Give life a chance
Iowans seems to believe the pandemic is over. Very few people wear masks. Only a slim majority is vaccinated against Covid. But the virus is there and it’s spreading quickly. Hospitals in the south are overcrowded with Covid patients, and this is what we will look like soon. We’re like the guy who heard a hurricane warning but ignored it because the current weather was fine.
Getting vaccinated or wearing a mask is uncomfortable and people don’t want it. Stopping at red lights is also annoying, but crossing red lights puts others at risk, so we don’t allow it.
Paying taxes is very troublesome, but without it we have no police. Civilization is impossible unless choices are sometimes restricted.
The vaccines are no longer experimental; Hundreds of millions got one. Over 600,000 Americans have died because they were not vaccinated; exactly zero died because they were vaccinated.
If you think you are for life, get vaccinated and wear a mask in public. Support that encourages others to do so. As you honor our military for protecting us, be a patriot and do your part to protect us. Freedom is not free, and sometimes the only sensible way to give up small freedoms is to gain larger ones.
Jim Eliason | Storm Sea
Operation tire dreams
A stormy applause for all supporters of the community who planned, financed and built the new basketball court in Seneca Park behind the police station. Operation Hoop Dreams is not a dream. I see children of all ages shooting hoops when I stop by the neighborhood on my evening walks. It’s a great thing. We keep Storm Lake proud.
Carol Lytle | Storm Sea
Don’t bother us, we adore
During this ongoing epidemic, the churches are doing somewhere between unevenly and fairly badly.
Some of the earliest and worst spreader events occurred at regular or annual meetings held almost in defiance of the authorities.
Then, when stricter guidelines were enacted, the churches called the First Amendment lazy and even sued for being removed from the major congregational guidelines to which they were subject. They wanted to be treated like God’s favorite citizens, and it was always clear to them that it was them.
This is an odd record for a Western religious tradition that is strongly associated with high achievements in medicine, underscored by the personal leadership of figures like Moses, Jesus and Mohammed in the public health field.
Churches today refuse to let go of theology for even a minute to see what they could learn from history, law, and health sciences.
In very ancient times, before the teachings of the great prophets dried up like dew on a blade of grass, religion endeavored to encompass and explain everything: nature, education, and nations.
But gradually, as the world just got too complicated, the churches narrowed their scope to some things whose reality can be seen (like love and kindness) and others whose reality is less obvious (like the effectiveness of the sacraments, the substance of miracles and the society of the afterlife).
How then is it that we will ever ban ignorance and violence (and error) because the state lacks ethics and the church lacks science?
Kimball Shinkoskey | Woods Cross, Utah
Family businesses and taxes
General tax policy. In his efforts to make US tax laws fairer, to remove loopholes and to shift taxes to the rich, President Biden’s plans for comprehensive tax reform are still missing all the details. to shape the final result with the Congress.
However, the president is sticking to his promise that changes to the tax law will not increase tax rates on individual incomes up to $ 400,000. And family tax breaks would reduce some tax burdens on the middle class.
Inheritance from the family business. Tax audits in connection with the succession of family businesses are under discussion and are also ready to be negotiated. It looks like no seriously debated proposals will force families to pay taxes on unrealized capital gains on valued agricultural assets (land) when qualified family members who have inherited land wish to continue practical farming.
The extent to which the final sale of farmland would be subject to a profit tax on the appreciation of the land is debated and may depend on the amount of a deceased’s estate exempted from inheritance tax (and an increased tax base). That exclusion is now $ 11 million, although most believe it will reset to the $ 3 million to $ 5 million range, roughly double that for deceased couples.
Legislature advocates a level of exclusion that would exempt family businesses in Iowa from the confiscating or harmful effects of “transfer tax”. The “transfer tax” in question is primarily intended to prevent the very rich like Elon Musk, Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos and their descendants from escaping taxes comparable to all other taxes. The US House of Representatives for Agriculture Chairman David Scott (D GA) and committee member Cindy Axne (D IA) appear to be insisting that exclusions and exceptions related to family succession protection be included in tax laws.
Exchange of arable land. If a farmer, or a farmer who has inherited land, wishes to exchange a piece of land for another non-owned land for agricultural reasons, that transaction should not give rise to capital gains tax liability. Most tax critics want to ensure that this reasonable tax deferral is maintained for the stability of farm operators, while abusive tax-free exchanges, primarily for speculative purposes, are eliminated.
In the past few decades, the big tax breaks have mainly been on further interests of wealthy and the corporate sector. We’re seeing a clear impact in rural Iowa with the monopoly of Big Ag, vertically integrated agricultural systems and farm consolidation. It is time to reverse these trends. The “trickle-down” theory of general prosperity has proven to be exaggerated.
Jay Howe | Green meadow
Small towns – victims of the corporate robbery
I applaud the efforts of tiny Wabasso, Minnesota, (765), to push back Dollar General and the corporate attack that threatens the viability of small towns including my hometown of Blooming Prairie, Minnesota, (1916 residents). . The long, ongoing struggle to restructure rural America began years ago, one factory farm at a time. I should know – our family farm in rural Dodge County is surrounded by 11 pig factories within 3 miles. The forced relocation of factory farms in rural areas is part of the coordinated, conscious and conscious corporate efforts to force the socialization of rural areas and to secure a new corporate structure. In the process, farming families were pushed out of the country and neighboring small towns that desperately wanted to survive were eroded.
Nowhere is this devastating excavation more evident than in rural Minnesota. During my youth, my hometown was a bustling community that shared an attitude of abundance and kinship. When bread was broken there was enough for everyone. In town there were two grocery stores, local banks, two drug stores, a dime store, several restaurants and equipment stores, a furniture store, two clothing stores, local barbershops, a doctor’s office, a dentist’s office, a liquor store, a pool hall, local accounting firms, and other businesses on the town busy Main Street as local dollars circulated in the small community.
A healthy interdependence permeated the community as residents bought local produce and supported local businesses – long before corporate giants, with the help of Republican-minded Farm Bureau workers, built factory farms and prospered the rural area, divided the farming community and a sick dependence on the community Industry created giants. Local businesses eventually closed their doors after the takeover that brought Main Street to a standstill in a single generation.
One by one they closed – schools, churches, restaurants and shops.
In this void, corporate chains like Hog Slat, Inc., the largest contractor and manufacturer of pig production equipment in the United States, opened a retail store to support neighboring pig factories on the south end of town. And coming soon to the north end of town – a Dollar General Store to extract the last of the dollars in the small town. My hometown – like many other hometowns – is being demoted to a corporate outpost to support corporate giants.
I watch in fear as my hometown withers and dies. Thanks to corporate greed, dollars that once circulated in Blooming Prairie and other small towns have been withdrawn, and the profits landed on the corporate balance sheet. Dollars have flowed to multinational corporations like Hormel, whose corporate headquarters are just 15 miles south and generate billions in corporate profits. Never satisfied with the company’s performance, “Humans are the only animals whose desires grow with ingestion; the only animal that is never satisfied. “
Tragically, the latest store to open in many rural towns is a funeral home. When the small towns are done burying the dead, who will bury the cities?
Sonja Trom Eayrs | Maple Grove, Minn.
Please stop stealing
Why are vandals taking solar lights from the tombstones of our loved ones? So sad.
Kathryn Dick | Storm Sea