Dems make history one way or another

Key House Democrat: “There Are No Rules Here … We Make Them Up As We Go Along”

Charitably, can we chalk that up to being unable to express oneself clearly? On the other hand . . .

Carter made him a federal judge in 1979. Two years later he

was charged with accepting a $150,000 bribe in exchange for a lenient sentence and a return of seized assets for 21 counts of racketeering by Frank and Thomas Romano, and of perjury in his testimony about the case. He was acquitted by a jury after his alleged co-conspirator, William Borders, refused to testify in court (resulting in a jail sentence for Borders).

He wasn’t off the hook yet:

In 1988, the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives took up the case, and Hastings was impeached for bribery and perjury by a vote of 413-3. He was then convicted in 1989 by the United States Senate, becoming the sixth federal judge in the history of the United States to be removed from office by the Senate. The vote on the first article was 69 for and 26 opposed, providing five votes more than the two-thirds of those present that were needed to convict. The first article accused the judge of conspiracy. Conviction on any single article was enough to remove the judge from office. The Senate vote cut across party lines, with U.S. Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont voting to convict his fellow party member, and U.S. Senator Arlen Specter voting to acquit.

It could have been worse for him:

The Senate had the option to forbid Hastings from ever seeking federal office again, but did not do so. Alleged co-conspirator, attorney William Borders went to jail again for refusing to testify in the impeachment proceedings, but was later given a full pardon by President Bill Clinton on his last day in office.

But not for his buddy Borders.

Tags: Alcee+Hastings, Rules+Committee

The public sector, yes!

News alert has it: Illinois is broken

It’s all about our timeservers in Springfield and Chicago:

What’s going on?

When your strategy is delay-and-deny, you have chosen to be obsolete. Reasonable people want to elbow you aside and make way for problem-solvers. That’s why, in America’s private sector, a generation of managers who confused mastery of the status quo with aggressive response to crises has been shoved into early retirement. Those execs lacked the skills to quickly re-engineer failing businesses. To make unfamiliar, uncomfortable, unpopular decisions. To halt death spirals. Many of those ex-bosses now call themselves “consultants.”

Day by do-little day, the leadership rank in Illinois government looks more like a breeding ground for consultants. An epic challenge has brought not an epic response, but rather a pattern of petrified inaction and bizarre belief that revenue is sure to rebound. Faced with problems largely of their own making, these people merely shift the blame to national economic trends. They behave as though they are helpless. And perhaps they are. We, the voters and taxpayers, are not.

Etc. See Chi Trib for more more more . . .

Tags: Chicago+Tribune, Illinois+in+crisis

The public sector, yes!

News alert has it: Illinois is broken

It’s all about our timeservers in Springfield and Chicago:

What’s going on?

When your strategy is delay-and-deny, you have chosen to be obsolete. Reasonable people want to elbow you aside and make way for problem-solvers. That’s why, in America’s private sector, a generation of managers who confused mastery of the status quo with aggressive response to crises has been shoved into early retirement. Those execs lacked the skills to quickly re-engineer failing businesses. To make unfamiliar, uncomfortable, unpopular decisions. To halt death spirals. Many of those ex-bosses now call themselves “consultants.”

Day by do-little day, the leadership rank in Illinois government looks more like a breeding ground for consultants. An epic challenge has brought not an epic response, but rather a pattern of petrified inaction and bizarre belief that revenue is sure to rebound. Faced with problems largely of their own making, these people merely shift the blame to national economic trends. They behave as though they are helpless. And perhaps they are. We, the voters and taxpayers, are not.

Etc. See Chi Trib for more more more . . .

Tags: Chicago+Tribune, Illinois+in+crisis

OPRF’s Weninger in SC

OPRF’s Supt. Weninger in South Carolina:

Today, the seven-member [Asheville-area] board must [begin to] decide who among the three [candidates] – a cerebral Midwesterner, a thoughtful South Carolinian and an engaging Georgian – will be their top choice. [italics added]

Next week the decision. Weninger:

if ($(‘#story_assets’).length == 0 && $(‘#assets_ad #yahoo_300x250_ipbtf div’).length == 0) {
$(‘#assets_ad’).hide ();
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At Wednesday’s public forum, Weninger addressed a long-standing concern among Richland 2 personnel that an outsider would alter community and culture that already exist in the district.

