Where's the Dirt?

I'm kind of wondering just who is dirtier - politicians or commercial media.  I'm thinking it depends on the day and the players.

Consider that Representative Monique D. Davis (D) 27th District recently made an inflammatory comment on AM radio that is being taken as far out of context as liability lawsuits will allow, and maybe a little further if the alleged perpetrator in question is one of the numerous non-profit organizations catering to a protected category of people.

But before I get started I'm going to set the stage, and I'd like you, the reader, to indulge me a minute and read this next paragraph carefully.

Imagine you're in Chicago.  The notorious Big Windy.  Imagine you have a nice, big feather pillow.  Go to the very top of the Willis Tower (AKA Sears Tower) first thing in the morning on a day with a nice breeze blowing.  Stand on the roof, lean over the railing and rip the pillow open.  Shake all the feathers out of the pillow and watch the wind distribute those feathers all over Chicago.

That's how a rumor starts.

Now what I'd like you to do is go collect up the feathers, every last one, and put them back into the pillow.

That's what it takes to quash a rumor.

Keep reading for an informative, well-written rant about police, commercial media and several sterling examples of just what is wrong with commercial media and government today.

Cop Shooting - (ex) Officer Thomas White is Still Free

I've written about this case before, but until recently I haven't seen any news about the case.  Then I found something in The Toledo Blade the other day.

On May 23, 2009 in an act of cowardice, Ottawa Hills police officer Thomas White shot motorcyclist Michael McCloskey in the back, paralyzing him from the waist down.  Thomas White is completely unrepentant, as would be expected of any gang member shooting an innocent victim.  The victim shouldn't have been there, and that's all.

When Lawyers Go Bad: The Conclusion

I wrote about the disbarred attorney Linda S. Cook in my post titled: When Lawyers Go Bad. The local scandal sheet picked up the story but failed to run it to the goal line: Ex-Sylvania lawyer guilty of attempted records tampering - 8/25/2011.  Today I got some email from a person unknown to me asking about Linda S. Cook and her possible whereabouts. Having an hour or so to kill I decided to see if I could find out just what did happen to this wayward ex-servant of the Court, because the last I heard she was staring at a year and a half in the big house, courtesy of Judge Gary Cook (no relation).  After a little searching I discovered what happened.

George Zimmerman: Wanted $10,000 Reward

I thought that the commercial news media pushed the Zimmerman - Martin shooting over the top.  I still think that's true, but I've revised my estimation of just where the top is.

When Lawyers Go Bad

A long time ago when I was a noisome, recalcitrant little snot nose my parents sent me to school.  They said it was the law that made them do it.  I had a few other ideas about just why they were so happy to see school start every year.  Anyway, back then there was an area of Sylvania Township (Ohio) known locally as Dogpatch.  The area was defined geographically as being North of Alexis Road and West of Whiteford Road.  The residents were mainly Appalachian immigrants who came up North for the good jobs in the automobile factories.  Living in the Township, which is outside the city and the city's laws, agreed with them.  They could work all week and cut loose on Friday night, when the whole family would get full of whiskey and play with their gun collection, get into fights, get the police involved, maybe get thrown in the hoosegow (or not) and then get out and get sober enough to go to work Monday morning.  Dogpatch was a right lively place, and being in Sylvania the children of these families went to the same school I did, which provided me with broader horizons and a colorful vocabulary that was sharply curtailed by my Mother.


Not all of these folks were bad or even overtly morally corrupt, although you wouldn't catch many of them singing in the Sunday choir.  Many of their children grew up to be very successful people, and generally dropped their old manners and customs like a live grenade.  One of this moonshine to middle class group is (was?) Linda S. Cook, whom I used to know and who proved that you can take the girl out of the hood but you can't take the hood out of the girl.  Linda became an attorney and now faces over a year in the Big House.  I do not recommend any leniency in this case.  Continue reading to find out why.

Cost of a Criminal Trial, Revisited

Back in November of 2010 I was inspired by Jeff Gamso to write Cost of a Criminal Trial, where I referred to the trial of the serial killer Anthony Sowell.  At that time (November 2010) the cost of the trial was at $185,000 and going up like a sky rocket.  Well, what do you expect?

