Want to Know About Tony "The Man in the Iron Mask" Rezko? Read Sun Times Reporter Natasha Korecki - A Real Journalist

The Media stinks because it collectively believes that its audience agree fully and rapturously with it or are to dismissed universally as bumpkins, Rubes, hill-rods, knuckle-draggers, and Bible-clinging gun toters. I have never owned a gun and read the Bible via the readings during Mass on Sundays.

The Media believes it to be H.L.Mencken, Edward R. Murrow, Ring Lardner and Anne Landers on steroids. Too many iconic columnists believe themselves to be Atticus Finch, when in fact they are little more than Ernest T. Bass.
Some female columnists see themselves as 12-Step Dry Dorothy Parkers and are little more than Roseanne Barr before a well-needed nap.

There are yet great writers covering stories. In Chicago, the Sun Times is blessed to have great reporters, despite a daffy Color-forms Progressive editorial board.
Mark Konkol, Abdon Pallasch, the tenacious Tim Novak, the always fair and witty Steve Metsch, Maureen O'Donnell and the brilliant Natasha Korecki.

Yesterday, Ms. Korecki offered the most exact, tightest, honest and insightful summary of the Tony Rezko saga in her report on today's sentencing of America's Man in the Iron Mask.

Tony Rezko was the 2008 Presidential Campaign in miniature - a story where the smoke ascending from the fire was sucked up into the ozone by the Media, like a powerful kitchen exhaust hood over a toasting skillet of week old fish.

Natasha Korecki recently covered the Blago court dates with wit and accuracy.

Here is a real journalist who respects her readers on Tony Rezko.

Long known as the “political fixer,” who was friends with a politically young Barack Obama, Tony Rezko once grabbed headlines in a presidential campaign. At the same time in Illinois, Rezko’s name was synonymous with a federal investigation into former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

But since Rezko volunteered to go jail after his 2008 conviction, he’s settled in as not much more than a footnote in both politics and corruption.

That’s partly because the investigation into Blagojevich exploded after Rezko’s trial, taking a new turn involving the sale of President Obama’s U.S. Senate seat — conduct that happened when Rezko was already behind bars.

However, even though he cooperated with federal authorities after his conviction on 16 of 24 counts of corruption under Blagojevich’s tenure as governor, Rezko was never used as a witness in subsequent criminal cases.

It’s left the once high-profile defendant, set to be sentenced on Tuesday in Chicago federal court, in a precarious position.

Rezko volunteered to go to jail immediately, volunteered to cooperate and volunteered to delay his sentencing so he could be called as a witness at both of Blagojevich’s trials as well as the trial of Springfield power broker William Cellini, according to his lawyers.

Being behind bars — but not sentenced — meant he endured more oppressive prison conditions than most white collar criminals who are usually sentenced then shipped off to prison camps, his lawyers said.

But in the end, the government never called him to the witness stand. While Rezko’s lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve. to sentence him to time served, the government has requested a stiff penalty: 11 to 15 years in prison.

Thank Ms. Korecki! You wrap things up much tighter than a Federal Prosecutor with an agenda! You respect the people at the Red Boxes fishes for alot of quarters.

A Real Priest Tunes Up Planned Parenthood's Gov. Patsy Quinn

Illinois Governor (for now) Pat Quinn turned the keys over to Boss Terry Cosgrove. Boss Terry Cosgrove is the President of Personal PAC of Planned Parenthood. He is not the labor governor, that he campaigned as, but the pawn of Planned Parenthood and the Progressive Machine of Illinois - Cadillac Commie lawyers making millions in Pan-wrongful lawsuits ( Torture, brutality, racism and just being mean), Gay Rainbows, Public Salary PACS, Green Rangers, Dr. Quentin Young and Abner Mikva.

Pat Quinn immediately found cover when he was challenged by the Catholic Bishops of Illinois and sanctimoniously whined that he is a Christian and allowed Boss Cosgrove to control the narrative for him - The Bishops were anti-rape victim. Really? The news media said so, when Boss Cosgrove made the phone calls and terrifying Twitters.

Now, the Catholic Bishops want a sit down with Governor Christian. Let's see, $ 500,000 from Personal PAC and Boss Cosgrove's good will, or living up to the Baptism. Confirmation, and all that other hocus pocus, from the Abusers of Children . . .now, which way do you think Quinn will flop? Quinn flipped on all of the skilled trades unions, doing the Christian budget of Illinois.

The Bishops should do something better with their time - devising strategies on how not to allow the in-the-tank media to play them for saps again.

Instead, have a real priest visit Governor Christian. I suggest Father Tony Brankin of St. Odilo's Shrine of Lost Souls in Berwyn.

Father Brankin is a real priest and there are damn few of them.

Click my post title, scroll down to page 2 and read in full the parish bulletin from St. Odilo's and the musings of Father Tony Brankin with regard to the Quinn tap dances for abortion.

Quinn can't hide behind Planned Parenthood's skirts when there is real priest in the room.

Chicago Comic Paul Kelly - The Soul of a Pro

There is so much interest in the annual arctic sea ice minimum that there's a prediction market on Intrade. People bet on it. Betting on sea ice is a little like buying life insurance. You say "I bet I die." The insurance company says "We bet you don't." Eventually you do die, but somehow they end up winning the bet.

Saturday's Lions of Laughter brought home three big name Stand Up Comics, Kenny Howell, Bill "Soups" Campbell and the iconic John Caponera shepherded by Chicago-based Paul Kelly. The Four Lions of Laughter was a sell-out!

The show ran from 8 P.M. until well past 11:30 and the four comic geniuses had them rolling in the isles of the Beverly Arts Center. Leo Men and their wives and significant others packed the 400 seats of the south side theatre operated by Leo Alumnus Mike Nix thanks to the tireless efforts of Leo President Dan McGrath and Alums Bobby Standring, Bill Figel, John Gardner, and Paul Kelly.


Not only did Paul Kelly open the show with a side-splitting Occupy St. Barnabas shtick, but he acted as Emcee - rather ego wrangler to the three hot-property assessts of mirth. Every performer is or should be an exacting craftsman and not one of the masters of timing and punch-line phoned in this show.

Bill Campbell related the comic nature of parenting and the road in show business; Kenny Howell pushed the edge of the envelope and had demure Longwood Ladies, Mother Mc Auley Cheerleaders and Queen of Peace knock-outs shooting pop through the schnozes, as Master Howell '82 knocked one after the other into the balcony packed his Classmates; John Caponera brought things home with his rubber mug maniacal antics that accompanies his verbal assaults on the funny bones.

But it was Paul Kelly's kinder and gentler self-deprecating south side EveryDad who controlled the pace and the path of a great night's entertainment. Kelly talked about our daily discovery that God has the last laugh on all of us Long-in-the Tooth Tab Hunters - " I am bald in the front, top and back, with patches in my ears and possess a rather hairy butt; therefore, when things really go south in the hair department, I'll just comb all of that forward . . .it comes already parted. Hell, I get up every morning, look in the mirror and say . . .Okay."

Leo Alumnus Brian Needham, a Beggar's Pizza Magnate provided hot stuff for post-concert Cokes and Jokes and Jazz artists pianist Tom Muellner and singer Miss Terry Sullivan knocked out tunes from the American Songbook of Jazz Standards.

Paul Kelly was a Pro's Pro and made the Lions of Laughter Concert magic for the scores of guests and Leo Lions.

Thank you to the staff and crew of the Beverly Arts Center, especially Mr. Rick Julian who worked the sound board for the comics and provided the first public viewing of film-maker Bob Milkovich's Leo Boxing You Tube sensation "Believe in Yourself."

Sinclair Lewis, Progressives and the Gospel of Contempt

Sinclair Lewis wrote very important novels in the last century. They are important, because the novels have been used to mark the Hegelian line in the sand separating Americans. He is a Nobel laureate. Here are some of the words he slung at his acceptance speech -

Whether imaginary castles at nineteen lead always to the sidewalks of Main Street at thirty-five, and whether the process might be reversed, and whether either of them is desirable, I leave to psychologists. . . .

I drifted for two years after college as a journalist, as a newspaper reporter in Iowa and in San Francisco, as - incredibly - a junior editor on a magazine for teachers of the deaf, in Washington, D.C. The magazine was supported by Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. What I did not know about teaching the deaf would have included the entire subject, but that did not vastly matter, as my position was so insignificant that it included typing hundreds of letters every week begging for funds for the magazine and, on days when the Negro janitress did not appear, sweeping out the office.

