Leading legislators bent on hobbling Iowa’s community newspapers so they can keep the public in the dark are lurching forward. A bill to eliminate public notices from newspapers cleared the Senate Local Government Committee last week. City councils and school boards would not have to publish their board minutes, claims paid and other public business except on their own websites.
The bill is presented as an attempt to save money. It won’t. The government employs legions of public-relations flaks to spin the facts and tell you that your rising taxes must be somebody else’s fault. They are doing fine. The facts get hidden instead under the guise of saving money.
This is actually a deliberate attempt to weaken journalism that confronts the American-style Taliban — government that shoots people in the streets, detains citizens without hearings and bans books. These legislators fully intend to silence us.
Eliminating legal notice revenue will kill a third to a half of the state’s newspapers — nearly all in rural communities like ours. Legislators know it. That’s why they’re doing it. They call a free press “the enemy of the people.”
They are suffocating libraries, gagging teachers and trying to hide their business from the public. They are operating secret police that puts legal residents in concentration camps and ships them to points unknown. It is Stalinist. Eliminating public notices is another nail in the coffin to an informed democracy. Step by step, it is our undoing. We lose a little more freedom every day with every chink in the armor of democracy.
Of course we depend on the revenue just like CBS News lives in fear of the Federal Communications Commission. Losing legal notices will mean a lot of pain for us. It means you will know less. You will have a hard time finding the list of salaries they used to publish. You won’t know to check the state website when they are taking away land for a pipeline. You won’t know how your money is spent. Pretty soon, you won’t know what happened to your cousin who got arrested.
The newspaper won’t be there to report on it. Not in Aurelia, where we had to shut down The Star after Cherokee County cut off public notices. It will result in fewer reporters bringing you the facts. That is the whole point of the American Taliban. Their aim is to rule using the cloak of religion. They seek to gain and hold power by any means necessary. This is not about saving money. It is about power.
Secrecy and fear conspire in efforts to keep the public from interfering with the government. First, they eliminate the city council minutes and bills so you know a little less. We will report on the highlights, but you won’t get the nitty gritty. Then, the newspaper erodes away until there is nobody left to report the news. That is how the Taliban likes it. If you protest, the government will gun you down. They know where to find you.
They have cowed the major broadcasting networks. They have raided newsrooms and arrested reporters. They control the social media channels. They are coming after us, community newspapers that are the last bastion of a free press. They threaten us for our news reporting and for our opinions. They are cutting off our revenue. Forgive our siege mentality, but those are the facts.
You should know what the American Taliban are really up to. They are trying to steal your liberty and destroy democracy. We know we sound self-serving — we plead guilty. The government was forced to account for its business and support a free press through publication. The cost is a trifle compared to what we waste on road salt and gravel. It is the cost of an informed electoral democracy. This goes back to Ben Franklin days, the idea that there should be postal franking and public notices that provide a foundation for a free press. Those ideas have been thrown into the dustbin of liberal democracy. We live in a Christian nationalist state. Propaganda substitutes for vetted facts. All of us are obliged to seek out the truth while the channels are shut down.
Somehow we will survive because we must. We will report and advocate. We will not forget. We will not give up. We will tell you the truth. The government won’t. To survive in the absence of public notices, we need your support through subscriptions and donations. Without a free press, the authoritarians will have their stranglehold. They are well on their way. Freedom demands our vigilance. It slips away right before our eyes.
Another poll reports what Iowa legislators refuse to acknowledge: Most voters think water pollution is a serious issue and they would support candidates who want to clean things up. This poll was conducted for an environmental interest group, Global Strategy Group on behalf of Food & Water Action, and found that nearly 60% think pollution is a serious issue. The poll said 82% of those surveyed would support clean-water candidates.
These findings coincide with a lot of polls over the past 20 years, and actual votes by people in Storm Lake and statewide. So why does nothing change? Because nobody is willing to buck Big Ag in a meaningful way. The politicians are awash in money from the seed, chemical and food companies that control agricultural surface water pollution. President Trump last week invoked the Defense Production Act to protect glyphosate (RoundUp). In his first term he used the act to protect meatpackers. Suffice to say that clean water and air have a lot of popular support but face a wall of monied opposition.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand has been careful about what he says but has been saying it more lately. Sand is talking about the nitrate problem. Democratic agriculture secretary candidate Chris Jones screams about water pollution, which forces the conversation. Even some Republicans are getting on the clean-water boat: governor candidate Zach Lahn says it is time to take on Big Ag over pollution. Lahn has a lot of money but corporate lackey Randy Feenstra has more.
We would like to think that the politicians are catching up to the people. We should not get ahead of ourselves. Iowans voted by over 60% 15 years ago to amend the state constitution for a permanent stream of sales tax revenue for clean water. The Republican legislature has ignored it completely and never appropriated the money.
Clean water is an issue for the November midterm elections. Cancer is associated with water and air pollution, and Iowa is a national leader. People are alarmed about the cancer rates. That might be moving to some action, even in Iowa.
The Supreme Court slapped down President Trump’s tariff regime but he has a king complex and might not listen. He increased tariffs immediately in the wake of the ruling that tariffs are a tax, and taxes are controlled by Congress. This causes yet more confusion and chaos. Nobody knows how this all shakes out, other than that consumers will not get their money back.
Iowa soybean growers, likewise, will not get their export markets back. China turned elsewhere, namely Brazil and Argentina, for soy during the first Trump Administration. It became clear under Trump and the Biden Administration that China was determined to take its business elsewhere. It has.
China will buy Iowa soybeans when they are cheap enough. Trump made them cheaper, but not cheap enough. Hiking tariffs won’t help. China has paved the roads in Brazil and built the ports in South America to not need us.
The court’s ruling should inspire a bit of hope that the imperial presidency has not taken root. The justices are encouraging Congress to assume its constitutional responsibilities and push back at the Trump power grabs. Some Republicans are straying from the flock, but none of Iowa’s congressional delegation is standing up to Trump’s madness.
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