Friends of ours: Joe "the Builder" Andriacchi
There's only one politician in Illinois who can make Republican gubernatorial candidate Judy Barr Topinka look like a reformer: Gov. Rod "The Unreformer" Blagojevich.
Blagojevich, a Democrat, is also known as "Official A." But that one is on the tongues of rampant speculators who read federal court documents. I'd rather stick to "The Unreformer." It's folksier.
Topinka is looking better by comparison because Blagojevich is being pounded by a scandal a day, with federal investigations of state pension deals, patronage hiring and contract cronyism.
So Judy should be playing "Lady of Spain" on her accordion, waltzing nimbly toward the governor's mansion, correct? Perhaps not.
Blagojevich has entertained the taxpayers of Illinois since he took office as a reformer with the backing of his now estranged father-in-law Ald. Richard Mell (33rd). One of the governor's first reforms was to hire Joe Cini, a City Hall guy from the mayor's Department of General Services, as state patronage chief.
Cini came to my attention in those heady reform days when Blagojevich put Bill Fanning on the Illinois Gaming Board. In 2004, Fanning took part in a mysterious board vote to support a casino in Rosemont, something former Gov. George Ryan wanted as business as usual. But state and federal investigators said a Rosemont casino might not be prudent.
Some Rosemont casino investors were tied to Mayor Richard Daley's City Hall, like Sue Degnan, wife of Daley's political brain Tim Degnan. She was listed, most curiously, as a disadvantaged minority. But the reason the FBI didn't like Rosemont had to do with something else. Investigators believed some Rosemont casino investors had ties to the Chicago Outfit.
After the vote, I learned Fanning was a former shirttail relative of reputed Outfit boss Joe "the Builder" Andriacchi. When I started asking around, he quietly told board members he knew Andriacchi only slightly, then he was quietly let go.
The Blagojevich administration, in full reform mode, quickly fingered Cini as the one who recommended Fanning. And last year, when the indictments of Daley's patronage chief Robert Sorich made news, Blagojevich was asked about patronage armies and reform. He told reporters he called Cini "just to make sure" there was no patronage going on.
"I called up our patronage ... [here Blagojevich stopped in midsentence remembering that patronage meant `business as usual'] "He's not even that. He's intergovernmental affairs director, we even changed the name, and just to get some reassurance ... and his answer kind of summed it up: Of course we don't do those things," Blagojevich said in October of 2005.
Lo and behold, now Cini is under federal investigation for "those things." It was detailed in a fascinating Tribune scoop on July 2 by Tribune reporters Ray Long, Rick Pearson and John Chase. They reported how Blagojevich's own inspector general denounced the administration in a report for subverting state patronage laws, including violating provisions designed to give military veterans preference in winning state jobs. "This effort reflects not merely an ignorance of the law, but complete and utter contempt for the law," wrote Blagojevich's first executive inspector general, Zaldwaynaka "Z" Scott.
Since then it's been story after story, with Blagojevich on the defensive, desperately shaking hands at parades, head bobbing furiously like one of those dolls they give out to the first 10,000 fans at the ballgame, loudly insisting he's a reformer. He says he's glad to hear about the problems, because that way he can fix them. But while Rod is perceived as a phony, Judy can't seem to get much traction. Perhaps that's because Republicans know her too well.
More than half of all rank-and-file Republicans who voted in the primary voted for other candidates. They see Topinka as the handmaiden of the Republican side of the Illinois combine, a creature of party bosses. Included among these is "Big" Bob Kjellander, the Republican National Committee treasurer who scored millions of dollars in finder's fees from Illinois state pension deals under the Blagojevich administration. How's that for bipartisanship cooperation?
Folks trying to explain her problems with conservative Republicans often mention her liberal social views, her support of gay rights and abortion. That's part of it, but a small part.
The core Republican vote is angry over Illinois political corruption and the taxes and the Kjellanders. They know that Topinka, as chairman of the Illinois GOP, helped drive former U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald out of politics. She refused to endorse him for re-election though he was the incumbent, because Fitzgerald had the audacity to bring politically independent federal prosecutors to Illinois.
