The Campaign

 

I guess one has to give credit where credit is due.  The newest campaign effort by the formerly stalwart party, Republican, is the granting of an Indian corporation, Mesabi Metallics,  in excess of a billion dollars to build a $15,000,000,000 steel making factory on the Mississippi River in Lee County.

The alacrity with which this one has been done is quite amazing (unique actually) including a special session of the Iowa legislature to bestow money upon a promise to build; and, just in time for the election.  

There has been some investigatory work done by the Des Moines Register, a paper which does not really get its due and is apparently unread by the majority of Iowans.  I actually remember the time when the Des Moines Register was delivered to your door every morning by a "paperboy" and was actually read for purposes other than determining the latest score of some athletic team in some variety of contest occurring the day previous - - with analysis.  Currently, even the online version of the Register consists of a great deal of sports reporting, but it does make an effort to include items that actually have some impact on its readers such as the $15,000,000,000 ephemeral steel plant. 

As with the Republican lieutenant-governor candidate, not much research has gone into the project.  A $1.36 billion promissory note, no big deal for sure when the result will be the largest steel mill in American history - -  according to our President and Governor and acolytes and in a state that has been running a budget deficit for several years now.

The chances that this magnificent project will ever be completed is negligible. Iowa is not ever going to host such a complex.  We can't even agree on the building of data centers let alone a $15 billion dollar steel mill by an Indian company with a significant trail of failed projects.  This thing is simply campaign noise.

Once again, the Republican Party is relying on the ignorance of the electorate.  It did not use to be so.  The Republican Party actually had a clear set of beliefs and used those beliefs to set policy;  policies I did not agree with, but were recognizable and coherent.  This is no longer the case.  It is quite disturbing actually that a large number of the electorate, possibly a majority, uses Facebook to determine what is happening in the world and what one's attitudes and beliefs should be.  The idea of paying for a subscription to a magazine or a newspaper appears to be a thing of the past.

Again, the possibility of this gigantic structure actually being built is negligible, approaching zero actually.  If one gives this a little thought, one quickly realizes that one day Iowa will lead the nation in the production of steel is a fantasy simply proposed for purposes of an election now in doubt. As is the case with most election campaigning, it has no basis in fact and is presented to gain votes from a public who has no idea of what to believe or not to believe.

Richard E H Phelps II

Mingo