WILKES-BARRE, Pa. - For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.
The explanation, prosecutors say, was corruption on the bench.
In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.
“I’ve never encountered, and I don’t think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,” said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.
Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.
No company officials have been charged, but the investigation is still going on.
The high court, meanwhile, is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned and the juveniles’ records expunged.
Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it.
Many appeared without lawyers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1967 ruling that children have a constitutional right to counsel.
'I have disgraced my judgeship'
The judges are scheduled to plead guilty to fraud Thursday in federal court. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years behind bars.
Ciavarella, 58, who presided over Luzerne County’s juvenile court for 12 years, acknowledged last week in a letter to his former colleagues, “I have disgraced my judgeship. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame.” Ciavarella, though, has denied he got kickbacks for sending youths to prison.
Conahan, 56, has remained silent about the case.
Many Pennsylvania counties contract with privately run juvenile detention centers, paying them either a fixed overall fee or a certain amount per youth, per day.
In Luzerne County, prosecutors say, Conahan shut down the county-run juvenile prison in 2002 and helped the two companies secure rich contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, at least some of that dependent on how many juveniles were locked up.
One of the contracts — a 20-year agreement with PA Child Care worth an estimated $58 million — was later canceled by the county as exorbitant.
The judges are accused of taking payoffs between 2003 and 2006.
Allegations of extortion
Robert J. Powell co-owned PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care until June. His attorney, Mark Sheppard, said his client was the victim of an extortion scheme.
“Bob Powell never solicited a nickel from these judges and really was a victim of their demands,” he said. “These judges made it very plain to Mr. Powell that he was going to be required to pay certain monies.”
For years, youth advocacy groups complained that Ciavarella was ridiculously harsh and ran roughshod over youngsters’ constitutional rights. Ciavarella sent a quarter of his juvenile defendants to detention centers from 2002 to 2006, compared with a statewide rate of one in 10.
The criminal charges confirmed the advocacy groups’ worst suspicions and have called into question all the sentences he pronounced.
Hillary Transue did not have an attorney, nor was she told of her right to one, when she appeared in Ciavarella’s courtroom in 2007 for building a MySpace page that lampooned her assistant principal.
Her mother, Laurene Transue, worked for 16 years in the child services department of another county and said she was certain Hillary would get a slap on the wrist. Instead, Ciavarella sentenced her to three months; she got out after a month, with help from a lawyer.
“I felt so disgraced for a while, like, what do people think of me now?” said Hillary, now 17 and a high school senior who plans to become an English teacher.
'I was completely destroyed'
Laurene Transue said Ciavarella “was playing God. And not only was he doing that, he was getting money for it. He was betraying the trust put in him to do what is best for children.”
Kurt Kruger, now 22, had never been in trouble with the law until the day police accused him of acting as a lookout while his friend shoplifted less than $200 worth of DVDs from Wal-Mart. He said he didn’t know his friend was going to steal anything.
Kruger pleaded guilty before Ciavarella and spent three days in a company-run juvenile detention center, plus four months at a youth wilderness camp run by a different operator.
“Never in a million years did I think that I would actually get sent away. I was completely destroyed,” said Kruger, who later dropped out of school. He said he wants to get his record expunged, earn his high school equivalency diploma and go to college.
“I got a raw deal, and yeah, it’s not fair,” he said, “but now it’s 100 times bigger than me.”
