Friday Homestead Dispatch

Beat One's Gums

Feb 16, 2024

“There’s no money in any bank. Not in yours, not in mine. Not really, apart from a few bucks in a drawer. Most money is purely theoretical. It’s all in computers, backed by trust and confidence. Sometimes they have gold in a vault downstairs, to make themselves look serious. You know, to suggest capital reserves, like in the Fed in New York, or Fort Knox.”
—A Wanted Man, Lee Child

1.
In Iowa, here’s one more example of Republicans doing all they can to fuck up normal people’s lives and livelihoods. According to the very fine writer Art Cullen out of Storm Lake, IA, Sen. Adrian Dickey, R-Packwood, and Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig have put forth a bill that would require public employers to submit a list of their employees to the state when a contract is about to expire. If the employer doesn’t provide the employee list, the union would have to sue the employer in district court. Case said that means his union would have to sue up to 100 municipalities and school districts as their contracts come up.

Sometimes all it takes is one man with a bullhorn to fight back. Storm Lake native Jesse Case, leader of Teamsters Local 238 in Cedar Rapids (the state’s largest union local with a presence in 83 counties), noted the collective bargaining law passed a half century ago with a Democratic legislature and Republican governor. It worked. Case maintains this latest attempt BY REPUBLICANS would end collective bargaining in Iowa, and he will go all-out to inflict as much pain as possible on hostile legislators. He is innovative. He got involved with labor by putting union stickers on pork going out of the non-union Storm Lake IBP plant, which got him fired and set on a path of organizing. He should not be underestimated. Legislators might get a bullhorn in their ear for breakfast. He has been known to do that.

Republicans are blundering in their overreach. They continue to fumble around with Area Education Agencies, which will cause no end to their headaches with special ed parents. They continue to harass libraries, which is a no-win in Iowa politics — there is no dispute in Alta that it shall have a comprehensive library despite the legislature. They continue to harass gay and transgender citizens, threaten private colleges like Buena Vista over phantom terror sympathies among students from places like Galva, and proscribe a full accounting of history in high school social studies class.

2.
And Republicans in Arizona think it’s important to sue the Biden administration because they’d rather mine uranium in the Grand Canyon than have the 900,000 acres that surround the Grand Canyon in Mohave and Coconino counties designated as a national monument. The monument garnered wide support among Native tribes as well as lawmakers like U.S. Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema, Reps. Ruben Gallego and Raul Grijalva, to Coconino County and the city of Flagstaff. Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen and House Speaker Ben Toma have called the creation of the monument a “land grab” without a direct mention that the land was already owned by the federal government — which took it from the tribes in the first place. Prior to the monument’s designation, the land was managed by the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service.

Other shenanigans from Arizona GOP lawmakers this week include the introduction of a bill that strips language in a current statute to weaken the governing power of faculty representatives at Arizona’s public universities. The changes would diminish the longstanding shared governance role of faculty at the three state universities — University of Arizona, Northern Arizona University and Arizona State University — from participants to consultants in governance, personnel and education matters, centralizing power with the university president and the Arizona Board of Regents. All of this comes as university faculty, staff and students face layoffs and cuts due to what many say was mismanagement of public university funds at the hands of administrators like President Robbins and former Chief Financial Officer Lisa Rulney (who was allowed to stay on in a business operations advisory role and maintain her full salary).

And one more that’s just insane…Rep. Rachel Jones (R), of Tucson, is the sponsor of House Concurrent Resolution 2055, a declaration saying that the state legislature already has the power — via the U.S. Constitution — to pre-appoint Arizona’s electors for the 2024 presidential election, to ensure that they would vote for former President Donald Trump, regardless of the results of the popular vote, according to the Tucson Sentinel. Click the link to read more as I’m too disgusted to lay down any more digital ink about it.

Maybe, just maybe, these unpopular stances among the GOP will lead to taking back the House in November…one can dream, no?

3.
This just in. One in five Americans, according to a latest poll, are morons. Yes, you heard it here first. Just under a fifth of Americans believe Taylor Swift is part of a conspiracy to help Joe Biden win re-election in November. Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, said “The supposed Taylor Swift PsyOp conspiracy has legs among a decent number of Trump supporters. Even many who hadn’t heard about it before we polled them accept the idea as credible. Welcome to the 2024 election.” Among the morons, nearly 15% of Americans don’t believe climate change is real, a new study out of the University of Michigan reveals. And, of course, Lord Orangeman Fuckleroy is one of the most influential figures among climate change deniers. His tweets around a cold snap in Texas in December 2017, as well as his missives rejecting the 2018 IPCC report released at the Cop24 UN conference, were some of his most engaged social media posts among climate change deniers.

Just so you don’t think I’m playing favorites, here’s Fuckleroy now speaking in his own well-meaning and elderly, but articulate voice:

"I love Pennsylvania. We ran twice. We won Pennsylvania twice. We won Pennsylvania twice. We did much better the second time than we did the first time. Now more than we have ever taken are pouring into the country from countries that many of you have never even heard of. They are pouring into our country and an entire generation of young people could very well be decimated by something that could very well happen: World War III. If you are a violent criminal today, if you kill people nothing happens. But if you are a religious person of a certain faith, you get persecuted. And I don't know what's going on with Catholics. But Catholics are getting treated very badly. What the hell is going on with Catholics? And yet we got 88% of the evangelical vote, but only 50% of the Catholic vote. We should get 110% of the Catholic vote. What are they doing to Catholics?

