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Diversity + Equity + Inclusion = America at its best (and we need that urgently)
OMAHA — Life at its best, the growth of family, development of friendships and pursuit of professional passions, is about addition, not subtraction. That’s the mindset I walked away with after a DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) event at the Omaha Chamber of Commerce, a learning experience led by Des Moines-based Claudia Schabel, president and […]
Tie value of dollar to corn, beans, ag commodities, presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy says
VAIL, Iowa — Among a buffet of provocative ideas and policies in businessman Vivek Ramaswamy’s hard-charging upstart presidential campaign, one stood out in the heavily agricultural community of Vail, Iowa, where the Republican held a rally in recent days. Speaking to a Crawford County Republican event, Ramaswamy offered a strategy for stabilizing the U.S. dollar that […]
Gov. Kim Reynolds could king-make a DeSantis presidency
Minutes before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke last week in Des Moines to an influential social conservative audience, the presidential aspirant’s wife beamed in the front row as she sat next to Iowa’s wildly popular governor, Kim Reynolds, and key Republicans. Casey DeSantis had reason to keep smiling as her husband joined moderator Tucker Carlson […]
A good-news story about Iowa newspapers
DENISON — Gordon Wolf was everywhere in Denison. Until he wasn’t. A trusted newspaper editor, a 24-year veteran of the Denison Bulletin-Review, a bespectacled journalist fond of button-down short-sleeve shirts that date to an earlier time of ink-stained work when most newspapers had their own presses, a reporter with the ever-present camera around his neck, Wolf […]
Workplace law changes would make for lost, dangerous Iowa childhoods, Council Bluffs labor leaders, parents, say
Council Bluffs — Labor leaders, parents and Council Bluffs community members say proposed radical changes to Iowa’s child-labor laws would redefine what it means to be a kid in the state, placing young people in jeopardy while driving down wages for adults amid the tumult of a worker shortage. From Keokuk to Council Bluffs, and […]
They lost a 4-year-old son. Now this Iowa farm family is building a regional grief-therapy center.
Manning, Iowa — A wooden cross in a lovingly landscaped garden near the horse barn on this Manning farm marks the final resting place of Jed Riesselman, a little boy who carried an Avengers backpack on the school bus he couldn’t wait to board, smiled at the mention of M&Ms and bonded with a horse […]
How Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds could become president
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds insists a life in Washington is not for her. I believed her when she told me this near the shores of Black Hawk Lake in Lake View last year before the governor announced what became a successful reelection bid for Terrace Hill. At the time, speculation emerged, prior to Sen. Charles […]
Suicidal thoughts, resilience in a small-town Iowa newspaper’s fierce last stand
The talented and intrepid reporter Dave Hoekstra, a former 30-year writer with the Chicago Sun-Times, spent the better part of three years chronicling the struggle of independent newspapers like my family’s to survive amid a perfect storm of challenges and attacks that have shuttered thousands of locally owned papers or forced them to sell to […]
As rural Americans we must see ourselves as part of the nation’s diversity
In the age of scarcity (for many) and excess (for the few), the language and policies of diversity become zero-sum. What another gets, you lose, so goes the polarized thinking that has turned our public square into a fever swamp of resentments and recriminations. For too many rural Americans, the term diversity is synonymous with […]
Train-horn noise blares through political tribalism in Carroll
Like other communities around the nation that have used a variety of strategies to silence train horns, my hometown, Carroll, Iowa, is split on whether to spend tax dollars to reduce the noise coming from the two Union Pacific Lines crossing seven intersections in our slice of western Iowa. “It’s one of the constant problems […]
President Nile Kinnick? It’s not so far-fetched.
It is, of course, a canyon leap to project greatness onto an unfinished life. Or a developing one for that matter. The mouth of the funnel for leaders, men and women of consequence and distinction, is large, and few end up making through, University of Iowa history professor David Shoenbaum told me several years ago. All of […]
Sugar-and-salted irony: Grassley runs ‘favorite food’ at Iowa State Fair contest days after voting against capping insulin doses at $35
This is rich – rich by both caloric standards and a spectacular, if not cruel, lack of awareness, or give-a-damnism. And the timing is deadly. Within a week, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley opposed efforts to cap the price of a dose of insulin at $35 and announced an online contest in which he is asking Iowans to […]