Kirk thankful for...more canon fodder for his criminal wars

My Senator Mark Kirk never misses a chance to promote the war party agenda. Finishing his 14th year in Congress, he's supported spending every one of the several trillion dollars for our endless criminal warfare in the Middle East. He's never criticized bellicose American militarism unless its to lament it's not aggressive enough.

His latest valentine to vicious militarism jumps out of his Thanksgiving Day message to constituents, "Why I'm Thankful This Holiday Season." Invoking his mom's request what he's thankful for, Kirk lists two things: first, serving Illinois in Congress and second, 'our troops serving overseas'.  Without them he says, 'the world would be far more dangerous and unpredictable.'

He should try telling that to the millions of folks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia who have been killed, injured or displaced by senseless American warfare. Kirk gets the big bucks from Uncle Sam to promote the interests of the war party pure and simple. He's never met a proposed military intervention he didn't love. America and the world have a lot less to be thankful war with promoters of endless war like Kirk. He's never learned, and apparently, after 14 years, he never will.

Untouchable Ness could have saved Ferguson

Eighty years ago, Elliot Ness, Mr. Untouchable himself, became Director of Safety for Cleveland, OH, responsible for both the police and fire departments, Ness encountered one of the most corrupt police departments in the nation. There was no training academy. New recruits, mostly political appointees, were given a badge and a gun and told to uphold the law. Ness, learned the new field of scientific criminology from the highly revered criminologist August Vollmer at the University o Chicago. He immediately set up Cleveland's (and one of America's) first police training academies. He sought out idealistic, young college students instead of uneducated political hacks. He even quietly, because it was controversial, began recruiting African American recruits to patrol Cleveland's black community because he felt black policemen could better relate to and police Cleveland's inner city.

Too bad a little of Ness's wise, progressive approach to public policing didn't rub off on the city fathers of Ferguson, MO. If it had, Ferguson may have been able to avoid becoming the poster city for a failed police force, a failed city administration and probably America's least desirable city to live in.

Anderson's should cancel Bush's appearance

Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville should cancel their scheduled appearance of former president George W. Bush next Monday.  It's bad enough that there was no investigation and prosecution of President Bush for the immoral, illegal and criminal war that he launched against Iraq in 2003. But to honor him by letting him hawk his new book about Poppy Bush "41" adds an unwarranted air of legitimacy to a man who should be sitting in a prison cell for war crimes instead of adding to his fabulous wealth peddling book sales in Naperville. Anyone willing to fork over 40 bucks to Bush for a chance to meet him should say this: "Gee, I've never met a war criminal before."  

Ham sandwich indicted....Wilson walks

Some random thoughts on Michael Brown killing:

•Bob McCullough sounded more like a defense attorney for Darren Wilson rather than a prosecutor charged with seeking justice for excessive use of force

•Law enforcement and the criminal justice system left no opportunity to do the wrong thing go unfulfilled, from the apparent unnecessary killing of Michael Brown to the bizarre presentation McCullough made to the Grand Jury

•Once McCullough refused to recuse himself, and Gov. Nixon failed to take him off the case, the system was bound to fail the Brown family

•The old saying that a prosecutor can influence the Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich is still valid. It's just that Darren Wilson is more indictment proof than a ham sandwich

•Eeriest scene from the post decision demonstration: protesters and police amid smoke and tear gas moving under a large sign over the street proclaiming "SEASONS GREETINGS"

Crazy Texas about the murder crazy man

If Texas follows through on its vow to execute certified schizophrenic Scott Penetti, December 3, for killing his in-laws twenty years ago, it will make him the third murder victim of that terrible event. Penetti , 56, was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 20 years old requiring several hospitalizations for delusions and psychotic episodes. Texas allowed a certified crazy man to represent himself at his trial, during which he attempted to subpoena John F. Kennedy and Jesus Christ. Apparently, Texas officials thought that was evidence of Penetti's good faith commitment to defend himself rather than further evidence of his insanity.

