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You stand for what you tolerate.
Laura Belin has a scoop in her Bleeding Heartland column today that makes me sick. She reports that fake newspapers are being printed in the Des Moines Register printing plant and distributed in Illinois. Read her reporting here:
In my 20 years as a CEO coach in Annapolis and then Chicago, I heard expert speakers on a wide range of topics. It was, in a word, fascinating. If I could sum up a key takeaway, an organization's culture is the most important element for a successful long-term business.
And in that culture, key ingredients include; open and honest communication. Respect for employees. Diversity in the workforce is good for the bottom line. Employee retention is less costly than turnover. Employees do their best work voluntarily. Don’t go chasing nickels while dollar bills fly away. Culture eats strategy. The CEO is the ‘chief reminding officer.’ Recruiting and retaining top talent is one of the most important ingredients for a successful company, and those stand-out employees are drawn to organizations with a strong culture.
One CEO defines culture as “the way we do things around here.”
I could go on.
When I read Belin’s story today, the quote that came to mind was: You stand for what you tolerate. It is a truism in business and politics and relationships.
Iowa politics is abuzz, with the Iowa Poll released yesterday indicating Chuck Grassley has widened his lead over Admiral Micheal Franken. The story: Iowa Poll. This poll was in the field from Oct. 31 to Nov. 3. Donald Trump appeared in Iowa on Nov. 3 alongside Sen. Chuck Grassley and Gov. Kim Reynolds so the jury is out to know if it had an impact.
Majorie Taylor Greene was on hand at the Trump rally and made a joke about Paul Pelosi, who was in an Intensive Care Unit being treated for an injury sustained by a right-wing intruder who beat him with a hammer and demanded to see ‘Nancy.’
Did Grassley denounce this? Did Reynolds?
How about the photo of a hammer and men’s underwear Donald Trump Jr. promoted on social media as a Halloween costume?
Will this behavior help or hurt the GOP in Iowa? What are our values?
Back to polling in general.
The highly regarded pollster J. Ann Seltzer captures a moment in time. Let’s look back to the cycle when Kim Reynolds defeated Fred Hubbell. In a poll published on November 3, 2018, before the election, the results were Hubbell was 46% over Reynolds at 44%. In other words, no matter how historically accurate a poll’s reputation may be, the only poll that counts is on election day. And the margin of error can also be translated into the margin of effort on the ground leading up to election day.
What do we stand for? An 89-year-old career politician who says one thing in Iowa and votes another in D.C. Remember? Oh, how he talks about lowering prescription drug prices, but when allowed to vote on capping the cost of insulin, he votes no. And his campaign coffers have a lot of money from pharma. Surprise? Grassley works, but for you?
Today, in Iowa, a flood of money is being spent on ads targeting transgender kids. The GOP would much rather have you focus on the tiny fraction of a percent of children struggling with gender identity than the GOP battle to strip all women’s freedom to make decisions about their healthcare.
To my Republican friends, will your vote say you tolerate that? Do you stand for bullying children? Pardon me, but you can’t be all Bob Ray-was-such-a great-leader, and wasn’t his work on the ‘Character Counts’ program wonderful? Then vote for a party that is the antithesis of character.
What about Donald Trump? He orchestrated an attack on democracy. Will you support his Republican party because you got a fat tax cut? If the answer is yes, then you do not stand for the Constitution of the United States.
We stand for what we tolerate.
Why are so many Republicans silent on these fundamental, basic values?
Silence is aquiesance. When a media company takes money from a right-wing outfit that hires said media company to print blatant lies because they want the product to look like a legitimate newspaper, you have undone a reputation that has taken years to establish.
We stand for what we tolerate.
Is there a line you will not cross? Yes? No? What is it?
Prove it.
Where do you stand?
Character counts.
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The latest addition to our IWC is Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices column. She is a coach who highlights new writers. The first column was posted this week:
You stand for what you tolerate
You go, girl! Tell it.
One big takeaway from Tuesday's election is that a majority of Americans (it appears) rejected the GOP's culture war bullying and the ongoing strategy to divide. Except in two states - Florida and Iowa. And what do both states have in common? A bully governor who embraced the trump strategy with steroids. That a majority of voters rejected two 40 yr veterans of bipartisan leadership (Tom Miller and Mike Fitzgerald who have a stellar record of working hard for all Iowans) speaks volumes about 1) the success of weaponizing things like a global public health crisis, 2) the effectiveness of over-the-top attack ads that contain not a shred of truth (largely funded by outside money), and perhaps worst of all, 3) the gullibility of the average Iowa voter in 2022. I wish I could be more optimistic for Iowa's future. I predict that we are on the precipice of a mass exodus in coming years, particularly those under the age of 35.