iowa underground blog

K-I-S-S-I-N-G

...or so the L.A. Times would have us believe. Okay, so they’re not really kissing. Truth be told, how these two men have conducted their campaigns is a somewhat refreshing show of adulthood and civility, especially so considering what we’ve seen coming out of the fear-and-smear GOP for the past several years. I’ve always liked Leach’s temperament, if not the way he casts votes. Nevertheless, he’s had a good run and it’s time for one of Iowa’s most progressive districts to be represented in Congress by someone who doesn’t vote with the GOP 60+% of the time, don’t you think?

I’ll be the first to cast a vote for Jim Leach as the new President of the University of Iowa, however – not that my vote matters in that regard, mind you. Mephistopheles, are you listening? I’m ready to broker a deal here.

A few excerpts from the aforementioned L.A. Times article on Dave and Jim…

Both of the candidates in one tight House race refuse to go negative.
By Richard Simon, Times Staff Writer
November 4, 2006

CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA — Dave Loebsack believes in giving credit where credit is due. Believes it so much that he recently bought an ad on television here declaring, among other things, that his congressman, Republican Jim Leach, is a “good man.”

When a reporter asked what had prompted Loebsack to say that, the bearded college professor replied: “Congressman Leach and I truly like each other. We respect each other.”

What’s odd about all this is that Loebsack is the Democratic candidate challenging Leach. And Leach, who is facing serious opposition after having held his House seat for 30 years, is treating Loebsack in the same gentlemanly fashion.

Recently, when state GOP strategists sent negative ad mailers to district voters attacking Loebsack, Leach made them stop. Then he apologized to his rival.

Welcome to Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District, scene of what may be the most unlikely campaign in the 2006 midterm election cycle.

Almost everywhere else — in the campaigns that will decide who controls Congress before the 2008 presidential contest — candidates in both parties are spending millions of dollars trying to demonize their opponents. In appeals aimed at rousing voters’ fears and passions, many are scaling new heights of nastiness.

...

“I can’t imagine that there is another race in the country like it,” said Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Iowa. “As long as the national parties stay out of the race, voters in the 2nd District can enjoy that rarest of American political experiences: a competitive yet civil campaign.”

Although Leach knows it’s a tough year for Republicans, he has refused to go negative. When state GOP officials sent out that attack mailer, Leach asked them to stay out of the race. When they did it again, he warned Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman that he would refuse to caucus with his party when the new Congress convened in January if the negative tactics recurred. Mehlman promised to put a stop to it.

Then Leach called Loebsack and apologized.

“It has been my practice in my campaigns and in my public life over the years to accentuate the positive and run on my record,” Leach says.

For Loebsack’s part, it was in one of his own TV spots that he described his opponent as a “good man.” About the worst thing he’s said is that Leach’s party membership facilitates GOP control of the House.

...

A recent poll of 1,055 likely voters showed Leach ahead, 50% to 48%.

So close.

UPDATE:

• pdx

What with the popularity of you-tube, disseminating your own self-styled campaign spots has never been easier, and with the advent an open-source application by the name of CamStudio – actually making the videos has perhaps never been simpler. The folllowing ad was pieced together simply by opening a few files up in photoshop – manipulating the images while the RECORD button in Cam Studio is pushed, then hitting PAUSE for the frame break. This is a pretty rudimentary example of what can be done – tap your own creative juices and slap something together that will help push Iowa back into the blue, what say you?

Thanks to profo, on the Iowa Underground forums, for the concept.

• pdx

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

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article detailing the issues that mass food production has caused – in this case, the easy spread of a single E. Coli outbreak from a local contamination to a national outbreak:

TECHNOLOGY, EATING HABITS HELP TO SPREAD E. COLI
By Erin Allday San Francisco Chronicle
September 23, 2006

In the spring and summer of 1982, McDonald’s held a special promotion—- two burgers for the price of one—- that led to the first reported outbreak of a food-borne bacterial infection that now sweeps the nation with some regularity.

That year, at least 47 people in Oregon and Michigan, most of whom took advantage of the promotion, fell ill with severe abdominal cramps and bloody diarrhea. Doctors and public health investigators were spooked—- they’d never seen anything like it.

