The Swine Republic

If I hold to be true that absurdity determines my relationship with life, if I become thoroughly imbued with that sentiment that seizes me in the face of the world’s scenes, with that lucidity imposed on me by the pursuit of science, I must sacrifice everything to these certainties and I must see them squarely to be able to maintain them. Above all, I must adapt my behavior to them and pursue them in all their consequences. I am speaking here of decency. But I want to know beforehand if thought can live in those deserts. French/Algerian Writer and Philosopher Albert Camus In geology, ‘drift’ refers to all the debris transported and deposited by glaciers or their meltwater, and this glacial garbage in Iowa can be as much as 500 feet thick. Glaciers spread it across the landscape like peanut butter on an English muffin, masking surface roughness and leaving much of the landscape approximately level. In this part of the North America, little was left untouched by glaciers save a rough...

Few states are identified more strongly with a natural resource than is West Virginia. Fifty-three of its 55 counties are underlain with 62 separate veins of coal that has been mined since 1810 (1), more than a half-century before the state was pried away from Confederate Virginia by pro-Union factions and was recognized by Congress and President Lincoln. The plant remains petrified by heat and pressure and the people charged with extracting them from billion-year-old mountains were made the soul of West Virginia. The coal helped heat and electrify the country, win two world wars, and produce steel in nearby Pittsburgh and automobiles in Detroit. Employment in West Virginia coal mining likely peaked around 1950, when 125,000 miners comprised 6.25% of the state’s population of 2 million (2). Since then, the state’s population has dropped by 300,000 while the number of miners has declined more than 90% to 11,400 in 2021, barely more than 0.5% of West Virginians (3). West Virginia miners ...

It’s that time of year again. Another twelve months have gone by, and Crazy Uncle Frank once again brought his friend Captain Morgan with him to Christmas dinner, hidden in his jacket pocket. After a few surreptitiously spiked egg nogs, Frank gets a little mean and starts talking smack about his favorite whipping boy, conservation compliance.  First, a little primer on conservation compliance. According to USDA (1), The 1985 Farm Bill  “requires producers participating in most programs administered by the Farm Service Agency (FSA) and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to abide by certain conditions on any land owned or farmed that is highly erodible or that is considered a wetland.”  Of course, one of those programs is taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance. On average, federal taxpayers pay  62%  of the cost of farmers’ crop insurance premiums. Again, on average, for every $1 a farmer spends on crop insurance, he/she gets back $2.23 (2). I know, rig...

  The corn ethanol-carbon capture pipeline schemes continue to be up front and center in the news. Although there are multiple pipelines, garnering the most attention is the one proposed by Summit Carbon Solutions that will capture carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) gas from Iowa corn ethanol refineries and then pump it into North Dakota bedrock where it can scavenge oil from tired wells and inspire EPA to designate ethanol as kryptonite against climate change which will subsequently help ROWGs (Rich Old White Guys) get even richer.  The Summit proposal is being led by the Murderers' Row of cashing in on climate change: Terry Branstad (Lou Gehrig, because he's seemingly always in the lineup), Bruce Rastetter (Babe Ruth calling his shot) and Jess Vilsack (newcomer but future Hall of Famer Earle Combs). The 1927-28 Yankees led by the Babe and his own Murderers' Row steamrolled the American League on their way to becoming the first team to sweep (4 games to none) in two consecutive Worl...

  I’ve seen a lot of Iowa winters and I have to say the weeks between Christmas and January 20 th  were the ugliest I’ve seen the state look. I know northwest Iowa has had some snow cover, but what little snow there is lying around the rest of the state is thickly coated with the dirt that we're repeatedly told is so, so precious to the SOL (Stewards Oftha Land). A pre-Christmas blizzard moved a lot of snow and a lot of $20k per acre dirt along with it into the ditches, and the immediate warmup that followed melted much of the white stuff, exposing what the Cropagandists tell us is black gold. On Christmas Day, the northside I-80 ditch between Iowa City and Des Moines was one continuous trench filled with the SOL's dirt, and I-35 up to Highway 20 wasn’t much different. I saw a new wrinkle in this black magic I hadn’t seen before, this on Highway 13 south of Manchester in Delaware County. The downwind ditch (i.e. on the east side of this N-S road) was filled up with SOL di...

The Clean Water Act defines an impaired water body as one that is not meeting a designated use because of degraded water quality. In this circumstance, the state (in our case, Iowa DNR) is required to complete a restoration plan that includes a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). The TMDL determines the load (amount) of pollutant entering the waterway and where it is coming from, and how much that load needs to be reduced for the water body to meet the water quality standard associated with the designated use. Because Iowa DNR has refused to support rule-making to establish nutrient standards,  Iowa does not have many streams that are impaired for two of the worst pollutants, nitrogen and phosphorus, although almost all streams have been degraded by these contaminants. Until recently, the Cedar River was an exception--it was impaired because of its role as a drinking water source. While no community uses Cedar River water directly, the City of Cedar Rapids draws water from wells that ...