Does just one juror have the courage to do the right thing in the Blagojevich persecution?

Does one juror have the courage?
Blagojevich denied “missing witness” defense in “missing evidence” case

By Ray Hanania

Everything about the prosecution of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich stinks.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald justified his rush to condemnation, putting his arrest and charges before presenting any solid evidence in a court of law, by asserting that there was a real threat that Blagojevich was about to “sell” the vacated Senate seat of President Barack Obama to the highest bidder.

He even made it sound like Blagojevich was selling the seat not for campaign contributions to his strongest supporter – something many politicians do but no one seems to care – but for personal benefit. Putting cash in his pocket.

Yet after a month of trial, the prosecution didn’t bother to argue the original thesis and they didn’t bring in Congressman Jesse L. Jackson or even Antoine “Tony” Rezko the benevolent and oft-maligned campaign fundraiser and accused money schemer.

When Blagojevich’s attorneys sought to point out that the prosecutors didn’t even call the litany of witnesses they claimed were involved in the case in an 18 month public kangaroo court that resulted in the former governor’s impeachment BEFORE any facts were proven or evidence was weighed by a jury of his peers.

No, instead they focused on other issues that certainly would not have made great headlines as justification to rush in to anything involving compromising a person’s right to be innocent until proven guilty.

Judge James Zagel said he would not permit what the news media has referred to as the “missing witness” defense. Blagojevichs attorney, Sam Adams Jr., wanted the jury to know that after all the bombast, and higher-than-thou pontificating about justice, the prosecutors just brushed it all away. Rezko. And everyone else.

The tragedy is that Blagojevich’s real crime is not that he is a crook but that he is so disliked because of his arrogant, insensitive and abrasive personality. He’s annoying, difficult to listen to and consumed with a persecution complex that everyone is picking on him, even though as governor he picked on many others, too, and threw his own clout around when he felt it was in his own benefit.

He also was very aggressive about raising money for his re-election and future in politics having won a second term as governor. After all, he had no choice. His enemies in the state legislature and the news media, who literally “hated” Blagojevich, greased through a so-called reform bill that targeted the governor to make it harder for him to raise money, even though his challengers could raise money using all kinds of techniques too unethical for the governor.

So he was under pressure and he often spoke wildly and ruthlessly about pushing his supporters, many of them contractors and benefactors of state business – where else have I heard about that system operating before? – to donate huge sums of money.

Blagojevich did what the rest of them did and do. They’re just better liked, less hated and more discreet about how they raise funds from contractors and contributors.

Blagojevich was judged by the media and the politicians for making a public spectacle of himself yelling loudly that he is innocent at every opportunity he could find. Yet, isn’t that what the prosecutors did for 18 months, yell at every opportunity that Blagojevich was guilty and poisoned the atmosphere with one-sided leaks about what was said in secretly taped telephone conversations.

The prosecution did a number of Blagojevich and the mainstream news media helped. But only when Blagojevich tried to fight back did the media play their true role of lapdogs for the prosecution.

This trial was fixed from day one. Blagojevich had no real chance at a fair trial.

While Zagel, a judge who knows which side of the judicial system his bread is buttered, between an extremely unpopular former governor abused by the system, or the prosecution which could do no wrong in the eyes of the mainstream news media that viciously attacked and defamed Blagojevich at every chance they could get, denied the defense to use the “missing witness” defense, he in fact allowed the prosecutors to use an even more pernicious strategy. The “missing evidence” prosecution.

Did Blagojevich put one penny in his pocket. No. But the prosecution read his mind and used his private conversations to turn them in to proof that if given time, he would have eventually put the money in his pocket. That they couldn’t wait for him to do that only proves that it was unlikely that he would. And this “missing evidence” case is merely a dirtied mirror of the failings of the American Judicial system.

I hope Blagojevich walks. I hope at least one juror has the guts that no one else in this state has to stand up and declare loudly that the U.S. Constitution that guarantees every human being the right to defend themselves in a fair court of law and that they are innocent until proven guilty.

