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Former prep rivals now play on same baseball team

June 28, 2006 By

A year ago, Jeff Lanning and Dan Jennings played baseball for rival schools on opposing sides of Iowa’s 4A state championship game. A month later they were teammates at the University of Nebraska.

Lanning, a catcher from Ankeny High School, says he and the Cornhusker baseball team were a good match. He says, “That’s where I wanted to play, I kind of introduced myself to the coaches to get into the program, and I got a good opportunity because they were looking for a catcher and they wanted to bring a high school kid in to get experience for the upcoming years.”

Left-handed pitcher Dan Jennings, who’s West Des Moines Valley team won the 2005 state title says he and Lanning had been opposing dugouts long before high school. Jennings says, “Me and Jeff have been playing against each other since we were 9 or 10 years old, so it’s fun to come in with a teammate, especially a new teammate. We’ve been playing against each other for so long it’s good to be on the same team wearing the same color for once.”

Lanning says the two former rivals avoid talking about their last high school game and look forward instead. He says, “I don’t talk about it that much, he doesn’t talk about it…he’s a good guy, a good pitcher, he’s got good stuff and still a lot of room to grow, and he’ll do well in the future.”

Jennings agrees the exciting 8-6 match-up at the end of last summer was important then, but not relevant now. He says, “What I remember was it was one of the best games I’ve ever played, one of the best games I’ve ever been a part of. It went back and forth. It was fun to be in it, it was fun to play against Jeff, knowing I’m going to be his teammate next year, but we don’t really like to talk about it. It was fun for both of us, but I know how he feels about it, I know how much he wanted to win it, so I try to kind of stay away from that topic a little bit.”

Both have another chance to play together this summer for the Waterloo Bucks in the all collegiate Northwoods League. Lanning says he hopes to sharpen his skills behind the plate this summer in preparation for more playing time next spring. Lanning says, “If I can hit, I can hit, but if I can’t play defense well enough, then I’m not going to play. I just want to work on my defense, get that as good as I can before I go back.”

Through nearly four weeks of the Waterloo Bucks season, Lanning is among the team’s RBI leaders and Jennings has made several appearances as a starting pitcher and in relief.

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Grassley proposes taxing sex trade

June 28, 2006 By

Iowa Senator Charles Grassley has proposed a new way of cracking down on the sex trade. Some are calling it the “pimp tax.” Grassley and other members of his Senate Finance Committee have endorsed a bill that sets up a new division in the Internal Revenue Service to go after pimps who fail to pay taxes on their profits from “employees” who get paid for sex.

Grassley says there are “business people” in the “underworld of sex enslavement” who are making a buck and the I-R-S could help put them out of business. “Law enforcement people worked for decades to get Al Capone and couldn’t get anything on him,” Grassley says. “The only thing that sent him to prison was the IRS going after him.” Under current law, the I-R-S must prove that a pimp — or prostitute — earned income from the sex trade in order to prosecute.

Under Grassley’s bill, a pimp who fails to file a W-2 form for one of their prostitutes could be sentenced to a decade in prison. Grassley suggests it’ll give prosecutors a way to go after the kingpins of the sex trade who have evaded prosecution by conventional means. He concedes that pimps probably won’t start paying taxes or filing W-2 forms.

“But when the I-R-S finds out about it, they can go after you just like any other business person that wasn’t doing that,” Grassley says. Grassley calls the sex trade “vile” and he believes that if the bill becomes law, the I-R-S could go after sex traffickers and “yank from their grasp the girls and women they exploit.”

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: ,

Appeals Court rules on property rights case in Western Iowa

June 28, 2006 By

The Iowa Court of Appeals has ruled on a case involving the property rights of a western Iowa couple fighting with the city of Atlantic over an airport expansion.
Ray and Rita Mehaffey of Atlantic have filed two lawsuits in their dispute with the City of Atlantic which is trying to acquire part of the couple’s property for an expansion of the city’s airport.

City officials were unable to negotiate a purchase price for the land, and the City of Atlantic started the process of condemning the land — a process referred to as eminent domain — in order to complete the planned lengthening of an airport runway. In the case just decided by the Court of Appeals, the couple argued their property line was incorrectly drawn.