Topinka's bosses didn't like that. But the rank-and-file sure did. So even though Blagojevich's troubles delight the Topinka camp, they must be haunted by this:
Rank-and-file Republicans aren't well organized. They allow themselves to be divided. But like elephants, they never forget.
Thanks to John Kass
Monday, July 17, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
I Amuse You?
The famous scene from Goodfellas with Ray Liotta being asked by Joe Pesci if Ray thinks Joe is clown.
Jerry Springer Object of Mob Hitmen?
Friends of ours: Tommy "Horsehead" Scafidi, John Stanfa
During a discussion with Fox News host Geraldo Rivera on the July 13 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly wondered aloud if Mafia hit man Tommy "Horsehead" Scafidi -- who was allegedly ordered to murder Rivera -- could "have killed [Air America radio host] Jerry Springer" instead.
After laughing, Rivera responded: "I can name a couple of other people off the top of my head." O'Reilly then suggested another potential target: former MSNBC host Maury Povich. (Rivera recently interview Scafidi who claims that the hit was orded by Philadephia Mob Boss, John Stanfa, in 1991.)
From the July 13 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:
Video at Media Matters
During a discussion with Fox News host Geraldo Rivera on the July 13 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly wondered aloud if Mafia hit man Tommy "Horsehead" Scafidi -- who was allegedly ordered to murder Rivera -- could "have killed [Air America radio host] Jerry Springer" instead.
After laughing, Rivera responded: "I can name a couple of other people off the top of my head." O'Reilly then suggested another potential target: former MSNBC host Maury Povich. (Rivera recently interview Scafidi who claims that the hit was orded by Philadephia Mob Boss, John Stanfa, in 1991.)From the July 13 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:
RIVERA: Well, what "Horsehead" said he said was, "John, you can't kill Geraldo or any of these high-profile people. It will just bring down more heat on us."
O'REILLY: All right, but I've got a question. Couldn't he have killed Jerry Springer?
RIVERA: [laughing] I can name a couple of other people off the top of my head.
O'REILLY: Yeah, I mean, Maury Povich? All right. So they didn't kill you.
Video at Media Matters
Friday, July 14, 2006
Freedom Will Be Brief for Mafia Cops
Friends of mine: Louis Eppolito, Steven Caracappa
My guess is that one way or the other the Mafia cops are going to the can.
For life.
Although the federal prosecutors put on a masterful RICO case against Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa, convicting them on 70 counts in a racketeering case involving eight mob murders, kidnappings, money laundering, bribery, betraying the badge, drug dealing and general felonious low-lifery, Judge Jack Weinstein warned from pretrial hearings on that the racketeering case was "thin." That the statute of limitations aspect of the prosecution, trying to tie together Mafia contract murders in Brooklyn in the late 1980s and early 1990s to a drug-dealing conspiracy in Las Vegas in 2004 as a single ongoing criminal enterprise, was a "ticking time bomb."
Bang!
On June 30, Weinstein's warning blew up in the faces of the prosecutors like a pre-Fourth of July cherry bomb. But it hardly signaled Independence Day for Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa.
In the end, all the prosecutors managed to accomplish by having a jury return a 70-0 rout of a scattered and lame defense was to remove the word "alleged" from any future mention of the Mafia cops. Eppolito and Caracappa can now until the end of time be legally called murderers, kidnappers, thieves, traitors, mutts, skels without the need of legal qualifiers. Just as we can now refer to Kerik the Krook, we can call them Killer Caracappa and Evil Eppolito, Mafia hit men. But what lies ahead?
Federal prosecutors filed an immediate appeal to have the verdict reinstated. But if you read Weinstein's beautifully written decision on the letter of the law, it's hard to see where any appeals court will find wiggle room. If the appeals court upholds Weinstein, all the feds can retry the Mafia cops for are the Vegas drug charges, which are no joke since Weinstein sentenced each of them to 40 years on those counts.