On Thursday, July 21 I read that:

Sowell’s trial holds the record for the most expensive publicly funded criminal defense in county history, with a cost to taxpayers of nearly $600,000.

from Deliberations continue in case of serial-killings defendant Anthony Sowell. That's right.  Six hundred grand just to prove this worthless son of a bitch is a murderer.  And the fun doesn't stop there, oh hell no.  Sowell will likely get the death penalty.  Actually, I don't see any way that Sowell can't get the death penalty given the amount of media coverage this case is getting.  And then, especially since Cleveland is almost as dead broke as Detroit, we the people get to spend even more money while Sowell's case is appealed several times over the next twenty years, and we get to support Sowell while he sits on death row during these appeals, and then we get to hear all about how the Governor of the State of Ohio either commutes the sentence to life without possibility of parole or not, whereupon Sowell will have one more brief moment in the spotlight while he's either released into the prison's general population or executed in whatever manner the State has adopted twenty years from now.  By the time the whole process is finished, I bet the State will have spent over one million dead presidents just to put an unrepentant serial killer out of our misery.  That's $1,000,000 that we could have used to teach grade school children to read, preserve green space, provide low interest loans to college students attending medical school, clean up the environment (yeah, like Cleveland doesn't need that) or even send a State Senator down to Dallas, Texas for a red hot weekend with a hundred dollar an hour hooker.  Lock up your guns, boys - Sherrod Brown's in town!

Consider the Sowell case for just a minute.  How long does it take to enter a plea of not guilty?  Literally, five minutes at most.  Fifteen at the outside.  All you have to do is stand in front of a judge and answer one question.  After that the next question goes to the persecutor prosecutor.  If the death penalty is on the table, then two questions have to be answered before anyone goes any further with the case.  One, is the defendant legally insane; and Two, is the defendant retarded.  I don't know or can't remember the politically correct term for being retarded - sue me.  You see, the government of the United States will not execute a retarded person, nor will it execute a legally insane person.  I have no argument with that.  So even if the State picks up the tab for the necessary evaluations (which is the way it should be), and discovers that Sowell is either nuts or a retard, the death penalty comes off the table before the trial even begins.  But let's say Sowell is not nuts, and is not a retard.  Then the only question that remains is obvious, but in this case it cost us over half a million to conclude that, yes, in fact, this same Sowell that kept the remains of eleven dead women in and around his home is guilty of murder in the first degree - how much guiltier can this no good son of a bitch be?

I would like to revisit Bubba, Sissy and Joe who are joined by their friends Donny-Ray and Amanda-June down at The Silver Spur, having their third round of boiler makers.  Ask them about six hundred grand and you'll eventually get one or all of them to admit they cannot imagine just what you or anyone would do with that much money.  That's a sobering thought and would call for another round to start the party back up again.  Keep asking and Amanda-June will inform you somewhat peevishly that, "You're a real downer to be around, you know that?"  Explain that you're just trying to make sense out of it all - you know, spending six hundred grand on the trial of a serial killer who's as guilty as all that - and you'll get some good old country insight, likely from Bubba who is easily the most lucid of the group.

"Sheee-it, it's the guv-ment.  It don't have to make sense.  See?"

Then there will be a chorus of agreement all around.  It's the government, naturally it won't make any sense to anyone like you or me.  Just what do you expect, anyway?  Hell, we've all got too much damned common sense to understand somethin' like the guv-ment!  Too damned honest, too.

The thing is, Bubba is on to something.  Anthony Sowell is obviously a serial killer, obviously guilty.  He's been declared legally sane and competent to stand trial.  Just how the government ended up spending six hundred grand on the trial is beyond me, but the government should not have spent the money.  Sowell falls into that rare class of people that are bad enough to be taken out and shot.  I still advocate that the firing squad is the best and simplest method of execution.  The method has a lot going for it; it's sufficiently ceremonial, it's quick and there are no survivors.  Any government that will spend six hundred grand trying a criminal of Sowell's stature and force we the people to cover the cost is fully capable of putting together a firing squad and circumventing the legal system just long enough to assemble the firing squad and the criminal for the necessary amount of time to produce a dead body and an end to the spending.

Rant: Our (In) Justice System

On June 23, 2010 two low life sons of bitches, Eric Skowron and Alisha King, went over to Josh Luck's house and stole Josh's dog Tyson out of Josh's back yard, then took Tyson down the street to Skowron's home where Skowron shot Tyson twice with a .45 pistol. Tyson survived the shooting and returned to Luck's house before collapsing in Luck's front yard. When Josh Luck found his dog Tyson in the front yard he took Tyson to the veterinarian. Josh thought Tyson had been hit by a car. Not so, the vet told Josh. Tyson had been shot. Fortunately Josh's neighbor has a surveillance video camera set up outside and caught the theft on tape. Watch the Surveilance Video and see for yourself.