Blagojevich was convicted in the court of public opinion led by the lynch mob of the biased mainstream news media and a kangaroo court of hypocrites in Illinois politics, starting with his former Democratic running mate and now successor Gov. Pat Quinn.

Worse, he was guilty going in to the trial and the entire process was geared to prevent him from proving his innocence in the face of a pernicious “missing evidence” strategy.

I hope one juror has the common sense and insight to look past the pressures of the biased media and the biased political system in a state condemned for its culture of corruption long before Blagojevich arrived on the scene.

One juror who has the courage to do what’s right. To stand up to the avalanche of bias and stand up for justice.

END

Dodge makes it formal for comptroller at the Humphrey House Monday

ORLAND PARK, Ill., Sept. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Jim Dodge will formally announce his candidacy for the Office of Illinois Comptroller at a press conference Monday, Sept. 14 at 11 a.m. at the historic John Humphrey House, 9830 W. 144th Pl., Orland Park.

An Orland Park official since 1989, he is seeking the Republican Party nomination as the state's chief fiscal control officer in the Feb. 2, 2010 primary election. Dodge, who holds a master's degree in economics and finance from the University of Chicago, works as a technology consultant.

Dodge selected the Humphrey House site for its historical sentiment as John Humphrey served in the Illinois General Assembly, as a Republican Illinois state senator, and as Orland Park's first mayor.



Dodge is the first one to formally jump in to the race. Former Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka is also planning to officially announce and there are reports she is circulating her petitions, too, and will be running. Topinka has higher name recognition, but targeting Comptroller rather than the synch race for treasurer or governor might be an issue. Dodge needs to broaden his name recognition statewide. Both are friends and it is expected to be a cordially race.

* * * * *

Orland Fire District President Patrick Maher is also in the race for Cook County Commissioner in the 17th District. Maher, someone told me, was in the Lemont Parade (where I walked with my son). I didn't see him but I did see Mark Kirk and Judy Biggert.

I know because Maher's camp sent me their newsletter announcing his candidacy in the Democratic Primary Feb. 2. He'll face Dr. Victor Forys who has amassed a large campaign fund and ran once before for U.S. Congress.

I got the newsletter when I mentioned Maher in an earlier blog post. I also wrote that there have been more  sightings of one of Maher's top Fire Battalion Chiefs in their taxpayer-funded SUV gas guzzler driving his kids someplace outside the district again. Maher said he planned to look in to it. I thought he might actually act on the problem, because it is a major problem. But then again, all he did say was he would look in to it.


Here is Maher's campaign web site where he announces his candidacy: www.friendsofpatrickmaher.com.

He talks about the need to protect the interests of taxpayers, but I haven't seen him take any action on what I and other taxpayers consider a misuse of public vehicles, driving a Fire Protection District SUV outside of the district. Maher explained before that the 5 (?) battalion chiefs in the district drive the cars around on and off-duty so they are available when needed. Let's just hope that idea doesn't spread to other taxpayer funded government agencies.

The winner of the Democratic primary Feb. 2 will then face off with Cook County Commissioner Elizabeth "Liz" Doody Gorman, a Republican who has built a powerful front defending the rights of taxpayers leading the charge against the repressive 1 percent Todd Stroger Cook County Sales Tax. Maher didn't attack Stroger's sales tax plan in his newsletter discussion about fighting for taxpayer rights. That is going to be an hurdle that will be hard for him to overcome, the fact that Stroger and the Democratic Machine back him.

******

Former Cicero Town president Betty Loren-Maltese, who was convicted of corruption and spent seven years in the hoosegow and is now spending six months in a halfway house across the street from Circus Circus in Las Vegas, told FOX Chicago News reporter Anne Kavanaugh that she is writing a book called "Justice: Chicago Style" ... I thought it should be titled "Guilty."

Loren-Maltese, of course, never takes responsibility for her crimes or her vindictive ways and plays the victim so well. She's a split personality, on one side very likable and on the other vicious, cruel and mean. It's the Bad Betty and her greed that put her in jail and the Good Betty who only reappears when she needs sympathy.

