Showing posts with label Judge Richard Posner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Judge Richard Posner. Show all posts

Thursday, September 08, 2016

“You and the other officers will not make it to court.” - The Voice of the Unschackled in Judge Tharp's Court

Image result for Intimidating Jurors


Yesterday, a 71 year old gentleman was shot in the stomach by two thugs on bikes in the Marquette Park neighborhood.  Though a security camera caught the act taking place, I seriously doubt if the youths will be brought to book.

Yesterday, six of the magnificent seven dressed in suits and Bill Cosby sweaters had the opportunity to study the faces of "anonymous" jurors in Judge John "Jay" Tharp's courtroom in the Dirksen Federal Building in the Hobo Trial.  Last week, Judge Tharp deemed it too prejudicial to shackle the members of the Hobo super-star coalition of gangs, even though Federal Marshalls asked that they be so restrained in the interest of safety and justice.  Judge Tharp took the Atticus Finch approach - the high-minded, think-out-of box, Yankee spit in the face of common sense, ACLU approved self-focus.
Image result for Judge John "Jay" TharpFar left -Judge John "Jay" Tharp nominated to the bench by Mark Kirk (R, Durbin) - Never Right


Appeals Court Chief Judge Richard Posner could not have done better than Judge Tharp and Posner is always playing Brutus, Clarence Darrow, or Larry David,  in the court of public opinion (media), it seems to me.

Now, people who are doing their civic duty in the American Justice system are imperiled by Judge John " Jay" Tharp's play acting To Kill a Mockingbird.

Still, the potential jurors found themselves facing the six accused Hobo gang members in Tharp’s courtroom. The allegedly violent gang members* wore suits, dress shirts and chunky sweaters as they studied the men and women who could decide their fate. Federal prosecutors have accused the men of committing nine murders, as well as a series of brazen robberies, home invasions and other crimes.
The final group of jurors will sit through a trial that is expected to last months. . . . The judge took roughly five hours to question the first 16 potential jurors from Chicago and its suburbs — a group that included a handful of retirees, a bartender, a college student and a man who has spent nearly four decades as a puppeteer. (emphases my own)

The trial will take months - that is plural sets of four weeks.  Judge Tharp is deliberate.  Now, it seems to me that in a number of months the Unshackled Hobos and their families, friends and well-wishers will manage to lift the veil of anonymity from the imperiled nine good citizens and true.  Notice that they Hobos studied the men and women who could decide their fate, from the get-go.

The Unshackled Hobos and the Hobo coalition will be in the unprejudiced position to nod signals and gesticulate interests in particular jurors to friends and family.  It does not take a Nero Wolfe, or August Dupin to come up with an identity in this City - unless of course one might be in proximity to an old man watering his lawn when two thugs bike up and shoot him.

I would rather be Nero's Mom than a juror in the Unshackled Hobo trial in Judge John "Jay" Tharp's court.

Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

*  Federal prosecutors say the Hobos, a “renegade group” of Gangster Disciples, Black Disciples and other gangs, terrorized Chicago’s South and West sides between 2004 and 2013. Among the defendants headed to trial are alleged Hobo leader Gregory “Bowlegs” Chester and alleged assassin Paris Poe.
Poe is accused of participating in the slayings of federal informant Keith Daniels and Chicago police informant Wilbert Moore. The feds also say he once threatened a police officer scheduled to testify against him, standing within two feet of the officer in a Cook County courthouse and saying, “You and the other officers will not make it to court.”

Thursday, November 17, 2011

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

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Nothing is on the Square -Especially For Us Squares -God Speed the Bad Days for Mr. Vrdolyak



“Hey, not even fishing is on the square.” Edward Vrdolyak

Only on Powder Horn Lake, Alderman. There is where us Squares are. There and in Albany Park, Gresham, Morgan Park, Mount Greenwood, Canaryville, Chinatown, Pilsen, Chatham, . . . Edward R. Vrodolyak respected and honored the Square.

