This is purely to lower your blood pressure.
They are having political troubles in Iowa, but things got weird recently.
Peter De Yager, a 70 year old businessman and the owner of the Foreign Candy Company, was charged with fifth-degree theft.
A series of minor thefts in early September had Lakes Area store clerks scratching their heads. Newspaper racks were empty. Storefront vending boxes were cleaned out, and copies of the Sept. 2 Dickinson County News were hard to come by just 24 hours after the weekly newspaper was distributed throughout the Iowa Great Lakes.
On September 3rd, a little after noon, it was discovered that DeYager walked into the Jiffy station and cleaned out the store’s supply of the local newspaper, The Dickenson County News, and made off without paying for them. They were valued at about $20.
Then it was a discovered that a one man crime syndicate made it’s way through town.
Cameras at Jennings Tow & Repair in Spirit Lake recorded a man visiting the local Shell station at midday. Co-owner Sylvia Jennings said she recognized him as a somewhat regular customer, and she recalled him asking if she carried $100 gift cards.
“I said, ‘No, I don’t, but I’ve got $50. Let me get some more out here,'” Jennings said. “I turned around to get them out of the cabinet, and he grabbed my papers, folded them over, stuck them down by his leg and walked out the door.”
Next came the Spirit Lake Kum & Go, Spirit Lake Fareway, and Spirit Lake Hy-Vee. All through town, one right after the other, DeYager was stealing copies of the local newspaper.
Come to find out, DeYager’s name was in that newspaper on page 3.
He had been charged with fifth-degree theft and trespassing — both misdemeanors — after stealing a political yard sign from a residence in the Monarch Cove area. It was a Biden yard sign.
Now, here’s the clincher.
De Yager has donated more than $30,000 to various Republican campaigns and political action committees since 2019, according to the Federal Elections Commission, including $20,000 to Iowa Four — a PAC aimed at unseating U.S. Rep. Steve King in favor of Iowa State Sen. Randy Feentra, who was employed by De Yager’s company in the past.
The ignorant sumbitch could have probably bought the whole damn newspaper for fifty grand! But no, he goes around stealing newspapers so people won’t know he’s a theft.
Dude, you’re a Republican. We expect you to be a thief. We don’t need a newspaper or a security camera to tell us that.
The line in the story I will never forget is this one, where one store owner describes the theft.
“He put his Wall Street Journal down on top of the Dickinson County News and looked over to see if anyone was watching him, grabbed all the papers and walked out the door,”
Ain’t that grand!
