Kathy’s favorite farm and food lady

We wrap up this week’s podcast and radio show with Kathy paying tribute to her Aunt Marian, who died this month at the glorious age of 99.

Marian was Kathy’s mom’s older sister and the mother of twelve children. In addition to an old-school farming operation with hogs, corn, beans, alfalfa, and sorghum, Marian ruled over a huge garden and two full kitchens!

Between preserving food for the winter and serving three meals a day to 14 people, the kitchens pretty much ran full-time. Marian’s apple pies in particular were known far and wide.

It’s my contention that 21st century America has much to learn from Marian Smith and the farming practices of a bygone era. As supply chains are further disrupted from climate change and other calamities, large gardens and small-scale meat production will become necessities, not novelties.  Continue Reading →

Affirmative action, 14 foods for the apocalypse, and a holiday reflection

I took a break from hosting the Fallon Forum this week. Charles and Kathy filled in, with a deep dive into the recent US Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action. Charles also interviewed “Patricia Longbottom,” an over-the-top parental rights advocate. (Spoiler alert: this segment is a parody.) Charles and Kathy also discuss the 14 foods you’ll need to get you through the apocalypse. (I wish I could tell you this was also a parody.)

In other news, it’s been a tragic Independence Day holiday for too many American families, with celebrations marred by gun violence. Between Friday and Wednesday, 20 people were killed and 126 injured at 22 mass shootings.

Twenty-two mass shootings in six days! Wrap your mind around that. Sorry, thoughts and prayers are not a rational response.

I could say a whole lot more about gun violence, but want to reflect on another critical aspect of American life that comes to mind during this holiday. Here’s an excerpt from my book, Marcher, Walker, Pilgrim. As always, I welcome your feedback: Continue Reading →

Marianne Williamson opposes eminent domain for CO2 pipelines

Dear Friends, LISTEN TO THIS WEEK’S PROGRAM (and click here to share my blog) (01:44) An interview with Marianne Williamson (26:22) A new call to abolish nuclear weapons, with Kathleen McQuillen Continue Reading →

Remembering the Civil War veterans who continued the fight for equality after the War

This week — our Memorial Day edition — we discuss Steve’s soon-to-be-released book, One More War to Fight: Union Veterans’ Battle for Equality through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Lost Cause.

In an era where misinformation and outright lies too often pass as facts, Steve’s book “looks at the contentious post-Civil War era from the perspective of that special breed, Union soldiers, who lived by the bayonet and survived to carry on the fight for equality in the decades to come.”

Edna Greene Medford (professor of History Emerita at Howard University) writes, “Goldman offers a compelling argument in this comprehensively researched volume that addresses ways in which certain groups of northern white Union veterans supported a ‘just’ Reconstruction that aimed to protect and extend the rights of African Americans. Of particular interest is Goldman’s discussion of the role of the members of the Veterans Reserve Corps (wounded warriors), whose political activism, especially in veterans’ organizations; Freedmen’s Bureau work; and opposition to Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction plans, countered the prevailing prejudices and racism of post-Civil War America. This is a study that will enlighten both the serious student of history as well as the general reader.” Continue Reading →

America needs a new peace movement

Other than a few persistent, isolated voices for peace, we mostly hear crickets. Thus the question I ask in this week’s program and have asked before: Where is the peace movement?

Forty years ago, the anti-nuclear-weapons movement was broad and vibrant. It embraced every conceivable strategy — from hammering missile silos to volunteering in campaigns of “pro-peace” candidates.

That movement accomplished a lot: The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, START, The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, US-Soviet citizen-diplomacy, and much more. There are still 13,080 nuclear weapons in the world, but that’s down from over 60,000 in 1986.

Change happened, as it always does, because hundreds of thousands of people marched, spoke out, got arrested, campaigned, and made more noise than the lumbering colossus of the federal government could ignore. Continue Reading →

House Dems retract call for diplomacy in Ukraine

On another light note, five of us witched the heck out of Sherman Hill’s seasonable bash, Halloween on the Hill, this week. If you’re a Des Moiniac and there’s any room in your schedule for fun, be sure to add this October 31 event to your calendar next year.

On to serious stuff, specifically the letter sent to President Biden by thirty House Democrats calling for diplomacy in Ukraine.