When Kavanaugh asked me about whether her book would sell, I noted I would buy it, as a journalist. But, I wasn't sure a public that has had it up to here with former convicted criminals and convicts trying to make excuses for their actions would want to read the book. Betty most likely will simply fill the pages with junk about how it was everyone else's fault instead of her own, blame it on how "friends" betrayed her, and paint herself as the innocent victim of injustice, duped by male politicians.

The truth is if Betty were smart -- she has it in her -- she'd admit her responsibility in her crimes and her own life, stop playing the victim which is BS, and take responsibility for her own actions. Then, write about the colorful characters she met during her three year reign as Good Betty (93-96 when I was her consultant) and six year reign as Bad Betty (96-02 when politically sleazy PR consultants Dave Donahue and later Lee Harris ran her post-corruption defense campaigns under Ed Vrdolyak's direction. Donahue's greasy fingerprints are all over Orland Park and Township.)

I was her consultant when she was doing good and while she was quietly betraying everyone around her. Town Supervisor Joe DiChicio was found not guilty because the judge easily saw through her weak defense and efforts to manipulate the Town Clerk's board meeting records. I left her when I asked her if the FBI charges were true and she called Vrdolyak to tell him I spoke with the FBI, and Vrdolyak ordered Betty to fire me. Thank you Betty!

Harris and Donahue represented her when it was clear that she was the focus of a major corruption investigation that looted the Town of more than $10 million. That explains how Betty amassed all that money and property and big cars and high-flying gambling life.

If she got her act together, she could do some good with her life. but knowing Betty, she is always consumed with anger, hatred and meanness. Those are tough obstacles for anyone to overcome.

I liked the old, Good Betty, the one that shared leadership with other leaders in Cicero back in the early 1990s and opened the town together with progressive programs. But that Betty is just a memory that if came back would make her book a success. Bad, mean Betty writing a book. People who know her will buy it but that won't be enough to make it successful.

*****

Rumor is Rocky Wirtz, the owner of the Blackhawks and Judge & Dolph is a part of the investment group buying the Chicago Sun-Times. Wirtz is a smart guy. He put the Blackhawks back on the map and he is smart when it comes to business. I hope he can help re-organize the Sun-Times and keep it from closing.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

Fire Judge John J. Fleming and jail Anthony Abbate immediately

Nothing is more disgusting in Chicago than the lack of justice

By Ray Hanania

Had Anthony Abbate been Black, he would have had the book thrown at him. But Anthony Abbate is an arrogant fat pig of a Chicago cop who was caught on tape in a drunken stuper beating the crap out of a young female bartender. I don’t mean “fat” as just some kind of pejorative adjective, although that certainly hangs easily around Abbate’s dirt bag neck.

At 250 pounds, he’s overweight and that only added to the disgusting video scene as he pummeled, pounded, beat, kicked and dragged mercilessly the 125-pound Karolina Obrycka as she tended bar where she was working in February 2007 and where Abbate was drinking himself into an alcoholic stupor.

What provoked Abbate. Turns out he was beating up people at the bar before he turned his fat fists on Obrycka. But when she refused to serve him more drinks because of his conduct and the disturbance he had caused, fat dirt-bag cop Anthony Abbate turned himself into the poster child for everything ugly about the Chicago Police Department and the hypocrisy that protects those who embrace corruption and misconduct regularly.

Sure enough, leave it to a judgment bankrupt and ethically questioned Cook County Circuit Court Judge like John J. Fleming to find a flimsy excuse to justify giving Abbate leniency. Fleming comes from the same culture of corruption that produces cops like Abbate.

A 12-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, Abbate was off-duty during the altercation but that is baloney. No cops are ever off-duty. They’re always working. They always have the responsibility to step up in any circumstance and throw their weight around.

What is so disturbing about the fat dirt-bag cop Anthony Abbate isn’t the circumstances of this morally corrupt situation, but the silence of the thousands of good Chicago cops and suburban cops, too, who deep down sympathized with Abbate and their stupid “code of silence.”

