Carol Marin's Controlled Damage on Anita Alvarez' 'Damage Control'

Anita Alvarez’s efforts at damage control keep generating more damage than control.. . . And I’m not referring to what sometimes appears to be her office’s excessive zeal in prosecutions of would-be critics of the criminal justice system. Like Northwestern students probing wrongful prosecutions. Or citizen watchdogs who attempt to audio-record police or public officials.  Carol Marin Goes Full-Medill on Anita Alvarez

Then of course, I must add probing wrongful prosecutions?????  Bribing is probing?

After the student paid the cabbie, the driver recorded the transaction in his log, today's filing states. Apparently suspicious that it was a drug deal or a sting, he wrote: "detective gave me 60, told me to give him 40, gave me 60... gave him change." The "him" refers to Drakes.

Seems like Professor Dave Protess and the Kids of the Innocence Project - in the zeal to free Mr. McKinney of course - engaged in a little Pay-to-Play, " "You be a Witness to Justice , Mr. Drakes, and You Keep the Change! Change You Can Believe In!". Hickey -11/10 2009: Shell Games Catches up to Professor Dave Protess - Innocence?

What to think!  Carol Marin gives Cook County States Attorney, who was punk'd by 60 Minutes and refused to lie down again with flea-bitten newsies, one of her patented 'You Go, Carol!' haymakers right in the old snot-locker! . . . Well, near her schnoz . . .within a few feet . . .nearby. . . . same Zipcode. Anyway. Carol Marin tried to drag the WLS socko-tag team of Danny Proft and Bruce Wolf into the range of her air-punches with a Marinade of scorn for this 'Alvarez Damage Control.'

What I am talking about is Alvarez’s amazing — not in a good way — interview last Wednesday on WLS-AM in which radio hosts Bruce Wolf and Dan Proft asked about the 2004 death of David Koschman, who was struck, according to police, by Richard “R.J.” Vanecko, the nephew and grandson of two mayors named Daley.
Anyone who has followed this story knows neither the Chicago Police nor the Cook County state’s attorney’s office (where, at the time, Alvarez was third in command) displayed what could be described as zeal investigating this 2004 “heater” case.
Wolf and Proft asked why it had to take 8½ years and the appointment of Special Prosecutor Dan Webb to finally charge Vanecko? . . .Police and prosecutors are not known for their politeness when it comes to charging a case. Prosecutors can override the cops and charge anyway. And police top brass can go over the head of reluctant prosecutors. . . . Any other reason there were no charges back in 2004? Alvarez’s answer to this question is much, much worse.David Koschman’s mother, she said, didn’t ask.“I feel horrible for Mrs. Koschman that she lost her only child,” said Alvarez. “It’s a tragedy. It’s horrific that she has to go through that.”

But?

“But there was no contact with her and our office demanding this be charged,” said Alvarez.

         I can only imagine an incredulous radio audience.

Shoot, Carol, I remain credulous to that answer because Ms. Alvarez answered both Bruce and Dan (@ 14;23 on the broadcast) that from 2004 until Tim Novak ran a story on the Koschman/Vanecko Incident and Death of David Koschman in 2011there was no outrage and demands for inquiry let alone justice.  Sadness, loss, personal grief to be sure for a mother whose only child died in a senseless brawl, but from 2004-2011 there was no public outrage.  

Now, that is incredible. And so is this- Carol Marin seems to believe that it was she and not Chicago Sun Times Investigative Newsman Tim Novak exhumed the the sad story of the late David Koschman. The fact is the city's most tenacious and honest investigative pit bull Tim Novak, unearthed the saga while investigating extended and immediate Daley Family connections to sewer contracts and other things - I believe that in law that is called discover.

The booze-fueled incident, subsequent death and burial of young Mr. Koschman took place in 2004.  Tim Novak dug up the details with a request for a police report, which he received from Chicago Police Department records in 2010 - that was six years after the death and burial.

The year before, Anita Alvarez requested information of the Medill School Journalism pertaining to e-mails and notes of the students of David Protess in the McKinney wrongful conviction drama.  This caused no end of outrage from CNN who hired several of Protess' students from the very case, the Huffington Post and the connected ink-slinging hair-pins local, state and national.  They even trotted out a retired Federal Judge with a very odd CV -to accuse Cook County States Attorney Alvarez of using Gestapo tactics on poor old Dave Protess and his minions. The Headline Club of Chicago issued a scathing rebuke of Alvarez and thundered and woe-be-tied ed up a storm.