Right after he shot the dog, Skowron decided he'd better call nine one one and report the shooting before anyone else did. Here's a link to a story from ABC, which has the 9-1-1 Tapes From Tyson Dog Shooting and a transcript. The police responded, but they didn't believe Skowron's story.

Eventually Josh Luck saw his neighbor's surveillance video and called the police. Now, at this point I'd think that it's only a matter of time before these two scum buckets are sitting in the hoosegow for a few years. The prosecutor has a video showing a crime being committed, a confession by scum bucket Skowron the alleged perpetrator, a severely wounded dog and a pissed off owner. What more is needed? Turns out that, as usual, I'm wrong. We've got to have hearings and plea bargains.

Plea Rejected In Dog Shooting Case From the article:

Mr. Skowron is charged with animal torture, killing or injuring animals, firearms discharge, making a false police report, petty theft, endangering, and criminal trespass. Ms. King is charged with animal torture, killing or injuring animals, petty theft, and criminal trespass.

Judge [Michael] Goulding rejected an agreement reached by prosecutors and defense attorney Don Cameron that would have dropped the weapons charge against Mr. Skowron in exchange for his plea on two first-degree misdemeanors and a fourth-degree misdemeanor, attorneys said.

Good for Judge Goulding, right? Why let these two off easy when the prosecutor has a winning case. Why indeed - here's why:

"It's alleged that he discharged a large-caliber handgun and fired more than one shot," the judge after the hearing. "If those allegations were true, that's a serious offense to community safety."

There you have it. The judge is anti-gun, so rather than give the prosecutor a good going over and telling him to get to work, the easy way out is rejected, as it should be, but for the wrong reasons. The judge could have rejected this because Eric Skowron is a real son of a bitch and scofflaw into the bargain, and he's unfit for the community. Consider that at the first hearing, Judge Goulding told both scum buckets to stay away from the Luck home, which includes driving past it. They refused to do so.

Suspect In Dog'S Shooting Rearrested From the article:

Eric Skowron appeared in court yesterday after a complaint was filed against him by Kelly Luck. Ms. Luck alerted the court that Mr. Skowron had been seen driving past her home in violation of the judge's orders.

After a brief hearing, Judge Michael Goulding revoked Mr. Skowron's recognizance bonds and ordered that he be held in the Lucas County jail in lieu of a $3,000 surety bond. Yesterday he was released from the jail after bond was paid.

So he's out again after covering a three grand bond. All this does is demonstrate that Skowron doesn't care about the Judge's order, which seems to be as effective as any other restraining order. Meanwhile, we're back at the negotiating table for reasons I cannot comprehend, and here's the latest from The Toledo Blade: Pair Plead No Contest In Shooting Of Pet Dog. From the article:

As part of the agreement, prosecutors dropped charges against Mr. Skowron of theft, endangering, and filing a false police report. And they dropped a trespass charge against Ms. King.

That's right. Charges get dropped, and these were likely the easiest charges to prove. The scum buckets enter pleas of no contest to all the other charges. Why? Well, according to The Blade, who quotes the assistant prosecutor:

Assistant Prosecutor Michelle Albert-Turvey said after Wednesday's pre-trial that despite strong evidence against the couple, she preferred to seek a partial conviction now rather than wait for the outcome of the jury trial formerly scheduled for next week.

She preferred to flush any work that was done in preparation for the trial down the crapper in favor of less work, and she doesn't want to wait. I'm not surprised, but I'm angry.

We pay taxes. Most of our tax money vanishes into The Anointed One's happy time machine in Washington D.C. A smaller amount gets hoovered up by Our Beloved Dictator in Columbus, Ohio. A still smaller amount pays to support our system of (In) Justice at the county level. We pay to have prosecutors go to trial and put scum buckets like these two away in the hoosegow. We do not pay, or at least should not be paying, for Michelle Albert-Turvey with her pretentious hyphenated name to add another plea bargain to her resume, especially when she could have won this case if she'd been willing to work at it. I suppose her case load is too large or the case isn't important enough.

Plea bargain? Plea bargain my ass. This was a winnable case and the prosecutor bitched it. Let's fire her and get someone who's willing to work. Now I know how the police feel when they pass a case to the prosecutor and the whole thing gets flushed because of a plea bargain.