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Nebraska Public Media reported earlier this month on another emerging culture war: Rural Republican governors in the Intermountain West and Great Plains statesled by Nebraskas Pete Rickets and including Montanas Greg Gianforteequating President Bidens conservation agenda with a federal government land grab.

It seems that Biden had the audacity in his first month in office to direct the Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to develop a program to conserve at least 30 percent of all lands and waters in the United States by 2030. The America the Beautiful plan, or 30 by 30 as it is now known, is a national call to action to conserve the countrys natural resources.

Currently, only 12% of Americas land and water are conserved, according to the Department of the Interior, most of which is federal land (wilderness, national parks and monuments, wildlife refuges). Much of the other conserved lands are under permanent conservation easements voluntarily entered into by private land owners, primarily farmers and ranchers, keeping agricultural land from being developed. Other farm and ranch lands have been conserved by private landowners voluntary participation in federal programs designed to protect natural resources, dating back to the New Deal of the 1930s. These federal programs have been successful at significantly reducing soil erosion and protecting water and wildlife.

But according to Gov. Rickets and his co-conspirators, We are deeply concerned about any effort to enlarge the federal estate(and) we oppose any increase in land-use restrictions on lands under our state jurisdiction (or) infringing on the private property rights of our citizens (from a letter by the Governors to the President, April 21, 2022).

The only problem is, of course, that none of these fever dreams are real. Its just another effort to convince rural communities that the federal government is out to steal their land or trick them into doing something that is contrary to their property rights.

These Republican governors are lying to farmers and ranchers. Its not working, yet. In deep-red Nebraska, at least, 95% of Democrats and Republicans, according to polling done by New Bridge Strategies, a Republican research and polling firm, agree that they support private landowners ability to conserve land through voluntary programs.

According to Dean Fedde, a farmer in southeast Nebraska quoted in the Nebraska Public Media report, There is no land grab. The government is not going to take your farm. Theyre here to help protect that ground. They want to see working farms continue to be working farms. Its just the opposite of whats being told.

But that wont stop the grifters from grifting.

These governors will escalate their campaign to confuse farmers and ranchers when President Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act this week. The Act, among other provisions to address the climate crisis, contains $20 billion to boost voluntary land conservation in farm and ranch country.

In Nebraska, Rickets will step up his campaign to get county commissioners to adopt resolutions to oppose the creation of conservation easements on farmland. Already half the counties in the state have complied with this government overreach, and conservation easement applications in the Sand Hills have already been denied.

In Montana, expect the campaign to be led by the United Property Owners of Montana (UPOM), an astroturf public relations campaign waged by The Montana Group, a Helena-based political consulting firm of former Republican Party electeds and professional grifters who are known for hawking their Save the Cowboy yard signs (only $35!).

UPOM is opposed to the American Prairies land grab to establish a 3-million acre reserve for bison on public and private land in central Montana (and for several hundred years the home of the Blackfeet, among other indigenous peoples).

These grifters will undoubtedly be joined by Gianforte and Attorney General Austin Knudsen, both of whom have opposed the Reserve. American Prairie and other conservation organizations in Montana are simply using all of the tools developed by conservationists in and out of government for the last century to protect both the land and property rights. What they are doing is working for the benefit of all Montanans.

Like Nebraskans, lets tell the grifters that their culture war is not welcome in Montana.

Marshall Mayer, based in Helena, takes notes with a camera at take-note.com.

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The next front in the culture wars? Conservation of rural land and water Daily Montanan - Daily Montanan

Home / Section: Editorial cartooning CSotD: Culture Wars and Food Fights

Well start off the day with a really stupid idea and then you can judge whether we are moving up or down the scale.

Constant Readers will know that First Dog on the Moon is an avid climate change warrior, but will also know that he has no objection to shining a light on stupid ideas, such as a proposal to reanimate the Tasmanian Tiger. I was going to just add a link for those who dont know about Tasmanian Tigers, but the article is interesting enough that you really should read it.

Howsoever, the animals impressive stature in both Tasmanian culture and native imagery doesnt make reanimation a good idea. Some years ago, when proposals to reanimate the Wooly Mammoth were rife, one of my young writers interviewed a geneticist at the Denver Museum of Natural History who reminded her that mammoths went extinct for a reason and would not likely be able to live in the current world.

First Dog hints at this in that bottom left panel, and comes to the same conclusion my reporter did: We might better put some of that energy into preserving what weve got, given that the Earth isnt becoming any more welcoming for them than it was for Tasmanian Tigers or Wooly Mammoths.

Though, if you could insert a gene to make the de-extinctified Thylacine eat only rabbits, foxes, cane toads and feral cats, you might be onto something.