Doubtless this shows the advantages of a university education, and it was further shown when at the age of twenty-five I managed to get a position in a New York publishing house at all of fifteen dollars a week. This was my authentic value on the labor market, and I have always uncomfortably suspected that it would never have been much higher had I not, accidentally, possessed the gift of writing books which so acutely annoyed American smugness that some thousands of my fellow citizens felt they must read these scandalous documents, whether they liked them or not.

Main Street, published late in 1920, was my first novel to rouse the embattled peasantry and, as I have already hinted, it had really a success of scandal. One of the most treasured American myths had been that all American villages were peculiarly noble and happy, and here an American attacked that myth. Scandalous. Some hundreds of thousands read the book with the same masochistic pleasure that one has in sucking an aching tooth.

Since Main Street, the novels have been Babbitt (1922); Arrowsmith (1925); Mantrap (1926); Elmer Gantry (1927); The Man Who Knew Coolidge (1928); and Dodsworth (1929). The next novel, yet unnamed, will concern idealism in America through three generations, from 1818 till 1930-an idealism which the outlanders who call Americans «dollar-chasers» do not understand. It will presumably be published in the autumn of 1932, and the author's chief difficulty in composing it is that, after having received the Nobel Prize, he longs to write better than he can.

Lewis had contempt for the subject of all his body of work - people who were not unhappy.

There are the Babbits and the Progressives and all the poor, ignorant, and helpless masses who follow their directions in American Life. Opposing them are everyone else - the Middle Class and those much more financially fortunate.

The Babbits are those who see living a good, useful and comfortable life as a good thing - bills paid, kids fed, family housed by dint of hard work, personal economics, and faith.

The Babbits reflect the life lived by George Babbit, a fictional Midwestern Middle Class, Middle Western pater familias, who stood for everything that Sinclair Lewis was not and would not become - dull.

The 1922 satire Babbit was all the rage and the antithesis of the wild bohemianism that accompanied America's first victory as World Power, the prohibition of alcohol universal within the States, the disposable income that followed the post-War economic boom, and the challenge to values.

WWI was objected to by the new Hegelians, not so much out of love for humanity, as it was an interruption in Progressive Socialism. The Wobblies ( International Workers of the World) had moved beyond organizing labor to radical revolutionary goals. Planned Parenthood and Roger Baldwin's ACLU sprouted up with the success of American Labor, which took the path most taken - to the Middle Class. Workers wanted their children to eat, go to school, avoid the mines and mills, and scratch out a better life in America. They were not much interested in a Classless Society.

The Wobblies were co-opted into the American Communist Party and largely disappeared as irrelevant. Planned Parenthood, ACLU and the Progressive Left became the Movement. Workers do not tend to follow Worker Mandarins who could not identify the working end of a broom. Academics do that. So do young people ignorant of history and the values attached to hard work.

Sinclair Lewis became the voice of the voiceless Left of the Post WWI Era. He smartly delineated the Us and the Thems in very witty and attractive prose. Two years before the publication of Babbit, Lewis produced Main Street - the Progressive icon for American Middle Class hypocrisy, vacuity, bigotry, Bible/Gun Clinging, boosterism, and hate. Lewis voiced what the ACLU brings to court -Contempt for Middle Class values, faith, and quality of life, much more powerfully than Babbit.

When we read Main Street, Lewis pushes our noses in the THEY that Progressives want eliminated

“They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden; that mushrooms are as edible as corn-beef hash; that the word "dude" is no longer frequently used; that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of apparent intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight; that it is not a universal custom to wear scratchy flannels next the skin in winter; that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ; that some poets do not have long hair; and that Jews are not always peddlers or pants-makers.

"Where does she get all them the'ries?" marveled Uncle Whittier Smail; while Aunt Bessie inquired, "Do you suppose there's many folks got notions like hers? My! If there are," and her tone settled the fact that there were not, "I just don't know what the world's coming to!”
― Sinclair Lewis, Main Street

You can hear that voice coming over the air-waves of NPR anytime of the day. We don;t want to be Uncle Smail, much less Aunt Bessie.

Progressives understand that the Rock of Ages will wash away from the beating the tides of WILL and Time.

“I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers... coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now — and we're going to try our hands at it.”
― Sinclair Lewis, Main Street

We are the Aware the Progressive. They are patient.

Occupy Wall Street is the Triumph of Progressivism and the Triumph of Contempt.

Sinclair Lewis was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. He wrote It Can't Happen Here a really crappy novel, but a great icon of the intellectual Left and nine more unremarkable works. He died of alcoholism a year before I was born at Englewood Hospital to parents who lived in the back apartment above the alley at 76th & Union; moved to a large two bedroom apartment near Sherman Park on 55th Street and finally a Two Story Georgian at 75th & Wood in Gresham where my brother and sister were born. My Dad worked two-three jobs a week and sometimes a day. My Mom stayed home with us. We lived in a house we owned from 1952 -1974 and I went to teach in Kankakee, Illinois. A beautiful town built on a river with factories and opportunities. Sinclair Lewis hated towns like Kankakee and people who lived their - Kiwanis, Rotarians, Elks, Moose and most of all Knights of Columbus.

Babbits.


http://counterpoint.uchicago.edu/contempt.html

The Estonian Diesel Man - A Touching Irish Ballad

"Tis true, so.

Tina May Perfection from a Little Blond Brit

I love female vocalists, especially jazz singers - Keeley Smith, Peggy Lee, Amanda Crumley, Blossom Dearie, Terry Sullivan, Nancy Wilson and the fabulous Ella Fitzgerald
Tina May is young British jazz vocalist -Dig this Blond!

Tina started exploring and developing her jazz sensibilities at University College, Cardiff. She attended vocal studies with Eilleen Price in the music dept. and almost immediately teamed up with other musicians to form small bands.She joined the Welsh Jazz Soc. run by Jed Williams and was soon a regular listening to Sweets Edison, Eddie'Lockjaw' Davies, Al Cohn and many, many more at The Lions Den' in the Great Western Hotel in Cardiff. As a student of French ,Tina knew she would have the opportunity of living in France for a year as part of her degree course. She chose to study in Paris and began her apprenticeship in Jazz when ,by chance, she met up with some aspiring young music students, who invited her to 'faire un boeuf' - have a jam with them.These musicians were Pascal Gaubert and Patrick Villanueva - who recorded with Tina on the 'live in Paris' album nearly twenty years later! Very soon Tina was performing at Le Slow Club with the Roger Guerin Big Band with special guest Kenny Clarke - such a great drummer and sweet man. Le Caveau de la Huchette became another regular gig for Tina and the band. Tina formed a quartet with Patrick Villanueva, Renaud Garcia-Fons, Alain Richard and they performed allover Paris . At that time Tina was also involved in theatre and especially comedy review- something she felt a great affinity with. She met up with another talented thespian Rory Bremner who was already writing sketches and performing his hilarious monologues and skits on politics. Together Tina and Rory performed 'You are Eiffel but I like You (!)' - a review show which they took from Paris to the Edinburgh Fringe re-naming it 'Midnight Excess'. Tina was singing some amusing jazz songs like 'I'm hip' and doing some bi-lingual and 'franglais' originals as well as acting alongside Rory. Happy times !

The Men of Leo Boxing - Faith, Pride, Work, and Success

Mike Joyce and the boxing men of Leo Catholic High School.
Located on the southside of Chicago this school has been a safe and supportive place for young men to get a quality education for 86 years. © a bob milkovich short

Category:
Film & Animation

Tags:
milkovich Photograpahy leo catholic high school
License:
Standard YouTube License

John Ruberry Marathon Pundit on the Street With SEIU . . .I mean OWS Chicago

Pat Quinn and his Marxist guru Dr. Quentin Young* - Shanghai Pat is sporting his SEIU Purple Tie - wears it alot.

That purple tie and the color purple here in Illinois is the icon of the next layoff for a skilled tradesman, cop, nurse, firefighter, Chicago sanitation worker ( Garbage Collection Grid), Water Reclamation District employee ( think Rahm's looming Tax Water Park, kids) all thanks in large part to the influence of SEIU on Illinois' political/journalistic/academic culture.

When all the taxes have been sucked dry, it's lay-off time! We have larded the government work rolls and the pension debt at the say-so of SEIU.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Vanishing American Middle Class. This morning I read Marathon Pundit by Morton Grove's on the scene pundit-blogger John Ruberry.

Rubes is a guy who is like so many Americans; he has a good memory and is not much for the Memes.