However, even Northwestern University which harbors the Medill School of Journalism and docked David Protess's dinghy for years, was forced to axe that cable and cut Professor Dave adrift.

Dave buoyed up as Chicago Innocence Project of the big NYC based Innocence Project International! Medill connects people to good paying gigs - CNN, NYT, & 60 Minutes etc. Talk about a code of silence!  They can silence Gabby Hayes and get Marcel Marceau to canary-up with that power of the media.

Carol Marin is no Medill-ian  herself- she is a U of I grad.  However, following her rather silly Jerry Springer wilderness years landed Carol a gig with 60 Minutes to hitch up with her WTTW and Sun Times and back to NBC 24/7 visibility.  Solid. (these are some cut-outs in my Anita Alvarez scrapbook). Here's a peach, from December 2, 2010 - 

One of the cottage industries that has eroded any and all faith in our Justice System is the Lawsuit Lottery. The Lawsuit Lottery was invented by radical lawyers and assaults police officers, prosecutors, judges and city, county and municipal governments in defense of convicted murderers and career criminals by tugging at the heartstrings attached to our American sense of fair play.The gambit is always the same -

         A. A murderer was convicted of a horrific crime because,

                   B. A prosecutor hid evidence in defense of Systemic Racism

C. A Corrections Official tortured, abused and denied basic civil rights to whole bunch of copyrighted Minorities -usually many black men- while they awaited trial.

D. A convicted murdered can only be freed and given Justice by kids taught by Professor Dave Protess of the Medill School of Journalism as part of the Innocence Project.

Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvarez smelled the same stink that many newspaper readers found wafting through their senses as the endless parade of G. Flint Taylor Burge Bonanzas and Professor Dave Protess Atticus Finch Productions blared from the front pages and spilled into the evening news shows. Now, we learn, via the e-mails that the Cook County Prosecutor Anita Alvarez has stoically demanded that Professor Dave turn over, that Professor Dave Protess, the too much lionized leader of the Medill Innocence Project, tosses "Treats" to obtain the intended outcome of Innocence, where the Justice System had declared Guilt.No American wants an innocent man to suffer an injustice and the Hegelian Progressives use that sentiment to make millions of dollars and careers for future Katie Courics. Triple figure cab fare, a few few Iron Hotel visits by NIU college cuties . . .nothing seems too costly in the purchase of the intended outcome. That is pure John Dewey flavored Hegelianism.It seems the wheels are off of Professor Dave Protess's Snake-oil Wagon -

It sure seems to me, as one who reads the papers, listens to the news and generally remembers things, that Anita Alvarez as Cook County States Attorney incurred the Medill Media rath-universal when she dared to demand the notes and e-mails that exposed Professor Dave Protess as a hypocrite publicity hound and tweedy Fagin who trained phalanxes of journalist who embrace his ethics.

It also seems to me that a herd of practiced jackals who bound after wounded gazelle's only hardly seem worthy of emulation.   Let's try and remember that Tim Novak broke this sad saga when he was digging after connections in a family sewer scam and blood is always sexier than sewage.

Cook County States Attorney is getting hammered because she out-ed a hypocrite.  Carol Marin is only doing what Medill Industries requires and this applying Controlled Damage upon one who crossed them -Anita Alvarez.

2011 -Jan. 4: Sun-Times reporter Tim Novak requests the Chicago police reports from the Koschman investigation through the Freedom of Information Act. Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Timeline-David-Koschman-RJ-Vanecko-Richard-Daley-181887991.html#ixzz2FDuOoW7f  

Alvarez Agonistes: "60 Minutes" Had No Time for the Root of Its Interest in Anita Alvarez - David Protess

Under the spreading chestnut tree/I sold you and you sold me/.There lie they, and here lie we/ Under the spreading chestnut tree. Orwell's 1984

The Two-Minute Hate Drill was crafted by George Orwell in his novel 1984 - George was off by twenty-eight years.  These days the we get a heaping helping of the Two-Minute Hate Drill every day and no time off for Sunday. We have Hate Week cycles: We got Burge; we got Palin: We got Ryan; We got Blago; We got Charlie Sheen; We got Lindsays -Lohan and Graham; We got Joe Walsh: We got Chick Fil A; We got 1%-ers: We got Catholics and We always got Israel!  We have Vanecko and we now have the Random Judge!


