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Irony has been so deep in recent days that we shouldn’t be surprised if people start walking around with their chore boots on or with the cuffs on their pants rolled up to avoid the mess.

Consider:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made an observation Friday that caused some people’s eyes to bug in disbelief.

Speaking in Atlanta to a group of judges and lawyers, he said of American society these days, “We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don’t like.”

There certainly are plenty of examples of that, both among Democrats and among Republicans. But Thomas failed to acknowledge any connection between his statement and the actions of his wife, Ginni, in the weeks leading up to the inauguration of President Joe Biden on Jan. 20, 2021.

A "singularity" is a mathematical term for a situation where all known laws break down, and nothing makes sense. Physicists often use this term to describe the first fractions of the first second of the universe’s Big Bang origin, when even time didn’t really exist.

It occurred to me recently that here in Iowa, we have our own singularity. It’s called Ethanol. A state of senselessness, where all laws break down and math and science and even logic cease to exist.

I’ve written about (some would say railed about) ethanol many times. Why? Because corn ethanol for fuel is stupid. The industry exists by virtue of one reason and one reason only: government policy. The environmental benefits of using corn to produce a liquid biofuel HAVE ALWAYS been more desperation-half-court-heave than slam dunk, it’s lower potential energy when compared to gasoline makes the 10% blend number an obvious head fake, and its dominance of American politics has kept higher energy players sitting at the end of the bench. So why does ethanol get its ticket punched to the Big Dance year after year after year?

Politics. Liberal politicians from Joe Biden to Amy Klobuchar to Dick Durbin to Sherrod Brown to Cindy Axne to the Iowa City dogcatcher provide all the cover Republicans in general and Iowa Democratic state legislators in particular need to continue force feeding us this rancid cod liver oil until kingdom come.

Liquid biofuel volumes required by the Renewable Fuel Standard. The cellulosic requirements have never been met and EPA has waived them every year. Source: Department of Energy

How did this two-bit, two-carbon alcohol get enshrined as Iowa’s golden calf? A generation ago, GMO seeds and a favorable climate continued to increase corn yields, and by god, nature truly does abhor a vacuum and something had to step in to gobble up all that junk organic carbon laying around, otherwise known as #2 Dent. Enter the Energy Policy Act of 2005, also known as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) or if you're an Iowan, the 11th Commandment, that required blending of biofuels with gasoline. Grain-derived ethanol was to be a bridge fuel until cellulosic (ethanol made from leaves, stalks etc.) took over, but cellulosic flopped and is now riding the bench for the ANF’s Sandhill Cranes D league team in Middleofnowhere, Nebraska.

I’m confused.

Some of our political leaders seemed to be talking out of both sides of their mouths about why it is wrong for public school employees to engage in what the leaders think is pushing a point of view onto students.

These leaders need to figure out whether it is good — or is it bad? — when school employees are involved in what critics call indoctrination.

On one hand, some K-12 school districts around the nation have been up to their chalk boards in controversy over allegations teachers are trying to pass on to students the teachers’ opinions on LGBTQ issues, transgender rights, or disparities involving the races.

But this week, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case out of Bremerton, Wash., where a football coach’s post-game prayers on the 50-yard line have divided residents and split politicians nationwide more than any football rivalry.

by Kathie Obradovich, Iowa Capital Dispatch
April 18, 2022

The 100^th day of the 2022 legislative session in Iowa is Tuesday.

I know that’s probably not a day marked on your calendar. Most Iowans don’t pay much attention to whether the Legislature is in session or not. Those who celebrate Easter, Passover or Ramadan may have been spending time with family. Others may be planning their gardens, attending kids’ track meets and working toward the end of the school year. Some may have spent the weekend figuring out their taxes.

Speaking of taxes, yours are paying for everything that happens at the Iowa Statehouse, and guess what? Not much is happening right now. And whatever may be happening is being done in secret, behind closed doors, where you aren’t welcome.

House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst summed it up: “First and foremost, I want to echo what I’ve heard from so many Iowans who have reached out to me over the last few days and said the phrase: ‘The hell’s going on up there?’”