(Pat Bagley)

(Paul Berge)

The old question What are little girls made of? has clearly entered the world of bigotry and ignorance, if those two terms are not entirely redundant.

The issue of gender dysphoria has become a magnet for hatemongers, to the extent where you have to wonder if politicians who wage war on transexual children are honestly that viciously ignorant or are simply ringing a bell they know will summon the pigs.

Call it the Sooey Strategy, a bookend to the Southern Strategy once employed to attract the votes of bigots.

Those flames, however, reach beyond the voting booth. Bagley cites a case in which parents whose daughters had been bested by another girl complained to the school that the winner must surely be a transgender boy.

The school, as indicated in this coverage, handled the complaints well, checking the childs records and confirming that she had been enrolled as a girl since kindergarten. They didnt confirm the childs identity, sport or grade level to the press and certainly didnt share her personal records with the accusing jackasses.

Still, its a chilling indicator of the kind of witch hunts we can expect, as political opportunists use fear and ignorance as a tool to get elected.

The however part of this is in Paul Berges cartoon and accompanying commentary, where he notes that Amazon Primes TV version of A League of Their Own is not, as the 1992 movie did, avoiding the fact that several of the women in the All-American Girls Professional League were lesbians. (Duh.)

Nor is the new adaptation avoiding what was only hinted at in the movie, that the team was, by choice, all white, as were the mens teams in Major League Baseball.

His full essay is thoughtful and worth reading, and I agree with him that they should raise the issues without altering history. As it happens, the modernization of M*A*S*H got me to quit watching, and I could do an entire rant on the topic of fake-but-reassuring history in movies and television.

But Berges got the history covered, and Bagley is addressing the stupid bigotry issue, so well move on.

Ive differed with Steve Kelley enough times that its a relief to point out when we agree on something. Granted, his turning against Mehmet Oz would be more impressive if the Republican werent flailing and almost certain to lose.

Its less a matter of speaking truth to power than one of bayoneting the wounded.

Still, if nominating a person from New Jersey for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania werent tone-deaf enough, having the candidate maintain dual citizenship in a Muslim country seemed unlikely to attract the MAGAts, and whatever disadvantages he had to start with, Oz doubled with a breathtakingly foolish campaign.

The capstone was his ridiculous fake shopping trip for what he calls crudits and everyone with an income less than a cabillion dollars a year calls a vegetable tray, in which he not only seems to recommend dipping raw asparagus in salsa but claims to be shopping at Wegners.

I dont know how many people dip their asparagus in salsa, but there are 107 Wegman grocery stores and none of them are named Wegners.

Oz has explained that he was exhausted when he made that video.

Maybe he should eat more coffee beans.

As it happens, Im also in rare agreement with Gary Varvel (Creators), because however we may all differ about what should be taught in schools, the fact of the school lunch (and often breakfast) is one good people should agree on.

My support of breakfast programs goes back to when we used to buy the Panther Press not because we wanted to read it but because it helped fund free breakfasts and food banks in poor neighborhoods. Like the meals at rescue missions in those days, the recipients got preaching along with the food, but the food mattered and that was where you could find it.

The town where I walk my dog has, in recent years, extended the school meals program throughout summer and made it available for anyone who needs it. And why not? Feeding kids seems it would be a fundamental principle in a civilized nation.

But the same political hacks who insist kids be born are equally sure they dont need to be fed and so have cut the program.

Where are Huey and Bobby now that we need them?

We havent quite gotten to the point where being able to buy food is a luxury for the ultrarich, but Morten Morland tempers his hyperbole beautifully, with the difference being that we normal folks can only cautiously fill a basket while the rich guy can toss things willy-nilly into a brimming cart.

Including both asparagus and salsa. Cant have one without the other!

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CSotD: Culture Wars and Food Fights The Daily Cartoonist - The Daily Cartoonist

Political certainties are rare these days, but the zero chance that Grant Shapps ideas about mandatory insurance and registration plates for cyclists are ever enacted is about as close as you can get.

The transport secretary floated the idea of compulsory insurance for all bikes on the road and number plates for cyclists in an interview with the Daily Mail that made the front pagetoday: How are you going to recognise the cyclist, do you need registration plates? he asked. He then said the opposite in an interview with the Times: Im not attracted to the bureaucracy of registration plates. That would go too far. His confused interventions would have been news to his junior ministers at the Department for Transport, too, whose longtime view has been that such schemes are a waste of time.

It is not just his own political staffers more or less every official within the Department for Transport, and any expert outside it, would tell Shapps, if asked, that such plans have been mooted many times in numerous places, but have been very rarely implemented. When they have, it has never been with success. Switzerland had a try for a period. Argentina once tried, as have several US cities. But the only place to stick with the idea has been North Korea.