A year later, after months of investigation by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, investigators were able to identify the infection. It was a common bacterium, one that microbiologists had long known to live in human intestinal tracts with mostly harmless, and sometimes even helpful, results.

The bacterium was E. coli, but this was a rare strain that had mutated. It had attached itself to a virus, and that virus made people very sick. Today, that same strain, called 0157:H7, sickens hundreds if not thousands of Americans every year, and is the source of the latest epidemic linked to bagged fresh spinach that has sickened 166 people so far, one of whom died.

“At the time of that (1982) outbreak, there was no knowledge that E. coli could cause a disease like this, so nobody believed it,” said Lee Riley, a professor of infectious disease and epidemiology at UC Berkeley who was one of the lead investigators for the CDC in the McDonald’s case and an author of the first paper published on E. coli in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“The outbreak occurred because the restaurants were having these promotions and going through a lot of hamburgers,” Riley said. “It’s the mass consumption of meat and the way it’s processed and delivered and distributed that made it possible for this E. coli to spread.”

Escherichia coli is found in everyone’s body. It can be helpful—- it kills off other harmful bacteria, for example—- but mostly it just sits there and doesn’t do much. Certain less-benign strains of E. coli are known to be the most common cause of urinary tract infections among women.

The first noted case of 0157:H7 actually dates back to 1975, when a woman at Alameda Naval Air Station became mysteriously sick. Doctors at the time couldn’t diagnose what ailed her, but they noted the rare E. coli found in her body and sent a sample to the CDC. When the 1982 outbreak occurred, investigators used that sample as further proof that E. coli was responsible for the sickness in the McDonald’s cases.

Public health officials say it’s impossible to know how long E. coli 0157:H7 has been around. People probably were sickened by it for years, or even decades, before doctors identified it.

But the reason outbreaks have become more common in the past 25 years, health officials agree, is because technology has been developed to identify and connect strains of bacteria and because the nation’s eating habits have changed—we eat mass-processed foods that make it easier for contaminated products to reach more people.

Over the years, technology has become increasingly complex as federal health officials searched for ways to identify outbreaks more quickly. The technique used today, known as PulseNet, allows microbiologists to track the “paternity” of a unique strain of 0157:H7, and, thereby, tell if isolated cases that appear around the country are connected, said Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer with the federal Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition at the Food and Drug Administration.

The first E. coli outbreaks in the United States were in ground beef partly because E. coli bacteria live in cows, and partly because ground beef was among the first food products to be highly processed and mass-distributed via fast-food outlets. Beef from one tainted cow could be mixed with beef from hundreds of healthy cows, and the resulting hamburger patties would all be contaminated.

The nation has endured a handful of outbreaks since 1982—- including one notable outbreak involving hundreds of people who ate at Jack in the Box in 1993—- but the meat and fast-food industries have adopted policies over the years that make such cases more unusual now.

But in the 1990s, the source of the outbreaks spread to fruit and vegetables. In the past decade there have been 20 such outbreaks, including the most recent one. The last nine outbreaks involved leafy greens that were packaged into salad mixes.

Those salad mixes have become increasingly popular as Americans, told they need to eat more vegetables, jumped at the convenience of prewashed lettuce and spinach. But the problem with those mixes is the same problem the meat industry ran into—- a very small amount of contaminated vegetable can spread the E. coli bacteria to hundreds or thousands of packages when it’s mixed in a processing plant. That was the case with bagged spinach.

“Spinach is brought in from many, many farms,” Riley said. “So you have an opportunity for a lot of bagged spinach to become contaminated. It’s just a massive spread of E. coli, even if the original contamination was limited to one farm.”

With meat, solving the problem meant simply cooking it at a high enough temperature to kill the bacteria. But raw vegetables may prove more challenging because there’s not a lot that can be done once the produce has been contaminated. Washing produce isn’t necessarily enough to get rid of E. coli.

For now, federal and state investigators are searching farms in the Salinas Valley for clues as to what caused the contamination in spinach. But they may never know the answer. And to some degree, bacteria are always going to be living in our food supply.

“We live in a microbial world,” said Sam Beattie, a food safety extension specialist at Iowa State University. “Any time you go out into an agricultural field, can you really expect it to be a sterile environment? I don’t think so.”