My favorite Chicago reporter and one of the best in the business, Natasha Korecki reported this in today's Sun Times about the "60 Minutes" tune-up:

“We are appalled, absolutely, unequivocally appalled by the lack of information [in the ‘60 Minutes’ report],” Alvarez’s spokeswoman, Sally Daly, said. “They did not include information that is critical to this case. Anita spent an hour doing this interview. We were ensured that we were going to get a fair shake ... I didn’t expect that from ‘60 Minutes.’ She could have easily not done the interview. She stood up and explained the cases publicly.”
Daly said the piece failed to report key facts in the cases — the so-called Engelwood Four case and one in which a group of Dixmoor men’s cases were dismissed after they spent years in prison. That included some suspects pleading guilty and testifying against others before judges and juries.
“These cases were presented multiple times to judges and juries,” Daly said. “Our office did a very, very thorough, careful review of these cases. She found that there was not enough evidence.”

The object of the Two Minutes Hate Drill, or a Hate Cycle are determined by the needs of the agreed upon tautologists of the academic, legal, political  and journalistic interest complex: Progressive academic, clerics (UCC, Unitarian, atheist and secularists), elected officials, funding sources (Eychaner, Van Amerigen & etc.), and the cadres of lawyers and law professors in symbiotic solidarity with Medill fashioned editors and columnists. Their reach is national but most effective when pounded out locally.  E.G. David Protess' Innocence Project, rock-rooted on the campus of Evanston, Illinois' Northwestern University and buttresses by the MacArthur and Blum Centers for Law, has trained and sent forth the hundreds of journalists to CNN, Newsweek

Dave Protess no longer operates within the ivy of Northwestern, because Cook County States Attorney Anita Alvares out-ed Professor Dave as a phony and the university booted the Tweedy Fagin - The Chicago Tribune Company's Chicago magazine tried to parse Protess back into a good light: 

“That the university had seen fit to issue a one-sided, nasty, vituperative broadside against him in the form of that press release seemed to be a violation of trust, not only of the university’s relationship with David Protess as a faculty member but a breach of trust with us.”

Cubbage responds by saying that Protess forced the university’s hand. “Northwestern University generally does not discuss publicly actions regarding its faculty and staff,” he says in an e-mail. “However, statements in the media by Professor Protess and our desire to be as forthcoming as possible on an issue of great importance to the University, its faculty, our students, alumni and our community prompted us to make the statement.” . . .A few weeks later, an article by a Medill senior, Brian Rosenthal, appeared in The Daily Northwestern, questioning the reporting methods of Protess and his students. On the same day, a lengthy piece in the Chicago Tribune raised similar questions. Both articles cited two identical episodes (neither of them denied by Protess): that one of his students said she had misrepresented herself as a U.S. Census Bureau employee to learn the whereabouts of a potential source and that another had posed as a ComEd worker to help track down a witness.

Both incidents were contained in the Ferkenhoff report, according to sources. And Protess says Jenner & Block questioned him about both. When I asked Cubbage whether the report had been leaked, he responded, “The University has no knowledge as to whether the report was shared, other than it was not shared by the University’s Office of General Counsel or its outside counsel.” Rosenthal told me that he “had no direct contact with the so-called report.” The Tribune reporter, Matthew Walberg, declined to comment.

The stories could merely have been the result of increased scrutiny brought on by the controversy over Protess and the nature of the accusations against him. Whatever the case, the effect was palpable. Protess’s reputation, as well as his 30-year legacy, suffered a staggering blow. More than that, media attention had shifted away from outrage over Protess’s ouster and onto his and his students’ professional ethics.

Protess offered his defense: There’s a long tradition of reporters going undercover, including for a Pulitzer Prize–winning series in the Tribune in which the reporter William Gaines posed as a janitor to detail hospital abuses.

And several practitioners back him up. “As a longtime investigative reporter who also holds a doctorate and specializes in the history of investigative journalism, I can tell you this,” says the University of Maryland’s Feldstein: “Exposing wrongdoing is not easy. Powerful interests do everything they can to block such challenges to their authority. I can tell you that flirting with a source or paying a source’s cab fare is a routine practice among journalistic professionals, not even a misdemeanor compared to the literal felonies that Protess exposed.”

Others disagree with the practice of journalists misrepresenting themselves. “I don’t say I condone that, and it’s not what I do as a journalist,” says American University’s Lewis. “I always disclose who I am, and that’s how I conduct myself. [But] I also understand that this is a slightly gray area.” In the end, the point was moot. Protess was out. The damage was done—both to him and to the school. “It has a long-term effect that will take a long time for the institution to get over,” says Foster. “It’s one of those moments in the 90-year history of Medill, one of those chapters in the [university’s] history, that I think will remain heartbreaking.

