If I were to suggest that the good people of Northwest Iowa were getting snookered by politicians, it might affect our self-esteem as astute civic participants.
A curious fact does come up: Folks like US Rep. Randy Feenstra and Sen. Joni Ernst are busy beavers chewing on Chinese Communists buying our farms, while Gov. Kim Reynolds went down to patrol the Mexican border. Feenstra and Ernst have been in the pocket of Smithfield Foods, a wholly owned subsidiary of China, Inc.
Reynolds happily does the bidding of the meatpacking industry, along with the governors of Nebraska and South Dakota. The food giants dumped millions into lobbying during the pandemic.
Iowa law long has banned foreign ownership of farmland. The Chinese own less than three hundredths of 1% of US farmland. This is hardly a leading issue for our congressional delegation. It’s what you do when trying to secure left-behind angry voters — tell them it was the Chinese who stole the farm, or the Mexicans who cut your wages in half.
That’s what the reader who sent me an email complaining about me believes, that the libs are conspiring with the corporatists to steal our birthright, and that the lamestream media is trying to silence her (although she declined through silence my entreaty to publish her letter to me). Gov. Reynolds is the best ever, our schools are great, and she loves Iowa.
History reveals that Mexicans did not bust the union in Storm Lake. President Ronald Reagan did. Laotians did not cut the pay in half and increase the line speed. IBP did. The local newspaper editor did not write NAFTA or solicit the consolidation of the pork industry, and is not trying to silence the voice of the frustrated who feel overwhelmed.
Meanwhile …
The Iowa Department of Education reported recently in its annual assessment that our test scores continue to decline despite many years of Republican leadership.
Not to say that anyone is being duped or is drunk or hit their head, but …
Gov. Reynolds is working time-and-a-half trying to dismantle labor rights and collective bargaining. Democrats and Republicans dare not challenge the Right to Work law that Moses brought down from a think tank in Virginia where the bush still burns bright.
Terry Branstad’s son was selling business access to China after dad served as ambassador. Tom Vilsack’s son works with Bruce Rastetter on getting carbon capture credits for ethanol companies. I am not aware of any Mexicans involved in the deal, unless they happen to be scooping corn.
Just who brought the foreigners into Iowa, if foreigners are a problem?
When they busted the union by shutting down Hygrade, and the farm crisis hit right after, rural Iowa emptied out. That’s what flung open the gates to immigrant labor. I recall people putting their problems on our new neighbors from Southeast Asia at the time. Then they fixed their ire on Mexicans for awhile. And then they got used to it. Anybody who has paid attention in Storm Lake over the past 40 years knows that immigrants are not the problem, income is the problem.
No Mexican or Laotian is setting your income. The company is. It controls the political process through donations, and through owning the channels of propaganda that endorse and gush “alternative facts.”
So long as you fear the foreigner you don’t pay attention to who is actually rigging the game. It’s all a ruse: Feenstra and Ernst cluck about China while taking their money. Reynolds bucks up the National Guard along the Rio Grande while Mexicans cut meat for the Chinese in Denison. The theatre is crude but it does the job in two acts: divide and conquer.
Who is employing undocumented immigrants in Sioux County dairy barns? Who sets their wage? The barn owners write checks to Randy Feenstra and Joni Ernst and Kim Reynolds while they complain about the Chinese and Mexicans. It is not an issue that half the pork generated in Iowa is owned by the Chinese, and that it goes right back there along with the profits.
I’m not suggesting that the minority party does not sleep under corporate sheets, but it does sleep in the minority. In Iowa, the Republicans are solidly in control and have been for a long time. Which is why they need to make you think that Mexicans are the problem, or that the Chinese are about to buy that farm you’re renting. Why do they need to buy the farm when you work for scraps raising their hogs? Not that you could be duped or anything.
Art Cullen, managing editor of The Progressive Populist, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in his day job as editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa. His book, “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper,” was recently released in paperback.
From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2023
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