Point-Source Emissions Threaten to Undo Climate Action Plans

October, 2024

Lincoln — The City of Lincoln has launched a second round of homeowner incentives to replace fossil-fueled furnaces and air conditioners with electric heat pumps.  Low and moderate income families can receive up to $3000 for the conversion, on top of Lincoln Electric System and federal tax credit incentives. The "initiative is an important part of the city’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050," according to the Lincoln JournalStar. 

This is a good program.  Each household that converts reduces carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions by 1-2 metric tons annually.  Last year's pilot program reduced emissions by 250 tons of CO2e.

Another good local government effort is the acquisition and restoration of grasslands and wetlands at 27th and Arbor Road.  Each acre protected or restored can reduce 3-7 metric tons of CO2e emissions annually.  If 155 acres is protected at 7 tons per acre (both generous estimates) the annual reduction would reach 1000 tons.  

Both the heat pump conversions and protection of natural resource buffers are part of the Lincoln-Lancaster Climate Action Plan, adopted in 2021. 

But context is needed.  These and other worthy efforts will likely not be enough to meet Lincoln's goals for CO2e reductions.  Not when point-source emissions overwhelm them.

Smithfield Packaged Meats Corp. in west Lincoln was given a local government permit this year for 38,554 annual metric tons of CO2e.  In 2022, soybean processor Archer Daniels Midland in northeast Lincoln reported CO2e emissions of 158,580 metric tons.  Just to offset the coal-fired ADM plant's CO2e output would require the equivalent of converting nearly 80,000 Lincoln households to heat pumps, or at least 35 square miles of additional carbon-sequestration on woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands.  Doing the math is depressing.   

Theoretically, local governments can, by law, require stricter controls on point-source CO2e emissions than are required by the federal Environmental Protection Agency or by the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy.  A cursory review, however, suggests such measures are not under consideration.  Point-source emissions are not given attention in the local Climate Action Plan.  One reason may be that a 2019 local ordinance ceded the authority to the state.  

The state's Priority Climate Action Plan steers away from point-source emission controls in favor of distributing federal grants to voluntary projects in the agriculture production sector.  Announcing a $307 million federal grant this year, the governor said it would be used to "turbocharge the state ag industry." 

Looking at some of the state's largest CO2e emitters, one is located next door in Gage County.  Koch Fertilizer Beatrice LLC emitted 631,946 metric tons of CO2e in 2022.  That year, ADM's ethanol plant in Columbus emitted 1,163,383 metric tons.  

ADM has facilities throughout the midwest, some of which are in the company's plan to reduce CO2e emissions.  The Lincoln soybean oilseed plant is among the last to phase out coal as a part of this plan.  This presents an opportunity to look at how ADM's choices on reducing emissions are related to the regulatory environment in different states and localities, including those with stricter point-source controls.  ADM makes large political contributions to affect those environments, in Nebraska and elsewhere.  The same can be said for the Koch businesses.  Hypotheses are waiting to be tested.  

In the meantime, be prepared for less than good news in reaching our goals unless more can be done to address point-source emissions.  Per capita CO2e emissions in Nebraska already rank sixth highest in the nation. And don't be surprised as more frequent and more devastating storms strike in unexpected places, including our own state, city, and county.         

  

 

Missouri Does Not Have Standing to Oppose Student Debt Relief

October, 2024

Washington — Student loan debt relief for good cause has once again been stymied by dubious court injunctions.  The latest injunction raises eyebrows not only because it is the result of judge-shopping, but because the plaintiff, the State of Missouri, does not have the standing it claims to oppose the relief.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court in Biden v. Nebraska (2023) found, controversially, that Missouri's relationship to the loan servicer MOHELA was sufficient to give Missouri standing to oppose the first Biden debt relief proposal, that rationale does not attach to the much different debt relief effort now being promulgated by the Department of Education.  For example, most of those now eligible for the relief are linked more closely to loan servicers' errors and consumer protection failures, and the legal basis for the relief is grounded in the Secretary of Education's longstanding powers and obligations under the Higher Education Act, not on the previous HEROES Act justification disallowed in Biden v. Nebraska. 

