Thomas Barr Jr.'s Blog, page 9
August 3, 2015
Bradley Manning Made WikiLeaks an Overnight Sensation
Former Repug Governor���s Law to Stop Corrupt Politicians From Receiving Pensions Leads to Him Losing
Story by Travis Fain of the Daily
Press
Former Gov. Bob McDonnell must lose his state pension under legislation that he himself signed into law, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said in an opinion released Friday.
The law's intent was always clear: Government officials
convicted of a felony for misconduct in office would lose their state pensions. It passed after former Newport News Del. Phil Hamilton was indicted in 2011.
But there was a potential
catch in McDonnell's case: The law leaves it to the employer to determine that the misconduct occurred after the law passed, and to inform the Virginia Retirement System.
Who, some wondered, employs a former governor?
Gov. Terry McAuliffe asked
Herring to weigh in, and Herring's office determined that it's the sitting governor, whom the Virginia General Assembly has previously identified as the "chief personnel officer of the Commonwealth."
Now McAuliffe will inform McDonnell, grant him a
hearing required by law and move to cancel his pension, spokesman Brian Coy said. The formal notice will come within a few days, Coy said.
or positions," according to the opinion, which Herring signed.
An attempt to reach McDonnell's spokesman late Friday afternoon for comment wasn't immediately successful. The law also allows him to appeal the issue to a circuit court judge.
The
former governor's pension would have been about $3,900 a month if he'd started drawing this year, and $5,400 a month if he retired at 65, and he may still recover some money. A footnote in the attorney general's opinion notes that McDonnell can seek a refund
of his own contributions to the system, and the interest they generated.
He can also seek full reinstatement if his conviction is overturned on appeal.
The law kicks in before all possible appeals are exhausted, though. By legal definition,
McDonnell was a convicted felon when his trial judge entered his conviction on 11 counts of corruption, the opinion states. That's also the trigger for the loss of voting and firearm rights, Herring noted.
Some punishments contingent on a criminal conviction
begin only, "after all rights of appeal have terminated," the opinion states, but that language isn't part of Virginia pension law.
"We must presume that the difference in the choice of language was intentional," the opinion states.
A 4th Circuit
Court of Appeals panel has already rejected McDonnell's first appeal, and he has asked for a second. McDonnell maintains he broke no laws, and his case could ultimately go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
McDonnell's wife, Maureen, was also convicted last
year, and her initial appeal is pending before the 4thCircuit. Both were convicted of taking money and gifts from a wealthy Virginia businessman who wanted their help promoting a dietary supplement.
When the Daily Press checked
in January, no government entity had asked the retirement system to deny benefits to a convicted public employee since the legislation was enacted in 2011, according to spokeswoman Jeanne Chenault. The law didn't affect Hamilton's pension, Chenault said, because
it didn't take effect until July 1, 2011 and Hamilton's actions predated it.
The realization that Hamilton would still get his pension spurred legislators to pass this law. McDonnell signed it about two months before his family got a $15,000 check from
businessman Jonnie R. Williams Sr. to cover catering costs at a daughter's wedding, and about a month before Williams treated Maureen McDonnell to a New York City shopping trip.
July 24, 2015
President Obama to visit Oklahoma prison housing Kwame Kilpatrick
Story by Robert Snell of the Detroit News
President Barack Obama will visit Kwame Kilpatrick’s federal prison in Oklahoma on Thursday, offering a reminder of how far their careers and fortunes have diverged since both were
viewed as rising political figures eight years ago.
Obama is scheduled to meet with inmates and law enforcement officials during a visit to the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution outside of Oklahoma City. The visit comes amid the president’s
push to reform criminal sentencing laws, particularly for low-level, non-violent offenders.
“I don’t expect any interaction with the former mayor,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz wrote in an email Tuesday.
Kilpatrick, 45,
is serving a 28-year sentence at El Reno for racketeering and other crimes related to the Detroit City Hall corruption scandal. He is scheduled to be released Aug. 1, 2037.
Kilpatrick has appealed the convictions and is awaiting a decision by the 6th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
His family has expressed interest in requesting a presidential pardon, but Kilpatrick won’t get one from Obama. That’s because federal prison inmates must wait five years before requesting a pardon. Kilpatrick
was convicted and sentenced to prison in October 2013.
The two have crossed paths before.
Obama, a U.S. senator from Illinois, met with Kilpatrick in Detroit in May 2007 and sought the young mayor’s endorsement during his run for the presidential
nomination.
The relationship cooled a year later. In September 2008, an Obama spokesman said Kilpatrick should resign amid the text-message scandal.
"(Obama) believes it is time for the mayor to step aside so that the city can move forward and
get back to business,” Obama spokesman Brent Colburn said.
Kilpatrick was in jail when Obama was elected president in 2008.
In his memoir, Kilpatrick said he “hated on” Obama as he watched election coverage from his jail cell.
Kilpatrick wrote that he felt pride at seeing a fellow African-American win the historic election, but he writes that feeling later turned to enmity.
Kilpatrick writes he “hated on” Obama “a little, asking God, ‘Why? Why him
and not me?’”