The argument for registering bikes can seem initially tempting. Cyclists, like cars, are road users, they can and sometimes do break laws, and they can also cause serious harm to others. Why should they be exempt from identification and enforcement? The reason is very simple: practically, it would be enormously difficult to enforce and evidence shows it would deliver very little benefit.

First, the logistical hurdles of registering and identifying cyclists: a number plate needs to be big enough to be legible, which is tricky on its own. It would also only identify the bike itself, not the person on it. Some advocates have mooted the idea of rider-specific numbered tabards. But again, something big enough to be seen would be hugely impractical sweaty to wear in summer, and impossible to get over a coat in the wet or cold.

And what about children? No one has seriously suggested that a 12-year-old cycling to school needs to face such administrative hurdles. But if the under-18s are exempt, would 16- and 17-year-olds need to start carrying ID to prove their age?

Even if some half-workable administrative fudge could be found, you run into the other glaring drawback of such schemes: there is very strong evidence that they bring no net benefit either to road safety or to overall national wellbeing. In fact, they do the opposite.

Identifying road users does not eliminate danger. The UK has an estimated one million uninsured drivers, according to the Motor Insurers Bureau, and about 70 people a day are either killed on the roads or experience potentially life-changing injuries.

Almost all road casualties are caused by cars. Focusing finite police resources on bikes would be to concentrate on a group that kills an average of two a year, against around the 1,700 lives lost each year in car accidents.

All you would get from these draconian measures is, most likely, fewer cyclists. Mandatory helmet laws in places such as Australia a far less onerous administrative barrier have been shown to suppress cyclist numbers. And if you get people switching from bikes to cars you get worse public health, more pollution, more congestion and more road deaths.

So why did Shapps venture so far off piste? Probably because with discipline evaporating in the last weeks of Boris Johnsons government, he felt he could. Before now, cycle policy had largely been imposed on Shapps by No 10, with Johnson giving his longtime adviser, Andrew Gilligan, the lead on the issue.

Shapps is by no means the only incumbent minister showing off in the hope he might land a ministerial role if a Truss government becomes a reality. Within his brief, cyclists are an easy target that will score well with members who support a more populist candidate such as Truss. Cyclists remain in the minority despite a boom in numbers during the pandemic, only about 1% of all mileage on Britains roads is from cyclists. So cyclists are a conveniently small population for Shapps to take aim at.

Overall, the media treatment of cyclists has deteriorated recently. The Mail has routinely run scare stories about bikes for years but the previously bike-positive Times declared in January that it now supported registration plates.

This media coverage matters. Some studies have linked anti-cycling media coverage to drivers being more aggressive towards cyclists on the roads. So while its tempting to write off Shapps comments given how unlikely his ideas are to be implemented the consequences for cyclists on roads could be much more serious.

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Cyclists, welcome, you have just become the latest target in the culture wars - The Guardian

A snap election in September will choose a parliament after the resignation of Prime Minister Draghi, a technocrat whose strong international reputation did not help him stay in power.

Italys Mario Draghi, who, despite his July 21 resignation will remain as a caretaker prime minister until after a September 25 election chooses a new parliament, will have served longer as premier than Mario Monti, who similarly led a caretaker government while in office from 2011-2013.

Yet the two premiers left the countrys leadership in very different circumstances. Mr. Monti, who became prime minister when Italy was on the edge of default, largely succeeded in putting the countrys public finances in order. The main uncertainty after his tenure was whether the political right or left would win elections. Neither did, and another national unity government was formed, as the Democratic Party allied with Silvio Berlusconi, their former foe.

The outgoing prime minister took the countrys helm in February 2021 with two main goals. The first was to run an efficient vaccination campaign. Mission accomplished, largely thanks to army general Francesco Paolo Figliuolo, appointed as vaccine czar. The second was to secure largesse from the 806.9 billion-euro NextGenerationEU fund. Mr. Draghi, who had spent the previous eight years as president of the European Central Bank, used his prestige to shield Italy from criticism and win European funds. That was, however, only the first step: the resources need to be spent within a clearly defined schedule and with changes in the countrys legal and regulatory infrastructure (reforms).

As prime minister, Mr. Draghi had easier circumstances than Mr. Monti: he did not even have to attempt to reduce spending or raise taxes. Yet, paradoxically, he will leave a country mired in more fundamental uncertainty than when he took over.

Read more from Alberto Mingardi

The newly elected parliament will open on October 12. The new government will have to rush to create a new budget law. The Draghi government in recent months has been quite generous with special aid and subsidies to families and businesses to soften the blow of inflation and high energy prices.

