Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

My Point of View by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

Freeborn County is a great place to raise a family, but I’m not sure we have an accurate picture of the shape we’re currently in.

We keep voting for politicians, like Trump, Finstad, Dornink and Bennett, who back policies that accelerate redistribution of wealth to the top while our county declines.

Do we have a realistic understanding of how dependent Freeborn County is on federal and state money? I get the impression that many people think we’re supporting the metro area, when that is not the case. The metro area pays over 50% more per person in state taxes than people in Greater Minnesota pay. While they get less than they pay in back in aid and credits, we get back more, on average, than we pay in ($3,423 back vs. $2,871 paid in).

We in Greater Minnesota are the ones who are being supported by the state. We benefit from redistribution of income in the state. But we apparently think it’s the opposite, and we despise it.

If the metro flipped to Republican control and their legislators decided to stop redistributing income this way, we would be in for a bad shock.

We’re also more dependent on the federal government than the metro. Statewide, about 18% of people are enrolled in Medicaid, MA or CHIP. That number is 23% for Freeborn County and 22% for southeastern Minnesota counties combined.

These are federal programs that our congressman, Brad Finstad, wants to slash funding for to “rein in government spending” and pay for tax cuts for billionaires as part of the DOGE Caucus (newly created at billionaires’ behest). The Post Bulletin reported in December that Finstad is “eager” to get started on recommending cuts to basic programs that his own constituents depend on.

Those cuts, if enacted, would hurt our county badly while enriching the billionaire yacht class that doesn’t care a mite about our small communities. Either Minnesota would have to make up for the federal cuts with higher taxes, or it would do significant damage to our neighbors’ health and our local health care resources, which have already been eviscerated by Mayo.

(Losing most of our hospital services should have been ample warning to demand regulatory guardrails for powerful outside players who control our essential resources.)

Furthermore, our county population, which is six years older than the metro’s on average, has been declining for the past 50 years. As farms have consolidated into fewer hands and manufacturing jobs have been lost for a variety of reasons, Freeborn County has lost 20% of its population.

Winnebago and Worth counties to our south have lost 19% of their populations over the same time period, so it’s humorous to see people imagining that becoming part of Iowa would change our fortunes and green our pastures. The things we might “gain” are more water pollution and an increase in cancer rates (Iowa is second in the nation).

Rural people pride themselves in being “down to earth” and “grounded,” but it feels like people around here have lost touch with reality. Our information spaces have deteriorated, our community trust has eroded and we keep voting for consolidation and outside corporate control that is chiseling away at our jobs.

This decline is not inevitable, it is a failure of policy. It is also a shift from worshipping Christ to worshipping mammon (greed), even while keeping the Christian label.

Fighting for our communities means fighting for each other and the common good, not letting people get kicked down by powerful interests and left behind. We need to believe in good governance that works for the dignity of less powerful, regular people again. Bottom up, middle out.

A government that caters to the decadent wishes of billionaires is never, ever going to work for us, and we just reinstated a president who once attempted a coup and who thinks that the Gilded Age was really special.

The Gilded Age was really special for the ultra wealthy who hoarded most of the nation’s wealth, and it created severe economic hardships for a huge swath of the population, including in rural areas.

Mark Twain, who coined the term Gilded Age, wrote, “It seemed as if American capitalism was out of control, and American democracy couldn’t do anything about it because it was bought and paid for by the rich.”

Sound familiar?

The Gilded Age set off the Progressive Era, particularly in the rural heartland. This is where the Farmer-Labor party arose in protest to the corrosive power of outside wealthy interests.

The party successfully elected three of its candidates to the Minnesota governor’s office and four to the US Senate.

The Farmer-Labor party merged with the Democratic party in 1944 and became known as the DFL.

We are still here. The seeds of rural revival are still here.

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.