You can read the whole article here:
After 30 days of trial and 14 days of deliberation in the up-and-down Rod Blagojevich corruption trial, the jury has announced it’s verdict.
Of the 24 counts against Rod Blagojevich, the jury found Rod Blagojevich on only one count, the Martha Stewart offense (making false statements to investigators stemming from a 2005 interview). The jury was hung on all other counts. That offense carries a maximum of 5 years and a $250,000 fine.
Of the 4 counts against Robert Blagojevich (his campaign chief towards the end of 2008), the jury was unable to come to any unanimous conclusion on any count.
As a result, the judge has declared a mistrial on the remaining counts enabling the prosecution to try again, which they said in court they will absolutely do. A hearing was scheduled for August 26th to discuss that matter.
(Note: By way of full disclosure, Ken Howell is my father-in-law.)
Imagine this scenario. The University of Illinois hired an instructor to teach classes on Catholicism. That instructor teaches exactly what the Catholic Church teaches in regards to natural law and homosexuality. That instructor is summarily fired for hate speech. That is exactly what happened in the last few weeks in Champaign. An instructor who has received multiple Excellence in Teaching awards, Kenneth Howell was fired for… doing exactly what he was paid to do.
The University claimed that teaching what is objective reality about what the Catholic Church constitutes hate speech and the “principles of inclusion” dictate that such viewpoints need to be purged from the campus. By way of comparison, tenured Education Professor and convicted terrorist (who’s conviction was overturned on appeal due to a technicality) William Ayers teaches at the Chicago campus and advocated killing children of his adversaries. This just goes to show, if you were throwing bombs in the 70s, you’d have tenure at the University of Illinois by now too.
The entire purpose of a University is the free marketplace of ideas. However, radical leftists have decided that only their viewpoints can be presented. When it comes to Climate Change Science (which is not science, by definition) only one view can be presented. When it comes to homosexuality, only one view can be presented. One of the administrators in this case even suggested they find another instructor to teach the Catholic courses in a “more inclusive” manner. Or to put it in another way, to intentionally teach what the Catholic Church does NOT teach and call it true. In academic parlance, we call that academic fraud.
Now, you could argue that Dr. Howell is wrong. It’s a free country and in the marketplace of ideas, you are free to debate that point. However, the University decided to win the debate by simply eliminating all other points of view. You could argue that a public university shouldn’t offer religion classes. At least that is intellectually (albeit wrong) honest. But no one is suggesting disbanding the Department of Religious Studies or stopping the instruction of, say, Islam at the University of Illinois (which teaches basically the same thing).
The arrogance of these radical left-wing academics is stunning. Not only did they terminate Dr. Howell, they documented their reasons for doing so. In e-mail. Including Dr. Howell in many of those discussions. So while adjunct professors like Dr. Howell can be let go for any reason, or none at all, they decided not to just let him go quietly, they created evidence and handed it to him to substantiate a clear First Amendment case. The first rule of engaging in bad behavior… DON’T CREATE EVIDENCE. You’d think a bunch of PhD’s know that.
Take this quote for Assistant Dean Ann Mester: “the e-mails sent by Dr. Howell violate university standards of inclusivity, which would then entitle us to have him discontinue his teaching arrangement with us.” Thanks for the evidence, Ann.
It’s on this basis, the Alliance Defense Fund has come to Dr. Howell’s aid and demanded this morning for his immediate reinstatement. You can see a copy of the students complaint here. A copy of the e-mail referred to by Dr. Howell is here. Make your own judgements on the merits of the argument, but he was doing what he was paid to do… teach Catholic doctrine.
An interesting point about the complaint… the student making it had a friend make it on his behalf. This child didn’t even have the courage to put his own name to the complaint. What is also clear from other evidence is that the student took the class intentionally so he could complain about hate speech in class. He knew full well what the Catholic Church taught, he simply took the course for the purposes of flopping like a European soccer player.
Despite his cowardice, the fault here doesn’t fall with the student. The free marketplace of ideas has to be protected precisely because there will be those that oppose points of view and want them silenced. That was the very reason tenure for higher education was invented in the first place (which is distinct from tenure for K-12 educators which is an insane public policy).
Dr. Howell simply reiterated the moral status of homosexual behavior, a subject germane to the class he was teaching. That was treated as if it were violence. William Ayers, however, advocated and performed acts of violence, and he is celebrated. They give awards to South American dictators like Rafael Correa Delgado. for “exception achievement”. What in the hell is going on at the University of Illinois?
If you wish to join in the ADF’s call to reinstate Dr. Howell, you can find the contact information for the responsible parties here. Radical leftists know that the easiest way to “take over” a country is through the youth which is why they fight so hard to control education. It’s time to push back.