Abbate, to many of them, was a hero because Obrycka, who has a heavy accent, has been labeled and slandered and defamed on cop-talk blogs and in the halls of police station gossip as an undocumented, illegal alien who can barely speak English.

Instead of throwing that fat dirt-bag cop in to jail, Cook County Circuit Judge John Fleming gave the 40-year-old Anthony Abbate, a slap on the hand: home curfew of 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. and 130 hours of “community service.”

Who is this Fleming? Here’s his bio from one of those legal web sites:

Legal Experience: 1980-83, assistant general attorney, Chicago Park District (in house counsel); 1983-91, assistant state's attorney, Cook County (traffic 4th Municipal District and Felony Trial Divisions); 1991-94, deputy general attorney, Chicago Park District (supervise the Litigation Division); 1994-1995, ALJ, City of Chicago (Personnel and Parking departments); 1996-1996, Director of Administrative Adjudication, City of Chicago.

Judicial Experience: Judge Fleming was first elected to the bench in November of 1996. He was originally assigned to the 1st Municipal District of the Circuit Court of Cook County. He served in Traffic Court, Domestic Violence and Misdemeanor sections. He is currently assigned to Felony preliminary hearings and Central Bond Court at the Criminal Courts Building.

He has the “culture of corruption” stamp padded all over him.

Fleming, naturally defended his kindered colleague in this state’s rampant culture of corruption, asserting that he didn't see any “aggravating factors” to justify a prison term. Fleming incredulously argued that Abbate did not “seriously injure” the Obrycka, the hero in this sad Chicago saga.

Abbate beat the woman for nearly a half hour! What do you think Fleming would have done if the victim had been his child?

And, Fleming insisted after allowing this trial to be delayed two full years – something judges do when they want to help reduce the burden on the criminals they favor – that Abbate had a “clean record before the incident,” and that he had underwent “alcohol rehab and has not had a relapse” since entering the program.

Is it because Abbate’s past conduct has not been captured on tape as it was that night in that Chicago bar? Had it not been for the bar’s video tape system, Abbate would have gotten off without the worthless conviction handed down in Fleming’s unjust courtroom.

“If I believed sentencing Anthony Abbate to prison would stop people from getting drunk and hitting people, I'd give him the maximum sentence,” Fleming said.

Are you kidding me?

The only thing more disgusting about Abbate’s being given a pass is the moral bankruptcy of Judge Fleming’s ruling.

Fleming is a Circuit Court Judge. He was “first elected” to the bench in 1996. That means he can be removed from the bench. And, he should be removed as soon as possible.

Finally, every decent American citizen in the realm of this injustice by Fleming and Abbate has to ask out loud, Where are the voices of disgust from the Chicago Police Department and police departments throughout? Their silence is deafening and just as shameful, too.

END

Making voters even lazier is not the answer to low vote turnouts

Is it laziness? Apathy? Or is it just pathetic that in the face of such low voter turnouts in important local elections, voters may have to give up what they have already given up, voting in person in a polling place, to instead resort to licking stamps, sealing envelopes and mailing in their ballots?

If anything suggests that human beings are capable of marginalizing themselves, the shift from active voter engagement to voting by mail is the height of public irresponsibility.

And of course, there is always a politician who will exploit any maelstrom in our society. They range from morally corrupt to the immorally opportunistic, which is the category in which I would put our Gov. Pat Quinn.

Quinn is the guy who helped undermine public representation in the legislature to save a few bucks by changing the system which guaranteed that in legislative districts dominated by one party, a member of the minority party would always be elected.

Yet, in the face of having undermined public representation for a few bucks, he doesn’t hesitate to propose jacking up our state income taxes to off-set what many believe are fabricated and exaggerated state debts that range from $1 billion to $9 billion and that have grown to more than $11 billion. A whopping 50 percent increase in the state personal income tax.