The consolodation of the food market into the hands of one or two players – in this case, most of the nation’s spinach being produced in Salinas Valley, CA - can lead to massive outbreaks. It does need to be stated, however that federal inspection agencies have little to no power to halt such outbreaks before they happen.

(Thanks to A.V. Krebs’ Agribusiness Examiner #458.)

• Sousy

Okay, so I open my Sunday NY Times and find this piece of actual reporting:

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat
A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final

Then I open my DSM Register the next morning, and this is how the newspaper Iowa Depends on covers the story:

Dems jump on report linking war to terrorism
WASHINGTON – Democrats yesterday seized on an intelligence assessment that said the Iraq war has increased the terrorist threat, saying it was further evidence that Americans should choose new leadership in the November elections.

The Democrats hoped the report would undermine the GOP’s image as the party more capable of handing terrorism as the campaign enters its final six-week stretch.

That’s the way the Des Moines Register works. They don’t cover the story; they cover the spin. After all, what Democrats say about the report is far more important than, um, national security.

$%#@*&!

Not that I am accusing the Register of bias. I certainly wouldn’t do that after the paper lead last Saturday with the results of a mock poll that had McCain and Guiliani outpolling John Edwards by a few meaningless mock points over two years before the election. And that’s LEAD, as in this completely non-news story is the most important thing of the day. And I certainly wouldn’t accuse the paper of spinning instead of reporting when last week it LEAD with a poll showing Iowans had upped their approval ratings of Bush by a few meaningless percentage points (which were well within the poll’s margin of error).

That’s LEAD, mind you; that’s splash a poll result all over the front page and call it news. That’s report a story of national importance as if it were so much partisan squabbling while elsewhere the paper’s editors hypocritically dole out a rose to an Iowa candidate who resigned his party rather than engage in partisan squabbling.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: you can learn a lot from a newspaper if you read it with the proper contempt, but the Register is sadly beneath contempt anymore. It’s now just a hack paper floundering to get suburbanites to read it by covering football tailgating parties, drunken bike rides, and Oprah-esque abuse stories.

Yeesh.

• profo

Via Confined Space is an example of why companies fight hard to continue hiring illegal employees – and lobbying to avoid responsibility for doing so.

He broke a rib and injured a kidney, and his right lung collapsed. He also hit his head on the floor, severely injuring his brain’s frontal lobe, which controls language, memory and motor function.

Ruiz was in a coma, able to breathe only with a ventilator.

His younger brother, Jose, left his wife, two young children and his job in Mexico and rushed to Charlotte.

Ruiz’s wife followed, with a temporary pass to enter the country, leaving her three children behind. When she arrived at Carolinas Medical Center, she found the Virgin of Guadalupe medal in her husband’s hand.

Nurses were hoping for a miracle, but at Belk Masonry, a counterattack had begun.

The Companion Property & Casualty Insurance Co. paid his initial medical bills, but adjusters wanted to know all about Francisco Ruiz. When they discovered his illegal work status, they rejected his claim.

The law in North Carolina, as in most states, says that illegal immigrants who are hurt on the job are entitled to compensation. Companies, the law says, must pay injury benefits to “every person engaged in employment … whether lawfully or unlawfully employed.”

But officials at Companion Property & Casualty questioned the law’s intent. Why should they pay an alien who lied about his immigration status to get his job? How could an illegal worker technically be considered an employee?

Mr. Ruiz took the company to court and won. Of course, the workers comp company president defended the refusal to pay for medical care:

The company was disappointed but not surprised.

“We’re always viewed as the deep pocket,” said Companion President Charles Potok. “If you’re talking about paying somebody or cutting someone off cold, we typically lose.”

Of course, there is no mention of responsibility on the part of the Belk Masonry Co. – Mr. Ruiz’ employer.

Thom Hartmann comments on why companies fight to hire illegal immigrants in the first place.

• Sousy

It seems that the Iowa GOP leaders in Des Moines decided to “help” with a campaign in southern Iowa – in a way so disgusting that it forced their canddiate to drop out of the party and declare himself to be an Independent.

Kevin Wiskus, a candidate for Iowa House District 94, has switched his party affiliation from Republican to Independent following what he said was a “shocking and tasteless” mass-mailed brochure attacking his opponent.

The move, he said, was in response to a brochure from the Republican Party of Iowa attacking current state Rep. Kurt Swaim, D-Bloomfield.