 

Texas executed 500 people between 1976, when the death penalty was re-instated, and 2013. That is five times as many humans as both Virginia and Oklahoma, the next most prolific killers of persons to satisfy the bloodlust of their citizenry.

 

Penetti almost certainly should never take a breath of free air again. But neither should politicians and judges arrange his final breath through senseless state sponsored violence which demeans and degrades our society instead of affirming its mission of promoting the betterment of us all, including Mr. Penetti.

COD President Breuder spends lavishly on backs of students

At the November 20th College of DuPage Board meeting, President Robert Breuder defended himself from numerous charges of financial mismanagement by saying he always spends within the annual COD budget. He really got my attention with his boast how he's raised COD's bank balance from $50 million five years ago to $160 million today. On the surface that sounds fine. But consider that year after year he raises COD tuitio...n so his lavish spending can continue while he continues to pile up a savings surplus. Just this year Breuder proposed a substantial $6 per hour tuition increase. The Board blanched just a tad, reducing it to $4 an hour, still a needless financial dagger in largely strapped student pocketbooks. When Breuder's financial shenanigans really heated up several months later, Breuder conveniently tried to pre-empt the gathering spending storm by trumpeting, cue the trumpets, a $2 per hour reduction in student tuition effective in 2015. Not content to simply announce the reduction and move on, Breuder spent the next 15 minutes describing endless financial scenarios which, he claimed, could put COD at great risk by his magnanimous action. But, like Mighty Mouse, President Breuder was here to save the day for the COD student body.

As it turned out, the Board, realizing the enormous pressure being focused on them as well as President Breuder, rescinded the entire $4 an hour tuition increase. But, without the long overdue scrutiny about massive overspending and lavish goodies for the President and his Board, that tuition decrease wouldn't have been proposed, much less passed.

Critics of President Breuder and his Board are not a right wing conspiracy trying to destroy an educational treasure. They represent the entire political spectrum and simply want to make COD financially and ethically responsible to the students, the faculty and the community.

Book Pick: The Opening Kickoff, by Dave Revsine

Subtitled 'The tumultuous birth of a football nation', The Opening Kickoff chronicles the 25 year period from 1890 to 1915, when college football evolved from an almost collegial club sport to the emerging football nation that endlessly obsesses us a hundred years later. In 1890, it was college ball which began to captivate the nation. The football universe was located in the east at Ivy League Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Rutge...rs.

The 1890 game was a fierce, brutal spectacle of frequent kicking, and pile driving runs using formations such as the flying wedge that racked up a dozen or so deaths and countless crippling injuries yearly. Once football started generating fan and alumni revenues, colleges poured resources into the sport and threw educational values aside. Many of the good players were ghost students or simply pay-to-play ringers. As the deaths and the fakery issues mounted, schools debated both cancelling football programs or demanding wholesale reformation. In 1905, eighteen deaths prompted President Roosevelt to drag Ivy League school presidents to the White House for a session with the Bully Pulpit, which resulted in some safety and educational reforms.
  
The Midwest educational powerhouses Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Chicago scrambled to cash in on the largess being reaped by their Ivy League role models. Interestingly, University of Chicago, which abolished football in 1939, was arguably the most flagrant violator of the educational mission. Founder John D. Rockefeller lusted to compete with the revered Eastern schools in football as well as education, so he arranged for legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg to be hired even before the U of C opened; and the Maroons played their first game just a week later. Stagg was relentless in cashing in financially; scheduling 44 of his first 47 games at home to gobble up gate receipts. Wisconsin, among other schools refused to play against Chicago for a time as a result.

By 1915, the ball was reduced in size to facilitate the forward pass, flying wedge type running plays were banned and safer equipment was mandated. The game essentially adopted the form still present today. But a hundred years later we still see relentless recruiting and payment scandals, players who major in basket weaving, and programs that turn a blind eye to scandalous behavior such as occurred at Penn State, to keep the billion dollar college football gravy train on track.