The appropriate test for Missouri's standing in the current, much different case is whether Missouri is injured or if it actually benefits from the relief borrowers would be given.  That is not going to be a close call, as the supposed injury to Missouri even in Biden was conjured out of nothing.  And, clearly, the servicer MOHELA is not an arm of the State of Missouri, although both Missouri and MOHELA still make futile arguments in that direction.

That question was resolved earlier this year by the federal district court of Eastern Virginia in Pellegrino v. Equifax (2024):  MOHELA is not an arm of the State of Missouri.  If Missouri insists that it is, to have standing, then Missouri should pay borrower relief for MOHELA malfeasance.  Missouri cannot have it both ways.  

Judge-shopping is bad enough.  Giving plaintiffs standing when they have none is worse.  Many learned legal commentators, representing a broad ideological spectrum, have already doubted that Missouri had standing in Biden v. Nebraska.  That was a contrivance to carve out the narrowest of paths for the Supreme Court to make pronouncements on its "major questions" doctrine.  But this new attempt at debt relief is hardly a major question, if properly scored, as it deals primarily with fulfilling the promises the federal government made to borrowers over decades in its student loan programs.  Granted, it is hard to find a plaintiff who will be harmed by the government finally fulfilling its own obligations, but Missouri is certainly not it. 

  

American Voices Abroad: Get out the Vote

September, 2024

Berlin — Our friend and chair of Berlin-based American Voices Abroad, Ann Wertheimer, gave an inspiring speech recently in Hamburg.  Here is part of it. 

Defending Democracy rally, Hamburg, September 22, 2024

My name is Ann Wertheimer. I was born in New Jersey and lived there until I moved to Washington, D.C. to work as a public school teacher. I have been living in Berlin since 1971 where I taught English at the Freie Universität.

I am the chair of American Voices Abroad Berlin—or AVA, for short. AVA is a politically progressive group independent of all political parties both in the United States and in Germany. We offer a community for engaged U.S. citizens and provide a forum for a wide spectrum of views. We began in 2003 as Americans in Berlin Against the Iraq War. After a while, we began to focus on other issues and then changed our name.

And, by the way, we are not only citizens of the United States; we are also members of the community where we live. We seek to engage all members of this community in dialogue on issues of mutual concern.

Und übrigens sind wir nicht nur Bürger der Vereinigten Staaten, sondern auch ein Teil der Gemeinschaft in der wir leben. Wir wollen alle in dieser Gemeinschaft in einen Dialog über Fragen von gemeinsamem Interesse einbinden.

Joining American Voices Abroad is a way of engaging in American civic life even from here.

Democracy, we think, is something you do. You do it as an individual and you do it as part of a community.

Doing democracy starts with voting. Free and fair elections are the basis of democracy. Voting is how you do democracy as an individual, but significantly as one individual among many. Voting is a political act that we carry out with all of our fellow citizens.

A strong democracy needs high voter participation, but the United States State Department estimates that, of the over 80,000 U.S. citizens of voting age living in Germany, less than 10% voted in the 2022 general election—even though registering and voting from here is fairly simple. (If you haven’t yet registered, go to votefromabroad.org and do it.)

So why do so many overseas Americans not vote, not even in an election as crucial as this one? Do they not know that they can? Do they not know how? Or is it cynicism? Or resignation? Or fear of being tracked by the government? Does low voter turnout possibly reflect a lack of civic engagement among Americans abroad, a lack of community? In our efforts to participate in the life of our country of residence, in Germany, have we forgotten the rights and responsibilities of citizenship? Are we perhaps confused about what it means to act as individuals and, at the same time, to be part of the body politic?

With all good will, people may say, “My conscience just won’t let me vote for this or that person because I disagree with her so strongly on … name your issue.” So they sit out the election with a sense of political righteousness. In the end, the candidate who wins the election is often much further from the non-voter’s ideals than the candidate who offended their conscience.