The letter was really quite moderate, yet its the authors retracted it almost immediately. I strongly disagree with that decision. Charles, on the other hand, thinks it was the right call. What ensues us is a spirited debate that Charles loses (in my opinion). Give it a listen starting at the four-minute mark and let me know what you think. If a majority of you agree with Charles, I’ll buy him lunch.

For me, what Ryan Grim wrote in The Intercept sums it up: “That the letter was met with fierce opposition is a measure of the space available for debate among congressional Democrats when it comes to support for the war and how it might be stopped before it turns nuclear: roughly zero.”
Continue Reading →

Marriage equality and how I became the two of spades

Much of my political work has involved fighting for constituency groups ignored, maligned, or discriminated against by those in power. One of the most memorable instances was in 1996, when I spoke out before the Iowa House against a proposed ban on same-sex marriage. That speech landed me an invitation by US Rep. Barney Frank to testify before a congressional committee.

Amusingly, my advocacy also landed me in a deck of cards published by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. That is seriously an honor I’ll always cherish.

Those two speeches opened a host of opportunities for me, including three pages of quotes in Evan Wolfson’s book, Why Marriage Matters. 

The question of whether or not marriage equality is threatened is my topic during the first segment of this week’s program. Short answer: No, it’s not. The fight for equality has shifted to our trans brothers and sisters, and to defending women against legislative assaults on their autonomy. Depending upon the outcome of the November 8 election, those two fights may take several turns for the worse.

Continue Reading →

Carbon offsets: Greenwashing on steroids

I’ll cut to the chase: Carbon offsets are a scam and the glowing language in corporate ads is mostly bunk. Comedian and news commentator John Oliver does a bang-up job analyzing and eviscerating offsets. It’s worth watching all 23 minutes of Oliver’s program (language alert to those sensitive to such things … sorry, Mom).

If you want a shorter but less colorful dig into carbon offsets, that’s the first topic Charles and I tackle on this week’s program.

I know, the idea sounds glorious. A corporation negates its carbon-spewing ways by planting trees or putting up windmills. Yet as Oliver points out, “study after study has indicated that most offsets on the market don’t reliably reduce emissions.”

It’s not just corporations engaged in this brand of greenwashing. Individuals can also assuage their climate guilt. Some airlines let you offset 1,000 miles of travel for a mere $2. You can also offset the carbon footprint of your pet: 50 cents per hamster, $6 per cat, and $10 per pet pig. If you think it’s getting kind of silly, then we agree. Continue Reading →

Schools, heat, climate org infighting, and food for the New Climate Era

Schools open amidst new challenges. Margaret Buckton, president of the Urban Education Network, joins me. Between school shootings, the residual impact of pandemic lockdowns, and Republican legislatures going nut job on K-12 schools, nearly 600,000 teachers have quit or retired across the US.

In Iowa, Senate President Jake Chapman kicked off the 2022 session by asserting that Iowa teachers had a “sinister agenda.” I guess you have to believe that to justify book bans, prevent teaching the history of racism, micromanage teachers’ work, and further degrade public education by shifting funds to private schools. Continue Reading →

Carbon sequestration done right

My guest is June Sekera. She’s a public policy scholar and researcher whose most recent work focuses on carbon sequestration, including the discovery that subsidies for “mechanical” carbon removal emit more CO2 than they remove.

If you follow my blog, talk show, and podcast, you’re no doubt aware that CO2 pipelines are in the “wrong” category of carbon sequestration. As June points out, “such projects claim they will reduce CO2 emissions by 90 percent when in reality they capture as little as seven percent. In many cases, they actually increase CO2 emissions because of the extra energy required to power the machinery that captures and compresses the CO2. In addition, most of the CO2 currently captured is used for enhanced oil recovery, thereby defeating the purpose.”

The truth is there’s not a high-tech carbon-capture scheme that works, including the “Orca” direct-air carbon-capture plant in Iceland. That costly initiative — much heralded by businesses and governments — is prohibitively expensive, could take decades to operate at scale, and ironically was delayed due to poor weather conditions.

Oh, and the world would need eight million “Orcas” to accomplish the necessary CO2 removal! Continue Reading →