iowa underground blog

From the transcript:

BILL MOYERS: But if reform has to come from the people who are benefiting from the system, are we going to get reform?

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: We’re going to get reform if and when they believe that the public will have the tar cooking and the feathers waiting if they don’t do reform. We’re not there yet, Bill.

THOMAS FRANK: Can I say two things about this question? First of all, the people who are in charge now have a vested interest in increasing our cynicism. They are the party of cynicism against government. And when they do these things, that’s just an added benefit that they’ve managed to get the cynicism numbers up where they have. That’s good for the Republican Party, the party that tells you that what? Remember what President Reagan used to say about government, you know? It was a joke, the idea that they were here to help you, all that stuff.

The second point I want to make is go back to the 19th century, the sort of parallel experience to what we’re going through now. You had a series of reformers come up in the 19th century. And every single one of them from, you know, Horace Greeley all up to the 1890s failed miserably, you know, were rejected in huge sweep. I mean, the corruptionists just whipped these guys. It was a piece of cake. It was easy. The only thing that—what really changed it is when reform became a broader thing, when it became Progressivism. And when it became, you know, look at society as a whole. We’re going to change the entire direction that we’re moving in. When—I’m talking about here people like Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. That’s when this stuff started to abate. Not before that.

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: You know, one problem we have here is what we really need is politicians. Politicians understand the nature of politics and the importance of the institutions. How to do give and take and compromises in an effective fashion. What’s happening now is where this flame of cynicism in the public, somebody pops up and says, “I’m not a politician.” And we say, “Okay, great. We’ll elect you.” And what we get are people who are on an ideological crusade, people who have a contempt for politics and believe that it is all sleaze, everybody does it. So bribery is a way of life.

BILL MOYERS: Is there hope when money trumps everything else today?

THOMAS FRANK: You don’t want to ask me that. I’m, you know, I’m a very pessimistic guy. And I don’t think there is because, you know, earlier we were talking about the Democrats and their reaction to all this, and I think their reaction has been lukewarm to feeble. No, they want that money, too. You know, they want to turn this around—-

BILL MOYERS: I saw the other day a very powerful House member, Democrat, saying, you know, “We’re going after some uncharted sources of money in the financial community. And we’re telling them that the next majority leader might be a Democrat.”

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: Yeah. You know, we’ve had a telecommunications bill that’s been up and pending in Congress for a long time, and they’re going to keep it pending for a long time. And every once in a while they say, “It’s going to pass, going to pass.” So then each side keeps throwing more money into it. Some of this stuff is difficult to deal with. It’s an ages-old problem. We have to constantly be at it to keep the money system from careening out of control.

In the short run, we’ve got a big problem here. We have a sharply polarized political system. We called the book The Broken Branch because Congress is thoroughly dysfunctional. It isn’t going to change overnight. We need new leadership, including a presidential campaign that may bring it. But we’ve got a process that’s going to take us years to reconstruct. I have long-term hope. We’ve always done it before. But short term, I’m very pessimistic.

BILL MOYERS: Does history, Mr. Historian, give us any reason for hope?

THOMAS FRANK: Sure. Absolutely. But in the very long term, I’m sorry to say.

BILL MOYERS: George Bush came to office in 2000, vowing to clean up Washington. And I just looked at one of his speeches this morning. “We’re going to clean up Washington,” he said. What happened?

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: They cleaned up in Washington.

More discussion on the forums.

• sousy

This is a story from last week, but there are some interesting ramifications here – and an interesting view of the ethical problems surrounding illegal immigration.

Last week, egg farms owned by Austin “Jack” DeCoster were raided by immigration services. The raids on the egg “farms” netted 36 illegal immigrants.

Immigration agents detained at least 36 illegal immigrants during a raid on egg farms in Wright County.

Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted the raid June 14 at several DeCoster egg farms. No charges have been filed and Teig declined further comment.

[b]It was the third raid at DeCoster farms in Wright County since 2001 that has led to the detention and possible deportation of illegal immigrants[/b], Sheriff Paul Schultz said.

Schultz said the [b]people that help get fake identification and work visas for the illegal immigrants should be held accountable[/b].

“The people who bring them here and furnish false IDs are just as guilty,” he said.<
...
He said the employees who were detained were hired by KNA Co., which was under contract with DeCoster to provide legal workers.

“We’re distressed to find some of those people were not legal,” [DeCoster’s attourney William] Smith said.

So…. DeCoster’s operations have illegal workers, yet the sheriff makes a statement regarding the workers. Let’s do a little recap of big events in the history of DeCoster’s egg laying operations.

[Ed Note: apologies in advance for possible pay-only links to the NY Times.]

1997: Jack DeCoster settles with the Department of Labor for $2 million in fines, following charges made by then Secretary of Labor Robert Reich that the egg-laying operations were an “agricultural sweatshop”.

2000: Even under the rather lax Iowa environmental laws applied to confinement operations, Jack DeCoster is named as a “habitual violator” under DNR regulations.

Miller’s Office has filed a total of five lawsuits alleging environmental violations by DeCoster Farms, the most recent filed in Lucas County on April 24. Last July, the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed a Wright County court decision assessing a civil penalty against DeCoster in the first suit, constituting one “strike” toward habitual violator status. On March 22 the Supreme Court upheld a district court decision against DeCoster in the second and third suits concerning violations in Wright and Hamilton Counties. The Supreme Court action paved the way for classification of DeCoster as a habitual violator under Iowa law, which requires that violators must have been the subject of “three strikes” – three violations referred to the Attorney General for legal action and assessed a civil penalty by a court. Civil penalties ordered in the first three suits totaled $79,000.