Source:here
I just had to include this as it is an grave injustice. These are kids thrown to the wolves so the wolves could prosper. Who knows what these kids were subjected to while in lock up.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Old media vs new media
When the internet first came out it was demonized by the old media as "harmful to children" and they did they're best to undermined it and then to have Al Gore demonize the net (yes,the same Al Gore who claimed to have invented the internet) as harmful to children. Now we can see why they feared the net,with printed newspapers losing circulation we see the truth. The internet gave a voice to everyone not just the priveleged elite few who have a stranglehold on the old media of newspapers and TV and cartel the prices to keep ordinary people from voicing their opinions with pictures and only allowing their opinions in the "op-ed" section of the newspaper with lower chances of being seen and subject to an editors discretion and if that editor has an axe to grind and you have the opposing opinion then there is a chance your letter won't get published. It happened to me when I wrote the Los Angeles Times opposing feminism. The old media had a stranglehold; you wanted something visual you put it on TV if it was visual and audio then you also selected radio and one will cost big bucks let alone two. TV and radio,they were your only choice and they both had high prices,truly a sweetheart deal for both and no competition. Now let's introduce the internet giving a voice to the people and letting them know that things are not how the elite paint them to be and people such as myself that are as far from politically correct as you can get as assures us we are not alone in our beliefs. There was also other reasons they feared the internet such as competition as I've said but also the internet holds the old media accountable we can point out watch was inaccurate about what was said on radio and/or TV thus holding them accountable. No wonder they feared the internet. I've heard that politicians are now paying attention to bloggers just as they paid attention to the old media when it was a cartel and that is truly revolutionary. The internet is taking us in an original voyage that is unheard of in the past and I trust take us down a positive path in the future.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Monday, November 24, 2008
The shakedown of Michael Richards
The Rogue Jew
The Black Mafia’s Shakedown of Michael Richards
2006-11-28 at 7:27 am · Filed under Vox Populi
What Michael Richards of Seinfeld fame did and said was wrong. The way the African American Community is handling it, even more wrong then the action itself!
The NAACP, a racist organization in its own right along with some other Racial oriented groups, now want to “SHAKEDOWN” Michael Richards for millions of his dollars saying that if he were to donate Millions of his dollars to their childrens charities, then all would be forgiven.
Two men who were at the comedy club when “Kramer” went on his racial tirade are using the help of attorney Gloria Allred to shakedown Richards and separate him from millions of his dollars that he earned.
Allred would like Michael Richards to go not before a judge, but a retired judge of her choosing so that Richards can apologize and then the judge can decide whether or not Richards should poney up the dough to the two men who are visually upset to the point that they see dollar $ign$.
Of course where the microphones and cameras are, you are more then likely bound to see the Shakedown King of Racism himself, Jesse “Whose Your Daddy” Jackson, who is also trying to cash in on Richards’ slip of the tongue.
The group of Politically Correct idiots have now come out of the woodwork calling for censorship by banning the N word.
I don’t defend the behavior or the words, but I defend the right of someone to be as big an idiot as they want to be and say those words.
I am not saying what Richards did wasn’t wrong, it was without a shadow of a doubt wrong as hell, but to cash in on what he did and said, is even more wrong. A$$holes like Jackson and Sharpton are always extorting money from people and businesses in the name of their race, although the only ones benefiting from the ill gotten dollars are crooks like Sharpton and Jackson.
What’s next, banning of the Muhammad Cartoons? Not on my watch.
Source:here
The Black Mafia’s Shakedown of Michael Richards
2006-11-28 at 7:27 am · Filed under Vox Populi
What Michael Richards of Seinfeld fame did and said was wrong. The way the African American Community is handling it, even more wrong then the action itself!
The NAACP, a racist organization in its own right along with some other Racial oriented groups, now want to “SHAKEDOWN” Michael Richards for millions of his dollars saying that if he were to donate Millions of his dollars to their childrens charities, then all would be forgiven.
Two men who were at the comedy club when “Kramer” went on his racial tirade are using the help of attorney Gloria Allred to shakedown Richards and separate him from millions of his dollars that he earned.
Allred would like Michael Richards to go not before a judge, but a retired judge of her choosing so that Richards can apologize and then the judge can decide whether or not Richards should poney up the dough to the two men who are visually upset to the point that they see dollar $ign$.
Of course where the microphones and cameras are, you are more then likely bound to see the Shakedown King of Racism himself, Jesse “Whose Your Daddy” Jackson, who is also trying to cash in on Richards’ slip of the tongue.
The group of Politically Correct idiots have now come out of the woodwork calling for censorship by banning the N word.
I don’t defend the behavior or the words, but I defend the right of someone to be as big an idiot as they want to be and say those words.
I am not saying what Richards did wasn’t wrong, it was without a shadow of a doubt wrong as hell, but to cash in on what he did and said, is even more wrong. A$$holes like Jackson and Sharpton are always extorting money from people and businesses in the name of their race, although the only ones benefiting from the ill gotten dollars are crooks like Sharpton and Jackson.
What’s next, banning of the Muhammad Cartoons? Not on my watch.
Source:here
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Bill O'Reilly meltdowns
A series of Bill O'Reilly meltdowns where Bill just loses it and it is so fucking funny.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Racist comments also Sharpton news
ETHNOCRAT AL 'The 'Do' SHARPTON
On Jews:
• "... Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not
anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. ... All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffe klatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'. Pay for your deeds."
