Our outrage could redeem us
$2 billion a year for Trump, we get manure in the river
Chris Jones and his boss at the water works used to ask as they gathered daily to discuss the roiling river’s polluted water: “Where’s the outrage?”
Iowans are freaking out over our leading cancer rates, chemical companies are held harmless by the Supreme Court, and it turns out Trump fleeced the world for $2 billion in just a year.
“The outrage has arrived!” Jones declared at the Iowa Democratic Convention. The delegates went nuts.
Nuts for a secretary of ag candidate, mind you.
The outrage is why. It is why so-called Democratic socialists are winning primaries. They want affordable heath care. They can’t make rent and Trump is hauling in $2 billion. Mainly from crypto-currency and a coin of himself that people actually pay for.
What could possibly make this geezer worth $2 billion per year? Not even LeBron rolling home to Cleveland is worth that.
The CEO of Principal Financial Group makes $13.8 million. The boss at John Deere makes about twice that. Greg Abel, who runs Berkshire Hathaway and MidAmerican Energy from Des Moines, earns about $25 million annually. Tyson CEO Donnie King brings down $37 million. These are all complicated companies. Jamie Dimon of Chase Bank is paid $48 million to help orchestrate the world economy.
Trump gets $2 billion for trading in confederate money. Pixie dust. Crypto makes trading in pork belly futures look like honest work. You set up a shell company, sheiks who have more money than sense pour $600 million into it, and you are off to the races.
Legal pilfery. That’s what a friend who worked in financial markets calls it. That sort of money could talk you into a war.
It’s the corruption, stupid.
Younger people are fed up with it, from New York to Colorado to Iowa. Call them what you will. They are tired of living in the basement. They can’t afford to farm. They are afraid to drink the water. Our legacy is washing downriver.
Chris Jones gives it voice. The degraded quality of life brought on by industrialized agriculture “is the issue of our time,” Jones said.
He speaks essentially to the plunder of Iowa, seeded by greed, as the family farm went the way of the rural village and trust.
People who are struggling to survive see Trump getting fat on their account can only shrug, bound up in a system they believe is rigged by the uber rich. Elon Musk is made a trillionaire by going public with a space company that is losing boatloads of money. Trump is raking it in on a promise to pay for a hamburger next Tuesday.
We are left with a river full of manure.
That’s why Chris Jones draws a crowd. “I never speak to an empty seat,” he said.
The governor candidates notice. Republican Zach Lahn built a primary campaign against corporate power. Democrat Rob Sand is talking a lot more about cancer and water. Sand’s TV ad on accountability is solid and earnest, and the attack ads don’t seem to be landing. People want to believe they hear a straight shooter.
Still, Trump scores around 45% approval among Iowans.
The Supreme Court ordered him to pay E. Jean Carroll $5 million for sexually assaulting her, and people think ho-hum, that is chump change in the shell game we’re playing. Our state attorney general thinks he is swell. So do our legislators.
Not everyone. Sand may have a slight lead on Lahn, who sees Marxism in the schools with his crazy glasses attached to the tinfoil hat.
Catelin Drey flipped a Trump state senate district to blue by calling out the attacks on working families: schools, health care and child care. Women bear the brunt. She is leading the way. Democrats have nearly swept special elections like hers, leading up to the midterms across the country.
Iowa is at the center of it all. Trump has at least $500 million ready to dump on a half-dozen Senate races, including the one between Democrat Josh Turek of Council Bluffs and Republican Ashley Hinson of Marion. They’re in a dead heat. How can Hinson fire up her base when the standard bearer is picking their pockets so he can pay off rape and fraud judgements?
Jones channels the outrage for Sand and Turek. He is able to identify the issue.
“I’m telling you, I have been in politics for 50 years in Iowa and I have never seen anything like it,” said retired Sen. Tom Harkin, who stumped for Jones and believes he may be setting the tone for other Democrats.
Young people who never knew we had a state ag secretary are paying attention, Harkin notes. It’s because Jones is confronting a system driven by greed and led by a convicted fraudster. Trump told them he would drain the swamp, but he emerged with $2 billion in a year. Things need to change. We should all be filthy rich but we’re just filthy, and we know it. Enough with getting played.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. His latest book, Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest: Notes from the Edge of the World, is available from Ice Cube Press. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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Art, Chris Jones has done something important beyond documenting polluted water: he's given people permission to talk about water quality and large corporate power. Rep. JD Scholten is doing the latter, as well, by explaining how giant corporations squeeze farmers.
That gives cover to candidates and legislators who've been told by some party leaders and consultants to avoid talking about agricultural regulation, monopoly power, or even water quality. Jones makes clear that corporations profit by externalizing the costs of doing business, leaving farmers, consumers, taxpayers, and our rivers to pay the price. Democrats won't reconnect with working people until they're willing to explain not just who's hurting, but who's benefiting.
I read this column, then I read it again to be sure I have digested the wisdom of the Oracle of the Lake, Storm Lake that is. Then I read the comments, and read them again. I was born and raised in Mason City. We hated the place when we were young, but deep down inside some of thought we were lucky to live in a decent, hard-working place like Cerro Gordo County. Now the whole state is the captive of Big Ag and you can't even go swimming in about half the state, all thanks to the moneyed interests of said Big Ag. I'd like to hear Chris Jones speak, although I suspect his chances of prevailing against the big money are slim. Yesterday I drove to Iowa City and back for the jazz festival. On the surface the corn and beans look good, but deep down inside I know that our monoculture system is sending our much-vaunted topsoil down the river and that Roundup saves most operators from protecting our environment. I drive through rural IA and in lots of small towns the corn and beans come right up to the yards of local residents. So we ask ourselves what did we do to deserve the sky high cancers rates? If you offered me a nice house on the outside of town adjacent to a Roundup Ready field I would say not only no thanks but Hell No. At least I live a couple of miles from these mad scientist experiments. Thanks to Art for keeping us all informed and conscious of the disaster that is rural Iowa.