“I do not support any kind of attack campaign tactics,” Wiskus said. “Voters should be able to choose between qualified candidates based on individual merits. At no time should voters have to make a choice based on which candidate can throw the most mud.

“Though I had no prior knowledge of this vicious attack on you, I ask that you please accept my most sincere and humble apology to you and Julie,” he wrote in an ad to appear in the Centerville Daily Iowegian.
...
“You deserve an apology from the Republican Party,” begins Wiskus’ ad in the Daily Iowegian. “Since he will not get an apology from the Republican Party of Iowa, I would like to apologize to Kurt.”

Mr. Wiskus appears to be a rarity in modern politics: someone who values personal integrity over partisan attack politics. The Iowa GOP flyer accused the incumbent Democrat Kurt Swain for being “soft on crime”, highlighting Mr. Swain’s record as a public defender (where he had the duty to defend “sex offenders”) and for voting for a bill sponsored by Republicans, of all things.

Statehouse candidate denounces brochure

Of course, on WOI radio, the chair of the Iowa GOP referred to the brochure as “voter education” – apparently missing out on the idea that a decision made in Des Moines wasn’t well recieved in the rural counties.

• Sousy

.... or at least, copying them from the political consultants back pocket.

The answers were so good, Republican candidates wanted to use them as their own. The embarrassment was at least seven did.

Republicans in House races copied their party’s talking points and included parts of the answers as their own for an AARP survey. The answers related to Medicare, Social Security, insurance plans and retirement.

Candidates in Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, South Carolina and Texas all submitted the sometimes word-for-word responses, which originated with the National Republican Congressional Committee.
....
Among the candidates who used the borrowed language were Andrea Zinga and Peter Roskam, both running in Illinois, Jeff Lamberti in Iowa, Chuck Blasdel in Ohio and Max Burns in Georgia.

Link: from Forbes Magazine.

• Sousy
  
  
  

Now that the dust has settled on the eminent domain legislation (for now) – another related issue has come to a head in Clear Lake.

State lawmakers can brag all they want about how they protected Iowans from shopping malls, airports and lakes. But when it comes to the property rights fight over hogs, they have nothing to brag about.

Sure, no one is seizing property to build hog confinements. But you don’t have to physically grab property to take its value.

Read the rest of Todd Dorman’s Blog Entry

• Sousy

Three cheers for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. It would appear she of the prodigious adam’s apple has reached a tipping point in her career – and is finally pissing off and offending those to the right of the political spectrum. It’s not quite ‘ding dong, the witch is dead’ yet, but it’s atleast a start, eh?

Via Editor & Publisher

By Sarah Weber

Published: July 12, 2006 5:05 PM ET

NEW YORK Ann Coulter is no stranger to controversy, but her latest adventures have several newspapers questioning whether carrying her syndicated column is worth the trouble. The Shreveport (La.) Times is currently leaving the decision of whether or not to keep Coulter up to its readers. But the first newspaper to officially drop Coulter’s column since the latest uproar began seems to be The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she had appeared for about 14 months.

Opinion Page Editor Doug Neumann told E&P, “Our decision was made before the plagiarism allegations. It did come after the publication of [Coulter’s] book, but I would say it didn’t directly play any role on our decision.”

However, Neumann surmised that Coulter’s incendiary book may have played an “indirect” role in the final decision. “I think it was the book that began to unwind support among her readers,” Neumann explained.

“Liberals have never liked her, and we’ve always gotten complaints [from them]. But the complaints that mattered the most were from the conservative readers,” who felt that their views were being misrepresented.

Coulter’s syndicate, Universal Press, cleared her of plagiarism charges earlier this week.

Though The Gazette may be the first to drop the outspoken conservative columnist in recent months, Neumann emphasized, “It’s not uncommon for opinion pages to change their line-up.” The daily has long published conservative Cal Thomas and replaced Coulter with another conservative, David Limbaugh.

“We’ve always had a rich line-up of conservative columnists,” said Neumann, “and we still do.”

related digg thread
Also, via ‘Crooks and Liars’, Donny Deutsch Shatters the Coulter Myth

• pdx

I just found this – which gives a good rundown of what “wage stagnation” is.

The census data can be found here.

