Letters to the Editor: The loss of community engagement

John Cullen’s Jan. 31, 2025, piece about diminishing interest in community service clubs notes that GenXers and Millennials are often void of service motivations.

We cannot overlook the fact that Iowa towns have seen many locally-rooted businesses snuffed out by out-of-town corporate-style outlets whose local managers, and their families, come and go. 

Reduced local business stakeholdership has much to do with the loss of community engagement. 

Owning some of the “turf” engenders motivations to keep it healthy. 

Buy local when you can!

Jay Howe, Greenfield

Ernst should be squealing

Senator Joni Ernst rode into Washington in 2014 on the promise to “make ‘em squeal,” meaning to fiscally castrate big spending bureaucrats. 

Let’s talk turkey. Ernst is now the Senate caucus leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the creation of a Trump executive order designed to eliminate government waste (in order to fund the permanent extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the richest among us). As DOGE chair, Ernst is complicit in unleashing a Trojan horse into the U.S. Treasury — a Trojan horse stuffed with Trump loyalists like soon-to-be trillionaire Elon Musk and his DOGE bros.   

In true robber baron fashion, Musk immediately demanded access to the Treasury’s payments system. In true loyalist fashion, newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent handed over a powerful tool a handful of sycophants was never supposed to possess. 

Joni Ernst herself is the one who should be squealing. Her zeal for trimming fat has escaped her control and has now been unleashed on veterans, Social Security and Medicare recipients, grant recipients, and taxpayers expecting refunds — multitudes of citizens whose sensitive information was heretofore in the safe keeping of only a few vetted treasury officials with security clearances.  

What to do? Contact Senator Ernst. Tell her to start squealing about this potentially disastrous breach. Then, remember this in the 2026 midterm election. Ernst is not working for us!

Karen Heidman, Sioux City