Edward V. Vrodlyak was sentenced by Judge Milton Shadur, but Federal Judge Richard Posner bullied the press and the 7th Appellate Court to reverse a Judge's decision -the judge who actually heard the case, weighed the evidence and determined the sentence of probation.

That is Justice? No, that is public opinion. Public opinion has nothing to do with what people actually think - that is why abortion is tagged Choice and SEIU is called Big Labor, or unions. Public opinion is the rigged deck of cards shuffled by a closed club of social engineers, agenda soaked columnists and editorial boards, and opportunists who are protected.

Edward Vrdolyak was an effective public official, a tough in-fighter, and a guy with full and respectful understanding of the public - the working people*, the tax-payers, the home owners and the Squares who work 8-14 hours a day to meet the cost of living and still manage to care for their neighbors, the Law and defend their country.

The Editorial Boards and iconic columnists are doing the bidding of Closed Club America and have tossed history down the Orwellian memory hole - it was Edward R. Vrdolyak working for Mayor Jane Byrne who registered the hundreds of thousands black men and women who stood on the political sidelines back in the late 1970's -it was boss Vrdolyak Head of the Democratic Party of Cook County who did that. Vrdolyak invented the Harold Washington Movement. That is a fact. Long before Slim Coleman and Lou Palmer ever looked at the books of registered African Americans, Edward Vrodlyak was doing the work. History is not cute, but what is done to history by the Closed Club is cute as hell - in Ireland they are called Cute 'Hoors.

Edward Vrdolyak had his day in court some time ago and faced the judicial music.

Federal Judge Richard Posner, a leading member of the closed club of social engineers et al., changed the score.

If you wonder why there is a Tea Party boiling over in this country consider what has happened to Edward Vrdolyak.


*

Hegewisch is a real place, and it's not in Harry Potter-land. But mention it to Chicagoans and 75 percent of them will give you that tilted-head, pursed-lipped look of Huh? Where?

It is, in fact, a neighborhood of Chicago, as south and east as the city goes. It's possible to play Twister with left hand on Chicago, left foot on Burnham, Ill., and right foot on Hammond, Ind.

It's a lovely and leafy place — bungalows in a row with tidy, manicured lawns. Lots of Polish surnames. Among them: the Dombrowskis, proprietors of Club 81 Too on Avenue M. It's a bar with a separate restaurant that's only open on Wednesdays and Fridays. If you ran this ambitious of a seafood operation with a short staff, you'd be open only twice a week too.

My first visit here on a Friday evening was greeted by Leo Dombrowski, a white-haired man in a Hawaiian shirt. There's his sister, Joan, apron omnipresent, full of institutional memory and sass. Brother George stands guard behind the bar. And the memory of brother Frank "Big Cheese" Dombrowski, its longtime manager until his death last year, looms as large here as his stout frame.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Judge Posner -Is He Smoking the Dope He Advocates? He Has An Opinion!!!! On Everything! Once Again It Is Other Judges! Hear Me?

Judge Posner is so powerful there is Cyber Posner -no kidding.



Judge Richard Posner is a Brahmin - an untouchable. How he came to be a Brahmin? The media, the lawyers, the gutless politicians. Smart guy.

He is universally - in that small but powerful universe of Progressive Thought - regarded as smarter than God - if God had gone to Yale and Harvard Law, but He ( all three of him) didn't.

Judge Posner is the big-mouth of the United States Seventh Court of Appeals. He has an opinion on everything -legalize reefer, give every woman an abortion upon conception, make sure that every American affords Richard Posner Enterprises the opportunity to make more millions of dollars, and every black robe in America is stupid, vague and vapid.

Recently, Posner bullied America into overturning a fellow judge's sentencing of Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak. Ah, Collegiality! A One-way Street. Talk about the Uber- Butt-insky! That incident was where I became Posner Conscious. Judge Posner rails against politics and yet politics is the rose petaled path he trods - at the University of Chicago, in Trust Law and all over the Democratic and Republican and maybe even Communist Party ( Ma and Pa were members) trails.