When The Catholic School Girls Against the War tossed fake blood on worshippers at Holy Name Cathedral he too remembered that International Solidarity Movement ( Hamas Activists)leader Kevin Clark not only goaded the goofy kids taken away in hand cuffs after their assault, but had also encouraged American-born Rachel Corrie to place herself in front of an Israeli Bulldozer and become an International martyr for the Left. Kevin Clark is a Gay Liberation activist as well and all purpose goader who manages to avoid arrest.

More so, John Ruberry also recognizes that activists like the shameless Clark work and play together, while the lazy Chicago media actively ignores their complicity in every confrontational demonstration and manage to spark police bashing universally.

Hamas, or the Palestinian Blockade, or George Bush Hate Fests, or anti-Catholic Gay Rights shout-downs, Condoms for Kindergartners, or Big Box SEIU Tax Raises, Kevin Clark, Andy Thayer and SEIU's Joe Isobaker are in the thick of the goading, shouting, liquid tossings, or press opportunities.

The Middle Class, in particular families supported by members of the Skilled Trades and Industrial unions, has been chipped away to near invisibility by SEIU and their lesser lights. SEIU is the monster PAC that masquerades as a labor union.

SEIU became legitimatized under the leadership of oafish John Sweeney in the 1970's, along with Teachers Unions, AFSCME, and radicalized under the great Mandarin of "Labor" Andy Stern.

SEIU is the most dynamic of organizing machines. They amass numbers - members, dues, and votes. Their members stay in low paying jobs for their entire lives as members of SEIU - janitors, nursing home bed-pan tossers, some nurses & etc.

SEIU members depend upon the threats of the leaders over cowardly, or cynical legislators, City council members, or any one who can raise tax revenue. That is collective bargaining SEIU fashion.

The Democratic Party and the Skilled Trades found it convenient to play-ball with SEIU, in this our post-Shakman Progressive world. SEIU feeds platitudes to lazy ink-slingers and copy for the morning reads.

Pipe-fitters, Insulators, Operating Engineers, Iron Workers, Electricians, Carpenters and Industrial workers have allowed the bullhorns of SEIU and its armies of XXXXL Purple T-shirt clad mobilized forces to intimidate legislators and keep American Labor in the news. In fact so effective was the Marxist Andy Stern in leading labor that BIG LABOR became synonymous with SEIU. SEIU is the voice of the National Democratic Party on Health Care, Gay Marriage, Abortion and Redistribution of wealth. SEIU organizes. SEIU is Occupy Wall Street as it was Occupy Madison and get Walker.

Click my post title and read John Ruberry and take a gander at the great photos take by a real journalist. You won't find this coverage of OWS kiddies in the Tribune or the Sun Times.

Thanks Rubes!

*

The primary figure who delivered Obama to the single-payer camp was Quentin Young, an 86-year-old retired physician who was a longtime friend and neighbor of Obama in Chicago. Young joined the Young Communist League as a teenager in the late 1930s. From the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s, he was closely associated with the Communist Party. In October 1968 he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was probing the extent of his knowledge about the riots that had erupted at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago two months earlier. The Committee accused Young of belonging to the Bethune Club, an organization for communist doctors; the group was named after Norman Bethune, a communist physician who devoted his services to the totalitarian regime of Mao Zedong.



Dr. Young was active in the radical movements of the Sixties and Seventies and led a small delegation to Communist North Vietnam in 1972. In the late 1970s, Young became associated with a Marxist organization known as the New American Movement, which was initially convened by Michael Lerner, an America-hating radical who counseled young people to explore the use of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs as portals to a greater comprehension of socialist principles.



In 1980 Young founded the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, a single-payer lobby group whose Board of Directors he chairs to this day. In 1982 Young helped establish the Democratic Socialists of America, which, as the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, asserts that "many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed." In 1987 Young co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a single-payer advocacy organization where he currently serves as national coordinator. In PNHP’s view, government-run healthcare "should be financed by truly progressive taxation."

In 1995 Young attended the now-famous meeting at the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, where Barack Obama was first introduced to influential locals as the hand-picked successor to Alice Palmer, a pro-Soviet radical who planned to vacate her Illinois State Senate seat in pursuit of a higher elected office. Young quickly became a friend and political ally of Obama, teaching the latter about the merits of single-payer healthcare. In a 2009 interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Young reminisced about the germination of his ideological kinship with the young Obama:

"Barack Obama, in those early days [as a state senator] -- influenced, I hope, by me and others -- categorically said single payer was the best way, and he would inaugurate it if he could get the support, meaning [Democratic] majorities in both houses, which he’s got, and the presidency, which he’s got. And he said that on more than one occasion…."

Another noteworthy influence on Obama’s views vis à vis healthcare has been Dr. Peter Orris, who co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program with Quentin Young. The son of a Communist Party member, Orris in the 1960s was a leader of Harvard University’s campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the New Leftist organization that aspired to overthrow America’s democratic institutions and remake the nation’s government in a Marxist image. He later joined the Communist Party (CP) for more than two decades, before ultimately shifting his allegiance to the CP splinter group, Committees of Correspondence, where he remains a prominent figure to this day.

Eddie V -Out of the Joint and Hunting the Rats! My Dream Film Noir

Eddie Vrdolyak is out and there is Hell to pay - make book on it. . . .or a really cool movie in black and white.

Judge Milton Shadur sentenced Alderman Edward Vrdolyak in December 2009, as I recall. Within hours, of the judgment, the most insulated and powerful Brahmin's in Illinois, federal Judge Richard Posner started squeaking. Try and find any reference to the Intrusive Jurist anywhere in the news copy, today, or tomorrow. The mewling media kittens wet the sandbox at the thought of Judge Posner.

However, in 2009, when the Larry David of the Illinois Federal Bench wanted Eddie V punished real hard, the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun Times and Carol Marin purred up a storm.

Judge Richard Posner, joined at the oral argument by two other judges, even asked the prosecution if it wanted a federal judge other than Shadur to re-sentence Vrdolyak.

"You're not going to get anywhere with Judge Shadur because he's made up his mind," said Posner, once the court's chief judge and a prolific author who is known for his aggressive questioning of lawyers during oral arguments.

In a rare move, the U.S. attorney's office appealed Shadur's sentence of five years' probation. The government had sought about 3 1/2 years in prison.

Vrdolyak had pleaded guilty for his role in a kickback scheme in which a Gold Coast real-estate deal was rigged so he could secretly split a $1.5 million finder's fee with corrupt insider Stuart Levine.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Niewoehner told the appeals panel that Shadur erred in concluding that Rosalind Franklin University, which owned the building, hadn't lost any money in the rigged sale. That played a key part in Vrdolyak eluding prison time.

But Posner said it was the corruption of the bidding process, not whether the school lost money, that was important.

"What is probation for such a crime?" Posner asked incredulously. "It's nothing," he said. "The punishment was not a punishment for a serious offense."

The conservative Posner's view represents a clear problem for the Vrdolyak camp, which argued Shadur was within his power to hand down the light sentence. Posner enjoys a national reputation and his opinion carries great weight. Judges David Hamilton, just appointed to the appeals court, and Daniel Manion will also take part in the decision.

Posner and Shadur, who was appointed to the bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, are known around the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse as two judges who often don't see eye-to-eye. Posner once removed Shadur from a civil case in 2002 because he had supposedly let slip in front of the jury too many of his own views about one side's case.

Judge Posner has made millions doing insider legal legerdemain on Trust & Anti-Trust cases, has his own Legal Warehouse, access to the ears of powerful and the morally/ethically vaccinated, and is Federal Judge with unlimited powers to do anything. Judge Posner does whatever he wants, when he wants and to whom he wants.
It's great to be Judge Posner.

You can have him.

Eddie V - went to prison on the say-so of recreational drug enthusiast and political hyena Stuart Levine - ever wonder who was the first person to suggest to anyone that Stu was a great guy? Who brought Stu to the Parties?

Anyway, I liked Ed Vrdolyak - he wouldn't know me if he was walking on me. Never did me no harm, or took a jit out of my jeans. I have always liked Eddie Vrdolyak; so did Mayor Harold Washington. They fought like hell, but amused one another. Eddie V is a hard guy. He is also a very smart guy. From everyone I met on Hegewisch and the Greater 10th Ward between 1994-present, I have yet to hear anyone say an unkind thing about Eddie V. He took care of the young and the elderly and kept tabs on the more shiftless Patres Familias of the neighborhood.

While reading that Alderman Vrdolyak was freed from Terra Haute FCF today, I imagined a black and white epic with a music score dominated by a sinister Bass. Think Alan Ladd, or George Raft, or maybe Bogie - a roll of dimes in each mitt. I don't think today's Hollywood cream-puffs could carry it off.

