Tag Archives: Kathy Byrnes

Reimagining St. Patrick’s Day

Posted on by

Instead of glorifying drunkenness, let’s celebrate Ireland’s vast wealth of writers, poets, musicians, and warriors.

Let’s celebrate a people who won independence after 800 years of oppression under the heel of British imperialism.

Let’s celebrate a people who survived despite England’s attempt at genocide (known in sanitized history books as “The Great Famine,” because everything Great Britain did back then had to somehow be associated with greatness). Continue Reading →

Stopping Putin through climate action

Posted on by

In a March 7 RNS column, McKibben writes, “If you want to stand with the brave people of Ukraine, you need to find a way to stand against oil and gas.

As I and others have been saying for years, a quick shift from oil and gas to renewables (and most importantly, conservation!) can and must happen quickly. The US response to Hitler proves that, when we want to, we can rapidly and radically shift our economy.

As McKibben points out, “In 1941, in Ypsilanti, the world’s largest industrial plant went up in six month’s time, and soon it was churning out a B-24 bomber every hour. A bomber is a complicated machine with more than a million parts; a wind turbine is, by contrast, relatively simple. … Do we think that it’s beyond us to quickly produce the solar panels and the batteries required to end our dependence on fossil fuel?” Continue Reading →

If Iowa Democrats lose in November, blame this

Posted on by

Why do I think Democrats are headed for another train wreck? Let me take you back to 2006, when I ran for governor. Rural Iowans of all political stripes were fed up with Republicans’ unwillingness to fix the Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) problem. That issue was a key factor in Democrats winning the governor’s office that year and taking control of the Iowa House and Senate.

With a new party in charge, Iowans expected results. Voters gave Democrats four years to fix the CAFO problem. Democrats failed — miserably, in fact, arguably making the problem worse.

Today, the political landscape in Iowa is much the same. Republicans refuse to help rural Iowans threatened by 2,000 miles (yes, 2,000!) of CO2 pipelines. Once again, they’ve handed Democrats a winning issue.

And what does the leadership of the Iowa Democratic Party do? So far, it has refused to take a stand against this property-rights-trampling, public-health-menacing, faux-climate-solution greenwashing scheme. Continue Reading →

The War on Christmas, and other Fox News myths

Posted on by

Last week, a mentally disturbed homeless guy lit the Fox News Christmas tree on fire (fake tree, I might add). The arson wasn’t politically motivated, but that didn’t stop Fox News’ Tucker Carlson from saying, “Torching Christmas trees is an attack on Christianity, obviously. It’s an assault of religious observance. By current standard, destroying someone’s religious symbol would be called a hate crime.”

Oh, please. The War on Christmas is as phony as Fox’s tree. It’s merely a self-serving tool to advance one’s political and economic agenda.

No one has mastered that tool better than Donald Trump. Continue Reading →

Dissecting the Rittenhouse verdict

Posted on by

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 →

How an industry took over a political party that took over the US

Posted on by

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 →

Ditch Columbus, bring on Cabrini

Posted on by

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 →

Gerrymandering alert: It could happen in Iowa!

Posted on by

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 →