Democracy may be exhausting, messy, confusing, and fragile, but it is truly our best hope. And we might take heart from legal scholar Jedediah Purdy, who writes: “Although no formula can make a polity democratic, there is one that goes a long way toward doing so: the principle that everybody votes.” (from Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy Is Flawed, Frightening — and Our Best Hope) ...

In the up-coming election, what’s at stake has never been more clear. It is the understanding that our government must work for all of us, that we are equal under the law, and that the rule of law, rather than the whims of one person or small group, must prevail....

We have learned that when wannabe dictators tell us what they intend to do, we should believe them. Wenn Möchtegern-Diktatoren uns sagen, was sie tun wollen, sollten wir ihnen glauben.

---

End Misrepresentation in College Pricing

July, 2024

Washington —  Of all the current problems in U.S. higher education (and there are many), one is said to be especially unsolvable:  pricing.

Credit is due Ben Unglesbee of Higher Ed Dive for describing why, and what pricing involves: discounting and other financial aid, legions of consultants, and even antitrust considerations.  An excerpt from his reporting:

The practice of marking down tuition sticker prices is decades old and comes with few benefits at this point, many experts say. It can mislead students and muddy the conversation around the value of a college education, while for institutions tuition discounting can wear on revenue and finances in a competitive environment.

“It’s not good for anybody. It’s not good for the students. And it’s not good for the institutions,” said Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College, in Massachusetts, and author of the book “A Problem of Fit: How the Complexity of College Pricing Hurts Students — and Universities.”

“If you interviewed university leaders and institutions that are doing this, they will tell you it doesn’t make sense,” Levine added. “But there’s no way to get out of it.”

...Trying to tailor aid — and hence price — takes complicated statistical crunching. Often colleges turn to outside firms that can build what’s called a leveraging matrix for admissions offices....

Convoluted as the pricing system might be, there is no easy off ramp.  As Levine noted, one fairly straightforward — but illegal — fix would be for institutions to work together on pricing.

Elite colleges have indeed tried such a tactic in the past, and they’ve been sued under antitrust laws. The U.S. Department of Justice reached a consent decree in the 1990s with Ivy League schools in such a case, and more recently top-ranked universities settled a price-fixing lawsuit brought by private plaintiffs.

Notwithstanding the above, there is a way to get out of this self-destructive dilemma, which I outlined briefly on p. 86 of Stephen Burd's (ed.) new book Lifting the Veil on Enrollment Management....  Let me describe it here in more detail.

Misleading students and parents is often inherent in pricing, particularly when price is set by what is known in the enrollment management industry as financial aid leveraging.  Thousands of schools, public and private, contract with consulting firms to maximize enrollment at the least possible cost to their budgets, even to the considerable disadvantage of populations they purport to serve.*  How they do it — their algorithms and aid packaging practices — is not disclosed to consumers, for fear disclosure would defeat the purpose of the processes.  The current system depends on a certain degree of secrecy and deception.  

Too many in higher education, generally speaking, do not know that under current law, full disclosure of both the amounts of all financial aid awards, which determine actual price, and the criteria used to arrive at those amounts, is required of all schools participating in federal student aid programs ("Title IV").**  Moreover, misrepresentation of price can result in removal of a school from federal program participation.***  

The Secretary of Education could and should issue a "Dear Colleague" letter to all Title IV schools reminding them of current law requirements and advising them that he will be sending program review teams to representative schools to assess compliance.  The review teams would be looking at both in-house and consultant-contracted pricing practices.  Particular attention would be paid to how the practices either support or undermine the statutory purposes of Title IV programs, which are to improve higher education access for the financially needy.  

The Secretary would use the review teams to identify any regulatory ambiguities that need clarification and any practices that countervail Title IV programs, which would be considered pricing misrepresentations as well as violations of legally-bound fiduciary duty under Title IV program participation agreements.  

