Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Obit watch: February 7 , 2021.

Sunday, February 7th, 2021

Leon Spinks, former heavyweight champion of the world.

Leon had fought professionally only seven times, with six victories and a draw, before facing Ali at the Las Vegas Hilton on Feb. 15, 1978, in a bout arranged by Bob Arum, one of boxing’s leading promoters.
Ali held the World Boxing Association and World Boxing Council titles. But at 36, though an overwhelming betting favorite, he was past his prime. He weighed in at 224 pounds to Spinks’s 197.
Spinks was a hard-charging brawler, but when he pressured Ali in the ring, the champion resorted to his rope-a-dope strategy, which was aimed at letting an opponent exhaust himself with punches that seldom did damage while Ali rested on the ropes.
The Spinks corner had a strategy of its own, aimed at weakening Ali.
“Jab, jab, jab, that was the plan,” Spinks’s trainer, George Benton, said in the dressing room afterward. “Hit him on the left shoulder all night with that jab.”Ali rallied in the 15th round, but Spinks warded him off and won a split decision.

He lost the WBA title to Ali in September of 1978: the WBC stripped him of the title because he wouldn’t fight Ken Norton.

Spinks’s last fight came in December 1995, when he lost a unanimous decision to Fred Houpe in an eight-round bout. Spinks was 42; Houpe was 45 and had not fought since November 1978.
Spinks retired with 26 victories (14 by knockouts), 17 losses and three draws.

George P. Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state and Nixon cabinet official.

He carried a weighty résumé into the Reagan White House, with stints as secretary of labor, budget director and secretary of the Treasury under President Richard M. Nixon. He had emerged from the wars of Watergate with his reputation unscathed, having shown a respect for the rule of law all too rare in that era. At the helm of the Treasury, he had drawn Nixon’s wrath for resisting the president’s demands to use the Internal Revenue Service as a weapon against the president’s political enemies.

Today’s dose of chicken soup for the you-know-what (because I’m pretty sure the actual term is trademarked, and I’ll hear about it from those people just like if I don’t refer to today’s game as the Superb Owl): Frank Shankwitz, former Arizona Highway Patrol motorcycle officer.

In 1980, he was introduced to a 7-year-old boy named Chris Greicius. Chris had terminal leukemia, and he desperately wanted to be a motorcycle officer when he grew up. He idolized Ponch and Jon from “CHiPs”.

The department had decided to make Chris’s wish come true, if just for a few days. A police helicopter ferried him to police headquarters from the hospital where he was being treated. Mr. Shankwitz was to greet him out front, next to his motorcycle.
“Figuring he’d be brought out in a wheelchair, I was surprised when the door opened and a pair of sneakers emerged,” Mr. Shankwitz wrote in his memoir, “Wish Man” (2018). “Out stepped Chris, an excited 7-year-old boy who seemed so full of life it was hard to believe he was sick.”
Mr. Shankwitz showed Chris his motorcycle, and after he and the other officers gave him a badge, the head of the department made him an honorary officer. Chris was feeling well enough to go home that night, and the next day the officers brought him a custom-made uniform.
To become a motorcycle officer, though, Chris had to pass a driving test — which he did, in his front yard, on his small battery-powered motorcycle. Mr. Shankwitz promised to bring him a special badge worn by motorcycle cops; he also called NBC, the network that aired “CHiPs,” and asked for the show’s stars, Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox, to autograph a photo.
The next day Chris was back in the hospital, and by the time Mr. Shankwitz arrived with the badge and the picture, he had fallen into a light coma. Chris had hung his uniform by the bed, and as Mr. Shankwitz pinned the badge on his shirt, the boy woke up.
“Am I an official motorcycle cop now?” Chris asked.
“You sure are,” Mr. