Carroll woman’s answer to highly visible Obama: Selling her televisions

A 78-year-old Carroll woman says she’s so tired of seeing President Barack Obama on the airwaves that she’s selling her television sets – two of them.

Deloris Nissen, a retired nurses’ aide and former Kmart employee who was raised on a farm near Audubon, placed a classified advertisement with The Daily Times Herald for Friday’s paper.

In the $5.50 ad, Nissen tells readers she has two television sets for sale.

The reason: “Obama on every channel and station.”

In an interview Nissen said she is serious about selling two TVs – and genuine about her disgust with what she believes to be an overexposed president.

“I just got tired of watching him on every channel,” Nissen said. “I thought, my gosh, does he ever stay at the White House?”

Nissen, who voted for U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the 2008 presidential election, said she could live with seeing Obama come on television to make serious announcements. But he seems to be on all the time, Nissen said.

When the president does appear on a channel she happens to be watching, Nissen said, she quickly turns.

“I have the remote real handy,” Nissen said. “I have the batteries. I’m ready for him.”

Nissen’s annoyance with the president as a frequent presence on her television doesn’t mean she’ll abandon the medium altogether.

She’s keeping a bigger flat-screen television and selling an older 20-inch Sony and possibly a 13-inch set.

“It’s too heavy,” Nissen said of the 20-inch TV. “I can’t handle it anymore.”

That said, she doesn’t plan on selling it for less than $100 – even if Obama was just on Tuesday pitching his health-care-reform plans.

Obama’s own advisers and political observers across the ideological spectrum have for months debated whether the now popular president is overexposed.

For her part, Nissen said she expects to take some flack for the advertisement in her local paper. After all, Obama did win Iowa and Carroll County in the 2008 election.

But she’s not worried about any criticism.

“I’m an old lady, and I don’t care,” Nissen said.

http://carrollspaper.1upsoftware.com/print.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=8449

Aplington-Parkersburg football coach shot; suspect in custody

*This goes in the WTF category…sheesh*

UPDATE (10:28 a.m.): PARKERSBURG — Shock and disbelief reverberated around the state today with the stunning news that one of Iowa’s best known high school football coaches was shot and killed this morning in the weight room of the high school.

Coach Ed Thomas was rushed to a hospital after being shot. Covenant Medical Center officials confirmed about 10:30 a.m. that Thomas, 58, died shortly after arrival in the emergency room.

Several reports say Thomas was shot in the head.

Butler County Sheriff Jason Johnson said that a suspect has been taken into custody and is at the Butler County Sheriff’s Office.

“It’s a young individual,” Johnson said.

“We know of no other injuries,” Johnson said.

A witness said someone shot Thomas in the school’s converted weight room next to the high school. The incident happened shortly before 8:30 a.m.

Traffic was stopped briefly on Highway 20 as an air ambulance landed and picked the coach up from an awaiting ambulance. Thomas was reportedly air-lifted to Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo.

The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation has been called in, said Jon Thompson, superintendent of A-P schools.

Crime scene tape surrounds a large part of land around the red shed. A crowd was gathering near the school. People driving by could be seen crying.

Parents and students were gathering about 9:45 a.m. at the elementary school.

Thomas has coached for 37 seasons. He has a career record of 292-84, including 156-31 as Aplington-Parkersburg’s head coach. He has won two state titles – 1993 and 2001.

Thomas has led A-P to 19 state playoff appearances. Thomas’ win total ranks ninth all-time among Iowa high school football coaches.

Thomas began his coaching career at Northeast Hamilton in Blairsburg.

He was the NFL High School Coach of the Year in 2003. He has four former players active in the NFL — Brad Meester of Jacksonville; Jared DeVries; Casey Wiegmann of Denver; Aaron Kampman of Green Bay.

“You know, Coach Thomas is the pillar of the community. Anything that affects him affects Parkersburg,” Johnson said.

http://qctimes.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_79ccb5de-60d0-11de-9d62-001cc4c002e0.html

Harkin demands Postville explanation

*I can tell you that there will never be an explanation, for a certain lobby will never allow such questions to be answered.*

Washington, D.C. – Sen. Tom Harkin wants the Bush administration to explain why the Agriprocessors slaughter plant in Postville was allowed to operate when it couldn’t pay for the livestock it was buying.

Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, says it was clear by the middle of October that Agriprocessors was not fully paying cattle and poultry sellers.

The plant was processing poultry up to two weeks ago, Harkin said in a letter Monday to Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer.

“Companies that are insolvent or in breach of their obligation to pay promptly are not to continue operating,” Harkin wrote.