”Not just heartbreaking, adds Leff. Ironic. “From the minute I heard about the Anita Alvarez subpoena, I felt that she set out to ruin David’s reputation and to derail the concept of the [Medill Innocence] Project. And I think she did a damn good job. And I think that, wittingly or unwittingly, the university played right into her hands.”

At the bottom of it all, the question still remains: Why would the university go to such great lengths to not simply reprimand Protess—or even push him out—but to publicly attack him, his work, and his integrity, to virtually excommunicate a man who had brought such renown to the school? (emphasis my own)

And that, boys and girls, was how Anita Alvarez was bumped to front of the line for Two Minute Hate and now in the Hate Cycle.

"60 Minutes" sent their hard hitting team to do a job on Cook County States Attorney Alvarez and they chatted up an Innocence Project talker from a its New York affiliate, Peter Neufield to dig up necrophilia in order to smear Alvarez, but not the hometown cabbie briber and Fagin Dave Protess.  Alvarez was set up and she is now a subject for the scorn of Zorn, the malice of Marin, and eggs of the editorial boards of both papers.

Alavarez was Bush-whacked. Given the editing, the snide and syrupy slurs of CBS 'Byron Pitts, Anita Alvarez did a commendable job with the 60 Minutes advocate. She held her ground and stated the case.

Ms. Alvarez fell afoul of the Medill/NorthwesternLaw/Lawsuit-Lotto Lawyer complex when she out-ed Chicago’s Fagin – David Protess – for the hypocrite-corner cutting phony that he is; causing Northwestern to deep-six him after years allowing The Wrongful Everything Gang to burnish the university’s reputation as Progressive Dreamworks and Hogwarts Illinois

Northwestern Professor Protess , Our Tweedy Fagin of Medill

Fagin: Clever dogs, clever dogs. Never blowed on old Fagin.

David Protess:

Maybe the Chicago Innocence Project will be going great and I won't want to go back (to Northwestern) because of the hassle ... Maybe it won't succeed and I will want to go back. Or maybe I'll want to go somewhere else, go to some other university. All of my options are on the table.

Chicago Tribune Editorial April 9, 2011:

If Protess misled administrators and attorneys in this case—and it appears he did—what does that say about all those cases he has worked on with students? That question will linger at least until prosecutors and McKinney's lawyers resolve what happened in his case.

That day can't come soon enough.

Had Anita Alvarez caved to the limitless media enabling of Professor David Protess, the Fagin of Medill, all would be just dandy and it ain't. I have long suspected that David Protess was a later-day "kidsman." A Kidsman was a 19th Century recruiter of children for training and guiding pickpockets and cut-throats. The vicious Bill Sykes was one of Fagin's students. The Artful Dodger, who befriends the naive orphaned child of privilege Oliver Twist, is on his way to the next level of crime. Fagin beats and threatens his "children" with warnings of dire consequences for "peaching," or "blowing" on Fagin's activities.

The "children" are rewarded for doing Fagin's bidding.

When Anita Alvarez initially petitioned for Fagin Protess's student e-mails, notes and records pertinent to the McKinney case, the academic, journalistic and legal communities marshaled a formidable army of protest and calumnies leveled at Anita Alvarez.

CNN, Huffington Post, Salon, The New York Times, MSNBC, joined the Chicago Tribune editorial board in terming Cook County States Attorney Alvarez a Gestapo bully. A former Federal Judge, of dubious record and achievement, wrote frequent attacks on Alvarez and defences of Fagin Protess. Click my post title and view a few.

Most telling were the star Protess pupils, now rewarded with CNN, AP, and other blue-chip journalistic postings. The kids did alright by Medill, The Innocence Project and old Fagin himself -Professor Dave Protess.

The Innocence Project and Northwestern University have been besmeared by the very advocacy they demand - outcomes be damned. That is as old as John Dewey, the bespectacled avuncular father of generations of Progressive Fagins.

Fagin was the leader of gangs of children, in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, patterned on the historical 19th Century criminal Ickey Solomon of London.

What does American philosopher and granddad of American public education have to do with David Protess's Procrustean pedagogy? Plenty.

John Dewey holds that Inquiry is Truth - play, if you will, the root of the Laboratory Method in education that established the Lab School of University of Chicago - play long enough and arrive at the original point of inquiry.