Eddie shoved out of the doors of the joint and goes home. Everyone knows he's out and that a guy like Eddie V don't forget. Stu is behind bars and Judge Posner is behind robes, but Eddie V was behind Fed Walls.

Pay-back and the Hunt for the Rats is on!

I'd pay Lowe's Cinema prices to watch that one!




http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-12-11/news/0912100746_1_appeals-court-light-sentence-oral-arguments

The Vanishing American Middle Class

"It ain't much, but it is our's" - 1947

"Just go to the ATM" - 2011


The vanishing American Middle Class is one of the wonders of the world, or should be.

Being Middle Class was once a badge of honor. Immigrants who braved coffin ships to scratch out the American Dream, worked, saved, prayed, and most of all learned together and kicked down the walls of economic isolation and poverty. Italians worked along the Chicago River north and south of its flow cutting lumber for this growing City. The Irish largely chased cattle, pigs, and sheep into pens and up onto steep ramps to the killing floors, where Poles, Lithuanians, and Bohemians hammered America's meat to be cut and chopped and processed by more Irishmen and Germans.

The Germans arrived here already Middle Class, as did German Jews, and were skilled craftsmen and professionals - doctors and lawyers. Swedes were skilled wood workers.

African Americans, freedmen, lived among white settlers and immigrants and often were more affluent than newer arrivals all through the Civil War and for a few decades after.

The labor strikes of the late 1880's through WWI brought waves of impoverished black men and women into Chicago, as strikebreakers, forced to compete with white ethnic immigrants. Industry shaped the competition, but learning moved the poor up into the Middle Class.

A man was proud to exchange a blue shirt for a crisp starched white shirt and attachable collar. Paddy learned to do more than dig. Stash learned to do more than hammer a cow, pig. Vitas learned to cut and put pipes together, after he was black-listed by Armour, or Swift, or Cudahy. Vito watched Emerson in the lumber yard and learned how to frame. Washington learned to not cross a picket line with his friends from Georgia and earn the trust of the angry white faces calling him every color-rich sobriquet and animal metaphor imaginable.

They learned to read, write, converse and get along. They learned to save, as well as spend from the Bohemians who not only made their beer, but owned the building in which they lived. They became as respectable and dignified in a few years off of the boat, or the train from Alabama.

By the 1920's, America was rolling toward the Middle Class. A Depression nearly choked it but the lessons learned from the previous century had taken root - learn a trade, develop a skill, make yourself useful, take care of others.

Parallel to the striving wave of impoverished Americans were American born, educated, radicalized by the Hegelian university professors who dominated academia, and contemptuous of 'lesser beings.' They became the Progressives. They viewed the Middle Class with scorn and contemptuously abandoned the bourgeoisie for Artist Colonies, or subjected Italian kids to Aristophanes.

They saw the Republican and Democratic political machines who were boosting the Masses toward the Middle Class, as a threat to true Self-Fulfillment, which could only be realized through their human laboratories.

Babbitry was and remains Middle Class hypocrisy - owning a modest home, making a modest income and the value attendant upon such aspirations were subject of laughter and derision. The Great Classless Society was to be fought for with patience and cunning.

WWII accelerated the American Middle Class and the lessons learned from the 19th Century and WWI made America the Moral and Economic Power of the Free Word pitted against the great Classless Societies formed by Stalin and Chairman Mao.

War did not erode the American Middle Class. Values taken for granted at best, or dismissed as stupid infected the American soul.

Labor made a pact with the Devil, when it admitted the Progressive ideologies through the back-door. The Reuthers and John L. Lewis were replaced by a Sweeney and a Stern. Big Labor was no long the trades or the industrial unions, Big Labor was public sector labor - SEIU.

By playing ball with Progressives, Labor and the American Middle Class drugged itself.

Here we are today -

The number of middle-income neighborhoods in the United States has dwindled significantly over the past 40 years, as the rich-poor divide deepens across the country, a study released Wednesday showed.

In 2007, nearly a third of American families -- 31 percent -- lived in either an affluent neighborhood or a mainly low-income one, up from just 15 percent in 1970, according to the study conducted by Stanford University, and released in partnership with the Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University.

Meanwhile, 44 percent of American families lived in middle-class neighborhoods in 2007, down from 65 percent in 1970.

"Mixed income neighborhoods have grown rarer, while affluent and poor neighborhoods have grown much more common," the study said.

For the study, researchers used data from 117 metropolitan areas, each with more than 500,000 residents. In 2007, those areas were home to 197 million people -- or two-thirds of the US population.

The values of faith, hard work, achievement, and charity, have been replaced by a universal ethic of entitlement. Go to the ATM for more money. We are OK with abortion. Too many of us believe that sexual inclination is a Civil Right. The more the Middle Class agrees with Progressives the quicker it will vanish into the Classless Society dreamed of by John Dewey, Roger Baldwin, WEB Dubois, and George Soros.

Our Pacific President Makes Up to Gunny - 2,500 Marines Go Down Under

CANBERRA — The United States will deploy up to 2,500 Marines to Australia as the nations expand their 60-year-old military alliance, President Barack Obama said Wednesday in a move that rankled China.

Stressing the rising economic influence of the Asia-Pacific, Obama told reporters in Canberra he was stepping up Washington's commitment to the region, undaunted by China, which he said America did not fear.

"The notion that we fear China is a mistake. The notion that we are looking to exclude China is a mistake," Obama said. Not by Jug-full!"

The self-declared "Pacific President" told reporters at a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard that when it came to the fast-growing region: The President went Full Salty!

"We are here to stay. Early in my Presidency, I mispoke, once. I was taken to task by America's Gunny for mispronouncing Corpsman as Corpseman.

To that end - I will deploy 2,500 screamin' kickin' clawin' US Marines just itchin' to get into a real donnybrook with them slant-eyed Heathen Reds in this our vast American bathtub that is the Pacific.






By God, I'd give my left globe to go with those Jarheads. Nothing like it - shipping out! The blue sea boiling as the old bucket cuts the swells and dolphins escort the tars and jars on the rail as far as they can go - RIGHT up to and including the Equator and we make the new shell backs out of young polliwogs!

I am the Pacific President and I have worn out more seabags than Georgie Bush has socks, lousy stick jockey ( spit). Why back in '74 thereabouts I was knee-high to gnats ass and smokin' - I was in Bali then. Kunai Grass don't bother me none. Neither do a sharp crack with a Bolo knife.

It will be great to feel the rolling deck under my feet again. Why last time in Shanghai. . . I had a . . .well let's just say that . . . never mind. I'll toss my hammock and seabag up over my broad shoulders and swagger abroad the Old Chaumont she was an ornery bitch of a scow but a good feeder - beans and hardtack washed down with quarts of good old So Ho Shin from Peking or the Squarehead U & B dark in Shanghai!



The Tackle tickles a bit. One second . . .there, we go, shipmates!

I must have pissed unicorns, or picked up a nail from that she -witch of a tart of a White Russian Countess in Tienstin . . .there I go again with my old Sea Stories.

Come on Miss Prime Minister, be good Sheila and howl this one out with me!

When the robbers had desisted/
And there wasn’t much to do,

Then the Fourth was called to China,/
To Shanghai the Chaumont flew,

Now for years we’ve been in Shanghai,/
What a peaceful life to lead!

Only two small wars to cheer us;/
All we do is sleep and feed

That wasn't so bad was it,Sister? Better than the crabs and a lack of Blue Oin'ment, or a butt-full of Brylcream!

By God them heathen Chinee had better keep them squinty eyes of theirs on them Ps & Qs!

That's all!

Step aside Feathermerchant! I'm as thirsty as I am horny and this is the only gangplank!

The Polls Closed and Archbishop Sartain is Secretary of USCCB - Is Chicago His Next Stop?

Archbishop Sartain, who will become USCCB secretary in November 2012 and serve for three years, was elected on a 136-102 vote over Bishop Robert J. Cunningham of Syracuse, N.Y. As secretary, he also will chair the USCCB Committee on Priorities and Plans.

There was a vote yesterday. The American Catholic Bishops voted for leadership positions in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The structure of the conference (USCCB) consists of 16 standing committees (whose members are bishops) and the departments, secretariats, and offices that carry out the work of the committees. The leaders of these departments, secretariats, and offices report to the general secretariat of the conference.