The Republicans who control the Iowa House, Senate and governor’s office have been unable to reach agreement on some key elements of the governor’s agenda. As a result, work on the state budget is at a standstill.

Published Saturday, April 2, 2022

I wrote Stop Saying We All Want Clean Water (SSWAWCW) on a snowy April weekend three years ago, and here I am again looking down at my keyboard and up at falling snow. Why does spring snow seem so aberrant to us when its appearance is a near certainty? I guess you could say that about other things too.

SSWACW was written as a manifesto of sorts, a stream-of-consciousness-volcano-of-frustration erupting because I’d had it with the brazen dishonesty that characterizes establishment agriculture and Iowa’s water quality.

Having been around a while, I had no expectation that the essay would change things, and the last time I checked, truth in agriculture is still about as common as an acre of Iowa farmland carpeted with a cover crop.

Just like our bad water, this dishonesty isn’t unique to Iowa; the entire cornbelt is awash in both.

This is one of those times when people who have little appetite for politics need to pay attention — because a big change is coming that many folks won’t agree with.

When the U.S. Mint asked each state to pick an image to represent the state on a series of special quarters in 2004, Iowa chose its schools. The quarter featured a likeness of Grant Wood’s famous painting of a one-room country school, with the message “Foundation in Education.”

The choice was not surprising. Our schools have been something in which Iowans have long taken great pride. Our chests swelled each time Iowa stood atop the nation’s college entrance exam rankings. Terry Branstad and Kim Reynolds even campaigned 10 years ago to bring Iowa’s schools up to world-class stature.

That was then. This year, Iowa’s foundation in education is being tested as surely as if an EF5 tornado were bearing down on every public-school building.

by Kathie Obradovich, Iowa Capital Dispatch
April 4, 2022

Iowa lawmakers seem poised, with their latest effort to update the state’s popular but long-struggling bottle bill, to give everyone what they want.

Everyone, that is, except consumers.

What do consumers want? Most simply want the convenience of returning their empties to their grocery stores or nearby redemption centers. They also want to keep bottles and cans out of the ditches and the landfills.

Through history, some political leaders have been outstanding orators. Boy, could they talk. They knew how to mobilize and move people with their words.

Think of Franklin Roosevelt and, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Or Ronald Reagan and, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

The ability to crystallize their thoughts in memorable speeches can galvanize public opinion and bring people around to the leader’s views.

But the best leaders have something else, and it gets too little attention and respect, especially in these divisive times. That is the leader’s listening skills.

This lack of attention to listening is unfortunate, because leadership is more than simply making decisions. Leadership is far more complicated than just doing what the leader’s most ardent supporters want.

by Kathie Obradovich, Iowa Capital Dispatch
March 17, 2022

Iowa grocery stores and other retailers would be allowed to opt out of taking back bottle and can returns and repaying deposits in 2023 under the latest version of a bill making its way through the Iowa Senate.

Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, and Republicans on the Senate Ways and Means Committee passed the rewrite of Senate File 2122 on Thursday, with all Democrats on the panel voting no.

The amended bill replaces a version passed earlier this week by a Senate subcommittee, which would have allowed grocery stores and other retailers to opt out of taking containers back if a redemption center was located within 20 miles of the store.

Many years ago, I sat at the kitchen table of a pots-n-pans salesman from Pleasant Valley. We didn’t talk about cookware. He was laying out with lots of precision why the United States government had no legal basis for prosecuting him for willfully refusing to file federal income tax returns.

It was a lengthy conversation that day in the late 1970s. I will spare you many of the details. It is enough for you to know two things about his salesmanship:

First, it was his assertion that the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one creating the income tax in 1913, was unconstitutional — in part, because the amendment was never properly ratified because Ohio was not properly admitted to the Union until 1953.

Second, neither the U.S. district judge, nor the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, bought his analysis — and he ended up spending a year in federal prison.

Last week, I found myself recalling the Iowa guy who was a cross between a kindly uncle and something of a crackpot. The trigger for my memories was news about two appearances in Sioux City by a lawyer from Florida with some, uhh, unconventional views of her own.