Still, retried without the spillover prejudicial evidence of eight murders, kidnappings and badge selling, those charges might bring considerably less time for first offenders. If they're convicted at all.
Which brings us full circle to the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, where this Mafia-cops investigation was originally made as a murder case, before it was wrested from them in a superseding federal RICO indictment.
It's no secret that there has been a long-standing competition between the Brooklyn DA's office and the Brooklyn federal prosecutors who often snatch state cases and make headline federal cases out them. One insider tells of the day Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes pointed out of his window in the Metro Tech Center and saw the new headquarters of the Brooklyn prosecutor's tower being erected and remarked, "Look, they're even stealing my [expletive deleted] view."
The reason this case should have stayed with the Brooklyn DA's office all along is that there is no such thing as a federal murder charge. Murder is always a state charge. Murders can be used as tent poles to prop up federal racketeering cases. But racketeering cases have statutes of limitation. A New York state murder charge has no statute of limitations.
If Judge Weinstein's case is upheld on appeal, the Brooklyn DA will be waiting on the courthouse steps to indict Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa on state murder charges. One suspects that there might even be more than the eight murders charged in the federal case. Plus there is the case of Barry Gibbs, who served 19 wrongful years in prison after, he says, he was framed by Eppolito for the 1986 murder of a prostitute on the Belt Parkway.
New defense attorneys will try to make double-jeopardy arguments against retrying Eppolito and Caracappa for the same murders presented in Brooklyn federal court. But just as they were acquitted on a legal technicality in federal court, the Mafia cops can technically be retried for the same murders on a state level because in federal court they were not charged with murder but with racketeering, which is a separate crime.
So, judgment day will come for the Mafia cops because the technical letter of the law will cut both ways.
There is simply no way that Hynes will ever rest knowing that these two monsters with gold shields, who ran around his county kidnapping, murdering, burying bodies in cement, talking bribes, framing people, selling out fellow undercover cops, facilitating murders with NYPD computers, might walk around free.
As Eppolito and Caracappa sit in the Brooklyn federal lockup awaiting a bail hearing until after Weinstein returns from vacation on July 21, they should know that just as there was a ticking time bomb of statute of limitations ticking in their federal case, another time bomb tick-tocks in the Brooklyn DA's office where the Mafia-cops case was first triggered.
One way or the other, the Mafia cops are going to the can.
For life.
Thanks to Denis Hamil
My guess is that one way or the other the Mafia cops are going to the can.
For life.
Although the federal prosecutors put on a masterful RICO case against Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa, convicting them on 70 counts in a racketeering case involving eight mob murders, kidnappings, money laundering, bribery, betraying the badge, drug dealing and general felonious low-lifery, Judge Jack Weinstein warned from pretrial hearings on that the racketeering case was "thin." That the statute of limitations aspect of the prosecution, trying to tie together Mafia contract murders in Brooklyn in the late 1980s and early 1990s to a drug-dealing conspiracy in Las Vegas in 2004 as a single ongoing criminal enterprise, was a "ticking time bomb."Bang!
On June 30, Weinstein's warning blew up in the faces of the prosecutors like a pre-Fourth of July cherry bomb. But it hardly signaled Independence Day for Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa.
In the end, all the prosecutors managed to accomplish by having a jury return a 70-0 rout of a scattered and lame defense was to remove the word "alleged" from any future mention of the Mafia cops. Eppolito and Caracappa can now until the end of time be legally called murderers, kidnappers, thieves, traitors, mutts, skels without the need of legal qualifiers. Just as we can now refer to Kerik the Krook, we can call them Killer Caracappa and Evil Eppolito, Mafia hit men. But what lies ahead?
Federal prosecutors filed an immediate appeal to have the verdict reinstated. But if you read Weinstein's beautifully written decision on the letter of the law, it's hard to see where any appeals court will find wiggle room. If the appeals court upholds Weinstein, all the feds can retry the Mafia cops for are the Vegas drug charges, which are no joke since Weinstein sentenced each of them to 40 years on those counts.