• "White folks was in caves while we was building empires... We taught philosophy and
astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it."
LIP FLAPPING SPIKE LEE:
On Trent Lott:
• "...card-carrying member" of the Ku Klux Klan."
On Interracial couples:
• "I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street."
On Clarence Thomas:
• "A handkerchief-head, chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom."
NO-NAD HILLARY CLINTON
• "You f*cking Jew b@stard." - To political operative Paul Fray.
ETHNOCRAT CHARLES BARRON, N.Y.C. COUNCILMAN
During a reparations rally:
• "I want to go up to the closest white person and say: 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing' and then slap him, just for my mental health."
MARY FRANCES BERRY, CHAIRWOMAN, US COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS
• "Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them."
ETHNOCRAT SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR WILLIE BROWN
• "The old white boys got taken fair and square."
JULIENNE MALVEAUX, USA TODAY COLUMNIST
• "There's no great, white bigot; there's just about 200 million little white bigots out there."
ETHNOCRAT ZACK WEBB, NAACP
• "Reparations are a really good way for white people to admit they're wrong."
Source: here
Getting back to Al Sharpton:
Uncle Sam To Sharpton: Pay Up, Deadbeat
Source: MSNBC [05/10/08]
Uncle Sam calls it balancing his books. Reverend Al Sharpton calls his header into the IRS’s bull’s-eye something else:
"Whatever retaliation they do on me, we never stop," Sharpton said. "I think that that is why they try to intimidate us." (MSNBC)
If you have any residual doubts that race card waving is an enriching endeavor, get over it. Over a number of years, Rev. Al has racked up an impressive tally of unpaid taxes:
* He owes New York City $365,558 in back taxes.
* He owes Uncle Sam $931,397 in back taxes.
* His for profit company, Rev. Al Communications, owes the state of New York $175,962.
Rev. Al has been fending off these claims, for several years, by using his nonprofit cabal,the National Action Network as a smokescreen. Bad bookkeeping, misunderstandings, and the like, are at the top of the excuses list. So far, it seems to be working, but Uncle Sam won’t be patient forever. For example, the relevant bean counters are especially annoyed over the failure of Rev. Al’s do-gooder cabal to meet their workers compensation and unemployment insurance obligations.
This isn’t the first time that Rev. Al has run afoul of the authorities. As recently as 2004, the IRS and FBI tried to pin him to the mat over irregularities associated with his Oval Office candidacy. A decade early, Rev. Al was acquitted of tax fraud and charges that he stole from one of his charities. In other words, Rev. Al isn’t as dumb as he looks, and will, in all likelihood, elude the forces of ‘injustice’ this time, too.
Source: here
On Jews:
• "... Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not
anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. ... All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffe klatsch, no skinnin' and grinnin'. Pay for your deeds."
• "White folks was in caves while we was building empires... We taught philosophy and
astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it."
LIP FLAPPING SPIKE LEE:
On Trent Lott:
• "...card-carrying member" of the Ku Klux Klan."
On Interracial couples:
• "I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street."
On Clarence Thomas:
• "A handkerchief-head, chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom."
NO-NAD HILLARY CLINTON
• "You f*cking Jew b@stard." - To political operative Paul Fray.
ETHNOCRAT CHARLES BARRON, N.Y.C. COUNCILMAN
During a reparations rally:
• "I want to go up to the closest white person and say: 'You can't understand this, it's a black thing' and then slap him, just for my mental health."
MARY FRANCES BERRY, CHAIRWOMAN, US COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS
• "Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them."
ETHNOCRAT SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR WILLIE BROWN
• "The old white boys got taken fair and square."
JULIENNE MALVEAUX, USA TODAY COLUMNIST
• "There's no great, white bigot; there's just about 200 million little white bigots out there."
ETHNOCRAT ZACK WEBB, NAACP
• "Reparations are a really good way for white people to admit they're wrong."
