Recruiter resorts to kidnapping, Seattle P-I

Recruiter resorts to kidnapping, Seattle P-I

When Marine recruiters go way beyond the call

For mom Marcia Cobb and her teenage son Axel, the white letters USMC on their caller ID soon spelled, "Don't answer the phone!"

Marine recruiters began a relentless barrage of calls to Axel as soon as the mellow, compliant Sedro-Woolley High School grad had cut his 17th birthday cake. And soon it was nearly impossible to get the seekers of a few good men off the line.

With early and late calls ringing in their ears, Marcia tried using call blocking. And that's when she learned her first hard lesson. You can't block calls from the government, her server said. So, after pleas to "Please stop calling" went unanswered, the family's "do not answer" order ensued.

But warnings and liquid crystal lettering can fade. So, two weeks ago when Marcia was cooking dinner Axel goofed and answered the call. And, faster than you can say "semper fi," an odyssey kicked into action that illustrates just how desperate some of the recruiters we've read about really are to fill severely sagging quotas.

Let what we learned serve as a warning to other moms, dads and teens, the Cobbs now say. Even if your kids actually may want to join the military, if they hope to do it on their own terms, after a deep breath and due consideration, repeat these words after them: "No," "Not now" and "Back off!"

"I've been trained to be pretty friendly. I guess you might even say I'm kind of passive," Axel told me last week, just after his mother and older sister had tracked him to a Seattle testing center and sprung him on a ruse.

The next step of Axel's misadventure came when he heard about a cool "chin-ups" contest in Bellingham, where the prize was a free Xbox. The now 18-year-old Skagit Valley Community College student dragged his tail feathers home uncharacteristically late that night. And, in the morning, Marcia learned the Marines had hosted the event and "then had him out all night, drilling him to join."

A single mom with a meager income, Marcia raised her kids on the farm where, until recently, she grew salad greens for restaurants.

Axel's father, a Marine Corps vet who served in Vietnam, died when Axel was 4.

Clearly the recruiters knew all that and more.

"You don't want to be a burden to your mom," they told him. "Be a man." "Make your father proud." Never mind that, because of his own experience in the service, Marcia says enlistment for his son is the last thing Axel's dad would have wanted.

The next weekend, when Marcia went to Seattle for the Folklife Festival and Axel was home alone, two recruiters showed up at the door.

Axel repeated the family mantra, but he was feeling frazzled and worn down by then. The sergeant was friendly but, at the same time, aggressively insistent. This time, when Axel said, "Not interested," the sarge turned surly, snapping, "You're making a big (bleeping) mistake!"

Next thing Axel knew, the same sergeant and another recruiter showed up at the LaConner Brewing Co., the restaurant where Axel works. And before Axel, an older cousin and other co-workers knew or understood what was happening, Axel was whisked away in a car.

"They said we were going somewhere but I didn't know we were going all the way to Seattle," Axel said.

Just a few tests. And so many free opportunities, the recruiters told him.

He could pursue his love of chemistry. He could serve anywhere he chose and leave any time he wanted on an "apathy discharge" if he didn't like it. And he wouldn't have to go to Iraq if he didn't want to.

At about 3:30 in the morning, Alex was awakened in the motel and fed a little something. Twelve hours later, without further sleep or food, he had taken a battery of tests and signed a lot of papers he hadn't gotten a chance to read. "Just formalities," he was told. "Sign here. And here. Nothing to worry about."

By then Marcia had "freaked out."

She went to the Burlington recruiting center where the door was open but no one was home. So she grabbed all the cards and numbers she could find, including the address of the Seattle-area testing center.

Then, with her grown daughter in tow, she high-tailed it south, frantically phoning Axel whose cell phone had been confiscated "so he wouldn't be distracted during tests."

Axel's grandfather was in the hospital dying, she told the people at the desk. He needed to come home right away. She would have said just about anything.

