Nick Bergus

So much joy after all the recriminations of the campaign. Grassroots movements , and welcoming people in, matters.

Josh Marshall has a sobering post at Talking Points Memo in which he quotes Lee Bollinger from an interview for the Chronicle of Higher Education:

We’re in the midst of an authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. It’s been coming and coming, and not everybody is prepared to read it that way. The characters regarded as people to emulate, like Orbán and Putin and so on, all indicate that the strategy is to create an illiberal democracy or an authoritarian democracy or a strongman democracy. That’s what we’re experiencing. Our problem in part is a failure of imagination. We cannot get ourselves to see how this is going to unfold in its most frightening versions. You neutralize the branches of government; you neutralize the media; you neutralize universities, and you’re on your way.

We’re beginning to see the effects on universities. It’s very, very frightening.

“Failure of imagination” is a nice way of saying “people who shouldn’t be are in denial of what’s happening.” I’d point to Chuck Schumer’s failure to hold the line this past week.

Back to Marshall:

That is what is happening. And we’re in the middle of it. As semi-familiar as the words and concepts are, we all collectively need to concentrate on that statement. It’s neither a future possibility nor an accomplished fact.

That is, as John Connor says in Terminator 2, there’s no fate, and we can’t act like there is.

Trump and his administration, with the help of the Republican Party, while dismantling the federal government, are also simultaneously attacking other nodes of power outside of government: the government. Obviously higher education, but also, and here’s where Marshall goes deeper, the law firms that are necessary for private actors to work within the legal system.

A free society exists not simply because there are limits on the power of the government. The state may have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. But it does not have a monopoly on power. It’s free because there are multiple nodes of power — cultural, economic, social — in the national space. Universities are one of those. The private sector economy is another.

We each need to resist in our own spaces and places.

We’ve got a huge job on our hands and there’s no guarantee we’ll succeed. But the first step of acting is knowing exactly where you are. People who are thinking in terms of Viktor Orbán are not surprised by each successive move. It’s actually pretty textbook. How it all shakes out comes down to the decisions countless private actors make. It also means supporting institutions that are meaningfully supporting free society. That doesn’t have to be a matter of performative spectacles. At its most essential, it means not changing behavior.

This is war, and we need to observe, orient, decide, act faster than those we oppose.

Each County Auditor in Iowa is required to mail property tax notices ahead of the taxing authorities’ budgets (and therefore tax rates) approval. The form of the notice is required by law.

From Johnson County’s online information about these notices:

The tax statement you recently received from Johnson County attempts to calculate and illustrate the county’s share of property taxes to be levied on your property. The percentage increase for the upcoming proposed FY 2025/2026 budget year assumes that your property’s assessed value will increase by 10% over the current year’s assessed value. This is an assumption the State of Iowa built into this statement and is a decision which Johnson County has no control.

The actual average increase in Johnson County assessed property value for the FY2025/2026 property tax calculations is as follows:

The State of Iowa’s frame is misleading at best. The actual adjustments range from 0.4 to 1.2 percent, and “most properties in this category will have no increase in their assessed values unless improvements were made to the property.”

There’s a term for purposefully misleading information to support a particular political stance produced by the state: propaganda.

Jason Benell writing at Bleeding Heartland:

Nowadays they seem to care more about appearing a certain way than addressing what their opposition is doing.

Republicans everywhere have zero qualms about being terrible. About lying. About dismantling safety nets. About stripping human rights.

Meanwhile, Democrats are worried about flag burning, not saying “fuck you” and other decorum to the point of alienating allies. It was enough for me to say fuck this.

In the midst of terrible legislation at the state and federal level, how candidates running for Iowa City Council’s March 4 special election want to react to protect vulnerable people is an issue. Both addressed it in recent interviews.

Oliver Weilein in an interview with KRUI (audio is available on YouTube):

Amman Hassan: […] Also, about the not collaborating with fascism, and the Iowa City autonomy, obviously we are kind of a blue dot in a sea of red. How much autonomy or wiggle room does Iowa City have to kind of ignore some of these resettlement orders or some of these acts against minority groups, immigrants in particular? How much wiggle room do we have to ignore those orders and address the issues as we see fit, or protect these groups as we see fit?

Oliver: […] When it comes to what kind of autonomy or agency Iowa City has in the state, it is true that we live in a hostile state run by people who are cruel and do not have the best interest of the people in mind. They want to protect the wealthiest people in our state, and they want to keep oppressed people in their place. We need to not go into this thinking that these are people that can be reasoned with, like Kim Reynolds, that we need to try so hard to placate them and to beg, because no matter what we do it will never be enough for them. They will always keep coming after our people. They will always keep cutting our budget. They will always keep lowering property taxes. They will always keep doing all of these things that are detrimental to our community, and I think it is delusional to expect any different, no matter how much we give them. Going into it with the attitude that we need to come up with another way. 