Minister for Ecological Transition Roberto Cingolani recently insisted that the country can get through the next winter even if Russia completely stops providing gas. The question is how. The last two generations of Italians (and Western Europeans, more broadly) have no memory of double-digit inflation. But neither do they have any more experience with energy shortages and government seizing supplies. The Italian government has strongly backed the Ukrainian war effort but has maintained that it would limit the costs of supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Italian households. Yet it is not clear this will be the case: the government may force families to cut down on winter heating, despite its repeated assurances that the war in Ukraine will not limit their wallets or room temperatures. If this turns out to be untrue, the new government will face social unrest that may become radicalized if Italians believe the government has been telling them lies.

Inflation is another challenge. Italy has low salaries, which have been basically stagnant for over 20 years now. At the same time, taxes on labor in 2020 were the fifth highest in the 38-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: 46 percent vs. an average of 34.6 percent. Increasing salaries should be a priority of the new government. Yet the proposals on the table seem unlikely to achieve that goal: though it will be difficult this time, the right-wing Lega Party is flirting with lowering the retirement age, which tends to raise the social contribution tax on labor.

The left wants to introduce a national minimum wage, though the country traditionally has national bargaining agreements that achieve the same goal. The Brothers of Italy, currently placed by the polls as the leading party of a center-right coalition, wants to lighten the fiscal burden of businesses that hire more people. The attempt, similar to the lefts, is to hijack the distribution of business-provided resources.

Gross domestic product growth is projected to be a modest 0.9 percent in 2023.

Fiscal leeway will be limited, particularly if interest rates eventually cross into positive territory and the yield spread between German and Italian 10-year bonds begins to widen, signaling the growing unease in financial markets. The spread already widened during the Draghi premiership, from 103 to 200 basis points. It is now floating around 250 basis points, partly due to the election uncertainty and the European Central Bank (ECB) raising rates. The new Transmission Protection Instrument that the ECB hoped would bring spreads under control is apparently working. Yet the new government, whose head will not have the prestige of Mr. Draghi, will need to pay extra attention.

Though estimates have improved for 2022, with expected economic growth of 2.9 percent, the gross domestic product is projected to rise only a modest 0.9 percent in 2023. Any new government should strive to revive stronger growth, but this would require reforms. The very word reform is now confused with requirements that need to be fulfilled to access European funds. Whoever wins the elections will need both to keep up with the timetable set by the Draghi government and add perhaps some changes of its own making.

Given the Italian predicament, one would expect an electoral campaign passionately devoted to discussing economic reforms. That is, however, unlikely to happen. For one thing, Italians suffer from a sort of reform fatigue. From 1994 to 2018, they were constantly promised profound changes to put the country back on the growth path. Though reforms were implemented, Italys transition is still in the making, a sort of never-ending story that ultimately disappointed voters.

The populist triumph of 2018 was partly a reaction against the litany of promises that mostly failed to accomplish their declared goal. Nobody understands this better than ex-Prime Minister Berlusconi, the master pied piper, always promising an Italian catharsis. This time, Mr. Berlusconi in office from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and again from 2008 to 2011 began his campaign by promising to plant one million trees and raise pensions. Though he may have pleased those most worried about climate change and the summer drought, Mr. Berlusconi also signaled that he was unwilling to trouble himself with labors such as economic deregulation, freeing the labor market or cutting taxes.

It is unlikely that any party will wage the next election campaign on a pro-growth agenda.

Mr. Berlusconi is not alone. Over the past few years, Italys political parties have highly invested in culture wars. They had the luxury to do so because they entrusted the prime ministers role to a seasoned technocrat like Mr. Draghi. Lega is going to campaign aggressively on immigration, though after Covid-19 and the subsequent reduction in international mobility, the issue is far less prominent. The left will rally around the flag of diversity and individual rights (LGBTQ+ causes, etcetera), which goes well with propaganda to shame fascist Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy and the most likely winner of the next election. In a desperate attempt to save something of their once huge following, the Five Star Movement will go for a mixture of environmentalism and social justice, to position itself at the extreme left.

It is unlikely that any party will wage the next election campaign on a pro-growth agenda. On a brighter note, no party will have a particularly dangerous economic agenda, certainly not one that would threaten the eurozone. In 2018, two parties (Lega and the Five Star Movement) were suspected of wanting to leave the euro. Nobody is flirting with the idea now. After NextGenerationEU, Brussels is no longer seen as the odious torchbearer of austerity but as a welcomed source of aid.