They were all sitting underneath his beautiful Corvette and a very flimsy garage with one of those very cheap garage doors. You can cut it open with a scissor. 'Does anybody have a scissor? I want to get some classified documents. Let's cut it open.' It had no security or Secret Service. Certain members of the Biden family lived there. I wonder what they did with those very important documents. They had no Secret Service people because he wasn't present. Biden fought them all the way. I didn't. He fought them very hard and they never got what they wanted to get anyway. I even gave the DOJ and the FBI lunch at Mar-a-Lago. They say I didn't behave. I gave them lunch. Have lunch at beautiful Mar-a-Lago...I guess they expected dinner, not lunch. I should have given them dinner. Very smart people surround the resolute desk. It's the most beautiful desk. When you are president, they allow you to take your desk--pick your desk. They have these unbelievable desks. It had a tremendous history of presidents behind it. He had the same desk. I think he took it because he likes me so much. He said, 'I want the same desk as President Trump had.’

We got Mexico to send 21,000 soldiers to our border free of charge. I got them free. By the way, I used to say Mexico is going to pay for a big piece of the wall. They owe us so much more than that. They gave us free soldiers. You're not allowed to do that, they can't pay for our wall. There was a mechanism where they could give us soldiers. They come in from prisons all over the world, mental institutions all over the world. They are terrorists. By the millions. First time you are seeing migrant crime. These are tough people. Many of them come out of jails and mental institutions...These are not innocents. These are tough people and we are taking them by the millions. We are taking millions of people. Millions and millions. Did you ever notice they come off--everybody has a cell phone. They come in and get off a bus. There is only some nice person greeting them. I don't know who these people are. Did you ever notice? They have like these people. Nice women. Beautiful women. 'Hello, it is so nice to see you.' The guy looks at her like he's going to tear her apart. 'Hello, here is your cell phone. Here is your credit card. Would you like to stay today at the Waldorf-Astoria or would you like a Trump hotel?' No, it's crazy.

I had the First Lady on committees. A lot of socialites from New York, a lot of socialites from Philadelphia. Many of them just love the glamour of being on a committee, but they don't know about El Chapo. They don't know about the toughness you were talking about, the ruthlessness you are talking about. They do things and they have a little discussion and then start talking about when they are having dinner, where they're going, wonder how nice it is. They talk about restaurants. Remember that every drug dealer kills a minimum of 500 people during his or her lifetime.”

And this gem on Valentine’s Day:

"We've already WON the NO Jury Allowed Engoron case in the Appellate Division. Statute of Limitations and Ivanka released from the CORRUPT Attorney General litigation. Judge Engoron has been overturned FOUR TIMES in this case (WOW!), A RECORD."No Victims, No Damages, a Never Used Statute, Unconstitutional Gag Order, happy banks and insurance companies (All made lots of money!), No Complaints, Fully DISCREDITED STAR WITNESS WHO ADMITTED TO LYING ON THE STAND, NO CASE!!! A Biden directed Political Witch Hunt for the purpose of Election Interference. Violent Crime at ALL TIME HIGH, AS BUSINESSES FLEE NEW YORK IN RECORD NUMBERS. I PAID OVER $300,000,000 in Taxes during dates in question, but they stupidly want me gone. MAGA!!!"

4.
If you haven’t been paying attention, you might be blaming the Biden Administration for the high cost of living despite the nation’s economy being quite strong; the United States has seen a particularly strong GDP recovery and is on track this year to reach the level that would have been predicted by the pre-pandemic trend, global labor markets continue to strengthen, and the United States has been especially resilient, and theU.S. inflation has cooled sooner and more quickly than in other advanced economies.

So, those of you sleepwalking through life (and most likely NOT reading this missive), why are the price of groceries and other necessities so fucking high? Well, it might have something to do with CORPORATIONS. You know, private enterprise that Libertarians are so fond of. According to the Guardian, the size, power and profits of these mega companies have expanded thanks to political lobbying and weak regulation which enabled a wave of unchecked mergers and acquisitions. This matters because the size and influence of these mega-companies enables them to largely dictate what America’s 2 million farmers grow and how much they are paid, as well as what consumers eat and how much our groceries cost.

And just this morning Robert Reich reported just four companies now control processing of 80 percent of beef, nearly 70 percent of pork, (as reported in that Guardian article above) and almost 60 percent of poultry so of course it’s easy for them to coordinate price increases, and PepsiCo's chief financial officer said that even though inflation was dropping, its prices would not.

5.
We like to find the quirkier TeeVee shows to stream. And many times you don’t know if a show has any teeth until you watch an episode or two. One we stumbled onto just before the Pandemic was the 10 episode Perpetual Grace. Usually about halfway through an episode we know by looking at each other and going, “What the Hell?” This show features the odd couple of Ben Kingsley and Jacki Weaver along with Jimmi Simpson in the lead role and Damon Herriman (Aussie actor who played Dewey Crow on Justified) as his sidekick. Also featured are Luis Guzmán and Terry O’Quinn.

We just finished up another such gem called The Tourist on Netflix, which takes place in Australia. Herriman is also in this one but the main two characters are played by the fabulous Danielle Macdonald and Jamie Dornan. Ólafur Darri Ólafsson is also superb and dominates the tiny screen. You may have seen him in the also fabulous Entrapped, also on Netflix.

6.
This debut gig is coming right up, as a reminder.