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.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
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.
Wells Fargo & Co. is one of the top 10 transparent and accountable companies in the S&P 100 when it comes to political spending, according to a new report from the University of Pennsylvania.
The report, from the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics at the university’s Wharton School, gave the financial services company a score of 84 out of 100, placing it firmly in the top tier of S&P 100 companies.
Wells Fargo, while based in San Francisco, has its main office in Sioux Falls, S.D., and runs major operations in Des Moines, West Des Moines and Davenport.
It and other companies were ranked based on 29 different indicators to gauge disclosure, policies, compliance and oversight.
At the top of the list were Colgate-Palmolive Co., Exelon Corp., Intl Business Machines Corp. and Merck & Co. Inc., which all received scores of 100.
A total of 57 companies received a score of 50 or below, while 14 received a score of zero. Included at bottom of the list were Berkshire Hathaway, Costco Wholesale Corp., Halliburton Co., MasterCard Inc., NIKE Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp., Wal-Mart Stores and Walt Disney Co., among others.
“The CPA-Zicklin Index of Corporate Political Disclosure and Accountability is the first comprehensive portrait of how leading publicly traded U.S. companies navigate political spending since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010,” the authors wrote.
In that decision, the court interpreted the First Amendment to mean the government can’t prohibit corporations or unions from making political broadcasts in elections.
But the report found voluntary disclosure of political spending is becoming a mainstream corporate practice, and a growing number of companies are putting restrictions on the use of their money.
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