The USDA enforces a federal law that’s meant to protect farmers in the event that a packer gets in financial trouble. The law requires packers to hold livestock and proceeds from meat sales in trust until their cash suppliers are paid. But Harkin said unpaid claims against Agriprocessors “evidently far exceed” the amount in trust.

USDA spokesman Keith Williams disputed that statement, saying that the company has a bond as well as trust assets to cover claims and that the value of the claims is yet to be determined.

Williams also said it would be up to the courts to decide whether the plant was operating while it was unable to pay its suppliers.

The plant, which was once the nation’s largest supplier of kosher meat, went into decline after an immigration raid in May and then filed for bankruptcy protection and stopped operations in November.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20081202/BUSINESS01/812020366/-1/ENT05

PETA video of pig abuse triggers investigation

*May the bastards realize what torture feels like…*

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Iowa sheriff said Wednesday he has launched an investigation into a videotape showing abuse of pigs at a farm.

The video, shot by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, shows farm workers hitting sows with metal rods, slamming piglets on a concrete floor and bragging about jamming rods into sows’ hindquarters. Greene County Sheriff Tom Heater told The Associated Press that he had met with PETA representatives Tuesday.

“They provided us with what appears to be some really good information,” he said. “Our next step is to secure interviews with potential suspects, and definitely make sure that there’s no further abuse occurring down there — that’s our main concern at this point.”

Asked if crimes had been committed, Heater responded, “It appears that there were, yes.” Watch undercover PETA video »

On the video, obtained by AP, a supervisor tells an undercover PETA investigator that when he gets angry or a sow won’t move, “I grab one of these rods and jam it in her [anus].”

The farm outside Bayard, Iowa, about 60 miles west of Des Moines, is a supplier to Hormel Foods of Austin, Minnesota. PETA wants to use the results of the investigation to pressure Hormel, the maker of Spam and other food products, to demand that its suppliers ensure humane treatment of pigs.

Hormel spokeswoman Julie Henderson Craven called the incidents “completely unacceptable.”

PETA is seeking prosecution of 18 people on animal cruelty violations. According to PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich, the video shows eight people directly abusing animals.

“Abuse on factory farms is the absolute norm, not the exception, and anyone eating factory-farmed meat is paying to support it,” Friedrich said.

After getting a whistleblower complaint from someone inside the farm, PETA sent two undercover investigators to get hired at the farm and document its practices — one from June 10 to September 8, and the other from July 23 to September 11.

At one point on the video, an employee shouts to an investigator, “Hurt ‘em! There’s nobody works for PETA out here. You know who PETA is?”

The undercover PETA investigator replies that he’s heard of the group.

“I hate them. These [expletives] deserve to be hurt. Hurt, I say!,” the employee yells as he hits a sow with a metal rod. “Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! Hurt! … Take out your frustrations on ‘em.” He encourages the investigator to pretend that one of the pigs scared off a voluptuous and willing 17- or 18-year-old girl, and then beat the pig for it.

Records at the Greene County Assessor’s Office show the property was owned by Natural Pork Production II LLP of Iowa until August 18, and then was transferred to MowMar LLP of Fairmont, Minnesota.

Lynn Becker, an owner of MowMar, called the abuses on the video “completely intolerable, reprehensible. We condemn these types of acts. If any animals were abused in the brief time we’ve owned the farm, if we still employ these people, any attempt will be made to investigate and initiate corrective action immediately.”

Becker said his company provided animal welfare training to the staff when it took over the farm.

Natural Pork Production II referred questions to AMVC Management Services, which managed the farm under its ownership. Mark Jones, AMVC’s network manager, said the video showed “unacceptable practices” and that his company is working with the new ownership to investigate.

Craven, the Hormel spokeswoman, said the farm became a Hormel supplier only after the change in ownership, and that MowMar “shares our commitment to animal welfare and humane handling.”

Craven said it was her understanding that the abuses took place before the change in ownership. But PETA’s Friedrich said the abuses continued, and that the new manager abused animals by shocking and kicking pigs.

Dr. Jennifer Greiner, a veterinarian and director of science and technology at the National Pork Producers Council, said the industry condemns “willful abuse” of pigs and that the video depicts acts that are not acceptable.

“Our industry is committed to handling pigs humanely,” she said. “My industry is full of good people.”

At one point in the video, workers are shown slamming piglets on the ground, a practice designed to instantly kill those baby pigs that aren’t healthy enough. But on the video, the piglets are not killed instantly, and in a bloodied pile, some piglets can be seen wiggling vainly. The video also shows piglets being castrated, and having their tails cut off, without anesthesia.

