I recently returned home from my 29th teaching visit to the Driftless region of our country, where Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota meet along the Big Muddy - the breathtaking Mississippi River.

Highlights of my trip included:

  • An invitation to present and answer questions for two full hours at a specially called session of the Viroqua, Wisconsin City Council. The session was also attended by more than 40 local residents excited about bringing a Community Rights approach to solving local issues. The local Crawford County Independent newspaper ran a detailed story about the presentation HERE. And you can view my presentation HERE.

  • Introductory Community Rights workshops in a number of Wisconsin and Iowa towns, including in Baraboo, Wisconsin, where my co-host is a long-time elected member of the Sauk County Board of Supervisors; and in Lansing, Iowa, where my co-host is running for a seat on the Allamakee County Board of Supervisors.

  • A day-long planning session in preparation to launch our new national ThinkTank on Rethinking the Regulatory State. It will publish policy papers, and constructively nudge journalists and single-issue activists to deepen their understanding of the true history and purpose of regulatory agencies. Contrary to popular belief, regulatory law is not and never has been about protecting human health, labor rights, and the environment. Our president’s dismantling of the regulatory state has created a golden opportunity for us to re-imagine what We want our government agencies to do to protect us.

  • An OpEd piece I wrote that was published in the Decorah, Iowa local newspaper, reminding local residents that they have the power and authority to take on Alliant Corporation in its drive to stop the community from creating its own public electric utility.

One of the most significant political changes that have happened due to my dozens of visits to this region since 2013 is an increasingly widespread realization among local residents that their local elected officials are the wrong people, and that those with a lot more political backbone and vision should be the ones making the key decisions that affect the people and their environment.

So these newly awakened folks are running for local office and most of them are winning!

There are so many urgent issues not being properly addressed in this region, such as rapidly increasing factory farms, new and expanded fossil fuel pipelines, and frac sand mines serving the fracking industry.