The membership of the USCCB consists of all active and retired Latin-rite Catholic and Eastern Catholic bishops (i.e., archbishops, bishops, coadjutor bishops, and auxiliary bishops) of the United States and the Territory of the Virgin Islands, but not the bishops of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Territory of American Samoa, and the Territory of Guam

Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York is the President and the Executive Director

The Secretariat is the next level of significance with leadership over four Associates

Associate General Secretary — Pastoral Ministry and Planning
Associate General Secretary and Secretary of Policy and Advocacy
Associate General Secretary and Secretary of Administration
Assistant General Secretary for Planning

The Secretary of the Conference is a huge job. The former Bishop of Joliet, IL and current Archbishop of Seattle, WA is Archbishop J.P. Sartain.

Like Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Sartain is relatively young and orthodox in his ministry. In an interview with a Seattle newspaper Sartain stated,
“My stand on things is with the church. Always has been,” he said, noting that he not only accepts church teachings but has come to understand the wisdom of them. “I don’t see my role in any way as changing church teachings or challenging it.”




He manages by walking around. The Seattle Archdiocese has 600,000 registered Catholics in its rolls, but also ministers to the 1,000,000 folks who consider themselves Catholic. Coming from a very Catholic town, Joliet, Archbishop Sartain will get a great deal of walking around in the vast Pacific Northwest.


Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), which works for attorney Jeff Anderson in suing the Catholic Church called for Pope Benedict XVI to revoke his appointment to the Seattle Archdiocese. That is to be expected because Jeff Anderson has not had near enough of a pay day in Illinois.

If SNAP were not so heavily funded by the Catholic Church Traget-Specific new breed of ambulance chaser, I would be far less cynical of their motives.

Everyone hates pedophiles, almost as much as they hate soulless opportunists.

The Catholic Church is under attack from the Obama Administration, dedicated to Abortion and pandering to the GLBTQ activists for Homosexual Marriage.

The Catholic Church is under attack in Illinois from Planned Parenthood's Governor Pat Quinn and the Rahm Emanuel Administration in Chicago, which dangles the tax threat every other day - water, utilities, you name it.

Catholic schools remain a threat to the daffy stand-up comics of Public Education - Catholic schools do not fix lisps, they educate through core values with great success.

Interesting to note - Francis Cardinal George was a USCCB heavyweight serving as Vice President and President and came to Chicago from the American Northwest as Bishop of Yakima and Archbishop of Portland.

Could be that USCCB not only elected a Secretary, but may put Cardinal George's successor as Archbishop of Chicago into the limelight.

Hope so, Archbishop J. Peter Sartain knows Illinois, the challenges our Faith face, the threats, and the particular individuals who do not wish well of Catholics or their Church. More so, the guy likes to fish and manages by walking around.



Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/06/05/1693712/new-archbishop-nurturing-his-flock.html#ixzz1ds6pI4Fk

Casey Stengel - A Tutorial on How to Respond to a Politician

Casey Stengel could out-Studs Terkel at saying absolutely nothing.

This is rather long, but absolutely necessary. Knowledge is power. Learn from the best.

The intricacies of language can dazzle and lift our souls to new heights and plumb the depths of the human heart. The rhetorical polarities presented in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar through the characters Brutus and Antony are lessons in themselves of words and their consequences - Brutus adopting the Attic method of pithy logical soundness and Antony's open-handed appeal to the heart-strings and passions via the Asiatic. Attic - the closed fist imperative command; Asiatic -open palmed request to 'lend me your ears.'

Using Attic, Asiatic, or Twitter politicians lie. They are dissemblers who will say anything to get over, get by, get past and get more. Public servants, the best of them, the capable and at times the most pure of heart and smartest never speak a word. They are sphinx-like.

Citizens are often called upon by politicians to speak their minds, or might even be subpoenaed. In that case it is mete to consider the very best means of saying absolutely nothing in the most words. In 1958, Casey Stengel was called before Congress to testify of the expansion and monetary worth of the National Past-time. Estes Kefauver, as randy an old goat who ever tore off his britches, until President Clinton, was enamored of television. Television had made him a household name a Vice Presidential Candidate with Adlai Stevenson. Kefauver moved from investigating organized crime in the American labor unions to baseball as monopoly.

Casey Stengel could give Studs Terkel a run for his money in saying absolutely nothing with thousands of words.

Here is how to testify -

Casey Stengel Testimony
July 8, 1958 Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee Hearing

Casey Stengel, Senator Kefauver, Senator Langer, Senator O'Mahoney, Senator Carroll & Mickey Mantle
Mr. Stengel: Well, I started in professional ball in 1910. I have been in professional ball, I would say, for forty-eight years. I have been employed by numerous ball clubs in the majors and in the minor leagues. I started in the minor leagues with Kansas City. I played as low as class D ball, which was at Shelbyville, Ky., and also class C ball, and class A ball, and I have advanced in baseball as a ballplayer.

I had many years that I was not so successful as a ballplayer, as it is a game of skill. And then I was no doubt discharged by baseball in which I had to go back to the minor leagues as a manager, and after being in the minor leagues as a manager, I became a major league manager in several cities and was discharged, we call it "discharged," because there is no question I had to leave. (Laughter). And I returned to the minor leagues at Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Oakland, Calif., and then returned to the major leagues.

In the last ten years, naturally, in major league baseball with the New York Yankees, the New York Yankees have had tremendous success and while I am not the ballplayer who does the work, I have no doubt worked for a ball club that is very capable in the office. I must have splendid ownership, I must have very capable men who are in radio and television, which is no doubt you know that we have mentioned the three names — you will say they are very great.

We have a wonderful press that follows us. Anybody should in New York City, where you have so many million people. Our ballclub has been successful because we have it, and we have the Spirit of 1776. We put it into the ball field and if you are not capable of becoming a great ballplayer since I have been in as a manager, in ten years, you are notified that if you don't produce on the ball field, the salary that you receive, we will allow you to be traded to play and give your services to other clubs.

The great proof was yesterday. Three of the young men that were stars and picked by the players in the American League to be in the all-star game were Mr. Cerv, who is at Kansas City; Mr. Jensen, who was at Boston, and I might say Mr. Triandos that caught for the Baltimore ball club, all three of those players were my members and to show you I was not such a brillant manager they got away from me and were chosen by the players and I was fortunate enough to have them come back to play where I was successful as a manager.

If I have been in baseball for forty-eight years there must be some good in it. I was capable and strong enough at one time to do any kind of work but I came back to baseball and I have been in baseball ever since. I have been up and down the ladder. I know there are some things in baseball, thirty-five to fifty years ago that are better now than they were in those days. In those days, my goodness, you could not transfer a ball club in the minor leagues, class D, class C ball, class A ball. How could you transfer a ball club when you did not have a highway? How could you transfer a ball club when the railroads then would take you to a town you got off and then you had to wait and sit up five hours to go to another ball club?

How could you run baseball then without night ball? You had to have night ball to improve the proceeds to play larger salaries and I went to work, the first year I received $135 a month. I thought that was amazing. I had to put away enough money to go to dental college. I found out it was not better in dentistry, I stayed in baseball.

Any other questions you would like to ask me? I want to let you know that as to the legislative end of baseball you men will have to consider that what you are here for. I am a bench manager. I will speak about anything from the playing end — in the major or minor leagues — and do anything I can to help you.

Senator Kefauver: Mr. Stengel, are you prepared to answer particularly why baseball wants this bill passed?

Mr. Stengel: Well, I would have to say at the present time, I think that baseball has advanced in this respect for the player help. That is an amazing statement for me to make, because you can retire with an annuity at fifty and what organization in America allows you to retire at fifty and receive money?

I want to further state that I am not a ballplayer, that is, put into that pension fund committee. At my age, and I have been in baseball, well, I say I am possibly the oldest man who is working in baseball. I would say that when they start an annuity for the ballplayers to better their conditions, it should have been done, and I think it has been done. I think it should be the way they have done it, which is a very good thing.

The reason they possibly did not take the managers in at that time was because radio and television or the income to ball clubs was not large enough that you could have put in a pension plan. Now, I am not a member of the pension plan. You have young men here who are, who represent the ball clubs. They represent them as players and since I am not a member and don't receive pension from a fund which you think, my goodness, he ought to be declared in that too but I would say that is a great thing for the ballplayers. That is one thing I will say for the ballplayers they have an advanced pension fund. I should think it was gained by radio and television or you could not have enough money to pay anything of that type.

Now the second thing about baseball that I think is very interesting to the public or to all of us that it is the owner's fault if he does not improve his club, along with the officials in the ball club and the players.

Now what causes that? If I am going to go on the road and we are a travelling ball club and you know the cost of transportation now -- we travel sometimes with three pullman coaches, the New York Yankees and remember I am just a salaried man and do not own stock in the New York Yankees, I found out that in travelling with the New York Yankees on the road and all, that it is the best, and we have broken records in Washington this year, we have broken them in every city but New York and we have lost two clubs that have gone out of the city of New York.

