THE U.S. Attorney, Lenny Rapadas, came on the Patti Arroyo Show, (April 4, Newstalk K-57) rapidly eclipsing the Breakfast Show in terms of asking pointed questions — emulating the Big Show — to discus the federal government’s initiative to crack down on adults who prey on kids electronically.
This program should be lauded for its good intentions. (Even if most teens have sex with teens not with adults.) However on Guam, with a sixth of the population on some sort of government assistance and 50 percent of the population eligible for EITC, what are the odds that a child on Guam gets solicited online versus “in house”?
Those on welfare and the working poor are not likely to have Internet access, computers etc. and therefore there is a greater likelihood for sexual abuse occurring off-line. What am I saying? That the poor are more likely to commit crimes? Yes or no.
Just because someone is poor does not mean that that person will be more desperate. But if there is a generational dependency on the welfare state and kids are having kids, then there is a greater likelihood for sexual abuse to occur among the rank of the marginalized. (Idle hands are a devil’s workshop.) Does this mean that there is no abuse going on in the middle-class ranks and among the elite? Of course not. This is the group that will tend to get targeted on-line.
When President Bush cracks down on sexual predators and drug peddlers/addicts/users and DSUI “drunkards,” he is doing it not because he loves the children and the victims but because he wants to send a message to the right that he is there to protect the innocent. (When more children go hungry to bed now under Bush’s policies than before his reign began.) In this, way he, Bush, can increase the size of government, its intrusion-capabilities and wield his presidential powers to promote his cronyism and nepotism.
Lastly, people didn’t really buy Carl T.C. Gutierrez’s rant (at a chamber forum) against former U.S. Attorney Fred Black that he, Black, “had a lot of baggage,” hence his removal as U.S. Attorney, did they?

Matt Philips
Mangilao, Guam