Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
The Rubashkin family, owners and founders of the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, were handed another defeat this week as Moshe Rubashkin was sentenced to 16 months in federal prison.
Moshe, a son of Agriprocessors founder A. Aaron Rubashkin, had pleaded guilty in February to leaving hazardous waste inside the Allentown, PA textile plant he owned and operated. His son, Shalom Rubashkin, was also charged in the case and will be sentenced next month.
Montex Textiles, which closed in 2001, was used by Rubashkin as an illegal storage facility for numerous containers of hazardous waste. When a series of unexplained fires in 2005 gutted the building just days before a sheriff’s sale (the company was won in foreclosure by a Brooklyn, N.Y. bank), the Environmental Protection Agency stepped in to order clean up of the property.
In addition to the prison time, U.S. District Judge James Knoll Gardner ordered Rubashkin to pay $450,000 in fines. The monies will be distributed between the EPA and the City of Allentown.
This will not be Rubashkin’s first stint at in a federal institution. In 2002, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $225,000 in restitution for bank fraud. That case was also linked to his ownership and operation of Montex Textiles.
Within months of his release from prison, Moshe Rubashkin was elected as president of Crown Heights Jewish Community Council in Brooklyn, which receives and administers millions in government funds each year.
Moshe and his father, Aaron, were found guilty in 1995 of collecting union dues from their Cherry Hill Textile employees without sending the collected monies on to the United Production Workers Union. The National Labor Relations Board ordered the Rubashkins repay the money with interest.
Moshe’s brother, Sholom M. Rubashkin, a former executive officer at Agriprocessors, is currently out on bail and waiting trail on federal identity theft and immigration-related charges. This week Agriprocessors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy amid a foreclosure lawsuit.
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