Bill Schuette Fights Human Trafficking in Advertisements, In Actuality...

 Michigan's incumbent Attorney General is up for re-election and he's pushing a narrative that he started back when he began doing the politicking needed to get him four more years back at the end of last year, and foisted strongly early this year during January, which, as if you didn't already know, is Human Trafficking Awareness Month. 

Now Michigan isn't exceptional in the business of human trafficking, in fact if we take a look at cases of potential human trafficking cases reported in the six year period between 2007-2012 (the last reported period, containing a couple of Schuette's years as AG) we see a map that looks like this:

Blue dots represent an area where a single report existed, yellow, orange and red climb the ladder of reports, red being a hot spot for trafficking.  Michigan is not immune from such cases, but you will notice that Michigan seems to have the most safe area of any state east of the Mississippi, with the Upper Peninsula effectively unaffected by the crime, along with the northeastern parts of Lower Michigan.  So Schuette's fixation on the crime seems odd, except that it is an election year and it does seem to test well to the public, who may think the low numbers are because of Schuette's doing.  That's why this ad was utilized earlier this year:   

And this advertisement came out just this last week:

But is this commitment genuine, or is it just a campaign ploy to tout Schuette as actually doing something when his office really hasn't done much other than defend state agencies from lawsuits by people being bullied or denied information, and attach itself to high profile cases coming up to re-election time, like the Baby Kate case.  It should be noted that their agency has not been successful in getting an open murder charge stick on Baby Kate's dad in their initial attempt.

If you guessed campaign play, you would be guessing right.  Making new earlier today, and reported in the Detroit Free Press is a story on a human trafficking case with the following being reported, with parts of interest highlighted in boldface:

U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow  sentenced a University of Michigan janitor to 21 months in prison – which he has already served – for sneaking four African children into the country in 2006 with fake documents and pretending they were his own.

A federal appeals court in August harpooned the government's human trafficking case when it threw out a forced labor conviction in the case, concluding that while the children's treatment was "reprehensible," it was not slavery.  Tarnow said he had no choice but to punish Toviave according to that finding.

"This is a serious case of child abuse that should have been prosecuted in the state courts," said Tarnow, who added a message for Toviave. "You got a huge break Mr. Toviave. I trust that you've learned your lesson as to your form of quote unquote, 'discipline.' "

During the sentencing hearing, Tarnow took a shot at Washtenaw County and the state attorney general's office for letting the federal courts handle this case when, he said, the states should have. He also asked where Attorney General Bill Schuette was on the case, noting he's "on my television every night" declaring war against human trafficking, yet no one from his office appeared in this case.

Joy Yearout, a spokesperson for Schuette's office, said the AG's office does not comment on pending federal litigation. But she defended Schuette's record saying he has aggressively fought human trafficking problem on many fronts.

Note, however, that Joy does not actually mention any of Schuette's aggressive actions against human trafficking, or why the Attorney General Office decided to throw these four west African children under the bus.  Maybe going after meaningless appeals in a Mason County Circuit Court after failing in presenting a case in a Mason County District Court is just taking away too many of their resources.

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It seems to me that human trafficking is more of a kidnap and abuse type of crime. A taxi could be considered part of human trafficking.

Human trafficking is a lot like that, Act 328 of 1931, but is probably more akin to slavery, where you force someone into doing labor or services under threat of harm if they don't.  You may want to switch your taxi service if your driver is taking undue advantage of you, Willy.

It's the silly names given to situations which are much more sinister and serious than their names imply. Kidnapping, enslaving and harming people should have a more potent name than "Human Trafficking".

Agreed, it doesn't seem to mean anything when you say "I've been human trafficked", it sounds more like you were on the People Mover in Detroit or something.

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