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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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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