Temple Grandin, a leading animal welfare expert who serves as a consultant to the livestock industry, said that while those are standard industry practices, the treatment of the sows on the video was far from it.

“This is atrocious animal abuse,” Grandin said after PETA sent her the video. But she disagreed with PETA’s contention that it was widespread in the industry.
“I’ve been on many good farms, and the pigs are handled gently,” she said. “This was blatant, deliberate animal cruelty. These people are sick. They need to be prosecuted. There are certain people that enjoy hurting animals and they should not be working with them — period.”

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/16/abused.pigs.ap/index.html

Postville Plant Charged With 9,000 Child Labor Violations

*Children working, illegal immigrants, animal abuse…WHAT IS NEXT FOR THESE MONSTERS???*

DES MOINES, Iowa — The Iowa attorney general’s office has filed child labor charges against the owner and managers of the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville.

The complaint filed Tuesday alleges more than 9,000 violations of Iowa’s child labor law at the plant. The attorney general’s office said the violations occurred from Sept. 9, 2007, to May 12, 2008.

The complaint indicates the violations involved 32 children under age 18, including seven who were younger than 16.

The plant was the site of one of the largest single-site immigration raids in the nation, with nearly 400 illegal workers being detained.

http://www.kcci.com/news/17429807/detail.html

Kosher meats firm cited for child labor violations

*HA. These people are absolute SNAKES. Is there ANYTHING proper at Postville??*

DES MOINES, Iowa – Iowa labor officials said Tuesday that they had uncovered dozens of child labor violations at the nation’s biggest supplier of kosher meat.

Officials from the state’s Labor Commissioner’s Office said their investigation, which spanned several months, uncovered 57 cases of child labor law violations at the Agriprocessors kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, where nearly 400 workers were arrested this spring in the largest immigration enforcement operation in U.S. history.

The types of violations included minors working in prohibited occupations, exceeding allowable hours for youth to work, failure to obtain work permits, exposure to hazardous chemicals and working with prohibited tools.

“The investigation brings to light egregious violations of virtually every aspect of Iowa’s child labor laws,” Dave Neil, Iowa Labor Commissioner, said in a statement. “It is my recommendation that the attorney general’s office prosecute these violations to the fullest extent of the law.”

Juda Engelmayer, an Agriprocessors spokesman, declined to comment.

Federal immigration agents arrested 389 illegal-immigrant workers, mostly Guatemalans, in a May 12 raid at the Agriprocessors plant. Most of the arrested workers pleaded guilty within a week and are serving sentences in federal prisons outside Iowa before being deported.

Allegations of child labor violations were included in an initial affidavit and a search warrant that led to the raid at Agriprocessors, which also operates a plant near Gordon, Neb.

Kerry Koonce, a spokeswoman for Iowa Workforce Development, the agency that oversees the labor commission, said Iowa’s child labor investigation into Agriprocessors began before the federal immigration raid and was independent of the raid.

Under Iowa law, it is illegal for children under the age of 18 to work in meatpacking plants.

Koonce said the number of violations is much larger than what is typically found in the state of Iowa.

“Typically, when we have child labor issues it’s an issue of one or two individuals,” she said. “From our point of view, with this investigation, it’s a large-scale violation of the law.”

Koonce said the full report was not being made public because it is a part of a criminal investigation but she confirmed that 57 children were involved.

Labor officials say the child labor violations would normally be turned over to the county attorney’s office, but in this case will most likely be handed over the Iowa attorney general at the county’s request.

The attorney general’s office said it could not comment on what penalties are possible, but Koonce said any charges would be filed against the company and would generally include fines.

Several underage workers who said they were employed at the plant have spoken out since the raid about their experiences.

At a meeting with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus last month in Postville, 17-year-old Noel Castillo Ordonez said he had worked long hours at the plant to support his family in Guatemala.

“I needed money for my family, because I could not help them,” he said in Spanish.

At the same meeting, 17-year-old Gilda Yolanda Ordonez Lopez openly wept as she described being forced to work shifts as long as 12 hours with no overtime pay.

“They asked me how old I was, and I told them the truth,” Lopez said.

Sister Mary McCauley of St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in Postville has been working closely with the workers’ families. She said she was “heartsick” over the stories of child labor violations that she heard after the raid.

“My first response is it doesn’t surprise me because of all that I have heard,” she said Tuesday. “Therefore, I am grateful that this was brought to the attention of the proper authority and my hope would be that some sanctions would be taken because I do think that these young children were not treated with respect and they should not have been there in the first place.”

State labor officials say they are still investigating some wage violations at the plant.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080805/ap_on_re_us/kosher_slaughterhouse_child_labor