Morning shorts
Friday, Nov 2, 2007 - Posted by Paul Richardson
* Prosecutors ask for email related to Mahajan case
Cook County prosecutors are seeking any e-mail correspondence between Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration and a private auditing firm hired by the state to investigate a politically connected drug-testing company accused of stealing more than $2 million from the state.
Cook County Criminal Court Judge James Obbish Thursday ordered that the e-mails be turned over to the court as part of the criminal case against Anita Mahajan, the indicted owner of the now-defunct K.K. Bio-Science.
* Firm hired by gov releases subpoenaed files in fraud case
* Supreme Court Justice considering Ryan’s last chance for bail
* Supreme Court justice gives Ryan’s bail bid hope
But Stevens could have decided after just looking at the brief from Ryan’s lawyers that there wasn’t enough to proceed, so the fact that he has asked the government to respond bolstered the hopes of Ryan’s lawyers.
‘’It’s encouraging,'’ said former Gov. James R. Thompson, Ryan’s attorney.
* Sen. Schoenberg urges schools to fight moment of silence law
* How did your school do on state tests? Check and compare
* WurfWhile: Why candidates should work with bloggers
What does a good blog campaign strategy look like? It has a story, the campaign’s story, and it develops it. It respects bloggers by not throwing bogus crap at them and engages bloggers by informing them with regular contact, making them part of the campaign and leveraging their ideas to achieve the campaign’s goals.
* Two set to challenge Roskam for House seat
* Michael Sneed: Stroger using a hospital scare tactic?
Is Cook County Board President Todd Stroger planning to threaten the closure of Provident Hospital in order to balance the budget?
Is it true Stroger staffers have been busing in Provident patients to budget hearings in order to build up the fear?
* Chicago Public Radio: Residents torn over library tax hike
* Daley wants stiffer penalties for red-light violators
* Friday Beer Blogging: Macau Edition
- Wumpus - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 9:02 am:
The word scare tactic no longer bothers me, I prefer Hospital Closure DoomsdaY!
- Cassandra - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 9:08 am:
Actually, Provident should be closed or sold. It is not far from the University of Chicago Hospitals and Clinics, which take Medicaid and Medicare, U. of C. is a research institution where one can get far superior care to that available at Provident.
There have always been concerns about the quality
of care at Provident and the taxpayers should not continue to support it.
- Captain America - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 9:24 am:
Provident’s threatened closure is tantamount to an admission that the Stroger Dynasty and the Cook County Board of Commissioners ran Provident Hospital into the ground after Dick Phelan and Ruth Rothstein reopened it. Provident is more or less on life-support anyway, but I don’t view its closure as a positive development.
In effect Stroger is admitting that his father. he, and. the Cook County Baord of Commisioers are completely unfit to serve as stewards of the Cook County health/medical system.
Other than funding increased labor costs, Cook County should not get any additional funds from taxpayers for the operation of its health and medical programs until the County Board turns over the operation of the system to an indpendent Baord of Trustees.
No reform, no money! Starve the beast until it relinquishes operating control of the health medical system.
- Levois - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 9:51 am:
Why did Cook County elect Todd Stroger? Was it the war? Was it Peraica (and I would understand that)? I hope Cook realizes they made a mistake by electing a politician’s son for that position.
- Sarah Fiegenholtz - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 9:53 am:
You get the government you deserve. Cook County voted for Stroger. Now they have to live with it. They should have thought it through before electing Urkel.
- Anonymous - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 9:54 am:
Threatening to shut Provident Hospital is basically threatened to shoot his neighbors in the head - it’s nothing but an employment shack for the Eighth Ward. OK, maybe that’s harsh — Beaver’s ward, too. But Stroger knows that it will stir up the black ministers and other deep-thinkers and turn the whole budget question into a racial issue. The place absolutely should be shut down and no tax increase should even be thought about until it is.
- Levois - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 10:22 am:
Provident should be turned over to private hands and this historic hospital that was built to serve mostly black patients should go back to this purpose. Under private hands it won’t worry about being closed because of some scare tactic doomsday scenario contrived by some politician.
