Dear Friends,
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Before I tell you about this week’s program, we’ve gotta talk about the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) — and by extension, the three proposed CO2 pipelines. I call your attention to these photos, sent to me by Keokuk County farmer, Steve Roquet. The first shows rich, black topsoil dumped into the DAPL trench in 2016/2017 — in direct violation of the required practice to keep topsoil separate from subsoil.
The second photo shows Roquet’s 2020 corn yield along the DAPL route (indicated by the red line toward the bottom left). Yields above the pipeline ran 60 bushels or less per acre, as opposed to 170 bushels or more per acre on most of the rest of the field. 
The third photo shows Roquet’s 2021 soybean yield along the DAPL route. Four years after the pipeline came through his land, Steve’s still getting less than 15 bushels an acre along the pipeline easement, as opposed to upwards of 70 bushels an acre elsewhere. 
Bottom line: Big-Ag and Big-Oil are behind these CO2 pipelines, and they’re making the same empty promises made by DAPL. This time, a lot more farmers and landowners aren’t falling for it.
Regarding this week’s Fallon Forum, thanks to all the listeners who called in. If you want to join us next week, we livestream the program on Monday at 4:00 p.m. CT here.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST. Here’s the flow of our conversation, with time stamps:
(1:29) MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. Some Republicans like to quote King to imply he’d be against teaching about racism in the schools. Yet you never hear the same apologists use more provocative quotes from King. Leonard Pitts has an excellent column about this, and I reference it extensively in our discussion.
(5:42) DEMOCRATS’ MONEY PROBLEM. With congressional efforts to restore sanity to election laws likely to fail, some Democrats say they’ll have to spend millions more on voter-registration drives and turnout. What billionaires and corporate PACs are going to finance that effort? Maybe the DNC should wean itself off of big money, come up with a progressive-populist message, and rely on volunteers and shoe leather instead of high-paid consultants and corporate cash.
(19:28) TEACHERS’ “SINISTER AGENDA.” In his passion to ban books, the president of the Iowa Senate, Jake Chapman, claimed, “It has become increasingly evident that we live in a world in which many, including our media, wish to confuse, misguide, and deceive us, calling good evil and evil good.”
At first, I assumed he was talking about Fox News, OAN, News Max, the shock jocks of talk radio, and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the corporate-owned mainstream media. But apparently, Chapman was talking about teachers and librarians, insisting that there’s a “sinister agenda occurring right before our eyes.” Yikes! Who knew?
(30:46) NO EMINENT DOMAIN FOR CO2 PIPELINES. Close to 2,000 miles — yes, MILES! — of Iowa farmland is threatened by three proposed pipelines. The players behind them include Black Rock and Valero — neither known for its love of the Earth. These pipelines aren’t solutions to the climate crisis, and eminent domain should never be used for any private purpose.
(35:23) CORPORATE MEDIA AND LOCAL NEWS. Alden Global Capital has a reputation for buying up local newspapers and laying-off reporters. When that happens, one of the casualties is local coverage. As Craig Aaron says in an interview with Janine Jackson of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), “Hedge fund vultures like Alden go into a community to squeeze and cut back on the newsroom. They’re there to sell off the buildings and equipment and put out the bare minimum kind of daily news product until they can take as much money out of it as possible.”
(43:38) UKRAINE AND THE WEST’S NATO PROBLEM. In the New York Times last month, retired US Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman wrote, “the United States must support Ukraine by providing more extensive military assistance … to reassure allies and bolster the defenses of NATO.”
Really? Escalate a new Cold War with Russia? What could possibly go wrong with that?
As FAIR points out, “In 2014, the US supported anti-government protests in Ukraine that led to the ouster of democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych.” There’s nothing to love about Russia’s dictator-for-life, Vladimir Putin. But maybe the US should get its own foreign-policy house in order instead of escalating tensions with another nuclear powerhouse. Furthermore, why are we threatening to expand NATO at a time when diplomacy is clearly the foreign policy tool of choice?
(51:27) RESTORING FAIRNESS TO MEAT PROCESSING. Here comes the Biden-Harris Action Plan for a Fairer, More Competitive, and More Resilient Meat and Poultry Supply Chain. Yeah, that’s quite a name, but the plan is a good thing. From the administration’s fact sheet: “Over the last few decades, we’ve seen too many industries become dominated by a handful of large companies that control most of the business and most of the opportunities—raising prices and decreasing options for American families, while also squeezing out small businesses and entrepreneurs.”
Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. If Democrats could talk that talk consistently, deliver on it, and eschew tainted money from the ultra rich, maybe they’d get somewhere with the disenchanted electorate.
Ed Fallon
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Ed Fallon