Council Passes Potentially Dangerous Nuisance Ordinance 5-0

 Despite dangerously undemocratic provisions in it, Monday Evening the Cascade City Council voted 5-0 for an amendment to the Nuisance Ordinance. There were several building owners in chamber, one of whom, Jake McAllister, asked how long it would take to enact. (After the 1st of the year.) It doesn't require a genius IQ to understand that the ordinance, which allows the city to act against a property owner for "General dilapidation or improper maintenance," could very easily be abused. After the 1st and 2nd provisions, most of the rest of the ordinance is an enumeration of the specific conditions under which the city can order a property owner to make the changes, but there seems to be nothing to protect the property owner. Clear and present nuisances like flooding and toxic chemicals being sprayed on people are not classified as nuisances, but when the business community wants to condemn some building, well folks, that's a nuisance. 

Council has also voted to go forward the an agreement with ECIA for Building Inspection Services, the cost of which will be borne by the homeowner. Council voted to increase Garbage collection rates across the board, not bothering to set up changing scheme that penalizes heavy garbage producers or rewards composters, recyclers, reusers and gardeners. 

Watching those poor sad people in Ukraine fight for democracy and going to Cascade City Council meetings is about the most dispiriting activity anyone could imagine. Some democracy.

"Ag-gag" Law Violates the 1st; Creates Dilemma

Query to Megan Oliphant and the others who commented on my mini set-to with the honeywagon haulers: Do you  know that the "Ag-gag" law the Iowa legislature passed, was found to be illegal, a violation of the First Amendment? A succinct report by Rachael Oatman published in Meat + Poultry at https://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/27330-iowa-ag-gag-law-found-unconstitutional outlines the issue. Chief Justice Stephanie M. Rose of the U.S. Southern Iowa District wrote that the law violates the First Amendment. “It is true that the act does not prohibit the editing, publication, or distribution of recordings or photographs on trespassed property...,”

Rose wrote, and she goes on to point out that trespassing is against the law, but that it is a "...necessary predicate to produce this protected speech..." In short, you must trespass to get the shot, though that wasn't necessary for this one: 

All I am trying to do is illustrate my contention that neither industry nor agriculture pays the real cost of producing products. Consider 1,889 Superfund sites on the EPA website proof. As far as I could see only 37 have been cleaned up, but the company owners and stockholders have (in many cases, they are already out of business) been paid handsomely, and now the rest of us have to clean up their messes. Hardly fair, huh? The same applies to the dead zone in the Gulf.

In Praise of Advent

 One of my favorite things about the Catholicism I recall from my childhood was psychological accuracy and discipline of concepts like Advent and Lent. It was probably not till I got into college and started "studying" Theology that I even realized what they were. Rest assured, as a kid I thought they were about giving up candy. I did not understand what was actually occurring was the individual discipling him/herself, earning the right to celebrate, in a sense making oneself worthy. In retrospect, I like it even more because it was a very democratic notion--that everybody, rich, poor and otherwise was supposed to mind the season. 

The concept of Advent as mindful restraint with a rationale, was violated big time by the business community this year when they started stocking Christmas before Halloween. The idea of restraint in any form is an anethema because it inhibits buying. I understand why small businesses must go along with it, but not why wealthy corporations like Walmart and Amazon chart this course. They certainly don't need the money, but inflation means some people aren't buying anything.

I understand even less why people go along with it. What seems revealing is who is going along. Most of the older folks (sometimes wiser in spite of ourselves!) don't. We understand why business does what it does, but we know we are entitled to protect our customs, concepts like Advent and what is psychologically valuable even though it runs counter to the business goal of making as much money as possible.  No matter what is sacrificed in doing so. We can protect our own culture and what is good about it by keeping our own council, preserving what is good, despite the commercialization urging us to do otherwise. But everybody has to do it.

Honeywagons and Nitro Tankers are Rolling

 

This fall I wrote a review of a very intriguing book published by the Cato Institute called Super-abundance.  Authors Marian L. Tupy and Gale L. Pooley set out to prove that more people leads to having more stuff. You don’t need Plato or Aristotle to refute this. Any three-year-old on any playground anywhere will assure you they are wrong. But us grown-ups have to use words like counterintuitive and prove it. With illustrations. 

So Thursday I stopped at the hog confinement building just west of town as they were pumping it out. I took a couple pictures and a young man came running over, started calling me demeaning names, demanded my phone, and told me I was in violation of the law taking pictures of an agriculture installation. If I am not mistaken a judge found that law an illegal violation of the people’s right to know.  

I called him demeaning names in return, refused to give him my phone and left. Still, sticking his hand in front of my camera takes a lot of gall—especially in view of the fact that agriculture one of the most heavily tax-subsidized industries in this country. Thanks especially to the Grassley dynasty.

As the crops are mostly out of the fields, the honey wagons and nitro tankers are rolling and so is the offal down the Mississippi to the hypoxic, dead zone in the Gulf. But of course, I can sit on my front porch and watch them fly by there and take pix whenever I have a little spare time. 

Happy Thanksgiving. I will post a link to the review when it is published.

Should You Let the Assessor In?

