President Alex LeBeau,

Ensuring our laws don’t unnecessarily harm business is an honorable pursuit. I applaud efforts made to support Common Core, infrastructure, education, removal of the personal property tax, and energy supplies necessary for Idaho to remain an attractive place for business.

IACI’s business members are an extremely diverse group, employing many thousands of Idaho citizens of various political persuasions and needs. To serve the diversity of their members, the IACI’s code of ethics encourages members to contribute to society and individual well-being, be honest and trustworthy, and to respect differing opinions.

Sadly, IACI’s “Prosperity Project” recently began a smear campaign against A.J. Balukoff and has severely violated these core IACI moral values. Creating a highly contentious, partisan, and uncivil political atmosphere violates the responsibility to contribute to society and overall well-being effectively. Confusing voters by cherry-picking a few words from a statement on “Obamacare” to create a different meaning is nothing short of making a deliberately false claim. Name calling A.J. as a “liberal” and associating him with Obama when A.J. voted for Romney and has current and significant differences with Obama and a typical liberal agenda is clearly a deceptive claim. These actions and the “Liberal AJ” ad’s focus on many issues that seem hardly related to IACI’s primary policy concerns demonstrates lack of respect toward differing opinions held by your membership and their employees.

I encourage IACI to work closely with both Republicans and Democrats. To avoid burning bridges and build them. Attack problems, not people.

Continuing to use deceptive and insulting advertising violates the trust your diverse membership places in an organization meant for all of them.

Regards,

Jon Young

P.S. I’d be happy to talk about ways we can advance the goals of IACI in a civil and informed manner.