DES MOINES, Iowa — Governor Kim Reynolds has announced the appointment of Colonel Mark A. Muckey, as Deputy Adjutant General for the Iowa Air National Guard. Muckey, a Sioux City native, was selected by Governor Reynolds for his outstanding military achievements and leadership capabilities demonstrated through nearly four decades of military service.   On Thursday, Reynolds said “Like the Iowa National Guard itself, Colonel Muckey has proven ‘always ready’ to protect and serve. For almost forty years, he has served our nation with distinction all over the world, and his highly decorated military resume speaks to the courage and skill he brings to every deployment. I want to congratulate Colonel Muckey for his coming promotion to Brigadier General and thank him for once again answering the call.”

Col. Mark Muckey

Muckey is a command pilot with more than 4,000 flying hours primarily in the C-130H Hercules and KC-135R Stratotanker. He has numerous deployments including Operation Joint Forge, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. He joined the military in 1984 through the Academy of Military Science and most recently has served as the commander of the 185th Air Refueling Wing in Sioux City.   Muckey has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma State and is also a graduate of the Air Command and Staff College and the Air War College. His significant military awards and decorations include the Legion of Merit, Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters, Air Medal with oak leaf cluster, Aerial Achievement Medal, and Air Force Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters.

With this appointment, Col. Muckey will be promoted to the rank of Brigadier General. Muckey replaces Brigadier General Shawn Ford who retired in early August. Colonel Muckey and his wife Susan live in Ankeny.

(Pottawattamie County, Iowa) – Police in Council Bluffs, the Southern Iowa Fugitive Task Force, and officials with the U.S. Marshals Headquarters, on Thursday (Oct. 6), arrested one of Texas most wanted fugitives. The arrest in Council Bluffs of Paul Anthony Basaldua. Although considered to be armed and dangerous, Basaldua was taken into custody without incident.

He was wanted for the alleged aggravated sexual assault of a child, aggravated sexual assault, and indecent contact with a child by sexual contact. Basaldua has a criminal history of assault, robbery, weapon, drug and theft charges, and more.

Authorities didn’t say where in Council Bluffs the man was arrested.

(Glenwood, Iowa) – Police in Glenwood report the arrest on Thursday, of 27-year-old D’Angelo Monson. The Glenwood resident was arrested for Burglary in the 2nd Degree. He later posted a $10,000 cash or surety bond, before being released.

(Radio Iowa) – Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic challenger Mike Franken agree U.S. military support of Ukraine is critical. Some of Grassley’s G-O-P peers have said U.S. assistance should be cut off.  “I hope that the American people will be patient to understand that helping Ukraine now will save us a lot of money later on if Putin is stopped right now,” Grassley says. Franken says if Ukraine falls, Russian president Vladamir Putin will order more invasions. “Yet another chapter of extending the great white Russia into neighboring countries,” Franken says.

The candidates made their comments last (Thursday) night during a debate on Iowa P-B-S. At nearly the same time, President Biden told a crowd in New York that Putin is not joking about using tactical nuclear weapons. Franken, a retired Navy admiral, says if that happens, U.S. aide workers should be sent to assist burn victims — and some will be unarmed but specially trained American soldiers. Grassley says that’s unwise. “I think it’d be very dangerous to send people, soldiers in without weapons so they could defend themselves,” Grassley said.

Franken replied: “If you’re going to be a broad shouldered nation in the world…then you’ve got to take those risks. That’s why we join the military…We swear the oath: ‘I will support and defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.'”   Last (Thursday) night’s hour-long forum was the only debate between the two candidates before the November 8th election.

(Des Moines, Iowa) – Two U-S residents (citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia), have entered pleas of guilty in Des Moines, to two out-five counts of unlawful conduct with respect to documents in furtherance of trafficking or forced labor. A Federal Grand Jury in the Southern District of Iowa, had previously returned a five-count indictment against the defendants, 46-year-old Nesly Mwarecheong, and 51-year-old Bertino Weires, for recruiting two young men from Micronesia to come to the United States for the purpose of coercing their labor in a meat processing plant for the defendants’ financial gain.

According to their plea agreements, the defendants convinced the two victims to leave their homes in Micronesia in December 2019 and travel to the United States by promising them they could work in the United States and send money back to their families. Once in the United States, the defendants confiscated the victims’ passports and obtained jobs for them at a meat processing plant in Ottumwa, Iowa. Each week, the defendants took the victims to cash their paychecks before seizing almost the entire amount and leaving the victims with only $20 each week. The defendants used various means to compel the victims’ labor and services, including confiscating the victims’ passports and social security cards, imposing debts on them, limiting and monitoring their communication with family, physically and socially isolating them and creating a system of total financial dependence on the defendants. In so doing, the defendants created a situation where the victims either had to continue complying with the defendants’ demands or risk being homeless and without a means of supporting themselves in a foreign country where they did not speak the language and had no means of returning home.

“These defendants used the allure of jobs in the United States to entice the victims, and then exploited them and profited off their hard work,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “The Department of Justice remains committed to partnering with federal, state and local officials to investigate and prosecute human trafficking offenses, which have no place in our society.”

The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Chief Judge Stephanie M. Rose on Feb. 15. The defendants face a maximum statutory penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The sentence will be determined at the discretion of the court after consideration of any applicable statutory factors and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, which consider a number of variables. As part of the defendants’ plea, they have agreed to pay nearly $70,000 in restitution to the victims.

Investigator Jeremy Tosh of the Ottumwa Police Department investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Virginia Bruner and Ryan Leemkuil for the Southern District of Iowa and Trial Attorney Christina Randall-James of the Civil Rights Division’s Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit prosecuted the case. Information on the Department of Justice’s efforts to combat human trafficking can be found at www.justice.gov/humantrafficking. Anyone who has information about human trafficking should report that information to the National Human Trafficking Hotline toll-free at 1-888-373-7888, which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. For more information about human trafficking, please visit www.humantraffickinghotline.org.

(Radio Iowa) – Creighton University Economist Ernie Goss says the problems that have slowed the Midwest economy are going to impact the holiday season as well. He says they asked supply managers who deal with holiday sales about the expected activity as part of the September economic survey.  “And it was weak, and when you annualize it about less than a half a percent growth, and that’s annualized over the rest of the year, and that’s for the holiday season coming up,” Goss says.  “Very weak holiday season expected,” Goss says. Goss says that’s below what you would normally see for the holiday.

“And what’s bringing that down is a lot of pre-buying. In other words, a lot of companies out there retailers, and other companies have built up their inventories in anticipation in anticipation of supply chain disruptions. So that’s what’s going to slow things down for the rest of the year,” according to Goss. Supply chain disruptions were the number one concern for all supply managers in the September survey, followed by labor shortages.