Once again, Judge Posner goes where he belongs . . .where ever he wants . . . into the Blago Trial:

In his opinion, Posner quickly came to Zagel's defense. In the first sentence, he wrote: "An experienced trial judge made a reasonable determination that the release of jurors' names before the end of the trial would expose the jurors to the widespread mischief that is a daily if not hourly occurrence on the Internet."

Posner then began a scathing review of Easterbrook's decision, calling it "unsound and confusing."

He attacked the presumption of media access. "Jurors are entitled to be treated with respectful regard for their privacy and dignity, rather than as media prey."

He said the panel ignored the consequences of Zagel having to possibly renege on a promise made to jurors and argued that there's no need for a further hearing. "The jurors may well be upset, concerned for their privacy, fearful of the prospect of harassment and angry at having been induced by false pretenses to agree to take months out of their life to perform jury service."

Posner even went so far as to say that Zagel might have to declare a mistrial.

It's highly unusual for a judge to speak so harshly of a previous opinion, Monico said. Putting aside issues of civility, the controversy raises more questions. Is there a real concern of jury tampering if names are released before the end of the trial? What influence will Posner's opinion have on the hearing?
asachdev@tribune.com

Judge Posner not only looks like Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm but he acts like Larry David's character as well.

Just a helot's opinion. Judge you are a beauty!

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Sacred Cow Judge Dick Posner Says Pearl Harbor Was a Sneak Attack!


The most sensible legislative response to the financial collapse of September 2008 would have been to do nothing until the causes of the collapse were fully understood. Richard Posner is a U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the Seventh Circuit and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School

Larry David look-alike and Colleague Over-Turning Federal Sacred Cow, Dope Smoking Advocate, Abortion Loving* and Trust Multi-Millionaire Richard Posner** of the Federal 7th District Right Here says that spending more money than we take in is bad - two years after everyone else with a room temperature IQ said the same thing and were called Tea Baggers!

Judge, You go,Boy!

What else you got, Judge?

Posner Pointers:

1. Never spread Mayonnaise that has been left out unrefrigerated in the sun for three days on your lunch time banana . . . it's bad.

2. George Armstrong Custer should not have split his forces nor employed California Joe, prior to his attack on Little Big Horn.

3. I refuse to buy stock in a carburetor company.

4. A used condom is just that . . .walk away.

5. When the gas indicator says empty do not floor it.

6. Never eat anything larger than my head.

7. Do not rent anything with Paulie Shore.

8. It is no coincidence that blond hair evolved in Scandinavia and northern Europe, probably as an alternative means for women to advertise their youth, as their bodies were concealed under heavy clothing. I happen to be bald.

9. I should not have clouted my relative Mike to that job with the Secretary of State! Red China should not have allowed that You Tube video to go viral.

10. Partial Birth Abortion? Never felt a thing! But, it's gotta hurt like hell. . .it ain't me Babe!

Judge Posner, Folks! He'll be here all of his life! Genius.
*. . .if doctors were not threatened with prosecution, what of their patients? Had anyone suffered injury or been denied an otherwise legal abortion? Over the past year, the law on partial-birth abortion in Indiana had not been enjoined, so that state offered a laboratory of sorts. In the course of the year, there had been no shift away from D&E abortions; in fact, the number had increased. As Judge Easterbrook summed it up, quite tellingly, the "plaintiffs do not contend that in any of the states where a partial-birth abortion law is in effect, even one woman has been injured or denied an abortion because of the law."

For Judge Richard Posner, who wrote the dissent, the whole apparatus of argument his colleagues brought forth was specious. It was at least conceivable to him that the D&X procedure could be better for a particular woman, because it might reduce the amount of her bleeding or the dangers of infection from fetal parts left behind. To deny the choice in that case could be, for that woman, an "undue burden."

But Judge Posner's claim did not really rest on empirical tests, for the procedure was too rare to have been the object of a systematic study. For Judge Posner, the case turned on axioms. He began with the right of women to choose abortion, and anything that burdened or qualified that right was presumptively suspect, wrong, unconstitutional. In one of the curious sidelights of the dissenting opinion, Judge Posner expressed a deep concern for abortionists, who "are frequent subjects of picketing and other harassment and occasionally of physical assaults." But he had no such solicitude for the one whose assault is the object of the surgery: "From the standpoint of the fetus . . . it makes no difference whether, when the skull is crushed, the fetus is entirely within the uterus or ifs feet are outside the uterus."