I think that if we really put our mind to these things and make them a priority, we can really do something. I look at examples like in 2020, when our mayor Bruce Teague and the city wanted to implement a mask mandate, and Kim Reynolds was like, “No, I’m writing it in law that cities cannot do a mask mandate.” We were able to get around that with just clever wording, something about mandating masks for persons and not facilities. Something like that. We can always put our minds to something and there are so many smart people, and so many organizations of smart people who know the law, who it’s their mission to do these types of things. The city councilors and the mayor at the time, they did a great job with that. I think if we apply that same determination, and willingness, and priority to protecting migrants and protecting trans people, and protecting our LGBT community, and our low income people, I think there’s always something that we can do. 

Like I said, that doesn’t mean that we do something reckless or not strategic or not smart. A lot of people have criticized me saying oh, he’s just gonna like… No, I’ve never said that. What does differentiate me from my opponent is that I am willing to say that I do not support ICE, and I will do whatever it takes, whatever it takes, to protect the immigrant community. At the end of the day, if everything has been, if all the things have been tried, if there is absolutely nothing else we can do as a city, I’m not willing to sell one person for a dollar amount. That seems to be what a lot of people who were criticizing me were saying, “Well at the end of the day, we are just going to have to sell out some of our neighbors to fascism.” I think going into this new administration with that attitude is crazy. It is what has gotten us into this position in the first place.

Ross Nusser in a separate interview on KRUI (audio is available on YouTube):

Glab: What are your thoughts and feelings on the recent Iowa legislator bills that have been passed through subcommittees that strip civil rights away from trans people?

Ross: Yeah, it’s so disappointing for Iowa. I mean, Iowa, we used to be a leader in civil rights, and now we’re a leader in the backwards movements of civil rights. It’s abhorrent, it’s awful, and we have to, as a community, figure out ways to fight smart.

Glab: Also, do you see trans people as part of your constituents to vote for you, or where do you see them as?

Ross: Absolutely. 100% unequivocally, absolutely.

Glab: What have been some of like the things that they’ve expressed to you as you were campaigning in terms of like their wants and needs.

Ross: I’ve heard a lot of personal stories, and the personal stories, just again, bringing it back to recovery, that’s how we relate our journey. So, I’ve heard many personal stories that have intimately related their journey. I’m not at liberty to share those stories on the air. It wouldn’t be respectful for me, but I can tell you that I have a deep sense of empathy. They are so very much a vital part of our community, and I fully intend on protecting them as much as I can.

Glab: With these bills kind of seem more likely than not to go through, what are you going to do if you were elected to City Council to protect the trans members in our community?

Ross: We’re gonna look at them, we’re gonna analyze them, them being the bills, and we’re gonna fight smart. Like I said, we are going to be resourceful, we are going to be thoughtful, we are gonna look into the future, we are gonna look at possible implications, any sort of action that could happen that would either go against us or for us, and we will make the best possible decision at the time. We will make sure that we are fighting for the needs of our most marginalized communities.

Glab: I know you’re not on City Council yet and probably haven’t fully fleshed out ways to do that, but do you have any ideas of how you would do that, I guess looking from an outside-in perspective at the moment.

Ross: Yeah, I’ve not been on City Council as you put, but I have been on leadership roles, and I have had to be in places where tough decisions are needed to be talked about and consensus is needed to be gained. So, this position is one of seven council members. This is just this is something where I will collaborate with my council members. We will figure out how to best address it at the time. I think that it’s hard to do anything and hard to make commitments to anything. Also, part of it is giving away the playbook, right? Like we want to fight smart. We want to be people who can actually protect, actually make a difference.

Amman: Do you have any ideas of what you would do in the present for when these bills pass and what you would do in the future?

Ross: So these bills have not passed, I’m not on council, and so I’m not sure.

Glab: Do you have Ideas of what you would do though?

Ross: Collaborate

Amman: Could you elaborate.

Ross: Collaborate with my fellow counselors.

Will: In addressing these questions, you’ve used the term fight smart a lot. Could you define that a little bit more?

Ross: Yeah, fighting smart, not taking it as anything other than what it is, seeing what’s coming at us, reacting in a way that’s responsible, evaluating what exactly is coming at us, and then figuring out what exactly our solutions can be. What are our options here? There are some things that we can do, there are some things that we can’t do. There are some things that we can do that draw more attention to us, there are some things that we can’t do that also draw more attention to us. So, fighting smart means fighting smart, it means looking, it means thinking before acting.

I voted for Oliver Weilein, and encourage all Iowa voters to do the same on or before March 4.

Robin Opsahl for the Iowa Capitol Dispatch:

Gov. Kim Reynolds signed into law a measure Friday to remove protections from discrimination on the basis of gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act.

The new law makes Iowa the first state in the nation to remove civil rights protections from a group of individuals designated with a protected status in state code.

That bears repeating: “The new law makes Iowa the first state in the nation to remove civil rights protections from a group of individuals designated with a protected status in state code.”

The legislators who voted for this know it’s not about protecting women and girls. They know it’s not about only enshrining immutable characteristics. They know it’s not to allow common-sense solutions or align with civil rights protections at the federal level.

We all know it’s because cruelty remains the point.