Of course, we have had some bad weather, I would say that they are mad at us in Chicago, we fill the parks. They have come out to see good material. I will say they are mad at us in Kansas City, but we broke their attendance record.

Now on the road we only get possibly 27¢. I am not positive of these figures, as I am not an official. If you go back fifteen years or if I owned stock in the club I would give them to you.

Senator Kefauver: Mr. Stengel, I am not sure that I made my question clear. (Laughter).

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir. Well that is all right. I am not sure I am going to answer yours perfectly either. (Laughter)

Senator Kefauver: I was asking you, sir, why it is that baseball wants this bill passed.

Mr. Stengel: I would say I would not know, but would say the reason why they would want it passed is to keep baseball going as the highest paid ball sport that has gone into baseball and from the baseball angle, I am not going to speak of any other sport. I am not here to argue about other sports, I am in the baseball business. It has been run cleaner than any business that was ever put out in the one-hundred years at the present time. I am not speaking about television or I am not speaking about income that comes into the ball parks: You have to take that off. I don't know too much about it. I say the ballplayers have a better advancement at the present time.

Senator Kefauver: One further question, and then I will pass the other Senators. How many players do the Yankees control, Mr. Stengel?

Mr. Stengel: Well, I will tell you: I hire the players and if they make good with me I keep them without criticism from my ownership. I do not know how many players they own as I am not a scout and I cannot run a ball club during the daytime and be busy at night and up the next day and find out how many players that the Yankees own. If you get any official with the Yankees that is here, why he could give you the names.

Senator Kefauver: Very well. Senator Langer?

Senator Langer: Mr. Stengel?

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir.

Senator Langer: What do you think is the future of baseball? Is it going to be expanded to include more clubs than are in existence at the present time?

Mr. Stengel: I think every chamber of commerce in the major league cities would not change a franchise, I think they will be delighted because they have a hard time to put in a convention hall to get people to come to your city and if it is going to be like Milwaukee or Kansas City or Baltimore, I think they would want a major league team, but if I was a chamber of commerce member and I was in a city, I would not want a baseball team to leave the city as too much money is brought into your city even if you have a losing team and great if you have a winning ball team.

Senator Langer: You look forward then, do you not, to say, ten years or twenty years from now this business of baseball is going to grow larger and larger and larger?

Mr. Stengel: Well, I should think it would. I should think it would get larger because of the fact we are drawing tremendous crowds, I believe, from overseas programs in television, that is one program I have always stuck up for. I think every ballplayer and everyone should give out anything that is overseas for the Army, free of cost and so forth. I think every hospital should get it. I think that because of the lack of parking in so many cites that you cannot have a great ballpark if you don't have parking space. If you are ancient or forty-five or fifty and have acquired enough money to go to a ballgame, you cannot drive a car on a highway, which is very hard to do after forty-five, to drive on any modern highway and if you are going to stay home you need radio and television to go along for receipts for the ball club.

Senator Langer: That brings us to another question.

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir.

Senator Langer: That is, what do you think of pay-as-you-go television?

Mr. Stengel: Well, to tell you the truth, if were starting in it myself I would like to be in that line of business as I did not think they would ever have television and so forth here but they have got it here now. (Laughter). Forty years ago you would not have had it around here yourself and you would not have cameras flying around here every five minutes but we have got them here and more of them around here than around a ball field, I will give you that little tip.

Senator Langer: You believe the time is ever going to come when you will have pay-as-you-go in the world series, which would be kept from the public unless they had pay-as-you-go television in their homes?

Mr. Stengel: I think you have got a good argument there and it is worthy of you to say that. I am not thinking myself of anybody that is hospitalized and anybody who cannot go to a ball park, I should think if they could pass that they should try to pass it, but I don't think they will be able to do it because they have gone in television so far that they reach so many outside people, you have to have a sponsor for everything else you do, go pay television and that is going to run all the big theaters out of business where you have to use pay television. All the big theaters and all the big movie companies went broke. We know that. You see that now or you would not have a place to hold a television for pay. I don't know how they would run that of course. I am not on that side of the fence. I am paid a salary.

Senator Langer: Just one further question. You do not have to answer it unless you want to. That is, is there any provision made whereby the team owners can keep a racketeer out of the baseball business?

Mr. Stengel: Well, sir—

Senator Langer: Can the owners of the New York Yankees, for example, sell out to anyone who may want to buy the club at a big price without the consent of the other owners?

Mr. Stengel: That is a very good thing that I will have to think about but I will give you an example. I think that is why they put in as a commissioner Judge Landis, and he said if there is a cloud on baseball I will take it off, and he took the cloud off and they have had only one scandal or if they had, it is just one major league city.

How can you be a ballplayer and make twenty-five ballplayers framed without being heard? It is bound to leak, and your play will show it. I don't think, an owner possibly could do something but he can't play the game for you. It is the most honest profession I think that we have, everything today that is going on outside.

Senator Langer: Mr. Chairman, my final question. This is the Antimonopoly Committee that is sitting here.

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir.

Senator Langer: I want to know whether you intend to keep on monopolizing the world's championship in New York City.

Mr. Stengel: Well, I will tell you, I got a little concerned yesterday in the first three innings when I say the three players I had gotten rid of and I said when I lost nine what am I going to do and when I had a couple of my players. I thought so great of that did not do so good up to the sixth inning I was more confused but I finally had to go and call on a young man in Baltimore that we don't own and the Yankees don't own him, and he is going pretty good, and I would actually have to tell you that I think we are more the Greta Garbo type now from success.

We are being hated I mean, from the the ownership and all, we are being hated. Every sport that gets too great or one individual, but if we made 27¢ and it pays to have a winner at home why would you not have a good winner in your own park if you were an owner. That is the result of baseball. An owner gets most of the money at home and it is up to him and his staff to do better or they ought to be discharged.

Senator Langer: That is all, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

Senator Kefauver: Thank you, Senator Langer. Senator O'Mahoney?

Senator O'Mahoney: May I say, Mr. Stengel, that I congratulate you very much for what happened on the field at Baltimore yesterday. I was watching on television when you sent Gil McDougald up to bat for Early Wynn. I noticed with satisfaction that he got a hit, knocking Frank Malzone in with the winning run. That is good management.

Mr. Stengel: Thank you very much. (Laughter).

Senator O'Mahoney: Did I understand you to say, Mr. Stengel, at the beginning of your statement that you have been in baseball for forty-eight years?

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir; the oldest man in the service.

Senator O'Mahoney: How many major league teams were there in the United States when you entered baseball?

Mr. Stengel: Well, there was in 1910, there were sixteen major league baseball teams.

Senator O'Mahoney: How many are there now?

Mr. Stengel: There are sixteen major league clubs but there was one year that they brought in the Federal League which was brought in by Mr. Ward and Mr. Sinclair and others after a war, and it is a very odd thing to tell you that during tough times it is hard to study baseball. I have been through two or three depressions in baseball and out of it.

The first World War we had good baseball in August. The second World War we kept on and made more money because everybody was around going to the services, the larger the war, the more they come to the ball park, and that was an amazing thing to me. When you were looking for tough times why it changed for different wars.

Senator O'Mahoney: How many minor leagues were there in baseball when you began?

Mr. Stengel: Well, there were not so many at that time because of this fact: Anybody to go into baseball at that time with the educational schools that we had were small, while you were probably thoroughly educated at school, you had to be. We had only small cities that you could put a team in and they would go defunct. Why I remember the first year I was at Kankakee, Ill., and a bank offered me $550 if I would let them have a little notice. I left there and took a uniform because they owed me two weeks' pay. But I either had to quit but I did not have enough money to go to dental college so I had to go with the manager down to Kentucky.

What happened there was if you got by July, that was the big date. You did not play night ball and you did not play Sundays in half of the cities on account of a Sunday observance, so in those days when things were tough, and all of it was, I mean to say, why they just closed up July 4 and there you were sitting there in the depot. You could go to work some place else but that was it. So I got out of Kankakee, Ill., and I just go there for the visit now. (Laughter).

I think now, do you know how many clubs they have? Anybody will start a minor league club but it is just like your small cities, the industries have left them and they have gone west to California, and I am a Missourian — Kansas City, Missouri — but I can see all those towns and everybody moving west and I know if you fly in the air you can see anything from the desert, you can see a big country over there that has got many names. Well, now why wouldn't baseball prosper out there, with that many million people?

