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I.R.S. to open call center in Iowa

September 29, 2009 By

The Internal Revenue Service plans to open a call center collections office in central Iowa in April of 2010. I.R.S. spokesman Bill Banowsky says the agency will hire about one-hundred people to start early next spring with another hundred positions to fill through the rest of the calendar year.

Banowsky says, “This is an automated collections system site, which means our customer service reps or collection representatives will be providing assistance to individual and small business taxpayers, helping them resolve their tax delinquencies, whether it’s maybe an unfiled return or they have unpaid account that they need to resolve.” He says the office will be located in the Des Moines area and a job fair to fill the first of the 200 positions will be held in the capitol city on October 5th.

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Filed Under: Business Tagged With: ,

Wild marijuana destroyed in Floyd County

September 29, 2009 By

About two tons of marijuana found growing wild in Floyd County was destroyed over the weekend by sheriff’s deputies. Sheriff Rick Lynch says it’s the sixth time in the last decade they’ve done such an operation. Sheriff Lynch says the mission is to both eradicate the crop and to protect those who are out trying to find the plants to smoke.

Lynch says the risk is that people spray chemicals like Round-up on the wild marijuana to kill it, and then other people pick it for recreational use and they may end up ingesting harmful chemicals that could end up killing them. Lynch says it’s the responsibility of land owners to get rid of the marijuana and they want to make sure as much of it is cut down as possible.

He says they don’t want kids or young adults roaming around the county trying to find the plants. He says if someone does cut off parts of the plant, they can be charged with criminal possession of marijuana. Lynch says the program doesn’t cost the county a lot of money since his department gets volunteer help to look for and harvest the plants.

Lynch says the plants that were cut down were destroyed. He says the plants were taken to an undisclosed area and burned. Many spots in Floyd County grew marijuana plants in the 1940s to be harvested with the hemp portion of the plant being made into rope during World War Two.

Contributed by Bob Fisher, KRIB, Mason City

Filed Under: Crime & Courts Tagged With:

Santorum says policymakers must take baton from talk radio

September 29, 2009 By

Former Senator Rich Santorum is headed to Iowa later this week for a trip that could be a prelude to a 2012 bid for the White House.

Santorum, a Republican, represented Pennsylvania in congress for 16 years before losing his reelection bid in 2006. Without that office to tie him down in Washington, D.C., Santorum says he now has the “beauty” of a conservative congressional record and the freedom to travel the country to tout it.

“I’ve got a pretty good record of tapping into the concerns of the American public, articulating those in Washington, D.C….and effectively following through and passing legislation or exposing corruption that has made a difference, so I think the record of doing is pretty much there,” Santorum said during a telephone conference call. “And so now it’s a question of whether this is something that I can use as a platform to go out and speak into the problems that confront America today.”

Santorum spoke with reporters this morning by telephone and downplayed expectations about a “Santorum for president” campaign.

“I have no plans and just the opposite,” Santorum said. “It’s not that I’m not going to plan, but this is an opportunity to speak and lend my voice to what I hope to be a conservative movement and a Republican moment to change the direction that Barack Obama wants to take us.”

According to Santorum, Republicans haven’t been that “articulate” in stating their opposition to President Obama’s policies. ”He surprised me in the boldness of his attempts to move this country, jerk this country,” Santorum said this morning. 

Santorum argues Republican “policymakers” like himself have to step forward now and take the baton from talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

“I think talk radio has done a great job and I’m not being critical, but, you know, look, part of talk radio is entertainment and hyperbole — you know, keeping an audience and while, you know, it serves a very important and useful purpose, you know we also need policymakers to go out there and be a little less shrill and a bit more pointed as to the criticisms and the antidotes to the problems that confront America,” Santorum said this morning.  “And that combination is something that we just need to be a little better at.”

Santorum will speak Thursday morning in Des Moines at an Iowa Right-to-Life gathering  Thursday evening Santorum will deliver a speech in Dubuque at an event organized by the American Future Fund.

Click on the audio files here to listen to Santorum’s conference call with reporters.   Santorum Part 1 features questions from Iowa reporters.   Santorum Part 2  features questions from out-of-state reporters (primarily from Pennsylvania).

Filed Under: Politics & Government Tagged With: ,

Grassley doesn’t think public option will make it in bill

September 29, 2009 By

Two of the Democrats on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee are expected to introduce amendments to the health care reform bill today that would include the so-called public option. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the panel, says he doesn’t put a lot of faith in the effort by the Democrats being approved by the six-member committee.

“I think they’ll come close but I don’t think it’ll be accomplished,” Grassley says, “because I think there’s enough Democrats, plus the Republicans, and maybe for different reasons, oppose it.” Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who chairs the committee, says he left the public option out of his bill, because he didn’t think the legislation could pass if it included the option of letting the government compete with private insurers. Grassley agrees.