The American Medical Association had testified that the D&X procedure was not strictly necessary for the health of the mother; still, there were opinions on either side. Judge Posner expressed a muted contempt for the experts with whom he disagreed, and he wondered what the courts would have made of a legislative finding of fact, in the South, in the 1950s, that blacks as a group were "slow learners."


http://smartgirlpolitics.ning.com/profiles/blogs/obama-and-elena-kagan-they
**Posner's political and moral views are hard to summarize. His parents were affiliated with the American Communist party, and in his youth and in the 1960s as law clerk to William J. Brennan he was generally counted as a liberal. However, in reaction to some of the perceived excesses of the late 1960s, Posner developed a strongly conservative bent. He encountered Chicago School economists Aaron Director and George Stigler while a professor at Stanford.[3] Posner summarized his views on law and economics in his 1973 book The Economic Analysis of Law.[3]

Today, although generally considered a figure of the right, Posner's pragmatism, his qualified moral relativism and moral skepticism,[8] and his affection for the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche set him apart from most American conservatives. Among his other influences are the American jurists Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Learned Hand.

Antitrust
Along with Robert Bork, Posner helped shape the antitrust policy changes of the 1970s through his idea that 1960s antitrust laws were in fact making prices higher for the consumer rather than lower, while he viewed lower prices as the essential end goal of any antitrust policy.[3] Posner and Bork's theories on antitrust evolved into the prevailing view in academia and at the Justice Department of the George H.W. Bush Administration.[3]

Privacy
He famously opposed the right of privacy in 1981, arguing that the kinds of interests protected under privacy are not distinctive. He contended that privacy is protected in ways that are economically inefficient.

Abortion
He has written several opinions sympathetic to abortion rights, including a decision holding "partial-birth abortion" constitutionally protected in some circumstances.

Breach of contract
He has written favorably of efficient breach of contracts. Breach often leads to a worse result for society: if a seller breaches a contract to deliver building materials, the buyer's workers might go idle while the buyer looks for a replacement. The lost production is a cost to the company and its workers and, as such, is a social cost. An efficient breach would be a situation in which the benefits are higher than the costs, because the seller is better off for breaching even after paying damages to the buyer (for instance, if some third party had a much greater need for the building materials, and was willing to pay a price high enough to both out-price the original receiver and offset the realized costs of breach of contract).

Drugs
He has characterized the U.S.'s "War on Drugs" as "quixotic". In a 2003 CNBC interview, he discussed the difficulty of enforcing criminal marijuana laws and asserted that it is hard to justify the criminalization of marijuana compared to other substances.

Animal rights
Posner engaged in a debate on the ethics of using animals in research with the philosopher Peter Singer in 2001 at Slate magazine. He argues that animal rights conflicts with the moral relevance of humanity, and that empathy for pain and suffering of animals does not supersede advancing society.[9] He further argues that he trusts his moral intuition until it is shown to be wrong, and that his moral intuition says "it is wrong to give as much weight to a dog's pain as to an infant's pain." He leaves open the possibility that facts on animal and human cognition can and may change his intuition in the future; he further states that people whose opinions were changed by consideration of the ethics presented in Singer's book Animal Liberation failed to see the "radicalism of the ethical vision that powers [their] view on animals, an ethical vision that finds greater value in a healthy pig than in a profoundly retarded child, that commands inflicting a lesser pain on a human being to avert a greater pain to a dog, and that, provided only that a chimpanzee has 1 percent of the mental ability of a normal human being, would require the sacrifice of the human being to save 101 chimpanzees."[9]

Torture
When reviewing Alan Dershowitz's book, "Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge", Posner wrote in The New Republic, September 2002 that "If torture is the only means of obtaining the information necessary to prevent the detonation of a nuclear bomb in Times Square, torture should be used—and will be used—to obtain the information. ... no one, who doubts that this is the case, should be in a position of responsibility."[10][11]

