One of the Republican candidates for governor would impose new fees and taxes on the porn industry. Bob Vander Plaats says it’s a “booming” industry and some of the pornographers’ profits should be used to off-set the costs of those who consume porn and then go on to prey on children. Vander Plaats would place the new taxes and fees in a state fund that would finance the tracking of sex offenders as well as treatment programs for both the victims and perpetrators of sex crimes.

Vander Plaats cites data from the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families which found 86 percent of the rapists they studied admitted to regular use of pornography, with over half admitting they imitated pornographic scenes when they committed their crime. “We need to be innovative and creative enough and have the will power to say ‘We’re going after these people,'” Vander Plaats says.

Vander Plaats would not only establish significant taxes on magazines and other products sold in adults-only stores, he would establish huge fees that the businesses would have to pay annually in order to legally operate in the state. In addition, Vander Plaats would support some sort of zoning restrictions that would prevent businesses that peddle pornography from operating near schools or homes. “Enough is enough,” Vander Plaats says. “How far are we going to push this line and especially when you can draw the lines of research that say there’s a definite cause and effect (between) pornography and child molestation and child rape and the sex offenses against children and against, in particular, women?”

Congressman Jim Nussle is competing with Vander Plaats for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, and Nussle this week pledged to put an electronic bracelet on every sex offender who’s released from prison so they can be tracked 24 hours a day by satellite.

Vander Plaats says Nussle’s proposal fails to address what prompts sexual deviants to become predators in the first place.”I believe we do need to have the toughest legislation possible to protect our children against sex offenders, but I really want to focus on the cause, and that is the Internet pornography industry and the pornography industry as a whole,” Vander Plaats says. “So I’m looking at ways that we can monitor that industry, the way we can regulate that industry and I believe a way that we can tax that industry.”

Vander Plaats says Nussle’s plan “does nothing to keep a person from committing their first assault. It does nothing to keep the sickest of individuals from violating one more law that they don’t care about. His plan merely reacts to a problem that should have been prevented in the first place.” Vander Plaats cites the recent case of a two-year-old girl who narrowly escaped an assault at the downtown Des Moines Library. The girl had been taken in a bathroom by a man who had just finished viewing pornography on a library computer.

Vander Plaats also cites statistics which show the Internet porn industry alone will rake in 12 billion dollars in revenue this year — exceeding the combined revenues of all professional football, baseball and basketball teams. “The tobacco and gambling industries are required to pay for their relative fallout. Therefore, why is the porn industry allowed to reap huge profits without paying for the moral fallout?” Vander Plaats said in a prepared statement.