Senator O'Mahoney: Are the minor leagues suffering now?

Mr. Stengel: I should say they are.

Senator O'Mahoney: Why?

Mr. Stengel: Do you know why? I will tell you why. I don't think anybody can support minor league ball when they see a great official, it would be just like a great actress or actor had come to town. If Bob Hope had come here or Greta Garbo over there half of them would go see Greta Garbo and half Bob Hope but if you have a very poor baseball team they are not going to watch you until you become great and the minor leagues now with radio and television will not pay very much attention to minor league ballplayers. Softball is interesting, the parent is interested; he goes around with him. He watches his son and he is more enthusiastic about the boy than some stranger that comes to town and wants to play in a little wooden park and with no facilities to make you interested. You might rather stay home and see a program.

Senator O'Mahoney: How many baseball players are now engaged in the activity as compared to when you came in?

Mr. Stengel: I would say there are more, many more. Because we did not have as many cities that could support even minor league baseball in those days.

Senator O'Mahoney: How many players did the sixteen major league clubs have when you came in.

Mr. Stengel: At that time they did not have as many teams. They did not have near as many teams as below. Later on Mr. Rickey came in and started what was known as what you would say numerous clubs, you know in which I will try to pick up this college man, I will pick up that college boy or I will pick up some corner lot boy and if you picked up the corner lot boy maybe he became just as successful as the college man, which is true. He then had a number of players.

Now, too many players is a funny thing, it cost like everything. I said just like I made a talk not long ago and I told them all when they were drinking and they invited me in I said you ought to be home. You men are not making enough money. You cannot drink like that. They said, "This is a holiday for the Shell Oil Company", and I said, "Why is that a holiday?" and they said, "We did something great for three years and we are given two days off to watch the Yankees play the White Sox," but they were mostly White Sox rooters. I said, "You are not doing right." I said, "You can't take all those drinks and all even on your holidays. You ought to be home and raising more children because big league clubs now give you a hundred thousand for a bonus to go into baseball." (Laughter). And by the way I don't happen to have any children but I wish Mrs. Stengel and I had eight, I would like to put them in on that bonus rule. (Laughter).

Senator O'Mahoney: What I am trying to find out, Mr. Stengel, is how many players are actively working for the major league teams now as was formerly the case? How many players do you suppose—

Mr. Stengel: You are right, I would honestly tell you they naturally have more and they are in more competition now. You have to buck now a university — anyone who wants to be a hockey player—

Senator O'Mahoney: Let's stick to baseball for a minute.

Mr. Stengel: I stay in baseball. I say you can't name them. If you want to know get any executive, you have got any names, bring any executive with the Yankees that is an official in the ball club and he will tell you how many players the Yankees have. And there is his jurisdiction — every ball club owner can tell you he is an official, they have enough officials hired with me with a long pencil, too.

Senator O'Mahoney: I recently saw a statement by a baseball sports writer that there were about four-hundred active ball players in the major leagues now. Would you think that is about correct now?

Mr. Stengel: I would say in the major leagues each club has twenty-five men which is the player limit. There are eight clubs in each league so you might say there are four-hundred players in the major leagues, you mean outside of it that they own two or three hundred each individual club, isn't that what you have reference to?

Senator O'Mahoney: I was coming to that, but is that the fact?

Mr. Stengel: Well, I say that is what you would say (laughter) if you want to find that out you get any of those executives that come in here that keep those books. I am not a bookeeper for him. But I take the man when he comes to the big league. They can give it to you and each club should. That does not mean and I would like to ask you, how would you like to pay those men? That is why they go broke.

Senator O'Mahoney: I am not in that business.

Mr. Stengel: I was in that business a short time, too; it is pretty hard to make a living at it.

Senator O'Mahoney: But the stories that we read in the press—

Mr. Stengel: That is right.

Senator O'Mahoney: Are to the effect that the minor leagues are suffering. There are no more major league teams now than there were when you came into baseball, and what I am trying to find out is, what are the prospects for the future growth of baseball and to what extent have the sixteen major league teams, through the farm system, obtained, by contract or agreement or understanding, control over the professional lives of the players?

Mr. Stengel: That is right. If I was a ballplayer and I was discharged, and I saw within three years that I could not become a major league ballplayer I would go into another profession. That is the history of anything that is in business.

Senator O'Mahoney: Do you think that the farm system keeps any players in the minor leagues when they ought to be in the majors?

Mr. Stengel: I should say it would not keep any players behind or I have been telling you a falsehood. I would say it might keep a few back, but very few. There is no manager in baseball who wants to be a success without the ability of those great players and if I could pull them up to make money in a gate for my onwer and for myself to be a success, I don't believe I would hold him back.

Senator O'Mahoney: The fact is, is it not, Mr. Stengel, that while the population of the United States has increased tremendously during the period that you have been engaged in professional baseball, the number of major-league teams has not increased; it remains the same as it was then. The number of players actually engaged by the major-league teams is approximately the same as back in 1903, and there is now, through the farm system, a major league control of the professional occupation of baseball playing. Is that a correct summary?

Mr. Stengel: Well, you have that from the standpoint of what you have been reading. You have got that down very good. (Laughter). But if you were a player—

Senator O'Mahoney: I am trying to get it down from your standpoint as a forty-eight-year-man in baseball.

Mr. Stengel: That is why I stayed in it. I have been discharged fifteen times and rehired; so you get rehired in baseball, and they don't want a good ballplayer leaving, and I always say a high-priced baseball player should get a high salary just like a moving-picture actor. He should not get the same thing as the twenty-fifth man on a ball club who is very fortunate he is sitting on your ball club, and I say it is very hard to have skill in baseball.

Senator O'Mahoney: You are not changing the subject; are you, sir?

Mr. Stengel: No. You asked the question and I told you that if you want to find out how minor league baseball is; it is terrible now. How can you eat on $2.50 a day when up here you can eat on $8 or better than $8. Now how can you travel in a bus all night and play ball the next night to make a living? How can you, a major league man, make it so that you can't? Is he going to fly all of them to each place?

Senator O'Mahoney: I am not arguing with you, Mr. Stengel.

Mr. Stengel: I am just saying minor league ball has outgrown itself, like every small town has outgrown itself industrially because they don't put a plant in there to keep the people working so they leave.

Senator O'Mahoney: Does that mean in your judgment that the major league baseball teams necessarily have to control ball playing?

Mr. Stengel: I think that they do. I don't think that if I was a great player and you released me in four years, I think it would be a joke if you released a man and he made one year for you and then bid for a job and then played the next year, we will say, out of Washington, he played in New York the third year, he would play in Cleveland and put himself up for stake. I think they ought to be just as they have been.

A man who walks in and sees you get fair compensation and if you are great, be sure you get it because the day you don't report and the day you don't open a season you are hurting the major league and hurting yourself somewhat, but you are not going to be handicapped in life if you are great in baseball. Every man who goes out has a better home than he had when he went in.

Senator O'Mahoney: Did I understand you to say that in your own personal activity as manager, you always give a player who is to be traded advance notice?

Mr. Stengel: I warn him that. I hold a meeting. We have an instructional school, regardless of my English, we have got an instructional school.

Senator O'Mahoney: Your English is perfect and I can understand what you say, and I think I can even understand what you mean.

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir. You have got some very wonderful points in. I would say in an instructional school we try you out for three weeks and we clock you, just like — I mean how good are you going to be in the service; before you go out of the service we have got you listed. We know if you are handicapped in the service and we have got instructors who teach you. They don't have to listen to me if they don't like me.

I have a man like Crosetti, who never has been to a banquet; he never would. He does a big job like Art Fletcher; he teaches that boy and teaches his family: he will be there. I have a man for first base, second base, short; that is why the Yankees are ahead.

We have advanced so much we can take a man over to where he can be a big league player and if he does not, we advance him to where he can play opposition to us. I am getting concerned about opposition. I am discharging too many good ones.

Senator O'Mahoney: Mr. Chairman, I think the witness is the best entertainment we have had around here for a long time and it is a great temptation to keep asking him questions but I think I better desist. Thank you.

Senator Kefauver: Senator Carroll.

Senator Carroll: Mr. Stengel, I am an old Yankee fan and I come from a city where I think we have had some contribution to your success, from Denver. I think you have many Yankee players from Denver. The question Senator Kefauver asked you was what, in your honest opinion, with your forty-eight years of experience, is the need for this legislation in view of the fact that baseball has not been subject to antitrust laws?

Mr. Stengel: No.

