Raising the taxes of the wealthiest Americans to meet a crisis — soaking them, if you will — is a grand, old, bipartisan tradition, almost as old as the income tax itself.In fact, the federal income tax was only 4 years old in 1917 when Woodrow Wilson raised the tax rate on the rich from 15 to 67 percent to help pay for the war.The first president to increase taxes on the rich to deal with a depressed economy and high unemployment wasn’t, as one might suppose, Franklin Roosevelt. It was his predecessor, the conservative Republican Herbert Hoover.But unlike Barack Obama, Herbert Hoover didn’t simply increase taxes on the rich by a few percentage points. He raised the Harding and Coolidge era top rates from 25 to 63 percent. It remains the second largest tax hike for the wealthy in our history, only surpassed by Wilson’s. Hoover also doubled the estate tax, known in Republican circles as the death tax, and increased corporate taxes by 15 percent.There wasn’t a word from his fellow Republicans about class warfare or soaking the rich or socialism, but his opponent, Roosevelt, did accuse Hoover of reckless and extravagant spending, and John Garner, the reactionary Texan running for vice president, said he feared the country was heading down the path to socialism.But the Depression worsened and near the end of Roosevelt’s first term, Americans were losing hope. As he would say in his second inaugural address, one-third of the nation was ill-housed, ill-clad and ill-nourished, one out of five was unemployed and there were growing doubts that the economy could be fixed.In addition, Roosevelt was threatened by a group far more dangerous than the Tea Party movement, Huey Long’s 27,000 Share Our Wealth clubs, which were attracting millions with the promise to make every man a king with a guaranteed annual income of $2,500, free education through college, a $5,000 homestead grant with a car, radio and washing machine, and old age pensions of $200 a month. Roosevelt’s response to Long’s demagoguery was the Revenue Act of 1935, which raised the Hoover rate on the wealthiest to 79 percent and financed many New Deal reforms, including Social Security and its old age pensions. And, incidentally, saved capitalism. I bring up these numbers to point out Obama’s alleged assault on the rich is miniscule compared with Roosevelt’s or Hoover’s or most others’. It would make you wonder what the fuss is about if you didn’t already know it was about 2012.The president is calling for a modest increase from 35 to 39.6 percent in the rate paid by those earning more than $250,000. This would restore the rate to where it was during the Clinton presidency and, as the former president has noted, the nation — and especially the rich — prospered during his two terms. To achieve that goal, Obama would do no more than end the Bush administration’s “temporary” tax cuts that he was forced to extend last year. Since World War I, the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers have usually been taxed at a much higher rate than they are today. It reached a high of 94 percent during World War II, a time when we paid for our wars and expected all of the people, rich and poor alike as we liked to say, to make sacrifices.Roosevelt’s taxes also financed the greatest and most successful entitlement program in American history, the GI Bill of Rights, which created and educated a prosperous middle class that endures to this day. The high rate for the rich was reduced for a time after the war, but the Korean War brought it back up to the 90 percent range, where it remained until it was lowered to 77 percent by, of all people, the Democrat John Kennedy.It got all the way down to 70 percent in the Johnson and Nixon years and was reduced — to 50 percent — by Ronald Reagan. Imagine. Reagan had his richest supporters paying half of their income to the federal government until he got the rate reduced to 28 percent in his last year in office. Finally, it should be noted that of all the presidents since Harding and Coolidge, only Reagan in that one year, the two Bushes, Clinton and Obama maintained tax rates of under 40 percent for the wealthiest. The rest — Republicans and Democrats — soaked the rich and, in good times and bad, the rich did quite nicely. Simsbury resident Dick Ahles is a retired journalist. Email him at dahles@hotmail.com.
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Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.
“I was a library kid. I walked to the library after school,” she said.
For Sher, the library is as much about the people as it about the books.
“Part of the job I love so much is that running the library is such a community,” she said.
She treasures the relationships she has built, whether recommending books, celebrating accomplishments or helping patrons through difficult times.
“I am thankful that our community is so supportive of the library, unlike what is happening in some other places where librarians are villainized,” Sher said.
Sher takes pride in the Hunt Library’s reputation for being “open and welcoming to everyone. People come in and see things and get pulled into things they weren’t expecting. Our library is seen as a positive force.”
Sher came to Falls Village after being awarded a fellowship at Adamah Farm, then a program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. She worked at pickling, in the greenhouse and later in the development office. She also worked as a nanny.
At the same time, “I was in the library all the time,” she recalled. “I’m a voracious reader. The library is where I met a lot of my first friends in Falls Village.”
She became assistant librarian at Hunt and worked in that position for almost a decade before becoming the executive director four years ago.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino
Sher met her husband, Adam, while working at Adamah. They had their wedding there in 2012. He now emcees many events which she co-organizes with the Falls Village Recreation Commission.
Sher and her family live near the library.
“It’s an easy commute,” she said with a smile. “My kids run back and forth. I can go home to walk the dog if I need to.”
