Posted July 31, 2025in Morain
A FRENCH GAMBLE French President Emmanuel Macron shook up world diplomatic circles last Thursday with his announcement that come September, France will recognize Palestine as an independent nation. How much difference that will mean for the Israel-Hamas war is debatable, but it certainly tightens the pressure on Israel to ease
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Posted July 24, 2025in Morain
THE BILLIONAIRE SPECTRUM I’ve been thinking lately about wealth. Not mine – I’m woefully short on acquaintance and familiarity with the subject, and that’s not going to change. But as I age, I ruminate, as many of you do, about what I would do with billions of dollars if I
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Posted July 17, 2025in Morain
The state of Iowa in 2013 approved its “Nutrient Reduction Strategy” for reducing nitrogen and phosphorus runoff into the state’s streams and rivers, and eventually downstream into the Gulf of Mexico. The voluntary Strategy was officially adopted in 2018, with a goal of reducing the pollutants’ runoff by 45 percent.
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Posted July 10, 2025in Morain
Memory is a tricky thing for older folks. Sometimes we can remember specific people, places, and events from decades earlier, while at the same time we can’t remember much about yesterday or even a couple of hours ago. My coffee group of very mature men belabors that failing regularly. The
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Posted July 03, 2025in Morain
The United States system of government is one of the most complicated such mechanisms in the world. It’s a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because it disperses power. That’s what the Founders intended with the Constitution in 1787, and it’s what has guided America since then. Federalism (dividing power
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Posted June 12, 2025in Morain
Iowa’s DOGE task force, a Governor Reynolds’ creation channeling the 2025 federal DOGE Department headed until recently by Elon Musk, last week discussed the possible consolidation of counties in Iowa. Various committees, commissions, boards, organizations, individual legislators, and other Iowans take up the idea every so often. The proposal, like
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Posted June 05, 2025in Morain
Donald Trump got it half right about the recent omnibus tax-plus-everything else bill that the U.S. House passed on Tuesday last week. It’s big, but it ain’t beautiful. The bill worries many, many Americans over the implications of its economic impacts, particularly those of modest incomes and of advanced years.
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Posted May 22, 2025in Morain
Have you ever heard someone refer to an “emolument” in a context other than the U.S. Constitution? Probably not. The word is somewhat archaic, and rarely appears other than as a reference to a gift provided to a public official, especially the President. It came into its own during President
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Posted May 15, 2025in Morain
The Trump tax cuts, enacted in 2017, are due to expire at the end of this calendar year, 2025. The new 2025-26 federal fiscal year doesn’t kick in until this October 1, 2025. Plenty of time for Congress to decide whether or not to renew the cuts. Right? Right. But
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Posted May 08, 2025in Morain
The deeper one dives into history, the more nuanced and complicated it seems. The nuances are all-important, though, because they enrich our understanding of human nature and of why things happened as they did. Last month marked the 250th anniversary of the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, generally recognized
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