When current law, as above, is followed by schools and reinforced by the Secretary, antitrust concerns will be minimized by removing the need for alleged anticompetitive collusion among schools in pricing.  The Justice Department will recognize that the Secretary's enforcement of current law consumer-protection disclosure requirements is pro- rather than anticompetitive and that the Secretary's identification and elimination of pricing practices that undermine the purpose of Title IV programs are not violations of either the "per se rule" or "rule of reason" standard of anticompetitive behavior (DOJ's concerns), because the Dear Colleague is issued by the Secretary based on law and is not the result of any agreements among institutions. ****  

Dear Colleague letters are sub-regulatory and a time-honored way to solve even the most difficult problems.  In this case, such a letter could soon end a pricing system that so many university leaders agree "doesn't make sense."  

________________________________

* See especially Peter Schmidt, "Words Without Actions: The Troubled Relationship Between Enrollment Management and Diversity," in Lifting the Veil on Enrollment Management....(2024).

** 34 CFR § 668.42 Financial assistance information   

*** 34 CFR § 668.71 Scope and special definitions

**** https://www.justice.gov/atr/case-document/file/1518171/dl?inline

        

Replace Judge Cannon

July, 2024

Washington —  Whether federal district Judge Aileen Cannon should be replaced in the Trump classified documents case, for alleged incompetence and prejudice, is a matter that may soon be taken up by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.  She has already been reversed twice in the case by the higher court and her latest decision looks to meet the same fate.  

This recalls my own experience* with a federal judge several years ago, in a case in which I was the plaintiff against nine student loan lender defendants, calling out their false claims against federal taxpayers.  

In our case, after the judge in question had been assigned and began to make decisions, five of the defendants objected to him continuing, as they had no confidence that he was up to the job.  In advance of their request for his removal, the defendants asked us as the plaintiff if we would join them in seeking a different judge for their five cases.  I recall my lawyers saying to me that ordinarily, if the other side doesn't like a judge, we should welcome his assignment, but in this case the defendants seemed all too correct in their assessment.  They felt that the judge was so erratic that the outcome could be disastrous for either side based on neither facts nor law.  

So we joined with the defendants and a magistrate judge was appointed by the district court as a replacement, to handle the five cases.  Within a few months, settlements were reached.

But that left four other defendants that the first judge had previously tried to dismiss from the case.  We successfully appealed that decision to the 4th Circuit, which reversed and remanded the case back to him, not to the magistrate.  I asked my counsel if we should ask once again for him to be replaced with a different judge for the remand, given that the judge would likely hold it against us that we had previously asked for his removal on the other cases, and succeeded.  They concluded that it was very difficult to remove a judge based on only one side's request, and that we would have to take our chances with him, dangerous as that might be.

We paid the price.  His decision on remand went against us, which we then had to appeal once again to the 4th Circuit, which again reversed him.  These successful appeals are known by their shorthand descriptions: Oberg I, Oberg II, and Oberg III.  The latter decision was taken by the defendant Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied certiorari. This reversal continues to stand as an important precedent in matters of sovereign immunity of quasi-governmental entities.

But the remand sent the merits issues back to the same judge for a jury trial.  Again, my counsel and I discussed whether to request a different judge, on the basis that he had ruled against us three times, had been reversed three times (with the last reversal being validated by the Supreme Court), and would be looking for vindication in a jury trial over which he presided.  Again, we decided to press ahead with the same judge, sensing no chance that he would be replaced.  

The trial was marked by two important rulings the judge made against us.  He did not permit us to enter evidence from the Pennsylvania Auditor General and he did not allow us to present numerous instances of PHEAA perjury.  He did not give the jury instructions that followed the statutory definition of false claims, omitting "reckless disregard" as a basis for conviction.  He did not allow jurors to take notes during the trial and refused a jury request early in their deliberations to put his jury instructions in writing for them.  

I knew what we were getting into when we went to trial, so I was not surprised at either the process or our loss in this judge's courtroom.  The loss had to be weighed against several successes involving other defendants.  We won settlements in seven of the nine original cases and set an important standard for determining sovereign immunity.  Other plaintiffs would eventually succeed in litigation against PHEAA due to its loss in Oberg III.  