The Court of Appeals rejected the Mehaffey’s bid to have the line moved. The case is being reviewed by some of those clamoring for a special legislative session this summer over a property rights bill that Governor Vilsack vetoed. Critics say cities and counties have too much authority in seizing private property for economic development projects and Republican legislators are trying to reconvene the General Assembly to override Vilsack’s veto.

Meanwhile Vilsack and his fellow Democrats are trying to convince the G-O-P to rewrite the bill in question.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Waterloo gains expansion of food plant

June 28, 2006 By

Waterloo city leaders are claiming victory for their efforts to lure a multi-million-dollar expansion project to Iowa. Officials with ConAgra Foods have chosen Waterloo for a 46-Million dollar project announced in April, to expand one of its three pudding production facilities in the Midwest. Up for consideration were Waterloo, Indianapolis, and Menomenee, Wisconsin.

Company officials this week chose Waterloo, where city and state leaders had secured an incentive package that includes 20-years of property-tax abatements and land for future growth. The 200-thousand-square-foot expansion includes doubling the size of the 9-year-old Waterloo plant and will add fifty jobs to the workforce there. Construction could begin in two weeks.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With:

Boswell seeks money for law enforcement coordination

June 28, 2006 By

Iowa Congressman Leonard Boswell says an amendment he offered to a justice appropriations bill would help states share criminal records. Boswell says the program ensures that accurate records are available to law officers and to permit states to identify people restricted from certain positions such as teachers and daycare providers.

Boswell, a democrat, says his amendment provides one-point-five million dollars to help states with the technology to share records. Boswell says the awarding of the money would be overseen by the Justice Department to take any political concerns out of the process and base the awards on need. Boswell says states would be able to connect to national record-checking systems to help with background checks.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts, Politics & Government Tagged With:

Another biofuel plant planned

June 28, 2006 By

Iowa’s status as a world leader in bio-fuel production is still growing. A group called Nishna Valley Bio Energy is announcing plans to build a large bio-diesel plant in the town of Manilla, in western Iowa’s Crawford County near Denison.

Louis Scheuring is one of the company’s board members. Scheuring says the state-of-the-art plant will produce 60-million gallons of bio-diesel per year using soybean oil, vegetable oils and animal fats as a feed stock. It’ll employ 36 full-time workers. Construction will begin this fall and it could be 16 months before the plant is fully operational.

Scheuring explains why they chose the site in southern Crawford County, near the intersections of Highways 141 and 45. He says five key factors include: rail access, highway access, and proximity to three specific utilities — electricity, water and natural gas. He says the project had its roots last fall and was spearheaded by local producers and businesspeople, though plans changed along the way.

He says the project started as an idea of members of the Manilla Economic Development Corporation as a way to enhance the community. They’d initially planned to build an ethanol plant but it fell through. Scheuring says an equity drive will be announced soon but could not comment on how much equity will be sought.

When construction began on a 30-million-gallon Wall Lake biodiesel plant, it was to be one of the biggest in the country. This Manilla facility is to be twice that size.

Filed Under: Agriculture, Business Tagged With:

"Superman Returns" gets good reviews in West Des Moines

June 28, 2006 By

The new Man of Steel is getting rave reviews from home state fans as “Superman Returns” opened to an ovation late last night (Tuesday). The movie hits theatres nationwide today.

The next generation Superman Brandon Routh is from the Des Moines suburb of Norwalk. After the first showing, West Des Moines moviegoers emerged about half-past-midnight, applauding and giggling. One woman says “It was really good. I enjoyed it and the whole theatre seemed to really enjoy it too. Everyone was oooing and ahhhing.”

One man says “Superman has lived on in D.C. Comics for years and years and now the new Superman’s from Iowa and it gives a little flair to Iowans, you know, saying that Superman’s from our hometown, it’s nice, a little spark.”

Routh is 26, the same age the previous movie Superman, Christopher Reeve, was when he first donned the red cape. If this movie succeeds, Routh reportedly has the option for at least two more in his contract.

Filed Under: Recreation & Entertainment
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