CYA, we’re all gonna die

Editorials from the Storm Lake Times Pilot, June 6, 2025

Joni Ernst is a US senator because she understands Iowa voters and speaks their language, cynical as it is. She castrated pigs. Gonna make ’em squeal in DC. Roast and ride a hog. Wear bread bags on your shoes riding the bus down gravel roads, and you know the story. She has set aside solid opponents in Theresa Greenfield and Mike Franken by doing the down home rag.

Last week Ernst faced a disgruntled town hall in Parkersburg where locals, presumably Democrats, questioned the Republican about the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed by the House. It would deliver massive tax cuts for the wealthy while slashing Medicaid for the poor and elderly infirm while piling up debt.

“People will die!” cried India May, a nurse and librarian running for the local House seat.

“People are not — well, we all are going to die, so for heaven’s sake,” Ernst retorted.

Well clutch my pearls, the Democrats went viral and the digital cage fight was on. Heartless. How could you?

You could hear them squeal. Give it another kick: Ernst shows up in a video from a graveyard the next day snarking that she is sooooo sorry for pointing out the certainty of death, and she was glad that she didn’t have to explain to the snowflakes about the tooth fairy.

Cutting taxes on the back of Medicaid and child nutrition is bad policy. Early access to health care saves money. Children who are fed well do better in school. Rural nursing homes are closing. Medicaid covers the ride for kidney dialysis patients from Pomeroy to Storm Lake or Fort Dodge. Buena Vista Regional Medical Center depends on Medicaid to remain open. These are serious subjects that deserve a serious discussion.

The sniping episode helped propel India May’s candidacy in Butler and Floyd counties. It was all over social media. “Iowa. A Place To Die.” Ernst knew it was red meat for her base, which eats up owning the libs. All of it is so tiresome, so predictable. World markets are in whipsaw and we are stuck talking about those mythical shiftless men who work the system to avoid work.

By Sunday, along comes Nathan Sage for a meet-and-greet at Puff’s bar in Storm Lake. He is running for the Democratic nomination for Senate. He was born into a Mason City trailer park, thought school wasn’t for him, enlisted in the Marines at 17, got his forearm properly inked up, toured Iraq in three hitches as a truck mechanic, came back, found school was for him, and eventually ended up running the radio station in Indianola. His latest day job is as Knoxville Chamber of Commerce director — interesting in that he frames his campaign around class conflict, which has been verboten around here.

“I knew I was not on a level playing field at a young age,” he said. “I’m about breaking the wheel, wrecking the status quo.”

Tax the rich, Sage told the crowd of about 10 folks, almost all from Sac County and deeply frustrated.

“Maybe I don’t wanna sit my ass in that ambulance if they don’t want to give me a Covid shot,” said the ambulance boss from Kiron.

Everywhere he goes, people are angry. Sage declared his disdain for the wealthy who make us punch down at the poor. Heck, they’re all going to die anyway. “They just don’t care about us. They just want to line their pockets. I’m the only working-class Senate candidate in the country right now. We are screwed,” he said. His new followers agreed.

He went on like that for about an hour. Sage has been on the cable TV shows. He was at Parkersburg when Ernst went flippant on death. Others are running but the self-styled working-class hero has the jump on them. Ernst does not act as if she is in any danger whistling past the graves. She will have all the money the defense industry can muster to sell the snark and the sizzle, never the steak, and fool the trailer court denizens in Mason City to vote for her style of mindless spunk born of deceit.

Campaigning for Senate: Nathan Sage of Indianola, left, visited Puff’s White Cap Inn on Sunday afternoon to drum up support in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for the US Senate seat held by Republican Joni Ernst of Red Oak. Sage advertises himself as “working class.” PHOTO BY ART CULLEN

No sanctuary here, iceman

Buena Vista County residents may be relieved to know that this is no sanctuary for immigrants. In fact, no place in Iowa is. That according to a federal list published last week warning that sanctuary cities could be punished. Several places in Minnesota are on the list, probably thanks to the fact that the Democrat is a governor. Iowa is so red we get an exemption.

Notable among the Minnesota sanctuaries is Nobles County, the seat of which is meatpacking town Worthington. It’s almost a twin to Storm Lake, but our lake and colleges are bigger and nicer. It has a JBS pork plant that just settled on a new contract with its overwhelmingly immigrant workforce.

Sanctuary or not, the Trump Administration has not raided the meat industry in its campaign to deport more than 10 million undocumented immigrants. Iowans who voted for Trump have been hornswoggled. If you really intend to make a deportation dent, you have to go after the food industry because that is where so many immigrants work.

Some JBS plants have employed children on night clean up. Former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who now oversees deportation, knows right where they are. No action. Instead, they are deporting Asian students from Harvard. ICE has not raided Worthington despite it being a so-called sanctuary. LeSeur, in the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant, also is on the list. Immigrants have been flocking there for generations to work in the fields and canning factories. No raids reported there.

Or in Denison, hometown of politicians Steve King and Steve Holt of melded minds. No sanctuary to be seen here, despite over half the town being Brown. We like the fact that Iowa appears to be off-limits for now, because we need the help. So does JBS in Worthington, which is why it has not been raided. It doesn’t matter if you are on the list or not, because we would hate to interrupt production. We like having Latino neighbors. Glad they are here doing the hard work for your food budget.

It is hard not to point out the blatant hypocrisy of it all. Trump knew he could not deport even a fraction of the undocumented when he claimed that he would deport them all — not just the criminals, since they were being deported all along. He lied. Voters believed his lies. Immigrants are still cutting hogs, sanctuary or not, because we absolutely need them.

Fund what you have

Iowa will need three to four times more college graduates in 2031 than it has today as job requirements advance over time. That has prompted a push by at least some legislators to refit community colleges to award four-year bachelor’s degrees. A report commissioned by Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, has come back outlining the effort.

Our first reaction is that we have plenty of room at Iowa’s private colleges and at the University of Northern Iowa for students seeking bachelor’s degrees. Iowa Wesleyan in Mount Pleasant closed not so long ago, and several other private colleges are on the edge (Buena Vista not among them).

Before we launch new bachelor degree programs we should fill the empty beds at private colleges. It is no cheaper to provide for a chemistry class at Iowa Central than it is at Buena Vista. We would not save money by shifting students from private colleges to community colleges. Property taxes certainly will rise because the legislature may demand it but is in no position to fund it. Legislators are hostile to the Iowa Tuition Grant program, which gives grants to private-college students. The legislature has been starving the program for many years, as it has slowly withdrawn support for our three state universities that used to be considered world-class. Legislators have been openly attacking private colleges in Iowa, which happen to be major economic engines in places like Waverly and Oskaloosa. Those without the benefit of a Buena Vista education have a hard time figuring this out, understandably. They are not protesting against Israel in Sioux Center. Private colleges are at the heart of many deeply Republican areas like Orange City and Sioux City. What are these legislators thinking?

We can hope that they will keep on studying and not doing anything about it.

We should not start something new until we can keep up what we have. We are not keeping up in Ames, Iowa City, Cedar Falls or Storm Lake. Community colleges could do a better job on vo-tech recruitment and placement, and engaging with K-12 systems. Let’s concentrate on that and quit the harassment of higher education in Iowa. Storm Lake needs Buena Vista and Iowa Central, not one or the other. Plus, you can already get a BVU degree through Iowa Central. This entire exercise is a perfect example of government waste, fraud and abuse. Where is Elon Musk when you need him?

Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where these editorials appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.

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