Senator Jim Carlin is running for Senator Grassley’s seat. I spoke with Jim when he came to meet with Clay County’s Central Committee. For the last eight years I have networked with thousands of Iowans living within and near industrial wind installations and now industrial solar. Over and over rural communities, real farmers, have tried to fight off these complexes that cast blight onto neighboring homes and farms. Almost 300 communities across the US have successfully fought them off but in Iowa it is more difficult than any other state in the nation, including Vermont.
Documentation of the 25 years of communities fighting these projects all around the world has been painstakingly chronicled on National Wind Watch. These are articles written by hundreds of little community papers and documentation by experts.
I asked Senator Carlin what he would say to these voiceless people. These are young families, businesses owners, old people living alone on the family homestead. He dispassionately told me that they should file nuisance lawsuits. The lawsuits would be against billionaires feeding off the government. Many people have filed lawsuits. They get some money and an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement to sign so that they are once again voiceless.
Really, I should’ve done my homework on Senator Carlin. A quick search on “Jim Carlin + wind energy” and we see that he thinks “Farmers deserve to profit from wind, biomass, solar panels”. Why? Why do a handful of landowners (not usually actual farmers) in Iowa get to sidle up to the government’s trough and force the rest of us to pay them? And not only pay them but put up with the negative impacts of their actions?
What about the free market?? Having the government take the people’s money and spend it where the people would not spend it is socialism. The government’s only real job is to protect the people’s rights, not their bank accounts.
Senator Carlin, since you are running for one of the highest offices in our nation I must ask, do you believe in Climate Change? Do you think the free-market could fix Climate Change? If not, what policies should the government be allowed to enforce “for the greater good”? Do you believe the government should have that kind of power? Should you?
Author: Janna Swanson
Janna Swanson helps her husband Paul farm in NW Iowa with their two young daughters. Since 2013 Janna has volunteered her time and energy for her community. She was a key member of the Preservation of Rural Iowa Alliance that protected landowners from the Rock Island Clean Line. From there she helped start and facilitated the grassroots group, The Coalition for Rural Property Rights to help protect community members from industrial wind installations. She is also a board member of National Wind Watch, a 25-year online collection of information of the industrial wind opposition from around the world. Most importantly Janna is a follower of Christ and seeks to help others to know and understand Him. Yet because she is also seeking deepening her own knowledge and understanding she welcomes critical, constructive debate. No one has the corner on truth, we all see “through a glass, darkly”. (I Corinthians 13:12)