“My kids have grown up here.” Her oldest son, Eli, “loves volunteering. He helps with Augustfest and often helps set up chairs for ArtWall gatherings.” Her younger son, Noah, is often at events and was eager to taste cookies at last year’s holiday cookie swap.
When she is not at the library, Sher likes to hike with her family. Bella, their Portuguese water dog, often accompanies them.
Sher enjoys seeking out people to offer events at the library.
“I do a lot of different community programming. It is one of my favorite parts of the job.”
Augustfest, featuring food, music and an auction, is the library’s biggest fundraiser.
“This summer we had a record 152 attendees, which was pretty incredible.”
Yonah Sadeh, a filmmaker from Falls Village, inaugurated the VideoWall this year, Sher explained.
“I’ve known Yonah since he was two. It’s wonderful to work with him as an adult.”
The VideoWall complements the library’s ArtWall, which showcases a new artist each month. Sher praised the ArtWall committee for its work and highlighted December’s popular “12x12 Show,” featuring works by local artists, each measuring 12 by 12 inches and priced at $150.
Sher added that some of the artists who exhibit at the ArtWall offer workshops to students at Kellogg School, next door to the library. In September, artist Danielle Mailer worked with the children. Vincent Inconiglios taught a class last November.
Being next to the school, said Sher, is a great advantage.
“Kids are coming after school, to see friends, work on projects, find a great book. Kids that love the library end up using the library as grownups.”
This past year, in partnership with Adamah, the library and school created a garden, with excess produce made available at The Center on Main.
This year is Sher’s second year participating in the Troutbeck Symposium in Amenia with James King, director of the library at Salisbury School. The Troutbeck Symposium is “a gathering of a year of student historical inquiry across the region” in which students “uncover stories that have been overlooked, forgotten, or never recorded.”
Last year, Sher and King began a project with a group of students researching Irish immigrants in Falls Village, exploring ancestry and creating small magazines about their findings.
They continued this year, visiting St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery on Dublin Road, cleaning seven gravestones and even righting one with the help of stonemason and gravestone restoration expert Karl Munson. Paul Kozeazny, a representative of the Catholic archdiocese, helped secure access to the site.
A film documenting their activities will be shown at the symposium in spring 2027.
A full schedule of programs and events, ranging from tech help to ceramic mug-making, can be found on the library’s website.
Despite spending her days surrounded by books, and a busy schedule of programming, Sher still loves to settle in with a book at home.
For more information on library programs and events, visit huntlibrary.org
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Touré was born in northern Mali in 1981. His father, the renowned guitarist Ali Farka Touré, came from a family of soldiers and wanted his son to join the army. The younger Touré studied drums and the calabash and practiced guitar in secret. He earned his father’s blessing to pursue music shortly before Ali died in 2006, and they played two tracks together on Vieux’s debut album.
Touré is known for his deft, polyrhythmic playing, and his songs grow out of riffs that repeat and layer to hypnotic effect. He draws on rock, blues, Latin music and various African traditions. This distinctive blend builds on his father’s work adapting the sonic traditions of Mali’s arid north to the guitar.
Vieux’s album “Mon Pays” (“My Country,” 2013) honored Mali’s culture after Tuareg separatists and extremist groups seized the north in 2012. “Samba” (2017) was recorded before about 50 listeners in Woodstock, New York. In 2022 came “Les Racines” (“The Roots”), a return to his father’s desert blues, and “Ali,” on which he and the trio Khruangbin reworked eight of the elder Touré’s songs.
Touré leads the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, which focuses on cultural and educational work in Mali. Around the anniversary of Ali’s death, it holds a festival in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Bamako has been under blockade for much of the past year, besieged by JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Against this backdrop, Touré continues to carry the music of Mali to audiences abroad.
At the Nov. 5 concert, Touré’s desert blues will share the bill with Gnawa, the music LanGus plays, which developed in Morocco among West Africans who were brought north across the desert as enslaved people. Gnawa is religious music traditionally performed at all-night healing ceremonies called lila, intended to carry participants into trance.
Samir LanGusProvided
LanGus was born and raised outside Agadir, Morocco, and began learning Gnawa from its masters at age 8. He plays the sintir, a three-stringed bass lute made of wood and camel skin. The player strikes a low string with the thumb to create a deep, resonant pulse. Iron castanets clatter over the sintir’s bass line, and vocalists trade call-and-response refrains.
LanGus infuses the tradition with jazz and improvisation. In New York, he founded the ensemble Innov Gnawa. His first solo album, “Gnawa Love,” came out in February.
Touré and LanGus’s Nov. 5 concert is one of the last public events at Race Brook Lodge, which is for sale and ended full-service operations at the end of 2025. The lodge’s final scheduled event, on Nov. 6, is an evening of Rumi’s poetry with translator and vocalist Haleh Liza Gafori, cellist Isabel Castellvi and ceremonial bard James Bird.
For tickets, visit rblodge.com.
James FitzGerald is a student at Yale Law School, where he focuses on ecological restoration and international environmental cooperation. He splits his time between Lakeville and New Haven.
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