. . . this is the first time in decades that a board is looking to outside leadership.

He explained the name:

For sure, Weninger is not a Southerner, noting his name, Attila, was given him by his Hungarian immigrant father.

But he said his parents’ story of coming to America fueled in him the sense that he could live anyplace in the country and be comfortable.

“I think I can be comfortable in Columbia. I really feel as if I belong to this country,” said Weninger, who described his leadership style as “situational.”

His style “has got to accommodate the culture,” he said, adding that he’d been brought to Oak Park to “make change.”

That ended in controversy with the board refusing to extend another three-year contract.

“My work is not done,” Weninger said. “I want to leave my kids a legacy because as an immigrant’s son, that is very important to me.”

Tags: Supt.+Attila+Weninger, Oak+Park-River+Forest+High+School, Richland+2+School+District

OPRF's Weninger in SC

OPRF’s Supt. Weninger in South Carolina:

Today, the seven-member [Asheville-area] board must [begin to] decide who among the three [candidates] – a cerebral Midwesterner, a thoughtful South Carolinian and an engaging Georgian – will be their top choice. [italics added]

Next week the decision. Weninger:

if ($(‘#story_assets’).length == 0 && $(‘#assets_ad #yahoo_300x250_ipbtf div’).length == 0) {
$(‘#assets_ad’).hide ();
}

At Wednesday’s public forum, Weninger addressed a long-standing concern among Richland 2 personnel that an outsider would alter community and culture that already exist in the district.

. . . this is the first time in decades that a board is looking to outside leadership.

He explained the name:

For sure, Weninger is not a Southerner, noting his name, Attila, was given him by his Hungarian immigrant father.

But he said his parents’ story of coming to America fueled in him the sense that he could live anyplace in the country and be comfortable.

“I think I can be comfortable in Columbia. I really feel as if I belong to this country,” said Weninger, who described his leadership style as “situational.”

His style “has got to accommodate the culture,” he said, adding that he’d been brought to Oak Park to “make change.”

That ended in controversy with the board refusing to extend another three-year contract.

“My work is not done,” Weninger said. “I want to leave my kids a legacy because as an immigrant’s son, that is very important to me.”

Tags: Supt.+Attila+Weninger, Oak+Park-River+Forest+High+School, Richland+2+School+District

Sullivan for mayor!

Former Oak Parker Sid Sullivan is running for mayor of Columbia MO. He and his wife Joan, recently married, “established roots for the first time” in Oak Park in 1975.

Sullivan worked for the Circuit Court of Cook County for 12 years. He later joined the private sector in 1988 when he took a job with Roche Diagnostic Systems, a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical giant Hoffmann-La Roche, earning a master’s degree in business administration along the way.

Sid was preceded in politics by his wife.

In 1994 she ran for . . . county commission[er] . . . in Cook County . . . She says she finished second in the race and came close to unseating the incumbent. In 1996 she ran for U.S. Congress in a crowded field that included Danny Davis, who won the election and still represents Illinois’ 7th District.

Sid’s platform reflects his Oak Park-ness. He favors:

• Complete transparency in all city departments [which no man dare gainsay]
• Job opportunities for all [ditto, but where does the city come in?]
• An empowered and responsive city council [not now empowered?]
• Adequate shelter for Columbia’s homeless residents [a la PADS?]
• Neighborhood planning that creates a sense of community [Oak Park!]
• Humane treatment for animals [local issue here?]

Columbia? It’s

the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the largest city in Mid-Missouri.^[6] With an estimated population of 100,733 in 2008,^[7] it is the principal municipality of the Columbia Metropolitan Area, a region of 164,283 residents.

vs. OP, with 50G or so, by the way.

