There’s some sense that recent successes seen by working families are due to fallout from COVID-19. But as Charlie points out, the success of the 2018 teachers union strike shows that the resurgence of Labor’s influence predates COVID.
While one might see the effort to unionize the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama as a failure, that effort has set the stage for other Amazon workers to push for better wages and working conditions. Continue Reading →
Perhaps nothing highlights the disfunction in our country more poignantly than the Kyle Rittenhouse homicide trial.
Charles believes the verdict was the correct decision, and says, “How this case became a question of white supremacy or second amendment rights I’m unclear about. It’s a discussion that should revolve around the danger of this perversion of the notion of self defense.”
Yes, for sure, stand your ground, castle doctrine, and similar laws are part of the problem. But to me, the Rittenhouse case was as much about race as it was about guns. As one of our callers, Jon, points out, “This whole thing happened in the context of racial protests.” Continue Reading →
In a sane world, there wouldn’t be any political message. COVID should never have been politicized. Partisans on both sides of the aisle did it, continue to do it — and it’s helping Republicans! Whether one is “woke” on COVID or anything else, do Democrats really think they can win elections by pushing wokeness? A poll this summer found that only a third of American voters consider themselves woke.
The problem is, wokeness is perceived as another form of elitism, and elitism is the Democratic Party’s biggest problem. Democrats have yet to recover from Hillary Clinton calling half of Donald Trump’s supporters “deplorables” in 2016. The reek of that elitist remark persists. Continue Reading →
This week, we discuss the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. Agreements have been reached on coal, deforestation, and methane. But do they go far enough? What enforcement mechanisms will be put in place? How much of what’s being touted as accomplishments is merely green-washing?
My callers and I tackle these and related questions on this week’s program. Callers range from Jerry Schnoor, a UI professor who has attended all of the previous climate summits, to the notorious “Frank from Des Moines,” a conservative whose perspectives I enjoy but often disagree with. (Spoiler alert: We cue Frank’s entrance into the conversation with Darth Vader’s theme music.) Continue Reading →
Rosenwald talks about how, early on in his career, Limbaugh was a failure, being fired from one radio stint after another. Limbaugh wasn’t very political. He didn’t bother to vote until his 30s. It will probably surprise you that Rosenwald says, “Limbaugh was so entertaining that he would have been equally successful had he been a liberal.”
Ouch. Opportunity squandered … perhaps. Entertainment (and the advertising revenue it brought in) was Limbaugh’s bottom line. He had no political agenda at first, and often used, even abused, parody.
Once, by way of taking a shot at the Great Peace March (my first foray into social change work!), Limbaugh told his audience that if you play Una Paloma Blanca backwards you’ll hear the voice of the devil. Limbaugh knew he was making it up. Much of his audience believed it. Continue Reading →
Two carbon dioxide pipelines are now formally proposed to tear through approximately 1,600 miles of Iowa farmland. That’s over four times the length of the Dakota Access Pipeline’s footprint across Iowa!
With Iowa landowners and other concerned residents still trying to process information from thirty Summit Pipeline public hearings that just wrapped up, the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB) wasted no time announcing a new set of hearings for the Navigator Pipeline.
We can’t sit back. We’ve gotta respond. These big corporations and their bought-and-paid for allies in state government hope to wear us down. Continue Reading →
Ignoble though he be, Columbus is generally loved by Italian-Americans simply because he’s Italian, even though the establishment of Columbus Day had nothing to do with elevating Italian heritage. When the holiday was first recognized in 1892, President Benjamin Harrison presented it, essentially, as a day to commemorate and further sanitize America’s colonial conquest.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, Italian immigrants were maligned and discriminated against as badly as the Irish. Some were killed, most horrifically when 11 Sicilian immigrants were lynched in New Orleans after the city’s police commissioner was murdered and the Italian community blamed — even though the 11 men had been found not guilty before the lynching.
Just as Saint Patrick’s Day gives Irish Americans a focal point to celebrate our heritage (and gives the rest of the country an excuse to get stupid drunk), Columbus Day serves that purpose for Italian Americans.
Columbus Day absolutely needs to go. Still, Italian Americans deserve their day of recognition. Continue Reading →
Dear Friends, CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS WEEK’S FALLON FORUM Check out what Senator Grassley had to say about the proposed Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline on a recent program Continue Reading →
The Iowa Legislature will vote on a second map on October 28. If Republicans reject it, they’ll draft their own map, and Iowa will have gerrymandered congressional and state legislative districts for the first time in modern history.
Sad to say, given the hyper-partisan nature of today’s politics, I suspect that’s what will happen.
I hope I’m wrong, but Iowa Republicans like Bob Ray and Jim Leach are relics of the past. So is the Chuck Grassley of the 1980s and ‘90s, when Iowa’s senior senator would sometimes vote his conscience and work across the aisle.
The Iowa Legislature was certainly a partisan place when I served from 1993-2006, and it’s gotten worse. Way worse. During my years at the Statehouse, Republican representatives and senators worked with me to pass my proposals on urban sprawl, eminent domain, teen pregnancy, drunk driving, gambling, skateboarding, and bow hunting, to list a few. I can’t imagine that happening today. Continue Reading →
How is it even possible that a member of Congress could make such a flagrantly false statement, with nothing to back it up, despite so much evidence to the contrary, and have that statement accepted as factual by a solid chunk of the electorate?
There is no simple answer. Without a doubt, the power of talk radio — along with its digital and visual counterparts — is a huge contributor to the persistent dissemination of lies and half-truths. For the life of me, I don’t understand why congressional Democrats don’t prioritize two reforms that would address this problem:
— Restore the Fairness Doctrine (thank President Reagan for eliminating that) to require balance on any station allowed to access the public airwaves.
— Break up media monopolies, which were enabled in part by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (thank President Clinton for signing that into law). Continue Reading →