainthood candidates, recently spent several days in western South Dakota gathering information about Black Elk’s life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was also looking for evidence of miracles. Black Elk was second cousin to Crazy Horse. Find this article here.

Happy end of summer reading!

Posted in Progressive Community, progressive values | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Preparing For Fall Campaigns – Kevin Kinney

Posted on August 28, 2018 by Paul Deaton

State Senator Kevin Kinney

The last week of August signals the end of summer. As school begins and the season wraps into the Labor Day weekend, political campaigns retool for a push to close the deal with the electorate.

Maybe readers didn’t know negotiations were ongoing.

More than in any political year I’ve seen, Democrats have an agitated district of voters to deal with.

“I think there’s a lot going on out there in reaction to what the president has done on any number of issues,” former political science professor and second district congressman Dave Loebsack told James Q. Lynch of the Cedar Rapids Gazette in an Aug. 27 article.

For the most part this cycle, such agitation benefits Democratic candidates throughout the state. It seems possible Iowa voters will put the swing back into “Iowa is a swing state,” by electing more Democrats in November.

Based on what I’m hearing from multiple sources, this election will not be won with political door knockers organized by the state party or by third party interest groups like Let America Vote or NextGen America. It will be won by individual candidates with local operations largely independent of overall party strategy. It is individual campaigns coordinating with each other, with third party entities, and with Campaign for Iowa (this cycle’s version of the coordinated campaign), where the hard work of winning will be done. Some candidates do it better than others, and it is an open question whether any one of them will be effective. It can be effective for smart campaigners.

One race we hear little about in the news is the State Senator Kevin Kinney re-election campaign in District 39, which serves as an example of how campaigns are working this cycle. At a recent Johnson County central committee meeting Kinney explained one of his supporters decided to run against him as a Republican, so he has competition for re-election. It’s been all hands on deck ever since to get Kinney re-elected.

Half of Senate District 39 is located in liberal Johnson County and half in more conservative counties to the south. Kinney was in many ways the ideal candidate to represent this district. With long experience in law enforcement, and three terms on the local school board, he came to know district citizens over a period of years before he considered running for the senate. His legislative agenda and approach to campaigning fit the district. Here is an excerpt from his campaign Facebook page:

I’m running hard to continue representing you in the Iowa Senate. I want to continue my work protecting victims of sexual assault and human trafficking, helping Iowa farmers stay dynamic, and ensuring all Iowans’ access to affordable, comprehensive healthcare. But I can’t do it alone, I need your help to knock on doors, make phone calls, staff our office, take a yard sign, and more. We need you to spread the word about our campaign and our message one door, one call, and one sign at a time.

We’ll be canvassing every weekend and we’d love to see you with us, or out in your own town talking to your neighbors! On weeknights we’ll be calling our neighbors to make sure they vote for common-sense government in Des Moines. Sign up today to volunteer and get a yard sign! Get involved to make sure that your voice is heard.

On Sept. 2 Senate District 37 candidate Zach Wahls will join Kinney in North Liberty for a voter canvass. Wahls seat is likely Democratic in the general election, enabling the political newcomer to organize canvassers to work for other candidates. There is significant help going out from the eight liberal counties in the state. Ultimately winning in November depends on what candidates like Kinney do in their districts.

“With September starting soon it’s campaign season, and that means we’re pushing to talk to as many voters as we can,” Kinney posted on Facebook. “Come join us to talk to your neighbors about electing Democrats to the State Senate in Johnson County!”

There may not be a blue wave coming, but candidates like Kevin Kinney are doing their part to retain and gain ground in the Republican Iowa statehouse.

Click here to learn more about Kinney’s campaign for re-election.

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