Tags: Sid+Sullivan, Mayor,+Columbia+MO

One for all, all for . . . what?

Chi Trib has new policy: advertising on its front page. You don’t believe me? Look at today’s home delivery, with this joyous, camaraderie-filled big picture over the fold:

Sorry, cannot find the glorious buddy shot on the web — different audiences, you know — and have to go with this. The glorious one has these three plus two others unnamed in a 48–square-inch shot in which O. sits behind desk, rolled back from it, knee crossed, hand on chin, watching E. and A. joshing with each other, O. watching as a kindly uncle. Good times at the White House!

The story is by by one Christi Parsons and Peter Nicholas, both of TribCo-owned LA Times, with its lede to die for:

President Obama was certain that he wanted to pass a healthcare bill. The question before his advisors was how to go about it.

Oh boy. It’s called keeping it soft for the home folks. And there was lots more to come, such as:

Axelrod and Emanuel are star players in almost every discussion. That might be expected given the common portrayals of the two. Emanuel is the hard-eyed, salty-tongued pragmatist who counts votes and navigates the polarized politics of Capitol Hill. Axelrod is more relaxed and avuncular, more inclined to invoke the aspirational language that Obama used in his campaign.

I love that “hard-eyed, salty-tongued” bit, “relaxed and avuncular” too. And that “aspirational language,” oh!

You heard about all that rivalry and angst and O.’s being no longer happy with this job? Or the ongoing ever-intenser struggle with recalcitrant Dems over Obamacare? Look, that stuff doesn’t belong in a love letter. Wash Post has it already anyhow. Give the Chicagocrats something to warm their hearts with over coffee. What’s a noosepaper for, anyhow?

Tags: Chicago+Tribune, Obama+Emanuel+Axelrod

One for all, all for . . . what?

Chi Trib has new policy: advertising on its front page. You don’t believe me? Look at today’s home delivery, with this joyous, camaraderie-filled big picture over the fold:

The story is by by one Christi Parsons and Peter Nicholas, both of TribCo-owned LA Times, with its lede to die for:

President Obama was certain that he wanted to pass a healthcare bill. The question before his advisors was how to go about it.

Oh boy. It’s called keeping it soft for the home folks. And there was lots more to come, such as:

Axelrod and Emanuel are star players in almost every discussion. That might be expected given the common portrayals of the two. Emanuel is the hard-eyed, salty-tongued pragmatist who counts votes and navigates the polarized politics of Capitol Hill. Axelrod is more relaxed and avuncular, more inclined to invoke the aspirational language that Obama used in his campaign.

I love that “hard-eyed, salty-tongued” bit, “relaxed and avuncular” too. And that “aspirational language,” oh!

Tags: Chicago+Tribune, Obama+Emanuel+Axelrod

Alinsky, end, and means

Been looking for this reference, Alinsky in Look Mag, and just found it, at Library of Congress:

Saul Alinsky
1967 Sept. 15 (date added to Look’s library) 27 photographic prints (contact sheets). Baldwin, Joel, photographer.
LOOK – Job 67-3429 <P&P>

This has to be the article in which he is quoted saying (as I distinctly remember), “If the end doesn’t justify the means, what does?” which I have referred to on several occasions.

The date would be right. It’s when I was living at Xavier U. in Cincinnati, having moved a month earlier from St. Ignatius High on Chicago’s West Side, where as a young priest I’d been involved in community organizing — amateurishly, but so what? It was a hit-and-miss exercise as practiced by the best of them.

The LOC reference is to its photo collection, donated by Look’s publisher, Cowles Communications, in 1971, as the magazine was on its way out of existence.

The photos

show social reformer Saul Alinsky meeting with black community organizers(?) at an organization headquarters(?); working in his office; meeting with other black men and Michigan govenor George Romney; travelling by plane.

Note the “reformer” sobriquet. There’s a long history of lipstick on pigs.

Now I have to find the text in which, as I said here and here, Alinsky said, “If the end doesn’t justify the means, what does?”

Tags: Saul+Alinsky, Look+Magazine, ends+vs.+means