Prisoners
In a dissent from an earlier ruling by his protege Frank Easterbrook, Posner wrote that Easterbrook's decision that female guards could watch male prisoners while in the shower or bathroom must stem from a belief that prisoners are "members of a different species, indeed as a type of vermin, devoid of human dignity and entitled to no respect.... I do not myself consider the 1.5 million inmates of American prisons and jails in that light."[3]

Newspapers
Posner supported the creation of a law barring hyperlinks or paraphrasing of copyrighted material as a means to prevent what he views as free riding on newspaper journalism.[12][13][14] His co-blogger Gary Becker simultaneously posted a contrasting opinion that while the Internet might hurt newspapers, it will not harm the vitality of the press, but rather embolden it.[15]

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Sun Times Demands Eddie V Do-Over"" Let's Find a Judge Who Will Do What We Want!"


Months ago Judge Shadur sentenced Edward R. Vrdolyak and the Sun Times Editorial Board screamed like Rag Sheenies. They fully expected Eddie V to go to the Guillotine!

They screamed the same way about George Ryan.

They Scream about everything, They are screamers.

Judge Richard Posner is a scream. He looks like Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm and from everything that I've read about and by him over the last thirty years, I'll bet he is as about as warm and as genuine as that character. Take a look at this - right out of the HBO script -


Posner noted that anyone once prominent in government can gin up a lot of letters.

"The business with the letters? It's ridiculous," he argued. "You have a person like this, he could generate a thousand letters."


'Letters????!!!! Anyone can get letters! You gotta write letters to get letters! I got Letters! Track, Glee Club! Alger Hiss Society! Letters? What's Letters?'


Posner's the appeals judge, anti-trust litigation game setter ( Founder of Compass Lexecon* - the Dictionary of getting, acquiring or keeping your billions of dollars), University of Chicago Professor, Abortion Friendly Judge, Dope Friendly Judge and Sun Times Editorial Board friendly judge.

I have always liked and admired Eddie Vrdolyak.

Judge Posner is a Protected White Elephant - 'Oh so, thoroughly above reproach, Me Lawd!'

I am thoroughly unimpressed by Appeals Judge Posner. He's an Ayn Rand character in the flesh. Posner plays with Microsoft and Fast Eddie does deals for people. I'll cotton to Alderman Vrodolyak any day.

Judge Posner screams that Eddie Vrodolyak should be sentenced in a judicial do-over.

The Sun Times Mensa Our Gang Comedians scream along with the Judge. Hell, I'll bet they asked the Judge to do the screaming.

I would love to see Sun Times pitbull journalist sink is buckers into the career and cases and confederates of Judge Richard Posner. They won't take the leash off of Novak because he'd tear buttocks -cheek to cheek - off of Posner and Pals. They'd make fast Eddie seem like a stylite.

It is interesting what Judge Posner screamed, when damning the already tried, convicted and sentenced Edward R. Vrdolyak: - "If you get old enough, you can commit a white-collar crime, and nothing's going to happen to you,"

Sic em, Novak!


Founded in 1977, Compass Lexecon's Chicago office pioneered the application of economics to legal and regulatory matters. We currently have a professional staff of more than 200 individuals, including 60 highly skilled Ph.D. economists and econometricians and more than 60 other individuals with advanced degrees located in seven offices.

Our practices are led by some of the most recognized and respected economic thinkers in the world including six former chief economists of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division. We maintain relationships with numerous high-profile academic affiliates, including Nobel Prize winners.

Antitrust, our founding practice area, remains a central part of our business. Our practice areas have expanded to include other areas of litigation including securities, intellectual property, accounting, risk management, valuation, corporate governance and employment matters. In all these areas, we often provide detailed damages analyses. Our non-litigation-related practice areas include matters such as business consulting, regulatory policy and public policy.

Compass Lexecon is a wholly owned subsidiary of FTI Consulting, Inc., a global business advisory firm.


http://www.compasslexecon.com/about_us/Pages/default.aspx