I extend my deep, sincere thanks to Iowa Regent Bruce Rastetter. I had feared that the Iowa GOP had gone off the deep end by giving itself over to the folks whose only purposes in life are to wage crusades against women, LGBT people, science and public education.

Rastetter’s recent attempt to intimidate University of Iowa faculty member Jerald Schnoor shows there are still many good old-fashioned Republicans left who are nothing more than obtuse, grubbing corporate profitmongers.

Schnoor’s gracious offer to hear out Rastetter buddy and ethanol industry flack Monte Shaw is quite adroit. As a professional academic, Schnoor’s duty is gather and analyze information, and I have every confidence that he will be able to listen, then demonstrate, how Shaw and Rastetter (who still has personal business ties to ethanol) are manipulating their data to serve the ethanol industry.

Schnoor has a higher duty: to assess, then evaluate the propaganda coming from Shaw and the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, and expose it as such.

Jeff Klinzman

Coralville