It is no secret that Illinois is going broke with over $6 BILLION in unpaid bills to social service providers, Medicaid doctors, mental health providers and schools. It is also no secret that the state has a $13 BILLION budget deficit that the Chicago Democrats who control the entire state failed to address. Next year’s budget deficit will be around $15 – $16 BILLION assuming the economy doesn’t do a double dip recession.
Just last week, Illinois overtook California as the riskiest state to insure against default on bond obligations. You would think cause a sense of urgency among the elected Democrats who control the state. You would be wrong.
Yesterday, we learned from the Associated Press that the Governor was busy doling out 20% raises to his top staff. While the rest of us worry about having jobs, see our hours cuts and our pay stagnates, political cronies in the Quinn administration get fat raises.
This would typically be the kind of story the public sector unions would jump on. Not in Illinois because the Democrats and unions like SEIU and AFSCME are part of the same corrupt political class that has driven the state into a ditch. There is also another reason.
On July 1st this year, 40,000 or so AFSCME state employees happily collected a 7% percent “cost of living adjustment”. July 1st next year, they will get another 7%. In short, in 2 years, they will get a 14% raise. Even in good years, 7% is well over inflation. The timing of these raises were also very well coordinated.
While AFSCME game back some of their raises in previous years (which only made them fairly generous instead of downright luxurious) this pay raise is designed to come right before the election. It just so happens that Democrats are having a bit of trouble this year, in particular, Governor Quinn. These state employees will be getting a nice Election Year raise courtesy of Governor Quinn.
At the labor bosses aren’t stupid either. Quinn’s Republican opponent State Senator Bill Brady is running to bring fiscal sanity back to Illinois. The union bosses will happily tell their people that if they want to keep getting double-digit raises, they need to volunteer for Quinn. 40,000 campaign volunteers is nothing to laugh at.
Meanwhile, compassionate Democrats have left those who depend on government services waiting, sometimes up to 6 months, for their providers to get paid. Sorry guys, they have an election to win, you can wait.
This November, the election will determine if the voters are stupid enough to keep these Chicago Democrats in charge who spend while the state is broke. And these are the people who are in charge now in Washington DC as well where passing a budget is even too much work.
I’ve received word of a disturbing turn of events coming out of Will County in Illinois. Apparently, the Will County Election Board is planning on keeping African-American mother Cedra Crenshaw off the ballot this November in her state senate race against A. J. Wilhelmi.
She was slated by the Republican Party and gathered more than enough of the requisite signatures. The reason they are using is some discrepancy in the filing date caused by a recent law designed to keep third party candidates off the ballot in Illinois.
Here is where things get interesting. The same argument was used in Cook County where it failed. The same commission is planning on ruling on an objection to a white Republican state representative candidate based on the same argument. He will apparently get to stay on the ballot.
The difference is that Cedra Crenshaw is an African-American and her opponent is a well-connected Chicago Democrat. They have taken their sweet time in ruling on the objection and holding her campaign in limbo. Now they are poised to finally rule that the Democrat shall run unopposed and not be able to be held accountable to the voters.
There is a protest planned at the Will County Courthouse at 3pm today. The final ruling is expected tomorrow. This is a national story of voter disenfranchisement and civil rights and expect to hear more of it soon.
In what can only be described as a horrifying display of bureaucratic incompetence, the Illinois Auditor General has discovered that the Department of Human Services has been funding home day care centers inside the homes of registered sex offenders.
Illinois, like many other states, provides assistance to low income families to pay for child care. The state also lets individuals set up small day care businesses in their homes. What happened was that someone who lived in the home of a sex offender set up a day care business and collected these checks from the state. It is unclear how many licensed facilities here are in total set up in sex offenders’ homes or how many children were supervised there. In one disturbing incident, a sex offender was personally paid for day care services.
The excuse of the bureaucrats in this case was that only recently a law allowed them the authority to do a background check on those facilities. It’s an excuse that sounds good on it’s face but the Auditor General found it unconvincing.
More importantly, no one needs authority to find a registered sex offender. The entire purpose of a sex offender registry is to make this information public. Quite helpfully, the Illinois State Police put the registry on their website. You can take a look here. There is even a nice function to let you create a map around an area to see where the sex offenders live in your neighborhood.
Whatever the merits of a sex offender registry may be, they exist so parents can protect their children. In this case, the State of Illinois has failed them by licensing and funding day care services, typically for poor people who may not have access to the Internet, in the homes of sex offenders and putting those children in danger. Even if it weren’t funding these centers with two dollars (they are), it represents an enormous oversight by another big government bureaucracy with “more important” things to do. After all, the Department of Human Services was one of the central areas of former Governor Blagojevich’s clout program. Perhaps that explains why incompetence abounds there.