Now, Quinn is suggesting we “save” more money by eliminating the process of forcing people to be responsible by getting their asses off the couch in front of the TV screen filled with “reality trash” TV shows, and going to the election polls twice every two years to elect the people who will eventually return to either steal their money through wasted taxes legally, or by literally stealing their money and maybe – maybe – going to jail.

He wants to replace it by having people vote by mail.

If I didn’t know Quinn, I’d suspect the maneuver was some kind of fetcher bill designed to get him a cash donation or bribe from the U.S Postal Service, which could use some stimulus package to off-set the fast-declining use of the “snail mail” which is being eclipsed by “email.”

But that’s not why he is suggesting this insanity. He is suggesting it because, as the proverbial stupid question and answer goes, it is there. Why does the chicken cross the road? Because it is there and it wants to get to the other side. Why does a do-gooder introduce do-gooder legislation? Because is sounds good.

Yet, reducing the effort our citizens have to make to vote is not the answer.

The answer to dwindling voter turnout is not to place the blame solely on the voters, and make it easy for them to ignore the entire process altogether, but instead to place the burden where it really belongs. On the shoulders of the corrupt politicians who run this state and our government to the ground, and the culture of corruption which is their lifestyle.

How about putting more politicians in jail? How about instead of grabbing the easy targets like Rod Blagojevich, grab some of the tougher crooks who hold office yet do exactly what Blagojevich did except with “finesse.”

Finesse? Is it finesse that separates Blagojevich strong arming contractors and donors in exchange for contracts and favoritism from his allegedly lesser guilty colleagues in Springfield who give clout and favoritism to their pals, supporters, contributors and family members?

Blagojevich’s greed is what is chasing him. So if you’re not greedy enough, and you don’t too blatantly cross the alleged line of ethics that exists in Illinois (which doesn’t really exist at all), you are okay to continue raping and pillaging the taxpayers?

No, Gov. Quinn. Don’t make it easier for the voters to votes. Make it harder for the politicians and government bureaucrats to steal and waste tax money. How about limiting politicians to two full terms. Finito! That’s it. Make Mike Madigan find a real job instead of sluffing off on the public payroll his whole life and then dragging his daughter (who would have made a fine English teacher or Monster Truck driver in another life) into politics, too.

Gov. Quinn, how about a real push for an ethics law with real teeth, instead of the dentures you and your cronies are now polishing up to pretend like the culture of corruption in Illinois is somehow being addressed?

But that would be too much to ask of a “reform” governor who has apparently reformed himself by suddenly doing what newly elected Jane Byrne did six months after defeating the “Evil Cabal of men” she fought: joining that Evil Cabal and becoming a card carrying member and advocate.

Let’s encourage voters to vote not by making it easier for them to be lazy, but rather by making it harder for the politicians to steal, lie, exaggerate, obfuscate and cheat.

That’s what I would call real reform.

-- Ray Hanania
www.radioChicagoland.com

Full text of the Charges and press release on Rod Blagojevich

Click HERE to open the press release issued by US Attorney Patrick Fiztgerald on the corruption charges against Gov. Rod Blagojevich (Bla-Bleep-ovich).

Click HERE to read the actual charges and full "Complaint" filed by the US Attorney's Office.

-- Ray Hanania
http://www.radiochicagoland.com/

Incompetent aides to Gov. Rod Blagojevich:

Incompetent aides to Gov. Rod Blagojevich:

CHICAGO (AP) -- Governor Rod Blagojevich says he didn't know $65,000 in campaign contributions from a former administration official who's pleaded guilty to felony charges hadn't been returned.

Ali Ata pleaded guilty this year to lying to a federal agent and evading federal income taxes. He then testified for the state against political fundraiser Tony Rezko.

Blagojevich campaign spokesman Doug Scofield tells the Chicago Sun-Times he's not aware the Ata money has been dumped.

The governor says he'd look into the matter. He says he'd also consider legislation requiring elected officials to return money contributed from similar sources.

Blagojevich has denied accusations by Ata he discussed a state job with him after Ata made large campaign contributions.

end