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Stop saying we all want clean water

Originally posted on Chris Jones' blog April 14, 2019

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably heard or read the phrase “we all want clean water."

If so, in all likelihood it came from someone of stature or someone knowledgeable about water quality issues.

Today, I had the idea to shake the Google tree and see what fruit fell to the ground when I entered the phrase “we all want clean water.”

It turns out one of our politicians has been quoted saying this so many times that I had a hard time figuring out who else had said it, so I started plucking names out of my head and attaching them to the phrase.

What resulted was an impressive list, a veritable who’s who of Iowa politics and agriculture.

‘Unemployment’ is not the same for everyone

The boss told Gus Malzahn on Sunday that he was no longer needed. His employment was ending immediately.

With that blunt conversation, Malzahn became another statistic of 2020. He took his place next to the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs this year — a year when unemployment, at times, rivaled those dreadfully dark days of the Great Depression.

But Malzahn is not in the same boat as most of the others.

'No Country for Old Men' informs struggle to stop pollution of state streams, lakes and rivers

I packed up my 20-year-old pickup and 35-year-old camper last week and took a virus-inspired trip to Arkansas. Iowa campgrounds have been closed for some time now, and those in Missouri closed October 31. Looking further south, I found that Arkansas state park campgrounds are open year-round and I picked Crowley’s Ridge State Park because of its proximity to Iowa (far NE Arkansas) and because there was a lake to fish in.

Crowley’s Ridge is one of the state’s six landforms, a giant alluvial deposit formed near the prehistoric confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. The 200-mile-long sandbar has been amended and elevated with an eon’s worth of wind-blown loess, such that the feature bulges like an arthritic spine 200 feet above the surrounding alluvial plane.

Like Western Iowa’s own Loess Hills, the soil on Crowley’s Ridge is thick and fertile, and the first settlers to the area (Crowley was the first) farmed the ridge because the surrounding bottomlands were unmanageably wet. Also like our own Loess Hills, the soil was highly vulnerable to erosion because of slope and texture. But in contrast to Iowa, where 27% of the Loess Hills is still cropped with corn and soybean (1), Arkansans had the good sense to surrender these hills to nature in the 1930s, and the ridge was re-forested to the original pine, oak and hickory, more characteristic of the Appalachians far to the east than the nearby Ozark Plateau to the west.

There are many reasons for gratitude

With all of the frustrations, the tragedies and the maddening political chaos that have been with us this year, I have the perfect recipe for our Thanksgiving celebrations.

No, it is not a new take on green bean casserole. It’s not some newfangled way to ease the strain on our belts after a holiday meal.

More than anything else, what our celebrations need this year is an extra helping of gratitude.

WW2 lesson is ignored during this pandemic

Forgive me, but I don’t think Americans are as tough as we used to be.

Specifically, I don’t think many of us see the big picture the way our parents and our grandparents did.

I venture down this treacherous path because I think this lack of toughness is affecting Iowans’ response to the coronavirus pandemic. Stay with me, and we’ll come back to this shortly. But first, some context.

During the 1940s, ordinary Iowans from Ackley to Zwingle, together with Americans all across this land, helped the Allied powers win World War II. The vast majority of them did this without ever putting on a military uniform, shouldering a weapon or digging a foxhole.

Election didn't ‘validate’ governor’s response

Gov. Kim Reynolds is claiming the election results were a “validation” of her approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

"This year, Iowans validated the direction of our state by expanding the majority in the Iowa House and maintaining the strong majority in the state Senate,” she said Thursday. “… In addition, it was a validation of our balanced response to COVID-19, one that is mindful of both public health and economic health.”

She said that with a straight face, as the pandemic is surging out of control in Iowa, setting new records almost daily for new infections, hospitalizations and deaths. She said it as two face-masked hospital executives stood by, preparing to plead for Iowans to consider exhausted health care workers and stretched hospital resources before they make their holiday gathering plans or decide to go maskless in public.

The governor has to follow the law, too

When the Iowa Legislature wrote the state’s public records law 50 years ago, lawmakers wanted to guarantee that anyone could obtain copies of state and local government records that are not designated by statute to be kept confidential.

There is no asterisk in the law. There is no exemption saying the governor can ignore the statute.

But there is evidence Gov. Kim Reynolds believes otherwise.

Lawyers representing the governor made a troubling admission this month in a Polk County District Court lawsuit. They acknowledged that a member of Reynolds’ staff directed the Iowa Department of Public Health on more than one occasion to disregard a request for public records about coronavirus testing.

Just leave arrests for law officers

My closest friend spent his working life in law enforcement. He handled everything from minor traffic violations to homicides, with assorted robberies, break-ins, vandalism and domestic assaults in between.

Sadly, Denny has been gone for three years. Among his family’s treasured possessions are his sheriff’s badges, the shoulder patches from his uniforms and the large, thick keys to the cells in the now-demolished jail he ran.

In a way, I am relieved Denny was not here last week when the news broke that the FBI had broken up what they said was a plot by vigilantes to “arrest” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and either put her on “trial” for treason or kill her.

The president’s taxes and so much more . . .

The events and issues of the past couple of weeks have been swirling around in my head like Toto, Dorothy and the debris picked up in that famous Kansas cyclone.

Here are some thoughts from that vortex:

* * *

HOW DO YOU COMPARE? People were buzzing Sunday night over news reports dealing with federal income taxes, how much some people pay (or don’t pay) and how people are using special provisions in tax laws to reduce their obligations to zero or close to zero.

‘Principles’ shouldn’t be a matter of convenience

One of my co-workers at the Des Moines Register was Gene Raffensperger, an excellent reporter with a delicious sense of humor.

When Raff was working on a dull story, he often would announce to colleagues, “We’re going to need another tanker of Murine. I’ve got an eye-burner here.”

Raff is no longer with us. But if he were, he would be telling us we need another tanker right now, this one filled with Maalox – because there will be lots of upset stomachs in the coming weeks.

Americans already are dealing with tremendous amounts of stress, thanks to the worst epidemic in a century, the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, and the most contentious presidential election in our lifetimes.

This mega-level stress has increased since Friday night, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a trailblazer for women’s equality, died at age 87.

Replacing a Supreme Court justice never is a picnic. But it’s obvious filling Ginsburg’s seat will be an epic knock-down, drag-out battle.

Two names guarantee that: Mitch McConnell and Merrick Garland.

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