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Filed Under: Health & Medicine, Politics & Government Tagged With: , ,

Police dog teams compete in Des Moines

September 29, 2009 By

Around 100 police K-9 teams from around the country are in central Iowa this week to determine who has the “top dog.” The 2009 United States Police Canine Association’s National Trials opened Monday in West Des Moines. Office Brent Kock with the West Des Moines Police Department says the dogs and handlers are tested in activities that are similar to what they might encounter on the job.

“Which includes tracking, criminal apprehension…if you get in car or foot chases and the dog is deployed, the dog will know which person to go after and how to detain the person until officers can get there,” Kock said. That means the dogs need to show skill in picking up scents, climbing ladders and jumping fences.

“Those are all things that we encounter when we’re out going through back yards. When somebody is jumping over fences, we don’t want to stop and lift the dog up over every fence that we come to,” Kock said. “So, you want the dog to be able to jump over the fence, pick up the scent again and keep going. We try and keep it as realistic as possible with all of our testing.” When West Des Moines added a K-9 team to its force, Kock spent six weeks at a training school in Indiana and now handles a dog named Ronnie. Like most police K-9 dogs, Ronnie’s a German Shepherd.

“They’re great around people. They have a very good nose, not necessarily the best nose out of any dog, but they’re good at tracking. They’re strong dogs, so they can apprehend people and you don’t have to worry about too many injuries,” Kock said. This week’s competition will conclude with a free public demonstration from 6:00 to 7:30 Thursday night at Principal Park in Des Moines.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts

Insurance company says collisions with deer are up

September 29, 2009 By
Deer in a Des Moines back yard.

Deer in a Des Moines back yard.

A report from the State Farm Insurance company says the number of car-deer accidents in Iowa in the last five years have increased by 17-percent. Agent Kari Durham says that’s right up with the national average. She says nationwide there’s been an 18-percent increase in deer-vehicle collisions, and overall Iowa ranks fourth for number of accidents.

Durham says the damage done to vehicles has increased too. Durham says the average property damage cost is about $3,050, which she says is also up from recent years. Durham says you can help avoid an unfortunate encounter with a deer by paying close attention in areas where they live.

Durham says the deer crossing signs are placed in the areas where the animals are most active, and she says the active hours tend to be between six and nine p.m. She says you should use your high-beam lights when possible to illuminate more of the area and see the deer. And if you see and miss a deer, don’t think you’re home safe.

Durham says deer generally travel together, so if you see one, there are generally others around. She reminds drivers that if you see a deer and can’t avoid it, it is best to hit the deer instead of swerving out of the way as that may cause you to lose control and hit another car. For the third year in a row, West Virginia tops the list of those states where a collision with a deer is most likely The likelihood of a specific vehicle striking a deer there is one in 78, compared to one in 104 in Iowa.

Filed Under: Fires/Accidents/Disasters Tagged With:

“Operation Photo Rescue” coming to Cedar Rapids

September 29, 2009 By

A group that restores photographs damaged in disasters plans a “rescue” mission in Cedar Rapids next month. Volunteers with “Operation Photo Rescue” will set up shop at the African-American Museum in Cedar Rapids on Friday, October 9th. 

Organizer Margie Hayes says her group got started in 2006.  ”Two photo-journalists decided that they wanted to help the people that got hit by Hurricane Katrina. They’d seen photos that were, you know, destroyed and they knew they could help, so they took off to do that. They had a blog site and people started joining and pretty soon it grew and grew until finally we now have over 2000 volunteers,” Hayes says.  “We have volunteers in all 50 states and 49 countries.” 

The plan now is for “Operation Photo Rescue” volunteers to work in Cedar Rapids on Friday and Saturday, October 9th and 10th, but depending on the number of folks who come forward with damaged pictures, the session may be extended to Sunday, October 11th.  There is a limit on how many snapshots each flood victim may bring. 

“While we’d like to take every photograph that they have, we can’t do that,” Hayes says.  “We ask that they take 20 that they’d like to have restored.” 

“Operation Photo Rescue” doesn’t keep the damaged photos.  Instead, volunteers take a snapshot of the wrecked photo with a digital camera and the “restoration” work is done mostly by “Photoshop” work on a computer.

“We wait until all of the pictures have been restored and then we send them off to www.DigMyPics.com and they have offered to do that free of charge for us.  There will be no cost to the families. The prints will be mailed back to them,” Hayes says. “But we do wait until they’re all done rather than do them one at a time, mainly just for cost factors.” 

Find out more online at www.operationphotorescue.org.  The group’s website has a gallery which shows photos that were damaged in a variety of disasters, from wildfires to hurricanes to floods and the “restored” images which the organization’s volunteers were able to create. Hayes says “Operation Photo Rescue” has a wide network of volunteers.

“We have our two founders.  They’re from Fredericksburg, Virginia. Our secretary and printer — she’s in San Diego.  One of my distributors is in Australia.  The other one is in the Netherlands.  I am in Kansas.  Our webmaster is in New York,” Hayes says, “so it’s really a global effort.”

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