But that took time.  Rather than face mounting legal challenges, PHEAA finally gave up being a federal loan servicer four years after the trial, but only after doing enormous damage in the billions of dollars to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program in the meantime.  PSLF has never been straightened out satisfactorily. 

It should be easier to replace judges when there is good reason to question their competence and prejudices.  Based on my experience, I think Judge Cannon should be relieved of any further work in the classified documents case, before even more damage is done to national security.  It should have been done much earlier.  The handling of classified documents is too important to be left to such a judge.  As a naval officer, I was once a ship's cryptographer with a top secret crypto clearance.  It was drilled into us that the mishandling of classified documents would have dire consequences.  It must stay that way.     

_______________________________

* See Dan E. Moldea, Money, Politics, and Corruption in U.S. Higher Education (2020). 

   

 

Justice Department Should Act to Reassure

July, 2024

Washington — In the wake of the tumultuous U.S. Supreme Court decision in Trump v. United States, a case that has alarmed Americans in that it puts a president above the law for actions most of us consider despicable, the Department of Justice should issue an emergency "Statement of Policy" to assure the country that it will continue to prosecute criminal and civil wrongdoing in the time-honored, two-century tradition of the U.S. Constitution.

Specifically, the Department of Justice should announce it will, notwithstanding Trump v. United States:

•  define "official" actions narrowly to prevent their being employed to cover illegal "unofficial" actions;

•  consider all presidential powers in the context of America's framework of limited government, with its separation of powers and checks and balances, including "core" presidential powers, which if used corruptly, cannot be "absolute";

•  rebut any "presumptive immunity" that tilts history's judicial scales unfairly, including those of Hammurabi, Moses, and Solon, and rely additionally on our own authors of The Federalist papers, who wrote that presidents must be "liable to prosecution and punishment in the ordinary course of law."  Immunity would not extend to withholding evidence from a jury when tantamount to bearing false witness. 

This emergency "Statement of Policy" will reassure citizens that the government's top agency for prosecution of wrongdoing, part of a co-equal branch in our system, is still on the job. 

The public should be given 45-day notice in the Federal Register to comment. Reaction will be overwhelmingly supportive, if the public is given the chance to weigh in.      

Lifting an Exasperating Veil

May, 2024

Washington —  This week Harvard Education Press is publishing Lifting the Veil on Enrollment Management, by Stephen J. Burd, editor.  The provocative subtitle is How a Powerful Industry is Limiting Social Mobility in American Higher Education.   It is a remarkable book, putting a spotlight on little-known college admission and financial aid practices that are devastating to the cause of equal opportunity and to the finances of needy families nationwide. 

My contribution to the effort is a chapter on the role of federal student aid in abetting the worst of the industry's practices, along with identifying expeditious remedies available under current law.  Other authors offer longer-term remedies that I support, but which, unfortunately, are unlikely to be enacted and implemented soon, if ever.  Time is of the essence: many current practices threaten financial ruin for students and families, especially this year with the uncertainty around FAFSA delays.  Moreover, the colleges engaging in these practices may themselves be unable to sustain them, and fail.  

My chapter makes the case for the Secretary of Education to send program review teams to selected institutions, fundamentally to determine if their largely covert enrollment management practices complement the purposes of Title IV of the Higher Education Act, or if they countervail them.  If the latter, the Secretary would use his powers under existing law to limit, suspend, or terminate the schools' participation in Title IV federal student aid. 

Among other issues, program reviewers would look specifically for (1) practices of aid packaging and leveraging that undermine federal aid, (2) deception or coercion of parents to apply for loans, and (3) disproportionately bad outcomes for students and families as viewed by race by income.  Institutions would have an opportunity to modify their practices before Title IV participation is cut off.  