In many ways, Italian parties will do their best to mimic the peculiar mixture of policies offered by the Draghi government. The spendthrift technocrat leaves the country with a budget deficit three times the size of the government led by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who served from July 2018 to February 2021, when populists from the right and the left allied for the first time.

Yet Italian politicians may be wrongly assuming that the spirit of the times has changed and that they will be allowed to continue with the status quo. They may be discounting how Mr. Draghis prestige helped Italy to receive a pass from the European Commission and benevolent attention from financial markets.

The course followed by the next Italian prime minister will be fraught with peril. While nobody can compete in international reputation with Prime Minister Draghi, his legacy has blemishes that will prove to be challenging from the first day of the new government.

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Italy parliamentary election will take place on September 25 - Geopolitical Intelligence Services AG

Pat Brothwell| OPINION COLUMNIST

On Aug. 2, Kansas voters rejected a proposed state constitutional amendment that wouldve said there was no right to legal abortion in the state, the first of its kind since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Fifty eight percent of voters 534,134 individuals voted for abortion rights in a state thats traditionally been heavily red, echoing the sentiment of the American public. Pew Research reports that 62% of Americans believe abortions should be legal, and 57% of Americans disapproved of the courts decision to overturn what they thought was precedent.

On June 24, District-11 Republican congressional candidate Chuck Edwards tweeted, I have always been pro-life. Im pro-life today, and Ill be pro-life tomorrow. The Supreme Court has now decided that this is a state issue, and I will keep working with the North Carolina legislature to ensure that life is protected in our great state. Only, thats not what the people Edwards claims hes looking to serve want.

More North Carolinians believe in abortion rights than the national average a Public Policy Polling survey reports that 74% of North Carolina voters believe abortion should be legal.

So, if the overwhelming majority of North Carolinians are pro-choice, why do we keep electing politicians who choose to eschew the views of their constituents to push the current conservative agenda? An agenda thats morphed into a monolithic viewpoint that doesnt represent the average American? We did it with Madison Cawthorn. If we dont learn from our mistakes, well do it again with Chuck Edwards, who, despite campaigning as the anti-Cawthorn, shares his possible predecessor's penchant for putting his own needs and views over his constituents.

A 2022 ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that 70% of Americans think enacting new gun control laws should take precedence over protecting gun ownership rights a WRAL News poll finds 62% of North Carolinians want stronger gun control. Chuck Edwards is a staunch defender of gun owner rights, though one wonders if hes driven more by his strict adherence to the conservative culture wars or his wallet, since he advertised in an April 22tweet that hes a federally licensed firearms dealer. Madison Cawthorn used his position in Congressto try to enrich himself. Must we worry Edwards will do the same?

As reported by the Mountain Xpress, during the Republican primary debate in April, candidate Wendy Nevarez emphasized how serving constituents must be a congresspersons priority. Were not doing it for profit, she said, were doing it for people. … If a businessperson only has profit (in mind), theyre not going to be thinking about the American people.

In the same debate, Edwards praised the merits of former President Trump, going so far as to emulate his penchant for speaking in third person. Chuck Edwards is a businessman that loves this country, with conservative principles, that has a track record of getting things done, Edwards said. Thats exactly why we sent President Trump to the White House in 2016: Hes a businessman with conservative principles that loves this country. Once again, the people disagree. Another ABC News/Ipsos poll found that 60% of Americans believe the House select committee is conducting a fair and impartial investigation into the events of Jan. 6, and 58% feel Trump should be criminally charged.

A major Edwards campaign promise is cracking down on the elusive Critical Race Theory (CRT) in high schools, even though the reality is that education-wise, its a theory mainly relegated to law-school studies. Also, a reality? A Spectrum News/Ipsos poll found that only 33% of registered North Carolina voters support banning CRT 45% are against a ban, and 22% dont know enough to make a decision.

I was unable to find whether Edwards supports codifying gay marriage, but his tweeting on June 27that Christian Conservatives are on the cusp of taking back our country leads me to believe he doesnt, even though Gallup found that 71% of Americans say they support legal same-sex marriage. In related news, Gallup also found that religious membership in the U.S. has fallen to an all-time low just 47%.

Ill go back to Nevarezs astute point that politicians should be working for people. Madison Cawthorn didnt. The Kansas vote shows the right-wing Washington establishment isnt. Lets not make the same mistake with Chuck Edwards this fall. He may not have Cawthorns jawline or Twitter following, but deep down, hes the same partisan hack.

Pat Brothwell is a former high school teacher, butcurrent writer and marketing professional living and working in Asheville.

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Opinion: Don't be fooled: Chuck Edwards is the same partisan hack that Madison Cawthorn is - Citizen Times