Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
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The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Campaign literature printed and mailed by Victory Enterprises, a Davenport-based consulting firm, for a Peoria, Ill., sales tax referendum, has some locals raising their eyebrows.
The ["Build the Block Downtown"] pro-museum campaign is asking taxpayers to help fund a $136 million project through a sales tax referendum, saying it will bring jobs to the area, yet isn’t supporting the local economy itself, they say, and it just sends a bad message.
Leonard Unes of Unes Printing said he was outraged when he received a Build the Block mailer last week. “Since it’s a local building campaign, they need to use local printers. We have all the capabilities in Peoria, there’s no reason to go elsewhere. We’re just as competitive,” he said.
The referendum, which will appear on an April 7 ballot, calls for a sales tax increase of 25 cents for every $100 worth of purchases made in the county. The taxes would pay for a combined Peoria Riverfront Museum and Caterpillar visitors center.
A spokesman for the pro-museum group said a great deal of money had already been spent with local printers and union shops on the awareness campaign. The group chose to go with Victory Enterprises, he said, because they needed a merchant that offered both printing and mailing with access to political databases. The other printer in the area which had such capabilities was not “completely unionized,” and wasn’t allowed to use a “union bug” on mailers.
Victory Enterprises, which was founded in 1993 by Steve Grubbs, a former Republican Party of Iowa chairman, produces a host of political literature, auto-dials and campaign paraphernalia primarily for Republican clients. Although there is no mention on the corporate site of unionization, the company has produced other mailers which contained a union symbol. A campaign finance disclosure report filed by Brent Oleson, a Republican successfully elected in November 2008 to the Linn County Board of Supervisors, indicates that a fee paid to Victory Enterprises included “printing, production (Union Sub-contract on graphics) for Advertising Insert.”
In January 2007, when Iowans were engaged in a discussion regarding “fair share” legislation, Victory Enterprises conducted a poll for the National Federation of Independent Business, showing that 61 percent of those asked were against the legislation.
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