• Sousy

A post from Willing Worker below reminded me of something I was going to post: this June marks the 20th anniversary of the end of the P-9 strike of the Hormel plant in Austin, MN.

A brief account of the strike from Wikipedia:

In 1985, workers at Hormel went on the Austin Hormel Strike in Austin, Minnesota at the Hormel headquarters. Frustrated by low wages and dangerous conditions, they started one of the largest strikes of the 1980s. The strike began in August of 1985, with the sanction of the International level of the Union, P-9. The local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union P-9 led the strike, but was not supported by their parent union. After six months, a significant number of replacement workers crossed the picket line prompting riots in Austin. Wayne P. Goodnature was Sheriff at the time. In January 21, 1986, the Governor of Minnesota, Rudy Perpich, called in the National Guard to protect the replacement workers (derisively called scabs). This unpopular move brought on protests against the governor and Governor Perpich soon withdrew the National Guard from Austin. The action had more effect on the national union which ousted the local P-9 and the strike was ended in June 1986, making the length of the strike 10 months. Over 700 of the workers did not return to their jobs, refusing to cross the picket line as some had chosen to do. Ultimately, however, the company did succeed in hiring new workers at lower wages. It is still disputed as to who actually made the original National Guard request. The strike was chronicled in the film “American Dream”, which won the Academy Award for best documentary in 1990.

Minnesota Public Radio also ran a story two years ago about the strike. The unions finally conceded, which allowed Hormel to cut the wages and benefits that kept Austin, MN a proud, blue-collar town. Since then, Austin’s population has followed the pattern of rural migration and wage declines that are prevalent of all areas of rural America.

A documentary filmed in 1990 about the strike won an Academny Award for Best Documentary:

Wikipedia: American Dream

Something important to note (from the film description):

Hormel cut the hourly wage from $10.69 to $8.25 after posting a net profit of $30 million.

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.

Thanks to a tip from Chris Woods – Des Moines Cityview has a great bit of reporting on the politics going on surrounding the eminent domain bill.

Cityview: Strange Bedfellows

A bit from the article:

“This does not make sense politically. I can’t figure this out,” says Rep. Jeff Kaufmann, a Republican who managed Iowa’s eminent domain bill in the House.

Kaufmann says he doesn’t understand certain Democrats’ reluctance to return for a special session. “There’s a hesitancy there. I can’t get to that hesitancy,” he says. “It’s almost like there’s something missing, but I don’t know what that is right now.”
...
“I smell Doug Gross in all of this,” Kaufmann says. “I’ve had some pretty solid Republicans tell me this, too.”

The reason? A number of proposed lake projects – particularly one in Madison County where Doug Gross stands to profit from land ownership around the proposed lake. Of course, many others have proposed economic development projects around said lakes, including a rather odd alliance:

Further muddying the waters is the fact that certain people – notably Congressman [Steve] King – are talking about creating private economic development around the publicly financed lakes.

In a 2004 letter to one of the Clarke County supervisors, King states, “[T]he ability for private development on and near the lake will be critical to the financial success of the project. A portion of lakefront property, possibly as much as one third of the total lake area, should be used for private development of homes and related businesses.”

If you read the whole article, you find what is probably behind all of this: campaign donations.

I was initially unsure of what all of this meant, but I think I am now (oddly) in agreement with Chris Rants: let’s get this eminent domain law (or, if that’s not legally possible – a new law) on the books – we can tweak definitions later.

Can we also discuss campaign finance reforms while we’re at it?

Smithfield Foods, known in Iowa for successfully fighting Iowa’s packer ban anti-trust laws and increasing their presence in Iowa’s meat packing industry is in the news for employing illegal tatics to fight unionization in Smithfield processing plants.

There is something that struck me as related to our recent illegal immigration debates – Smithfield hiring illegal workers, then threatening them if they dare to organize or protest working conditions:

“They would always tell us don’t get mixed up in this stuff about the union, if you talk about the union they will fire you, (and) having the Hispanics think they’ll bring in INS if they try to vote for a union,” he said.

This is something I’ve never heard in the midst of all of the rhetoric coming from Washington: while we focus on walls and technology and deportation – what is to be done to employers that break the law to employ a virtual slave labor force?

The answer is evidently “nothing”.

Links:
Confined Space: Treating Workers Like Hogs

SmithfieldJustice.com

• Sousy