Still, retried without the spillover prejudicial evidence of eight murders, kidnappings and badge selling, those charges might bring considerably less time for first offenders. If they're convicted at all.
Which brings us full circle to the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, where this Mafia-cops investigation was originally made as a murder case, before it was wrested from them in a superseding federal RICO indictment.
It's no secret that there has been a long-standing competition between the Brooklyn DA's office and the Brooklyn federal prosecutors who often snatch state cases and make headline federal cases out them. One insider tells of the day Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes pointed out of his window in the Metro Tech Center and saw the new headquarters of the Brooklyn prosecutor's tower being erected and remarked, "Look, they're even stealing my [expletive deleted] view."
The reason this case should have stayed with the Brooklyn DA's office all along is that there is no such thing as a federal murder charge. Murder is always a state charge. Murders can be used as tent poles to prop up federal racketeering cases. But racketeering cases have statutes of limitation. A New York state murder charge has no statute of limitations.
If Judge Weinstein's case is upheld on appeal, the Brooklyn DA will be waiting on the courthouse steps to indict Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa on state murder charges. One suspects that there might even be more than the eight murders charged in the federal case. Plus there is the case of Barry Gibbs, who served 19 wrongful years in prison after, he says, he was framed by Eppolito for the 1986 murder of a prostitute on the Belt Parkway.
New defense attorneys will try to make double-jeopardy arguments against retrying Eppolito and Caracappa for the same murders presented in Brooklyn federal court. But just as they were acquitted on a legal technicality in federal court, the Mafia cops can technically be retried for the same murders on a state level because in federal court they were not charged with murder but with racketeering, which is a separate crime.
So, judgment day will come for the Mafia cops because the technical letter of the law will cut both ways.
There is simply no way that Hynes will ever rest knowing that these two monsters with gold shields, who ran around his county kidnapping, murdering, burying bodies in cement, talking bribes, framing people, selling out fellow undercover cops, facilitating murders with NYPD computers, might walk around free.
As Eppolito and Caracappa sit in the Brooklyn federal lockup awaiting a bail hearing until after Weinstein returns from vacation on July 21, they should know that just as there was a ticking time bomb of statute of limitations ticking in their federal case, another time bomb tick-tocks in the Brooklyn DA's office where the Mafia-cops case was first triggered.
One way or the other, the Mafia cops are going to the can.
For life.
Thanks to Denis Hamil
"Little Man" Working for the Chicago Mob
Sounds like this is one to skip.
Size does matter: "Little Man" is big on gross-out humor and slapsticky sight gags that appeal to the lowest common denominator, but small on genuinely clever laughs.
Marlon Wayans, technologically manipulated to play a pint-size jewel thief who pretends to be a baby, does look ridiculous in his onesies and matching beanies, which is good for a guffaw here and there. But you can only get so much mileage out of that image, even over a film that's under 90 minutes long (but still feels interminable).
Marlon and his brother/co-star, Shawn, co-wrote the script with brother Keenen Ivory Wayans, who also directs. So if you've seen any of the family's other films ("Scary Movie,""White Chicks"), you know exactly what you're in for: boob jokes, poop jokes, penis jokes, jokes about getting kneed/hit/kicked in the groin.
It's juvenile and repetitive but not all that offensive, until Marlon's character, Calvin Sims, gets pummeled during a beer-soaked arena brawl by a professional hockey player who truly believes he's a baby. That's when you can put away the cake and send home the dinosaur costume guy — the kiddie birthday party is over.
Calvin ends up in this infantilized state after pulling a jewelry store robbery with his partner, wannabe rapper Percy P (Tracy Morgan, making fun of Master P). The two have just stolen a $100,000 diamond at the request of a Chicago mob boss (Chazz Palminteri, eternally stuck in the same role), but with police chasing them, Calvin drops the stone into a purse belonging to up-and-coming ad executive Vanessa Edwards (Kerry Washington, a long way from "Ray").