- cermak_rd - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 10:51 am:
I don’t think private hands could successfully run Provident. Have you seen the reimbursement rates for Medicaid? Medicare is a little better, but without a good quantity of private patients with good insurance, I’m not sure any private enterprise is going to want to run Provident when they can take that capital and run a more profitable hospital elsewhere.
Someone who understands public health and healthcare delivery needs to take a good look at the Cook County Healthcare system as a whole and decide what is absolutely necessary and what isn’t to deliver quality healthcare to the citizens of Cook County without having extra service that is unneeded. Healthcare should not be a jobs service or a way to drum up contracts for cronies.
- FED UP - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 1:02 pm:
Stroger will never close provident. It should be filled with employees but it is a ghost payrollers heaven. All clout employees do nothing jobs. This is where stroger keeps his patronage army. He has been busing his people to these public comment sessions to say provident needs to stay open. IT NEEDS TO BE SHUT DOWN. CRook Co. health care system is a bloated patronage filled joke.
- Captain America - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 1:51 pm:
Provident closed initially because it was mismanaged by private parties. The population that Provident serves is not a lucrative franchise opportunity for the private sector. Public sector subsidies would always be required to make it a financially solvent operation.
I don’t know if anyone noticed, but there was a story in yesterday’s papers that the accreditation of the Cook County OB-Gyne resident training program is in jeopardy because of mismanagement by the Stroger dynasty. You can’t blame Todd for this, but you can blame John Stroger and the Cook County Board. John Stroger and his health care management team ran the Cook County helath medical system into the ground.
Federal funding reductions have played a strong supporting role in this debacle.
No reform, No money. It’s not a racial issue. It’s a leadership and management crisis.
- One_Mcmad - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 3:00 pm:
Justice John Paul Stevens is not considering George Ryan’s request for bail although it is reported in newspaper. He simply took a legal procedural step and “requested” a response from the Government.
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/07a373.htm
That means that the Government does not have to respond to his “request” for a response or the government does not have to respond to motion on the merits, but can respond stating that the Supreme Court lacks jurisdiction over the motion as there is no pending action. George Ryan’s attorneys have not filed an actual legal action before the Supreme Court, but has asked the Court for bail pending “the filing and disposition of a petition for writ of certiorari”.
If the Court grants the motion it would be taking jurisdiction over a non-action. The normal procedure is to file an action before a court and thereafter motion the court for relief. George Ryan’s case is not so unprecedented that it requires deviating from the normal Supreme Court practices and rules.
If Justice Stevens grants the motion, it will not only set a new precedent, allowing for new rules, but also open up the door for every petitioner (especially criminal petitioners) to file a motion for bail, a stay or whatever have you, prior to the filing of an actual legal action. Further, if George Ryan’s lawyers had filed the petition and then filed the motion for stay, since Petitions for Writ of Certiorari are descretionary, to grant relief prior to the Court accepting the case, would mean that the Court will be granting the petition and sees an important question of law that needs to be considered by the Supreme Court.
- One_Mcmad - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 3:11 pm:
In referring to the docket sheet, under the names of George Ryan and Larry Warner, is not appellant, petitioner, but it specifically says “Applicants” meaning they have filed an application before the Court. The Supreme Court only has jurisdiction over Appellants and Petitioners.
- Spunkie - Friday, Nov 2, 07 @ 7:19 pm:
The last and only remaining question on the Gov. Ryan matter is simple. “Did anyone even remotly related to the Government, ie. FBI or US Attorney, leak the juror info to the Tribune.” They should answer this directly and unquestionably. A persons life, be he oh so bad, is on the line. If they really care about unjust convictions then (tribune) should say yes or no. I tink it’s kinda ethics related, and we all know how ethical the Tribune is, right?
- Kankakee Ken - Saturday, Nov 3, 07 @ 6:49 pm:
The last question that needs to be answered in the George Ryan case,…I mean the last that should be answered is “Did anyone associated with the prosecution or cops tip off the tribune about the jurors criminal backgrounds?”. Since peoples freedom is at stake, and the Trib cares so much about justice, they should be called upon to say in certain terms if they were tipped by the government. Not WHO the source was, just if it came from that side of the case. If the answer is no, so be it. If the answer is anything else, then this whole thing, including the conviction, is a fraud. Well, another fraud anyway.