SULLIVAN'S SALVOS
December 30, 2024
Sullivan’s Salvos 1/2/25
In this edition:
*RIP Steve Miller
*RIP Jimmy Carter
*Welcome to 2025!
*Serving As Chair
*Committee Assignments
*January 6
*Media Failure
*Leaning In
*Did You Know?
*RIP Steve Miller
I was sad to hear that Steve Miller of Iowa City passed last week. Steve was a Union brother, serving for a time as President of AFSCME Local 186. Steve worked for IC Transit, and was a very well-liked individual. RIP.
*RIP Jimmy Carter
Former President Jimmy Carter recently passed away at 100 years old. I must admit, I was not a huge fan of Carter’s politics. I wish he had been more labor friendly and less enamored of fiscal austerity. He should have never appointed Paul Volcker as the Fed Chair. And with a Democratic trifecta in place, he blew up Ted Kennedy’s Universal Healthcare proposal. On the other hand, he achieved peace in the Middle East, pushed through the SALT 2 Treaty, and made energy conservation a thing.
More importantly, Jimmy Carter is perhaps the most decent human being ever to hold the Office of the Presidency. Even if you did not care for his policy choices, you cannot argue with his intelligence, honesty, integrity, kindness, and compassion. It would be great to see more of that in the White House. And Carter must have had the best post-Presidency of the past 90 years or so, serving as an inspiration to many with all his good works.
RIP, Mr. President!
*Welcome to 2025!
Happy New Year! Here’s to a better and brighter year ahead! I have never been big on New Year’s resolutions – you can see that by my weight! But I certainly welcome the “fresh start” feel of the New Year. I hope 2025 is good to you and yours!
*Serving As Chair
I am done serving as the Board Chair for 2024. It was an eventful year!
People are often under the misconception that the Board Chair has some special powers. They really don’t. The role is largely ceremonial. It is true that the Chair and Vice Chair help set the agendas, but if the process is working as it should, no Board member ever feels shut out.
To me, the two biggest jobs of the Chair are 1) managing what gets on the agendas and when, and 2) ensuring that meetings run smoothly. The public deserves efficiency and effectiveness. A well-run meeting can also save hours of staff time – and that means money!
Supervisor Jon Green was Vice Chair in 2024, and I expect him to be elected Chair in 2025. Jon and I worked together very well (IMHO), and I appreciate his willingness to dive in and work hard. I am sure he will do well as Chair. Congrats to him!
*Committee Assignments
The Board of Supervisors tries to rotate the committees upon which its members serve. We typically serve on any given committee for 2-4 years, then move on. This ensures that all members get a certain amount of exposure to everything we do. It also ensures that a fresh set of eyes gets involved every so often. Sometimes it is more complicated than this, but that is generally how things work.
We have not been rotating much lately. Unfortunately, there are a few committees no one really wants to serve on, and others that everyone would like to do. In trying to negotiate this, nothing changes. I hope we can figure out a way forward.
This rotation (if it happens) takes place in January every year, so we are all taking on some new and different challenges. I will be serving in the following roles for 2025:
I will continue serving on the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) of Johnson County Board and the East Central Mental Health Region (ECR). I will serve as a liaison to our Veteran’s Affairs Commission, the Think IC Board of Directors, and the Better Together 2030 Board. I am looking forward to working with each of those groups.
There are many, many other boards, committees, and commissions of which I am a part. But this gives you a sense of a couple of my assignments.
*January 6
January 6 marks the 4th anniversary of one of the lowest points in US history. The defeated former President riled up a bunch of insurrectionists who then broke into the US Capitol, killing cops along the way. It remains the only coup attempt in American history (unless you include succession.) January 6 is the most shameful day in American history.
Has there been any accountability? Some. Hundreds of people have been charged, and 378 individuals have been convicted thus far. But no one has been sentenced harshly. None of the US Congresspeople nor US Senators who conspired have been charged. And most importantly, Trump himself has thus far avoided all accountability.
Please – do not treat January 6 as yesterday’s news! We still can and must demand accountability! Traitors attempted to overthrow the US government on that day. They killed cops. We must not let this go! Acknowledge what happened this January 6 and every January 6 until the end of time!
*Media Failure
There are many examples of the media failing in the Age of Trump. Here is one that I find particularly galling:
Did you catch Trump recently saying that, “Well, you know, it is really hard to bring prices down…” Ya think? Of *course* it is really hard to bring prices down! Otherwise every President would do it!
The problem is not that Trump said this in late December. The problem is that during the campaign he made *ridiculous* statements about how he was going to lower prices. And the media, knowing full well those statements were bullshit, just let him do it.
The media should have simply agreed to say, “And how are you going to do that?” When he doesn’t answer, you just keep asking that same question. And you continue to write and broadcast that he did not answer the question.
To tie this to the above article – I fully expect the media to tell “both sides” of the January 6 insurrection. As though there are two sides! It is like saying there are “two sides” to the stories of Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer!
When historians write about this period, the complete and utter failure of the media is going to be one of the biggest issues.
*”Leaning In”
(This ran in Salvos in January of 2019. Unfortunately, it still feels relevant in 2025.)
I was one of many people who celebrated when Michelle Obama called out the idea of “Leaning In”. By now we are all familiar with Lean In, the book written by Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg. Lean In (according to Sandberg herself) “means to be assertive, to move toward a leading, rather than a following, role.”
There is nothing wrong on the face of that message. I’m sure that for many women and girls, it is good advice. Michelle Obama’s criticism is not that. Obama’s criticism is that the whole idea behind Lean In is that individual success is completely up to each individual woman, who just needs to pull herself up by her bootstraps. It is putting lipstick on a pig – in this case, the old American myth of rugged individualism. And that is crap.
We live in a world where literally billions of women are second class citizens. They do not enjoy the rights that men enjoy, and various combinations of government, religion, and big business are comfortable keeping them subjugated.
Things are better in the global West, but only when in comparison to the rest of the world. In America, women still only make about 80 cents for every dollar a man makes. We still have policies that punish motherhood. And wealthy white women like Sandberg pile on by blaming women themselves for their lack of “achievement”.
When Johnson County raised the minimum wage in 2015, I was struck by the fact that it affected many more women than men, and that many of those women were mothers. Why are we blaming these women for that situation?
When the Iowa Legislature convenes in a couple of weeks, you will hear all kinds of stuff from leaders in businesses, education, and politics about how Iowa needs to do more to train its workforce. While I am certainly not against training, that is NOT the issue!
I would love someone to stand up at one of those meetings and say, “Want workers to do better? Why don’t we raise the minimum wage? Why don’t we mandate paid sick leave? Why don’t we offer free Community College? Why don’t we ensure that every Iowan has adequate health care? Why don’t we address our childcare crisis? Why don’t we do more to promote public housing and public transit? Why do we continue to blame all our problems on a lack of training?”
Women didn’t cause our problems. The men who run big businesses and the mostly-male politicians who grovel at their feet caused these problems. They should be held to account.
Unfortunately, Sheryl Sandberg joined her fellow big business partners in blaming women workers for our current state of affairs. Fortunately, Michelle Obama keenly noted that women workers are not the problem!
*DID YOU KNOW? Within 36 hours of January 6, 2021 five people died: one was shot by Capitol Police; another died of a drug overdose; and three died of natural causes including a police officer who died of natural causes a day after being assaulted by rioters. Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died of suicide within seven months. Damage caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million. (Source: Wikipedia.)
Anyone interested in learning more about County government should take a look at the County website-
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---Rod
posted by Rod Sullivan @ 7:06 PM
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