Vanessa and her husband, Darryl (Shawn Wayans), had just been talking about whether they were ready to start a family, which gives Percy the idea to dress Calvin up as a baby and sneak him into the house to steal the diamond back. Logical, right?
We never see the transformation take place — and we should have, because it actually could have been funny — but all of a sudden, Calvin is lying in a basket on the front porch of Darryl and Vanessa's suburban home, dressed in a diaper and bonnet and swaddled in a pastel blanket. (Naturally, in the three seconds before Darryl steps outside and finds him, a dog lifts his leg to pee on Calvin.)
All the adults are complete idiots, of course, because no one seems to notice or care about how freakish baby Calvin is — the fact that he has a full set of teeth, for example — not even the doctor who examines him. The only one who's onto him is Vanessa's cantankerous dad (comedy veteran John Witherspoon), whom everyone assumes is senile.
Nonetheless, the couple takes him in for the weekend. Hijinks ensue, including nipple biting and violently soiled diapers. In one of the more disturbing sequences, Calvin not only watches Vanessa and Darryl having sex from the railing of his crib, he later joins them in bed.
In this instance, apparently size doesn't matter.
Reviewed by Christy Lemire
Size does matter: "Little Man" is big on gross-out humor and slapsticky sight gags that appeal to the lowest common denominator, but small on genuinely clever laughs.
Marlon Wayans, technologically manipulated to play a pint-size jewel thief who pretends to be a baby, does look ridiculous in his onesies and matching beanies, which is good for a guffaw here and there. But you can only get so much mileage out of that image, even over a film that's under 90 minutes long (but still feels interminable).
Marlon and his brother/co-star, Shawn, co-wrote the script with brother Keenen Ivory Wayans, who also directs. So if you've seen any of the family's other films ("Scary Movie,""White Chicks"), you know exactly what you're in for: boob jokes, poop jokes, penis jokes, jokes about getting kneed/hit/kicked in the groin.
It's juvenile and repetitive but not all that offensive, until Marlon's character, Calvin Sims, gets pummeled during a beer-soaked arena brawl by a professional hockey player who truly believes he's a baby. That's when you can put away the cake and send home the dinosaur costume guy — the kiddie birthday party is over.
Calvin ends up in this infantilized state after pulling a jewelry store robbery with his partner, wannabe rapper Percy P (Tracy Morgan, making fun of Master P). The two have just stolen a $100,000 diamond at the request of a Chicago mob boss (Chazz Palminteri, eternally stuck in the same role), but with police chasing them, Calvin drops the stone into a purse belonging to up-and-coming ad executive Vanessa Edwards (Kerry Washington, a long way from "Ray").
Vanessa and her husband, Darryl (Shawn Wayans), had just been talking about whether they were ready to start a family, which gives Percy the idea to dress Calvin up as a baby and sneak him into the house to steal the diamond back. Logical, right?
We never see the transformation take place — and we should have, because it actually could have been funny — but all of a sudden, Calvin is lying in a basket on the front porch of Darryl and Vanessa's suburban home, dressed in a diaper and bonnet and swaddled in a pastel blanket. (Naturally, in the three seconds before Darryl steps outside and finds him, a dog lifts his leg to pee on Calvin.)
All the adults are complete idiots, of course, because no one seems to notice or care about how freakish baby Calvin is — the fact that he has a full set of teeth, for example — not even the doctor who examines him. The only one who's onto him is Vanessa's cantankerous dad (comedy veteran John Witherspoon), whom everyone assumes is senile.
Nonetheless, the couple takes him in for the weekend. Hijinks ensue, including nipple biting and violently soiled diapers. In one of the more disturbing sequences, Calvin not only watches Vanessa and Darryl having sex from the railing of his crib, he later joins them in bed.
In this instance, apparently size doesn't matter.
Reviewed by Christy Lemire
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