I'm encouraged to see the City of Des Moines decreasing their reliance on fossil fuels and picking up some hybrid cars for their fleet. I'm even more encouraged to discover the Register is covering it.
Also from today's Register, Des Moines ranked 94th out of 100 cities in Men's Health Magazine's ranking of angry cities. Mayor Cownie said:
"I think that it has to do with Iowans and the quality of life and the quality of people in Iowa and their ability to work through problems,"
I personally think it might be because people aren't paying enough attention to their elected officials.
When I discover a new blog, I usually watch it for a few days or weeks via RSS to see if it's worth linking on the sidebar. Iowa Guy passed the test with this post on Joyce Schulte and Steve King. I'm having a hard time editing my template this morning, but once Blogger caves in and does its job, he'll have a shiny new link.
Finally, Nick Johnson took the time yesterday to acknowledge a good corporate citizen: Musco in Oskaloosa. Musco is tripling their workforce in Osky and refusing all government incentives/bribery to do so. A quote from their President, Joe Crookham:
"It’s part philosophical, philanthropic, in part it’s just plain good business to say we’ll spend our money to do this stuff and you guys spend the community’s money on making it a better community,"
I think that line by itself qualifies Musco for a spot alongside Gander Mountain in the "Good Corporate Citizen" Hall of Fame.
KL
4 comments:
Oh, please. The Crookham family and their buds at Musco underwrite the Repubican Party in this state. They aren't creating new jobs out of the goodness of their hearts. They make a lot of money and then they pays dues to the GOP.
Anon,
I know we are getting close to November and partisanship is reaching its high point, but this is really stretching it. So these people are running their business to pay their dues to the GOP? Even as a Dem I must say there is absolutely nothing wrong with running a successful business and donating to the GOP. Somehow I doubt they founded the company just for it to be a cash cow for the GOP. And even if they did, so what?
The shocking part about this whole thing is that it is actually newsworthy when a company decides to expand without any government incentives. This corporate welfare shit must stop. And it really should be a bipartisan thing. Nationally, we are talking about a true zero sum game.
Anon 4:43
Of course they're not creating jobs out of the goodness of their hearts, they're doing it to make money and fulfill orders for their products and services-that's what business exist to do.
rf-good call. Why is our economy becoming beholden to boll wevil employers who will bust ass for the state that offers them the biggest bribe.
We have far too few indiginous businesses in Iowa-Des Moines is losing home offices left and right and small town Iowa is economically dying-and all we do is fight over pieces of a rapidly shrinking pie.
Also, I think you'd be interested to find the contribution MUSCO Lighting made to Christopher Rants political "hit squad" over at the Iowa Leadership Council. You can find it here.
I agree with Ted that business has a right to work to make a profit and Crookham will continue to invest in Oskaloosa as long as he's making goo d money. I have no problem with that. He's not doing what he's doing for "partisan" political gain.
I do disagree with MUSCO tarnishing their stellar reputation by giving money to such a hack operation trying to get around campaign finance rules to take unlimited corporate contributions...something I think would rile Mr. Lobner up...
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