Radio Iowa reports that today an expert from the Center for Women Policy Studies urged Iowa legislators to add a law to the books making human trafficking illegal. Currently only the federal government may prosecute cases in Iowa, and adding a statute would enable local law enforcement to help.
The federal government has prosecuted one case of human trafficking in Cedar Rapids.
She says local lawmakers don’t want to wait for a federal case to unfold here. Federal prosecutors are stretched very thin, she says, advising that Iowans won’t want to wait for them to track down cases, “because then you will know that you have a bigger problem.”
For every one federal prosecuted, she says that’s just the tip of a huge iceberg, and there are dozens of people locked away you won’t know about. Wolf says women in poor countries are promised jobs in other countries but wind up working in prostitution, or laboring in sweatshops, in farm fields, or as housekeepers in private homes.
Well, first it was this story about an Osceola, IA, woman who was involved in a high-tech kiddie porn ring:
In this case he says investigators think they were distributing “child molestation on demand.” Instead of selling videotapes or e-mailing photos, the investigators charge people were committing acts of child molestation and streaming the video live to viewers as it happened. Patrons would request certain acts be performed, and “get it on demand,” what Counts describes as “pretty sick stuff.”
Daniel Dean Duello, 34, of Mount Auburn, was charged with sexual exploitation by a school employee after a two-year investigation, police said.
Duello is accused of having a sexual relationship with a female student from June through December 2004 while he was head varsity football coach and assistant varsity girls’ basketball coach at Vinton-Shellsburg High School. Duello resigned after the allegations surfaced in 2005.
And then another one! Hull, IA, teachers’ aide Kelly Jean Cuperus, 38, had a relationship with a 15-year-old student (which continued on after his 16th birthday):
Sioux County Attorney Melissa O’Rourke said the sex abuse and lascivious conduct counts are connected to two incidents in which sexual conduct took place last summer, when the boy was 15 years old. Iowa’s age of consent is 16, she said.
The count of sexual exploitation by a school employee alleges that the pair also engaged in sexual conduct several times during the current school year, O’Rourke said.
Anyone think that Iowa has a problem? This Register article describes the second two cases together and reveals that the Duello case went unresolved for over a year!
Vinton Police Chief Jeff Tilson said the student, who has since graduated, was a member of the varsity girls basketball team, of which Duello was the assistant head coach.
Tilson said he was notified of the alleged sexual conduct in Sept. 2004. He said the investigation concluded after about 1 1/2 years after the police department was able to “track down witnesses – current and former students.”
He still has his teaching license, although that’s finally under review, too.
Roll Call reports that Senator Feingold’s resolution to censure the President for his domestic wiretapping program has its first co-sponsor, Senator Tom Harkin.
It’s good to see that another Democrat has the courage to stand with Feingold. But is the censure resolution such a hot idea? The New York Times has an article detailing the energizing effect the resolution is having among the Republican Party’s base
With the Republican base demoralized by continued growth in government spending, undiminished violence in Iraq and intramural disputes over immigration, some conservative leaders had already begun rallying their supporters with speculation about a Democratic rebuke to the president even before Mr. Feingold made his proposal.
Brian Jones, a Republican spokesman, said the e-mail messages generated a higher response than anything the party had sent in several months, including bulletins about the Supreme Court confirmations.
Having won on the Dubai ports issue and with Bush’s approval on national security issues plummeting, it may seem ill advised to turn the national debate toward censure on a program that Republicans claim has widespread support. Yet, a Gallop poll has a slim majority of Americans saying that the domestic surveillance program was wrong, and Zogby reports that
Just 28% are willing to allow their telephone conversations to be monitored, and 25% favor allowing random searches of mail.
Just as Bush’s numbers have eroded on terror and National Security, so can they decline on wire tapping. But Democrats need to keep the debate on the resolution focused on the program and not the punitive nature of the resolution itself. That way, the censure resolution can keep Bush’s unconstitutional program in the media and on voters’ minds. Domestic surveillance and the Patriot Act can fit into a much broader narrative of Republican contempt for Civil liberties, and that’s more and more a winning issue with the American public. It’s a good thing we have Senators like Feingold and Harkin. But where’s the party leadership on this?
Today the Register reports that (surprise surprise) Iowa House Republicans neglected to pass an education bill that would increase teacher salaries or funding for preschools. Republican House Speaker Rants:
“We have a revenue estimate that we have to abide by, by law,” he added. “I wish we had more to give, but that’s the amount of money we have available to spend.”
Can you blame them? Allocating tight funds sure is hard, ain’t it? Sure we all want teacher salary increases, but where will the money come from? Certainly not a cigarette tax.
Democrats failed to get a cigarette tax increase approved Wednesday in the Iowa House.
Rants, a Sioux City Republican, is against a tobacco tax increase and says the revenue it would raise would set the budget up for trouble in the future as cigarette sales declined.
Would revenue really fall significantly from a tax? New Yorkers pay 7.50 for a pack of cigarettes and yet the percentage of smokers is just under the national average. What gives?
Sure, there’s evidence that cigarette tax increases lower smoking, but the decline in use is most significant among children. And with ballooning state medical costs (the proposed tax was designed to pay for health care in the first place), reducing smoking can save money in the long term by cutting out a major source of health care woes- cigarettes.
Maybe Iowa Republicans should put that in their pipe and smoke it.
The DNC has this post to its “blog” about its 50-state strategy. I know I’ve heard people talking about how great it is (and perhaps it really is a novel approach), but I wonder how far down it really goes. That is, will they be helping random campaigns for State Representative, or just high-profile campaigns like Governors, US Congressmen, etc.?
I guess we’ll find out how “grassroots” the plan really is this summer, which is also when we’ll find out how many states the DNC is really going to be pressing in. I know Iowa’s on the list somewhere, but is it really a top priority?
