Grassley addresses concerns during 40th 99 county tour

A low turnout of less than a dozen masked constituents of Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) turned out for a townhall meeting Tuesday morning at the O’Riley Center as part of his 99-county tour. During the meeting, Grassley fielded questions about Black Lives Matter, COVID-19, the economy, federal aid, education, absentee voting, Roger Stone, corruption and public office.

BLM

Gordon Crawford of Creston asked the senator how concerned he is with the “so-called Black Lives Matter movement.”

“I’m concerned about it from two standpoints. One, it illustrates what went wrong in Minneapolis, but also what’s wrong elsewhere,” said Grassley. “I think it does good for us to be reminded from time to time that we’ve got to have fairness and equality for everybody. From another standpoint, what I’ve seen, the peaceful demonstrations are very valuable because that’s one way people are expressing their free speech maybe without even saying anything.”

Crawford said the BLM movement is lead by “socialists and radicals,” that it isn’t a movement, but rather an organization advocating violence and the defunding of police.

Grassley said the idea of defunding the police would bring vigilante law enforcement or maybe no law at all.

“Maybe 1% of police do something wrong and and it gives 100% of everybody a bad name. Just like when we have one congressman going to prison. It hurts the reputation of all of us,” said Grassley. “But some change in police activity is legitimate.”

Lisa Quam of Creston told Grassley, “A gal in charge of Black Lives Matter was directly associated with a terrorist organization and [a current New York City police] commissioner was actually in a photo as they were releasing her from prison in 1985.”

“Are our leaders ... are they on this? Are they seeing exactly the underground stuff going on within some of our leaders ...?” she asked.

“The only answer I know how to give you on that, and I wouldn’t apply it to just Black Lives Matter, but this is probably a couple years ago ... I got this information from the FBI director, and at that particular time ... but that there were more than 1,000 people at that time in the United States that the FBI was keeping track of. Now, how closely they keep track of them, I don’t know. But, they seem to try to be on top of it because of what can happen in the United States ... Orlando, New York ... Boston ... Minneapolis ... Fort Hood ...San Bernadino ... so that’s what they are trying to keep on top of,” said Grassley.

Quam said she sees leaders, specifically naming Nancy Pelosi, as part of the problem.

“Why are we continuing, as tax payers, paying salaries of people after it’s so obviously treasonous to our country that people die for and continue to die for every day?” asked Quam.

Grassley told Quam those leaders are in their positions because they were elected to them by the American people and the only way to get rid of them is to unelect them. While it is highly rare, Grassley said the Senate or the House could expel a person by a two-thirds vote, but by doing so undermines the vote of their constituents.

“How do you argue with the American people if you believe in the validity of the ballot? ... You vote them out of office if you don’t like them,” said Grassley.

COVID-19

Alicia Stafford of Creston and an employee of Wellman, told Grassley that Wellman has had 10 positive cases of COVID-19 at the facility that employs 400 employees. Of those 10, eight were asymptomatic. After management learned of the cases, she said Wellman was shut down for two days for sanitation and those who tested positive self-quarantined at home for 14 days.

Stafford then asked Grassley how to curb the absentee rate at Wellman, which she said rose from 5 to 13% since the awareness of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said the absenteeism at Wellman is related more toward individual panic and