Winners

When catastrophe hits, patriotic citizens step up to the plate, proving that the worst of circumstances often bring out the best of the populace. But last week proved in annual, spectacular fashion the best of times also bring out of the worst among Americans, who almost invariably equate consumption with patriotism and, even after ceremoniously cutting a check to Katrina victims this summer, have no qualms running over grandma with a Best Buy cart to snag a cheap digital camera during the mandatory post-Thanksgiving shopping spree. Call the corporate monstrosity a town center, but the annual images of the rapacious use of credit cards at venues across the metro make it clear why Americans are perceived as fat, greedy bastards around the globe. Sure, we might lament the injustice of a war for oil (while we purchase petroleum-based trinkets) and whine about the influence of corporate donors on public policy (while we stuff their bank accounts with our holiday dollars), but Black Friday inevitably reveals our true colors. And we're all lucky that Santa isn't a humanitarian environmentalist, because, if that were the case, we'd be getting nothing but a lump of coal.

As millions hit the road for the holidays, Amtrak reported record ridership, with the number of Iowa passengers chugging above 61,000 in fiscal year 2005, a 13 percent increase. And despite its beleaguered image as a waste of public money, being propped up by more than $1 billion in public funds and losing upwards of $400 per passenger on some routes, talk of a Midwest rail system is allegedly gaining steam, which would hub in Chicago and shoot daily trains to cities like Davenport, Des Moines and Iowa City. Of course, if Amtrak's any guide, people might be wary of paying wallet-crushing prices to board a train with a 25 percent chance of getting to its destination, oh, sometime before the end of 2006.

Losers

The increasingly absurd game of follow the leader continued last week, as openly reluctant Polk County supervisors acquiesced to the politically popular but completely unsubstantiated notion that local governments can keep child molesters' genitals in check by simply ostracizing them from civil society. With virtually every municipality jumping on the bandwagon of banning child sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of just about anywhere children might congregate, Polk County Supervisors Chairman Tom Hockensmith conceded that shutting out sex offenders from 90 percent of the county was the board's only "choice under the circumstances." Of course, the "circumstances" themselves are already starting to prove problematic. Local offenders are checking into jail on the taxpayers' dime because they have nowhere else to go, all the while infant girls are sexually assaulted in public library bathrooms by convicted sex offenders who, based on state law, could live in that kid's bedroom. But it sure is easier to slap on a scarlet letter and send offenders packing - pushing them out of affordable housing and potentially divorcing them from their support networks - while continuing cookie-cutter treatment plans and ignoring state data that shows sex offenders, in fact, have some of the lowest rates of recidivism. After all, this out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality does have one sexed-up attribute: it ensures folks like Hockensmith look tough on crime.

And, speaking of sex offenders, the courts got tough on victims last week, as a Cass County District Court judge sentenced Tracey Dyess - the Griswold teen who burned down her home, inadvertently killing her young nephew and sister while trying to get at her sexually abusive stepfather - to a term that will likely keep the 18-year-old behind bars until she's at least 35. Nobody's saying the premature death of her two siblings is anything but a terrible tragedy, but even prison officials aren't sold on the efficacy of locking up a young woman who has been sexually abused since she was 4 years old, citing concerns that the mental health treatment she needs might not be available while she languishes behind bars at taxpayer expense. In fact, even the prisons' medical director, Edward O'Brien, openly admitted that Dyess' long sentence could amount to a second tragedy in an already unfortunate situation: "That young girl's going to be in here for that piece of her life? That's a really bad thing." CV

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