But, even after being told her son would be brought right out, her daughter spied him being taken down a separate hall and into another room. So she dashed down the hall and grabbed him by the arm.

"They were telling me I needed to 'be a man' and stand up to my family," Axel said.

What he needed, it turned out, was a lawyer.

Five minutes and $250 after an attorney called the recruiters, Axel's signed papers and his cell phone were in the mail.

My request to speak with the sergeant who recruited Axel and with the Burlington office about recruitment procedures went unanswered.

And so should your phone, Marcia Cobb advised. Take your own sweet time. Keep your own counsel. And, if you see USMC on caller ID, remember what answering the call could mean.

Daily Kos :: Ohio Coingate keeps coming back to the election

Ohio Coingate keeps coming back to the election
by Pounder

Sun Jun 5th, 2005 at 20:21:53 CDT

This Ohio coingate which i have been trying to cover locally is getting freaky.
Everyone is focusing on the money and the pay for play that is obvious, but there is something else in the under current that just keep coming up constantly and not getting any answers.

It always seems to come back to the election and the Lucas county Board of elections - and bernadette Noe.


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First, she was chair of the Lucas county GOP and hence had a spot on the BoE. Lucas County had terrible problems in Nov. there is a pdf report on the Ohio sec of state website

Now it gets a little weird. Bernadette Noe reported a guy called Joe Kidd who was director of the Lucas BoE to the authorities, from the blade

The contributions to the Bush campaign became the subject of a criminal investigation after Bernadette Noe and Sam Thurber, two former GOP members of the county elections board, talked to the county prosecutor's office about what they claimed was wrongdoing by Joe Kidd, the former director of the county elections office and a fellow Republican.

Investigators found nothing to validate their claims against Mr. Kidd, but the investigation quickly changed direction to focus on new allegations that Mr. Noe had routed campaign cash to the Bush campaign through other local Republicans.

So thats weird, right ? If she was up to her neck in campaign fraud, why report anything and bring attention, and it seems that is exactly what happened, as the tables got turned on her.

I tried talking to a few blade reporters about this, but they are very cagey.

Ok, so strange but shit happens, people are stupid.. BUT, then i read today this little nugget, again its in a blade story, where it isnt kinda burried at the bottom....

COLUMBUS - Attorney General Jim Petro acknowledged yesterday that Bernadette Noe, a lawyer and wife of embattled coin dealer Tom Noe, "may have" successfully lobbied his office to direct thousands of dollars in contracts to her law firm to collect debt on behalf of the state.
"Tom never brought it up. I don't doubt that Bernadette may have," Mr. Petro said....

In 2003, Mr. Petro appointed Tracy Kidd, who like Ms. Noe was a part-time lawyer at the Toledo law firm Wise & Dorner, as special counsel to conduct debt collection. The appointment meant that Ms. Kidd, and potentially Ms. Noe, would receive as much as one-third of the $245,000 collected during her tenure as special counsel for the state.

Who is Tracy Kidd ?

no other than the wife of Joe Kidd !!

so we have Bernadette Noe, with the Help of Tracy Kidd, getting kickbacks from the state to do law work for the state, and for some reason, she starts ratting out her lawyer partners husband at the BoE and the shit blows right back in her face.

no one is that stupid. There is a story not being told here.

Daily Kos :: Ohio Coingate keeps coming back to the election

Daily Kos :: Slavery in Florida on Jeb's Watch

Slavery in Florida on Jeb's Watch: Ignoring Published Reports, He Permits it to Continue
by Lawyer to Capitalists

Sun Jun 5th, 2005 at 13:28:03 CDT

CNN is reporting today that federal agents raided a slave camp filled with homeless persons in Florida. Specifically:

Federal agents raided a migrant farm labor camp where homeless men and women were kept in what labor officials called a version of modern-day slavery.

Four people, including the camp's owner, Ronald Evans, face federal charges in a case that officials said is likely to grow. Investigators are looking into alleged environmental violations and drugs found at the camp in Friday's raid.