Senator Carroll: It is not now subject to antitrust laws. What do you think the need is for this legislation? I had a conference with one of the attorneys representing not only baseball but all of the sports, and I listened to your explanation to Senator Kefauver. It seemed to me it had some clarity. I asked the attorney this question: What was the need for this legislation? I wonder if you would accept his definition. He said they didn't want to be subjected to the ipse dixit of the Federal Government because they would throw a lot of damage suits on the ad damnum clause. He said, in the first place, the Toolson case was sui generis, it was de minimus non curat lex. Do you call that a clear expression?

Mr. Stengel: Well, you are going to get me there for about two hours.

Senator Carroll: I realize these questions which are put to you are all, I suppose, legislative and legal questions. Leaning on your experience as manager, do you feel the farm system, the draft system, the reserve clause system, is fair to the players, to the managers, and to the public interest?

Mr. Stengel: I think the public is taken care of, rich and poor, better at the present time than years ago. I really think that the ownership is a question of ability. I really think that the business manager is a question of ability. Some of these men are supposed to be very brillant in their line of work, and some of them are not so brillant, so that they have quite a bit of trouble with it when you run an operation of a club in which the ownership maybe doesn't run the club. I would say that the players themselves — I told you, I am not in on that fund, it is a good thing. I say I should have been, to tell you the truth. But I think it is a great thing about that fund.

Senator Carroll: I am not talking about that fund.

Mr. Stengel: Well, I tell you if you are going to talk about the fund you are going to think about radio and television and pay television.

Senator Carroll: I do not want to talk about radio and television, but I do want to talk about the draft clause and reserve systems.

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir. I would have liked to have been free four times in my life; and later on I have seen men free, and later on they make a big complaint "they wuz robbed," and if you are robbed there is some club down the road to give you the opportunity.

Senator Carroll: That was not the question I asked you, and I only asked you on your long experience—

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir. I would not be in it forty-eight years if it was not all right.

Senator Carroll: I understand that.

Mr. Stengel: Well, then, why wouldn't it stay that?

Senator Carroll: In your long experience—

Mr. Stengel: Yes.

Senator Carroll: Do you feel, you have had experience through the years—

Mr. Stengel: That is true.

Senator Carroll: With the draft system, and the reserve clause in the contracts. Do you think you could still exist under existing law without changing the law?

Mr. Stengel: I think it is run better than it has ever been run in baseball, for every department.

Senator Carroll: Then, I come back to the principal question. This is the real question before this body.

Mr. Stengel: All right.

Senator Carroll: Then what is the need for legislation, if they are getting along all right?

Mr. Stengel: I didn't ask for the legislation. (Laughter).

Senator Carroll: Your answer is a very good one, and that is the question Senator Kefauver put to you.

Mr. Stengel: That is right.

Senator Carroll: That is the question Senator O'Mahoney put.

Mr. Stengel: Right.

Senator Carroll: Are you ready to say there is no need for legislation in this field, then, insofar as baseball is concerned?

Mr. Stengel: As far as I'm concerned, from drawing a salary and from my ups and downs and being discharged, I always found out that there was somebody ready to employ you, if you were on the ball.

Senator Carroll: Thank you very much, Mr. Stengel.

Senator Kefauver: Thank you very much, Mr. Stengel. We appreciate your testimony.

Senator Langer: May I ask a question?

Senator Kefauver: Senator Langer has a question. Just a moment, Mr. Stengel.

Senator Langer: Can you tell this committee what countries have baseball teams besides the United States, Mexico and Japan?

Mr. Stengel: I made a tour with the New York Yankees several years ago, and it was the most amazing tour I ever saw for a ball club, to go over where you have trouble spots. It wouldn't make any difference whether he was a Republican or Democrat, and so forth. I know that over there we drew 250,000 to 500,000 people in the streets, in which they stood in front of the automobiles, not on the sidewalks, and those people are trying to play baseball over there with short fingers (Laughter), and I say, "Why do you do it?"

But they love it. They are crazy about baseball, and they are not worried at the handicap. And I'll tell you, business industries run baseball over there, and they are now going to build a stadium that is going to be covered over for games where you don't need a tarpaulin if it rains.

South America is all right, and Cuba is all right. But I don't know, I have never been down there except to Cuba, I have never been to South America, and I know that they broadcast games, and I know we have players that are playing from there.

I tell you what, I think baseball has spread, but if we are talking about anything spreading, we would be talking about soccer. You can go over in Italy, and I thought they would know DiMaggio every place. And my goodness, you mention soccer, you can draw fifty or a hundred thousand people. Over here you have a hard time to get soccer on the field, which is a great sport, no doubt.

Senator Langer: What I want to know, Mr. Stengel, is this: When the American League plays the National League in the world series and it is advertised as the world championship—

Mr. Stengel: Yes, sir.

Senator Langer: I want to know why you do not play Mexico or Japan or some other country and really have a world championship.

Mr. Stengel: Well, I think you have a good argument there. I would say that a couple of clubs that I saw, it was like when I was in the Navy, I thought I couldn't get special unless they played who I wanted to play. So I took over a team. When they got off a ship I would play them, but if they had been on land too long, my team couldn't play them. So I would play the teams at sea six months, and I would say, "You are the club I would like to play." I would like to play those countries, and I think it should be nationwide and governmentwide, too, if you could possibly get it in.

Senator Langer: Do you think the day is ever going to come, perhaps five years from now or ten—

Mr. Stengel: I would say ten years, not five.

Senator Langer: When the championship team of the United States would play the championship team of Mexico?

Mr. Stengel: I really think it should be that way, but I don't think you will get it before ten years, because you have to build stadiums and you have to have an elimination in every country for it, and you have to have weather at the same time, or how could you play unless you would hold your team over?

Senator Langer: Do you not think these owners are going to develop this matter of world championship of another country besides the United States?

Mr. Stengel: I should think they would do that in time. I really do. I was amazed over in Japan. I couldn't understand why they would want to play baseball with short fingers and used the same size ball, and not a small size, and compete in baseball. And yet that is their great sport, and industries are backing them.

Senator Langer: In other words, the owners some day, in your opinion, Mr. Stengel, are going to make a lot of money by having the champions of one country play another country and keep on with eliminations until they really have a world championship?

Mr. Stengel: That is what I say. I think it is not named properly right now unless you can go and play all of them. You would have to do that.

Senator Langer: That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Senator Kefauver: Mr. Stengel, one final question. You spoke of Judge Landis and the fact that he had rather absolute control over baseball. There was a clause in Judge Landis' contract which read:

We, the club owners pledge ourselves to loyally support the commissioner in his important and difficult task, and we assure him that each of us will acquiesce in his decisions even when we believe they are mistaken, and that we will not discredit the sport by criticism of him or one another.

This same clause was in Mr. Chandler's contract, but we do not understand it to be in Mr. Frick's contract. Do you think the commissioner needs to have this power over management?

Mr. Stengel: I would say when there was a cloud over baseball, like any sport, you have to have a man that has the power to change things. Now, when Landis was in, that was the situation with baseball. You were bucking racetracks. We don't have a tote board. We are playing baseball for admission fees. Now, we don't have a tote board in baseball. Who would? That would be great, if you have that out there, and you could go out there and, you know, use a tote board and say, "Does he get to first or won't he get to first?" and so forth.

Now Landis was an amazing man. I will give you an example of him. It is a good thing you brought him in. I was discharged one year, and I was the president of a ball club at Worcester, Mass., so I discharged myself, and I sent it in to Landis and he O.K.'d it.

Why was I president? Then I could release my player, couldn't I? And I was the player. So I was the only player ever released by the president, and that was in Worcester, Massachusetts, so I got discharged.

Senator Kefauver: Do you think the present commissioner ought to have the same power?

Mr. Stengel: There are sixteen men in baseball who own ball clubs. We will say that an individual can hardly make it any more unless he is wealthy. That is how it has grown. I would say the biggest thing in baseball at the present time now, and with the money that is coming in, and so forth, and with the annuity fund for the players, you can't allow the commissioner to just take everything sitting there, and take everything insofar as money is concerned, but I think he should have full jurisdiction over the player and player's habits, and the way the umpires and ball clubs should conduct their business in the daytime and right on up tight up here.

Senator Kefauver: Thank you very much, Mr. Stengel. We appreciate your presence here.

Senator Kefauver: Mr. Mantle, do you have any observations with reference to the applicability of the antitrust laws to baseball?

Mr. Mantle: My views are about the same as Casey's (laughter).

Casey Stengel Testimony : July 8, 1958 Senate Anti-Trust and Monopoly Subcommittee Hearing


Now, that boys and girls is how to talk to a politician.