Source: here
Getting back to Al Sharpton:
Uncle Sam To Sharpton: Pay Up, Deadbeat
Source: MSNBC [05/10/08]
Uncle Sam calls it balancing his books. Reverend Al Sharpton calls his header into the IRS’s bull’s-eye something else:
"Whatever retaliation they do on me, we never stop," Sharpton said. "I think that that is why they try to intimidate us." (MSNBC)
If you have any residual doubts that race card waving is an enriching endeavor, get over it. Over a number of years, Rev. Al has racked up an impressive tally of unpaid taxes:
* He owes New York City $365,558 in back taxes.
* He owes Uncle Sam $931,397 in back taxes.
* His for profit company, Rev. Al Communications, owes the state of New York $175,962.
Rev. Al has been fending off these claims, for several years, by using his nonprofit cabal,the National Action Network as a smokescreen. Bad bookkeeping, misunderstandings, and the like, are at the top of the excuses list. So far, it seems to be working, but Uncle Sam won’t be patient forever. For example, the relevant bean counters are especially annoyed over the failure of Rev. Al’s do-gooder cabal to meet their workers compensation and unemployment insurance obligations.
This isn’t the first time that Rev. Al has run afoul of the authorities. As recently as 2004, the IRS and FBI tried to pin him to the mat over irregularities associated with his Oval Office candidacy. A decade early, Rev. Al was acquitted of tax fraud and charges that he stole from one of his charities. In other words, Rev. Al isn’t as dumb as he looks, and will, in all likelihood, elude the forces of ‘injustice’ this time, too.
Source: here
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Jesse Jackson uses the "n" word
Fox: Jackson used N-word in crude off-air remarks
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
CHICAGO - The Rev. Jesse Jackson used the N-word during a break in a TV interview where he criticized presidential candidate Barack Obama, Fox News confirmed Wednesday.
The longtime civil rights leader already came under fire this month for crude off-air
comments he made against Obama in what he thought was a private conversation during a taping of a "Fox & Friends" news show.
In additional comments from that same conversation, first reported by TVNewser, Jackson is reported to have said Obama was "talking down to black people," and referred to blacks with the N-word when he said Obama was telling them "how to behave."
Though a Fox spokesman confirmed to The Associated Press that Jackson used the slur, the network declined to release the full transcript of the July 6 show and did not air the comments.
Jackson - who is traveling in Spain - apologized in a statement Wednesday for "hurtful words" but didn't offer specifics. "I am deeply saddened and distressed by the pain and sorrow that I have caused as a result of my hurtful words. I apologize again to Senator Barrack Obama, Michelle Obama, their children as well as to the American public," Jackson said in a written statement. "There really is no justification for my comments and I hope that the Obama family and the American public will forgive me. I also pray that we, as a nation, can move on to address the real issues that affect the American people."
A spokeswoman for Jackson's civil rights organization, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, said she could not confirm that Jackson used the slur.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
Let's see if they run Jackson out of town on a rail like they did Don Imus or will the civil rights crowd cover for Jackson like they always do. If Don Imus or another white male said this they would demand his hide but since it's Jackson look for a cover-up which is typical for this group.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
CHICAGO - The Rev. Jesse Jackson used the N-word during a break in a TV interview where he criticized presidential candidate Barack Obama, Fox News confirmed Wednesday.
The longtime civil rights leader already came under fire this month for crude off-air
comments he made against Obama in what he thought was a private conversation during a taping of a "Fox & Friends" news show.
In additional comments from that same conversation, first reported by TVNewser, Jackson is reported to have said Obama was "talking down to black people," and referred to blacks with the N-word when he said Obama was telling them "how to behave."
Though a Fox spokesman confirmed to The Associated Press that Jackson used the slur, the network declined to release the full transcript of the July 6 show and did not air the comments.
Jackson - who is traveling in Spain - apologized in a statement Wednesday for "hurtful words" but didn't offer specifics. "I am deeply saddened and distressed by the pain and sorrow that I have caused as a result of my hurtful words. I apologize again to Senator Barrack Obama, Michelle Obama, their children as well as to the American public," Jackson said in a written statement. "There really is no justification for my comments and I hope that the Obama family and the American public will forgive me. I also pray that we, as a nation, can move on to address the real issues that affect the American people."
A spokeswoman for Jackson's civil rights organization, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, said she could not confirm that Jackson used the slur.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed
Let's see if they run Jackson out of town on a rail like they did Don Imus or will the civil rights crowd cover for Jackson like they always do. If Don Imus or another white male said this they would demand his hide but since it's Jackson look for a cover-up which is typical for this group.
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