Governor Quinn will be announcing his budget cuts in the next 24 hours. Hopefully he cuts of funding for day care centers in the homes of sex offenders.
Right now the State of Illinois and the nation at large are watching the brazen corruption of former Governor Rod Blagojevich on full display as his federal trial winds on. It’s a case that implicates several high-level officials in both parties and scores of connected contractors, lobbyists and insiders.
Blagojevich was indicted for selling almost everything that wasn’t nailed down. Want a board appointment to a posh state commission? That’ll be $25,000 in campaign cash. Want a lucrative state contract? Give us some money.
The one thing that stands out as the trial goes on, is that while those who were selling state jobs, board appointments and contracts are being brought to justice, why aren’t the people who were buying favors being tried to?
Case in point, meet Georgia Brahos. She served a brief stint as the HR director for the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES). Despite having no HR background or education, she was referred to the position by Blagojevich’s Governor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs (GOIA). That body served as the brain center for Blagojevich’s clout operations.
In fact, Georgia appears to have gotten to the head of the line because she was a donor to Alderman Richard Mell, Rod Blagojevich’s father-in-law. Her donations to Mell stopped about the same time subpoenas were issued about the clout scandal at IDES.
At first, the head of IDES not only had concerns that Georgia had no real HR background, but the director did not even know Georgia was interviewing for HR director until she said so in the job interview. She got the job anyway. She served from Feb. 24, 2003 to June 15, 2003. She was let go for being grossly unqualified.
However, in her short time, she hired several people on who greased the skids for Blagojevich’s clout operation. You can read the full details about the IDEA clout operation in this Inspector General report that was made public during Blagojevich’s impeachment last year. In short, her successor who was qualified for HR was let go because he didn’t cooperate with the clout for jobs program.
Among other things, they openly subverted the absolute preference for hiring qualified veterans for state jobs, they directed applicants to falsify job applications so they could be hired and falsified positions so clouted applicatants could advance to the head of the line.
As a result of the Inspect General investigation, almost everyone was fired who participated in this scandal. Georgia Brahos was already fired so she got off. Her records and that operation she started in IDEA was one of the first targets of federal subpoenas into Blagojevich’s corruption.
Where is she now? She’s an e-Pay coordinator in Alexi Giannoulias’ Office of the Treasurer. She left under a cloud from IDES, was investigated by the Inspector General and was a target of federal subpoenas. All of this is public.
So why is she being sheltered and provided with a lucrative state job in the Office of Treasurer? Why would someone who aspired to the office of United States Senator protect someone who actively sought to undermine job opportunities to veterans? Because Alexi is part of the same corrupt political system that spawned Rod Blagojevich.
When one thinks of alleviating poverty, particularly in developing nations, it is almost automatically assumed that some governmental effort like the United Nations is necessary. We often hear that the measure of charity of a nation is how much a government gives to a developing nation via government-to-government aid.
The reality is, governmental bodies, particularly international ones, have a poor track record of economic development. Even inside the United States, the War on Poverty has a long losing track record. The reality is that this is not the only way to look at economic development.
Enter groups like the Acumen Fund highlighted in a new documentary called “The New Recruits”. The documentary follows the efforts of those trying to bring economic development to developing nations by fostering capitalism among the citizenry. To put it another way, instead of giving a man a fish, they’re trying to teach him how to run a fishery.
What it shows is an approach to poverty called social entrepreneurism. The viewpoint is that “charity” isn’t sufficient to alleviate poverty. That’s certainly true of government-to-government aid (because corrupt regimes tend to use the aid for other purposes than to alleviate poverty). It starts with the premise that charging the poor for goods and services gives them a voice and builds a culture of capitalism that spurs economic development on its own.
It’s not an uninteresting idea, when one looks at the United States and how it became an economic powerhouse; capitalism is no small piece of that equation. Consumers can buy virtually anything and there is a business to cater to almost any taste. With those businesses come jobs that allow people to move towards self-sufficiency.
The venture is certainly not presented as all roses and sunshine. The documentary does take a “warts and all” approach. I’m not sure the documentary also intends that social entrepreneurism is the “only” approach. In fact, it views the project as “patient capital” as it takes time to develop the cultural and social elements necessary for capitalism to work.
It’s worth a watch. See more at: http://www.thenewrecruits.com/
(Full disclosure, I run a microcharity in Tanzania that helps AIDS orphans get an education.)