"The word is out that we are concerned about human trafficking, and we will leave no stone or camp unturned," said Steve Cole, a spokesman for Jacksonville U.S. attorney Paul I. Perez.

Officials said homeless people were recruited to the Evans Labor Camp through offers of room and board, along with alcohol, tobacco and drugs, which they bought on credit. But they never made enough in the field to pay it off, according to an investigative summary.


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I think an interesting question to be asked is, in a state the size of Florida, how are the Governor's office and/or state law enforcement agents not aware of something like this? Too busy holed up in Pinnelas Park, interfering in the private life choices of law-abiding citizens, were they? Too busy imposing their religious mores on others to discover that there are homeless people being held in slavery in a drug-infested labor camp?

I am no investigative journalist and don't have the time right now to become one, but I think the question of whether Jeb knew/should have known about this camp would be a very interesting research topic. This will be especially true if he is going to run for office in the future, and does anyone really doubt that will happen?

Update [2005-6-5 15:25:16 by Lawyer to Capitalists]:

Okay, despite my "not a journalist" disclaimer above, I had to do just a bit of research to figure out why Jeb wasn't aware of this. What I learned is that migrant worker slavery in Florida was no secret.

For instance, columnist Bill Maxwell in the St. Petersburg Times reported on it in 2002, specifically ending his column with a shout-out to Jeb for help:
With more regularity, federal officials who monitor farm labor issues are digging out the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Written in 1865, it officially ended slavery in America. Again, the 13th Amendment "officially" ended slavery.

In reality, 136 years later, "modern-day slavery" is alive and well in the nation's agricultural states, and Florida is a leader in the exploitation of human chattel, with five slavery cases having gone through the courts in as many years.

. . . . . . Under this system, growers hire contractors, who then hire the pickers, keep track of them, house them and pay them. Everyone, including the governor and his emissary, knows that this egregious loophole lets farmers off the hook. Sure, Lee is behind bars, and the Ramoses may be on their way there. But rest assured, the farmers who hired them have replaced them with crew leaders.

Laura Germino, a representative of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, identifies the root of the problem: "It's time now that the agriculture industry take a look at itself and decide that it's not going to operate under the rules of the past and continue beating and holding workers by force."

The time has come for Gov. Jeb Bush to step up and put his moral weight behind this worthy crusade.

In the event that the St. Petersburg paper flies too low under Jeb's radar, he could have learned from CNN in 2004 about the massive slavery problem in his state, in the story titled (quite subtly): "Report: Modern-day slavery alive and well in Florida."

Update [2005-6-5 18:29:3 by Lawyer to Capitalists]:

If a one-time article wasn't enough to catch Jeb's attention, the Palm Beach Post produced an excellent series of stories on the subject, reporting:
For nine months, The Palm Beach Post explored the roots of modern-day slavery. Reporters and photographers traveled to destitute Mexican villages, crossed the desert with a smuggler, rode across the U.S. with illegal immigrants, found new claims of slavery, uncovered rampant Social Security fraud, and found that Florida's famous orange juice comes with hidden costs.
The crowning irony of this Florida modern-day slavery problem is found in this New York Times story from a few days ago (before this weekend's Florida slave-camp bust), in which it was reported:

The United States criticized four of its closest allies in the Middle East on Friday, saying Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are doing little if anything to stop forced labor and other forms of "modern slavery" within their borders.

The four countries are among 14 "Tier III" nations that the State Department said had a serious problem with trafficking in persons and made little or no effort to control it, despite prodding from the United States. Citation as a Tier III country can trigger economic penalties.

"Trafficking in human beings is nothing less than a modern form of slavery," said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking at a news conference introducing the government's fifth annual Trafficking in Persons Report.
How do you like them apples, folks? So, does anyone think this will affect Jeb's political prospects? Feel free to muse below!

Daily Kos :: Slavery in Florida on Jeb's Watch: Ignoring Published Reports, He Permits it to Continue