Other remedies are available through consumer litigation.  Some of the practices could (and should) be challenged by class action or false claims lawsuits, especially those that violate the terms of multiyear promissory notes, transparency requirements, and misrepresentation prohibitions.  Violations are rife. 

Three federal agencies need to coordinate their efforts on litigation.  The Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Department of Justice have often been working at cross purposes.  DOJ has been especially obstructionist in how to address bad practices, seeing the issues only from an antitrust standpoint, rather than in terms of de facto civil rights violations.  Peter Schmidt's and Catherine Bond Hill's chapters should be eye-openers for DOJ.

I hasten to add that recent litigation may offer hope.   A 2022 private class action lawsuit, alleging that enrollment management practices at seventeen institutions violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, was quickly supported by a statement to the court from DOJ, because the practices at these institutions, DOJ agreed, amounted to collusion to increase the net price of college for the lower income.  But that also describes the net effect of the entire enrollment management industry very well.  The lawsuit, now in settlement, even notes the work of Don Hossler in making its case.  Hossler appears with a chapter in Lifting the Veil and his work, among others',  may offer a bridge to close the distance between agency interpretations. 

The need for federal agencies to get on the same page is urgent.  Chapters by Stephen Burd and Beth Zasloff illuminate the issues at the school and family levels.  Their chapters are infuriating to those of us who have been watching the self-inflicted descent of American higher education for too many years, with its attendant hypocrisy regarding race and class.  If anyone is still in doubt about what has been going on, who has been doing it and why, the chapters from Neil Swidey, Jon Marcus, Ozan Jaquette (with Karina Salazar and Patricia Martin), Kevin Carey, and Jerome Lucido spell it all out.  

May this book turn things around, and quickly.

Student Financial Aid Application Woes

May, 2024

Washington — Here is a critical analysis that will seem familiar to those struggling with a FAFSA student financial aid application form:   

Complicated application process

Most are aware that the ... applications are pretty confusing and complicated. The forms try to cover every conceivable case, making them extremely long and complex.

Depending on what the prospective student indicated on the initial forms, supplementary sheets might have to be filled out to provide further information. Because of this, most applicants need an average of 5 hours to complete the ... application and 99% of them arrive incomplete....

[The application] is heavily criticized because the forms can be difficult to understand and ... there are slow processing times due to a large volume of applications. [Emphasis added]

The above quotation is not a critique of FAFSA, however, but of the application for Germany's grant and loan program known as Bafög.  Clearly, the U.S. Department of Education's application form troubles are not unique. 

But our U.S. application system has been further complicated by an attempt to simplify it, without fully appreciating how fraught that might be from both substantive and procedural standpoints.  Simplification introduces inequities.  Procedurally the changes are proving to be a nightmare.  

Some of us have been advocating for years that the whole federal student aid system needs fundamental overhaul, to rethink the role of states and institutions, to build redundancy into higher education access, and to question the very purpose and existence of the FAFSA monster that is now devouring its creators. 

Re-Visiting the Rural Rage Controversy

April, 2024

Lincoln and Washington —  Last month, when I wrote a mixed review of White Rural Rage, an important but flawed book about rural America, I had no idea that so many other readers would likewise find serious shortcomings in it.  

First, there were complaints from scholars who claimed their own works had been distorted by the authors.  Then high-profile publications weighed in with their own critiques, exemplified by The Atlantic's "An Utterly Misleading Book About Rural America." 

Some of the critiques are guilty of piling-on.  The book may be flawed in multiple ways but its subject and message must not be overlooked.  Its subtitle, "The Threat to American Democracy," is only too true.  Critics themselves are often missing the main flaw of the book: the authors are short on solutions.  

Pointing this out, and offering more insights per paragraph than the authors and critics combined, is Farah Stockman, from an unlikely source on rural realities, the New York Times.  She provides new survey data that confirm what many of us know to be true, that there are many rural voters who would be receptive to Democratic candidates, and a return to two-party competition, if only Democrats would show up and engage on rural issues.  