Why you might think twice about NOT letting the county assessor into your house is they are looking for improvements in your home, so they can jack up the assessment. Which is fine; I support people who can afford cathedral ceilings and Jacuzzis paying more. However, the assessor needs to acknowledge the real devaluators of property—noise, traffic, flooding, chemical and light pollution, access to water and sewer.

            When the nice assessor lady showed up, I wrote the Dubuque County Assessor Billie Selby, and told him I would make an appointment with her, if I could be assured that they would adjust the value of my property on the basis of the real devaluators:  I formerly lived across from a park—i.e. grass and trees, what is there now is a chain link fence, concrete and an ugly brown pool tech building. Having given Callahan construction its own sewer that my neighbor and I can’t tap into, the city has increased traffic past here (to River Bend) perhaps tenfold.

Most neighborhoods have a discreet light on the corner every couple blocks, the light pollution from the pool and the large flood light on the corner makes it all but impossible to see any but the brightest stars at night. There are others, flooding and chemical pollution but they don’t acknowledge them either—what they really look at is the sales. I am sure they pay far more attention to what the Takes’ sold their house. So…  

You are within your legal right to refuse (this is stated on the postcard they sent to alert us of the visit) and if you have any other devaluators, (yours may be different than mine,) I would not let them in. I will not until they come up with a formula that is fairer and more realistic. Is that too much to ask?

 

Cascade City Council: Doing Biz's Bidding

All but a couple items on the 26-item agenda at Monday night’s Cascade Council meeting were city services the business community.  Most had to do with enlarging TIF (Tax Increment Financing) district, thereby providing tax rebates to: 1) Iowa Main Street Investments LLC,  2) R & D Vaske LLC, 3) Eastern Iowa Excavating & Concrete, 4) Maryville/Cascade Lumber, 5) 3-B Properties, and then shamelessly dispensing with the democratic charade of reconsidering these decisions at subsequent meetings by waiving 2^nd and 3^rd readings. Most votes were 4-0, with Kelchen absent.

The very glib “Interim” City Administrator Lisa Kotter thinks we don’t know what TIF is, but we do—everybody pays taxes but companies in the TIF area get a portion of theirs back. The rest of us don’t. That’s TIF in a nutshell.  In a couple years you will see payments of 4, 5, perhaps even 6 figures out of the city budget going to these companies. It was legally signed, sealed and delivered at last night’s meeting. Set in stone for the next 5 to 10 years. Too late then.

Meanwhile, the city street sweeper is about to bite the dust, and Council is not sure how it will afford a new or used (?) one. Duh! Me either.

The proceedings came to a screeching halt when Mike Beck showed up to say he wants to cram 6 condos or apartments into a spot where 4 had been platted. There are only 4 sewer hook-ups there, so four of the units will have to share 2 Y couplings to the sewer main. A fire hydrant might have to be moved to accommodate the cramming. No decisions were taken.

To complete its business service evening, council held a public hearing to amend the building code to allow “fitness and exercise type” businesses in commercial and manufacturing zones, which it seems, is where they belong. 

Council finished the evening off by OK-ing 4 x 4/all terrain vehicles on Hwy 136. This is what I mean by unintended consequences—it was originally thought these vehicles would lessen the pollution, noise and traffic on city streets.  Be good for the environment. That appears to have been wrong. Now what?

2 Essential Books on Addiction & the Destruction of Democracy

Until I read Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe and American Cartel by ­Scott Higham and Sari Horwitz, most of what I knew about the pharmaceutical industry I learned teaching in Turkey: the only drug I take (Levothyroxine), prescribed for folks with underperforming thyroids, cost then between $15 and $30 a month in the U.S., but there, it was $3.50 for a 3 months’ supply! The U.S. is Big Pharma’s cash cow and it has no compunctions about bleeding us dry. Reading these two books, depressing as it is, gives you chapter and verse of who’s responsible for the opioid crisis.

Keefe’s book, a slower read, outlines the history of the Sackler Family from 1920s, who toward the end of the last century plastered their name on wings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, buildings at Harvard, Cambridge, even the Louvre and the British museums. While portraying themselves as great philanthropists, the Sackers, employing some of the best legal minds in the country, quietly undermined the Drug Enforcement Agency, Food & Drug Administration, and any other enforcement arm of the government that might try to hold them to account.

Yes, and the U.S. Congress, whom they leveraged to pass laws that were in the best interest of their industry creating an opioid addiction crisis especially the Appalachian coal country states, while they destroyed our democracy.These people have a lot to answer for, but so far, none has. A few dedicated DEA people, sweat blood to hold them to account but either lost or watched a paltry settlement that would not undo the harm done result.

The bottom line is:  none of the wealthy men and women, companies or their lawyers who brought us the opioid crisis is in jail. None of the poor and powerless addicts, who left orphaned children, overwhelmed grandparents, sundered communities and bereft families has been compensated. The few court victories that have been handed down have come from juries because they understand misery and don’t need a law to do what is right. Judges can’t seem to sort that one.

These two books tell us far more than we want to know, but most of what we should know about the immorality of the drug industry, our political leaders and our courts.  If you have to pick one, American Cartel is a shorter, faster paced, more comprehensive read.

One would also do well to take one giant step back, and ask how our own local democracy—city and county government--has been compromised by business for whom the bottom line is the primary value. What is the impact of 5 business people on the Cascade City Council?