The start of an inquiry is an indeterminate situation, usually coming from some practical matter ( convicted felon we want out of jail to raise a the larger issue of systemic failure of American Justice). The first step is to getting a clearer and more specific picture of the problem; the indeterminate situation becomes a “problematic situation”. The inquiry then proceeds by coming up with possible solutions to the problem That is, hypothesis that might help to act upon in the problematic situation. Evaluation then takes place; possible consequences of different solutions are considered, and by doing this the relative value of the solutions are estimated. The final test is when a solution actually is tried as a guide to action. The question of truth and falsehood come into play at this last stage of inquiry, and it is dependent on whether the consequences of acting upon the hypothesis under test are such that they resolve the problem and settle the indeterminate situation. Here, it is important to keep in mind the fundamental that role that Dewey ascribes to the indeterminate situation. It is our conceptions of this situation that guide the rest of the inquiry, and that determines how to evaluate and praise ideas and hypotheses. The indeterminate situation is the beginning of an inquiry, but also controls it throughout [p.207]. Coming back to the correspondence relation, it could be said to hold between the between the first and last stage of inquiry.

The opposite of John Dewey was the mathematician and philosophical historian Bertrand Russell whose rigorous methodologies eschewed "play" for study. Russell takes apart Dewey's playful assertions that begin and end in the very same place. Dewey, and his child Fagin Professor Protess "look" into the assertion that the American Justice System is flawed, because it is sytemnically and intrinsically racist, brutal, dishonest, lazy and corrupt - "What do you think, kids?"

Here is Bertarnd Russell's deconstruction of Dewey in summary by Swedish student of philosophy Björn Östbring:

His (Russell) version of the ( Dewey) correspondence theory is the classical one: the relation is between statements, propositions or beliefs to an independent reality, to empirical facts. A statement is true if what is referred to also posses the properties that the statement asserts. Dewey’s theory is obviously radically different from this, and in Russell’s view it does not even deserve to be called a correspondence theory. Russell’s description of Dewey’s whole theory of inquiry and truth is as follows (2): individuals engage in inquiry with the purpose of better interacting with their environment. In an inquiry, “assertions” are tools, and these assertions can be “warranted” to different degrees. The degree to which an assertion is warranted is determined by their ability to produce the desired results. During inquiry assertions can come to be replaced by better assertions, and sometimes they are the very means that lead to better assertions. The term “better” simply means that it produces more of the desirable results, lets us cope better with our environment, and hence “better” could basically be substituted with “more warranted”. An inquiry does not end; no assertion is the best for all times. The important point in this summary is that an assertion is warranted if it produces the desired results, and that the idea of truth thus loses its static and privileged nature.

Dewey and Protess begin inquiry with the conclusion and all the rest in between is just "play." What student would not rather play than work? Bertrand Russell's logical positivism is damned hard work.

Deweyesque inquiry is tailor made for a Fagin and advocacy journalism and education provides the charming "Master" with high moral ground and an embracing protective laissez faire attitude

Unlike the probity of Russell, the Dewey trained journalists, scholars, and academics will apply no further "inquiry" to other Fagins. Protess, now in disgrace with Fortune and Men's eyes will be an anomaly. A freak.

While the Medill engine will trot out more Heater cases and our Justice System will be further deconstructed in the advocacy playland that is John Dewey's Progressive America, David Protess will disappear into the shadows. Nothing to see here, folks! Inquiry? We don't need no stinkin' Inquiry! Right, Judge Stinky Sarokin?

Police, prosecutors, judges and juries will be villainized and criminals will always have much more benefits than doubts and greater Fagins than David Protess will threaten and reward more students - so long as they don't "peach," or "blow" to the cops.

Americans are fair-minded, but not really all that stupid. No one wants an innocent man punished, but no one wants any and all faith in our justice system destroyed by Fagins and an equally culpable media. We can thank States Attornney Alvarez for sticking to her guns during this entire shabby inquiry.

*

Fagin is described as "disgusting" to look at. He is the leader of a group of children, the Artful Dodger and Charley Bates among them, whom he teaches to make their livings by pickpocketing and other criminal activities in exchange for a roof over their heads. At the time of the novel, he is said by another character, Monks, to have already made criminals out of "scores" of children who grow up to live—or die—committing the same crimes as adults. Bill Sikes, one of the major villains of the novel, is hinted to be one of Fagin's old pupils, and Nancy, Sikes' girlfriend and sex worker clearly was.
Whilst portrayed as relatively humorous, he is nonetheless a self-confessed miser who, despite the amount he has acquired over the years from the work of others, does very little to improve the squalid lives of the children he takes in, allowing them to smoke pipes and drink gin "with the air of middle-aged men". In the second chapter of his appearance, it is shown, albeit when talking to himself, that he cares less about those children who are eventually hanged for their crimes and more about the fact that they do not "peach" on him and the other children

http://bjornostbring.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/dewey-vs-russell-on-truth/