SULLIVAN'S SALVOS
April 15, 2025
Sullivan’s Salvos 4/17/25
In this edition:
*Happy Easter!
*Congratulations Dave Wehde!
*Reynolds Not Seeking Reelection!
*Earth Day
*Happy Birthday Gatsby!
*Sullinomics?
*Did You Know?
*Happy Easter!
Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it! Please take care if you are travelling, and have a safe holiday.
*Congratulations Dave Wehde!
Longtime Johnson County Conservation Natural Resources Manager Dave Wehde is retiring after 39 years as a full-time employee. (He also served as a seasonal employee during college.)
Dave has always been one of my favorites. First, he’s just a great guy. Secondly, Dave is an absolute expert in the flora and fauna of our area, and his knowledge is respected far and wide. I love the way that Dave tells the history of a spot – where as some folks would start during the time of indigenous peoples, and others might start at the time of Lewis and Clark, Dave will start his story using geological time.
You do not replace people like Dave Wehde. It is like Michael Jordan retiring. You just move on, knowing that you were lucky to work with someone like that. Congratulations, Dave, and thank you for you service to the people and the land of Johnson County!
*Reynolds Not Seeking Reelection!
Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has announced that she is not running for reelection in 2026. Good. She is the epitome of evil. She has needlessly, callously hurt *SO* many people. It is unconscionable. I will just take the high road, and hope she requests and receives forgiveness before her judgement day.
*Earth Day
As usual, Johnson County is doing a proclamation noting Earth Day, and urging the people of Johnson County to act in defense of our planet.
But did you know the history of Earth Day? First, there was a photo. The iconic “Earthwise” image snapped by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders from lunar orbit on Dec. 24, 1968, showed our planet as it really is: a lonely and fragile outpost of life suspended in an endless, inky-black void. That new perspective jolted many people awake and lit a fire under others, helping the nascent environmental movement gain cohesion and momentum, experts say.
That photo led to Earth Day. The rest of the story, from Wikipedia: In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed at the United Nations. A month later, United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970. He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event "Earth Day". Denis and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States. More than 20 million people poured out on the streets, and the first Earth Day remains the largest single-day protest in human history. Key non-environmentally focused partners played major roles. Under the leadership of labor leader Walter Ruether, for example, the United Auto Workers (UAW) was the most instrumental outside financial and operational supporter of the first Earth Day. According to Hayes, "Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!" Nelson was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in recognition of his work.
*Happy Birthday Gatsby!
The Great American Novel – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – turns 100 years old this month. I hate to admit it, but the first time I read Gatsby, I just wasn’t mature enough to appreciate it. The next time I read it, only about three years later, it clicked. I have read it 2-3 times since, and my appreciation grows each time.
Economic disparity remains the biggest problem in our world today. Take a moment to reread Gatsby, and you’ll see that Fitzgerald laid this out for us 100 years ago. So we beat on. Happy Birthday, Gatsby!
*Sullinomics?
I get pretty wonky when it comes to economics, tax policy, and the like. I find it fascinating, and love researching the topics. But there is only so much you can do about the economy as a County Supervisor. Even less since Governor Reynolds stripped most of our Home Rule authority.
So, I decided, just for fun, I’d pretend I was King for a bit, and lay out the economic policies that make sense to me. Here it goes:
1. Institute the Elizabeth Warren Wealth Tax. If you recall, this is a 2% annual tax on the net worth of households and trusts between $50 million and $1 billion, and a 1% annual surtax (3% tax overall) on the net worth of households and trusts above $1 billion. This would raise about $3 TRILLION dollars over 10 years!
2. Increase the personal income tax using a very progressive model, with almost everyone paying something. (I like the buy in of almost everyone contributing something.) The top rate should be at least 75%.
3. Make every dollar of income taxable under Social Security. In other words, lift the cap. This takes care of funding Social Security – probably forever – with no benefit cuts.
4. Institute a small tax on all stock trades. (Also known as Bernie Sanders’ Stock Speculation Act.) This raises $2 trillion over 10 years, and helps to end speculation on Wall Street.
5. Institute strong rules to stop billionaires from avoiding these taxes. Institute strong rules for capturing the tax even overseas. (Warren can explain in depth how this can be accomplished if you want to check it out.)
6. Using this money, we greatly expand healthcare, getting to universal coverage. We pay for families to have free childcare. We increase Medicare and Medicaid payments to care providers, and require them to pay much higher wages. We increase SNAP benefits. We offer free community college. We invest hundreds of billions in affordable housing. We invest hundreds of billions in alternative sources of energy. It is a New Deal - like the 1930s, but designed for the 2030s!
7. We need to focus our manufacturing on things Americans need. Double down on factories that process food. Create more factories that produce drugs, medical supplies, and medical devices. Invest in factories that produce wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries. Invest in technology. Invest heavily in scientific research. Quit investing in plastic crap – other countries can produce that.
8. We need to invest heavily in a caregiving economy. We need people to be doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses, therapists, daycare workers, and in-home caregivers. We need to raise the pay for these jobs and create hundreds of thousands more of them. There are an unbelievable number of jobs that can be created caring for kids, seniors, and people with disabilities. It is meaningful, important work – we just need to compensate them accordingly. (Much of this can be paid for by having almost no private health insurance sucking money out of the system.)
9. We slowly right-size and modernize the military. We have no cuts in pay for service members, but we also do not buy outdated technology just to provide jobs in any given Congressional District.
10. Make actual progress on the debt and deficit. Republicans pretend those are not important now. As soon as Trump is out of office, the GOP will claim they are the biggest threats facing America. They are lying both times. But we do need to begin to address these issues.
I recognize that all of this is pie-in-the-sky. The wealthy will - primarily through the Republican Party – fight every bit of this. And these are huge changes that would take a long time to implement. But they could all be done. Much of the world already does it. This is just an exercise is thinking about a perfect world. That, in a nutshell, is “Sullinomics.” What do you think?
*DID YOU KNOW? Several interesting things have happened on April 17th.
1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York kills 146 workers.
1961: The Bay of Pigs Invasion - A group of Cuban exiles financed and trained by the CIA lands in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.
1982: The Canada Act, also known as the Constitution Act, was proclaimed, making Canada a fully independent and sovereign state.
1989: The Exxon Valdez oil tanker crashed off the coast of Alaska, causing a massive oil spill.
Anyone interested in learning more about County government should take a look at the County website-
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As always, feel free to contact me at 354-7199 or rodsullivan29@gmail.com. I look forward to serving you!
---Rod
posted by Rod Sullivan @ 11:04 AM
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