What issues?  She names several.  Those of us with a long presence deep in the heartland know many others, festering unattended from decades of rural abandonment by both political parties.  Going after rural voters would seem to be an obvious Democratic political strategy, given these new survey data.  

Let blinkered disputes about the book subside and more exhilarating work begin, toward real engagement with rural America.

White Rural Rage, Reviewed

March, 2024

Lincoln and Washington —  White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy, a new book by political scientist Thomas Schaller and journalist Paul Waldman, is such worthy documentation of the current state of rural collapse in America that a dozen copies of it should be placed in every rural library across the country. 

That is, if any such libraries are left.  The same goes for other places where people might read it: schools, nursing homes, doctor's offices.  Rural America has been hollowed out.  Some rural denizens, who will see the book as a slur on their character, will instead offer the book as kindling for an American Bebelplatz.  

The book deserves our most solemn attention.  The authors' impressive collection of statistical evidence and anecdotal information is frightening, even if sometimes presented as over-generalization.  Societal dysfunction is leading to authoritarianism and violence across a culture.  Most helpful is a technical note to understand the statistics, "What We Mean When We Talk About 'Rural'."

Also helpful is an up-front acknowledgement that many will dismiss the book as the biased product of two "coastal cosmopolitans."  Indeed, more should have been done to allay such concerns.  The book, for all its strengths, is regrettably weak in citing authoritative and readily available rural sources like the policy-oriented Center for Rural Affairs and the rural journalist nonpareil Art Cullen.

A book like this should likewise not have omitted mention of key moments in the demise of rural America.  Richard Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz told farmers "get big or get out," accelerating depopulation. His blunt directive was representative of decades of federal Farm Bills that wiped out generations of family farms in favor of corporate agriculture.  Later, other countries' reactions to Donald Trump's misguided imposition of tariffs hit rural America hardest.  Trump's plundering of Commodity Credit Corporation funds to send welfare checks to producers to make up for it has turned farm country into a federal vassalage.  Columnist Alan Guebert tells these sad tales from the deep heartland as few others can, and references to his work would have dispelled the book's coastal cosmopolitan bias. 

Another omission is an explanation of how the rural communication networks established by land grant universities have become conduits for the spread of rural rage.  The Cooperative Extension Service, established by the Smith Lever Act to convey university research, never completely cut its former ties to the Farm Bureau, a powerful interest group aligned with corporate agriculture and monopolies.  To many, they are still synonymous, or at least compatible in outlook.  Trump relies heavily on the Farm Bureau to do his business in the heartland.  

The most striking omission in the book becomes apparent as readers surely scream at virtually every page, "So what is anybody doing about this!"  There are few if any anecdotes about Democrats' efforts to counter the authoritarian Republican takeover.  Instead, in chapter after chapter, the disproportionate influence of rural areas in our constitutional system, especially in the Electoral College and the Senate, is highlighted and blamed.  The question of why Democrats don't compete in rural areas, if this is where the most consequential votes exist, is not seriously addressed.  

A reason for this may be that one of the authors once advocated that Democrats could safely give up on winning votes in the South, which in many places heavily overlaps with rural.  It is a strategy that national Democrats have pursued nationwide — essentially giving up on rural voters and trying to rely on identitarianism to win.  Many rural Democrats have fought this abandonment intensely, and lost.  Their anecdotes are sorely missing from this book.  It's long past time to name the names responsible. 

In the final chapter, remedies for white rural rage are offered but they are not convincing.  Nobel laureate Paul Krugman reviewed the book and concluded that the demise of rural America was inevitable and the situation is fundamentally hopeless.  Neither is true, but that is not an erroneous reading of the book, sadly. 

The authors end with hope that a movement with a better vision of the future will be created.  But just who would lead this movement is a big blank.  The authors do not develop a case along the way that a change in Democrats' strategy, or courageous leadership from the nation's land grant universities, or less counterproductive Farm and Food Bills could show the way.  Actually, those three in combination could make a huge difference.  

Maybe a quick second edition could overcome these shortcomings?  That's a scream and a plea.