July 17, 2015
Let's talk Gettysburg
Greece is a victim of its own cronyism and corruption
Story by Pavlos Eleftheriadis Why is Greece so different and why does the government of Alexis Tsipras send such mixed
messages towards Europe? Many people believe that the origins of Greece’s problems lie in its four-century domination by the Ottomans, which meant that it missed defining moments in European history, such as the Renaissance, the Reformation
and the Industrial Revolution, and is following a highly personal and informal model of government that suits an absolutist ruler but which is incompatible with the professional state that is dominated by the rule of law – and is a requirement for being
a member of the EU.
But even though Greece was very poor, it was a pioneer in democratic government. The first constitution of 1822 recognised the equal dignity and freedom of all people, whereas the constitution of 1844
set up the first Parliament in Athens, four years before there was one in Berlin, and established for the first time in Europe universal suffrage for men.
Most European states were hierarchical and more or less authoritarian before
the Second World War. Immediately after the war, however, most states introduced social insurance and welfare that
protected the weakest and poorest and gave the promise of equal opportunity for economic success and social recognition. In Britain, this was done through the NHS in 1948 and the introduction of unemployment and housing benefits and the expansion of the university
system. European societies that did this became far more egalitarian. Their politics became less confrontational and their economies prospered on the basis of the European social model of openness to markets, combined with social welfare for those that needed
it.
Greece did not follow this path. Absorbed by a ferocious civil war, which lasted three years,
killed thousands and divided the country to Right and Left, the post-war settlement never created a welfare state. Even today, with more than one
and half million unemployed, there is no universal unemployment or housing benefit. More than 90 per cent of the unemployed receive no help from the state. The poorest rely on charity, mostly offered by the Church and the city of Athens. There is no universal
health service, health insurance depends on one’s employment or profession. The intensity of the civil war meant that there was no trust on which to build such institutions or any long-term plan for the redistribution of resources. Greece remained a
deeply hierarchical society, where social class, political affiliation and family dominated one’s prospects. Clientelism was a substitute for social insurance.
The wounds of war were only healed in the 1980s, as the Socialist party (PaSoK) won
power and the country joined the European Union. Its leader, Andreas Papandreou, remained highly confrontational and embarked on a programme of public spending and of hiring his supporters to public sector jobs, to redress “historic injustices”.
Funds from the EU to assist Greece in dealing with the shock of entering the Common Market made his work much easier.
Starting in the Eighties populist spending and cronyism became the norm for both main parties, PaSoK and
the conservative New Democracy party, which followed Papandreou’s practices when it returned to power in the 1990s. The civil service became part of the spoils of government. There was no room for universal benefits or long-term strategies of assisting
the poor. Everyone was out to secure the best short-term outcome for themselves. The big winners were the public sector unions, the utility companies’ unions and the professionals: doctors, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists. The economy remained closed
and protectionist, working largely for the benefit of powerful special interests. The New Democracy government of Kostas Karamanlis excelled in this mismanagement, appointed an estimated 150,000 civil servants and finally lost control of public finances in
2007-2009.
Why didn’t the Greeks resist this slide into cronyism and corruption? In the late 1980s there was a movement to open up radio and television, until then a state monopoly. Under the pretext of “civil disobedience” wealthy
businessmen set up seven television channels. There was no competition, no process. Once the channels were established, the government issued “temporary” licences. These channels are still operating under “temporary” licences, virtually
without regulation or any safeguards of journalistic independence. They operate at the mercy of the owners who fund them and who use them to support their wider interests (in the oil business, real estate, banking, construction or shipping etc.). The media
owners are virtual oligarchs, with immense economic and political power.
and their favourite politicians. They have lost the trust of the public.
Many Greeks believe that this is the normal way of running an economy and a political system and that this is how Germany, England or France work. The idea that common institutions can work for the benefit of everyone, with impartiality and objectivity, and
not just pretend to do so, is remote from Greek public life. This is why Mr Tsipras is believed when he speaks of the EU as an instrument of “extreme neoliberal” capitalists and other elites.
The crisis of 2010 meant that Greece could not remain a member of the eurozone without opening up its economy and fixing its deep social injustices. Such reforms required trust, but there was none to be had. The governments of PaSoK and
New Democracy largely balanced the books, but refused to destroy the privileges of the special interests that kept them in power. The government of Syriza also resists reform, ostensibly because of hostility to “capitalism”, but in reality because
most special interests have switched their allegiance to Syriza as the real anti-reform party and the vehicle of a new cronyism. Hence, Syriza has done nothing to regulate the media oligarchs, open up the economy, or introduce meritocracy in the civil service.
It even refused to introduce a universal unemployment benefit by way of a “minimum guaranteed income” as proposed by the
EU.
The deeper foundation on which populists and demagogues thrive is lack of trust in common institutions. As long as the Greek political system does not restore this trust, real reform will prove highly elusive.
Pavlos Eleftheriadis
is a barrister and a Fellow of Mansfield College at the University of Oxford. He is also active in Greek politics with the new centre-Left political party, To Potami