2002:: DeCoster Farm settles for $1.5 million in a civil rape case brought by a domestic violence group.

DeCoster Farms will pay $1.53 million to a group of Hispanic women who claimed they were raped and abused by supervisors at the company’s egg plants in Wright County, the company and federal authorities announced Monday.

DeCoster did not admit liability.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began its investigation of DeCoster in August 2001 after the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence filed a discrimination lawsuit.

The group alleged that DeCoster supervisors in four egg-production plants sexually assaulted female employees and threatened to kill those who complained.
...
“We see a lot of sexual harassment cases, and a lot are pretty awful,” Kamp said. “But this was forcible rape.”

The women reportedly were afraid to testify, and criminal charges were never filed.

[Ed: anyone want to guess why the victims did not want to file criminal charges…. anyone?]

2003: Jack DeCoster pleads guilty to a pattern of aiding and abetting the continued employment of illegal workers. The guilty plea gets him probation (which is still in effect, if this article is to be believed) – instead of prison.

.Even when employers are convicted, penalties are often minimal. Austin Jack DeCoster, 68, owner of several Iowa egg plants that had at least 121 unauthorized workers, was sentenced to five years probation after he pleaded guilty to engaging in a pattern and practice of aiding and abetting the continued employment of illegal workers. His general manager between 1998 and 2001, who transported illegal workers between plants, was sentenced to three months home confinement with electronic monitoring and ordered to pay a $9,000 fine; he will be on probation for three years.

Under an agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE agents can inspect DeCoster plants without warning. DeCoster owns several egg farms in Iowa and Maine, and a hog operation in Iowa. DeCoster agreed to pay a $1.25 million civil forfeiture and $ 875,000 in restitution for the ICE investigation.

Now, this is just the big stuff. The Register also ran an article a few years ago detailing Jack DeCoster’s attempt to “remake his image”. But, after all of this (and continued violations – this time, neatly “outsourced’), we’re right back to the basic problem: DeCoster Farms and the owners have repeatedly shown a disregard for the law in both letter and spirit, while running an operation that basically amounts to human trafficking.

So… on to today, when the first charges are filed in the case. Who is being charged with a crime? Why, the workers, of course. No mention of the county attourney or federal officals pursuing the repeated violation, or possible probation violations. What’s amazing: in the comments to that previously linked article, someone is willing to defend rampant abuse of the law because workers in egg factories are evidently not entitled to things like “basic human rights” because that might mean we need to pay more for a dozen eggs. (Unlikely – has the price of eggs ever gone down because we’re willing to tolerate de facto slavery?)

Go to Hampton. Get a job cleaning chicken cages and other dirty work associated with the Egg buisness. Organize. Demand $12-$15 per hour.Plus paid for medical and a 401k. Better yet why not a fully paid for by the company pension. Lets not forget 4 weeks vacation after 10 years. Plus all the paid holidays the government gets.Then when eggs go to $8 a dz. you’ll really have something to gripe about.

It’s a rather amazing thing to note that we’re willing to tolerate the operation of a business that seems to make enough profit to pay multi-million dollar fines and remain ever in operation, yet there are people out there willing to believe that a business cannot pay workers enough for them to make a decent living. This is, to say the least, one of the great moral failings of our society.

The best suggestion I’ve heard so far: when the DNR catches a poacher illegally fishing or hunting, the DNR has the ability to confiscate all assets related to the crime. I would imagine that if the same rules applied to immigration and labor law, this “crisis” of illegal immigration would be over tomorrow – and without the need to spend one dime of taxpayer money on fancy new computer systems or multi-billion dollar construction projects.

One of Iowa’s own has done us proud.

She begins thusly…

Bruce Bartlett, The Cato Institute, Andrew Sullivan, George Packer, William F. Buckley, Sandra Day O’Connor, Republican voters in Indiana and all the rest of you newly-minted dissenters from Bush’s faith-based reality seem, right now, to be glorying in your outrage, which is always a pleasure and feels, at the time, as if it is having an effect, but those of us who have been anti-Bush from day 1 (defined as the day after the stolen 2000 election) have a few pointers for you that should make your transition more realistic.

and continues her evisceration of the conservative culture of corruption and hypocrisy in her blog entry at The Huffington Post here.

Another quickie excerpt:

President Bush is your creation. When the US Supreme Court humiliated itself in 2000 by handing the presidency to Bush even though two of the justices (Scalia and Thomas) had open conflicts of interest, you did not object. When the Bush administration adopted an “Anything but Clinton” policy that resulted in ignoring and dismissing all warnings of possible terrorist attacks on US soil, you went along with and made excuses for Bush. When the Bush administration allowed the corrupt Enron corporation to swindle California ratepayers and taxpayers in a last ditch effort to balance their books in 2001, you laughed at the Californians and ignored the links between Enron and the administration. When it was evident that the evidence for the war in Iraq was cooked and that State Department experts on the Middle East were not behind the war and so it was going to be run as an exercise in incompetence, you continued to attack those who were against the war in vicious terms and to defend policies that simply could not work. On intelligent design, global warming, doctoring of scientific results to reflect ideology, corporate tax giveaways, the K Street project, the illegal redistricting of Texas, torture at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, the Terry Schiavo fiasco, and the cronyism that led to the destruction of New Orleans you have failed to speak out with integrity or honesty, preferring power to truth at every turn. Bush does what he wants because you have let him.

• tristero

More on Santorum’s hypocrisy from Think Progress here and here.

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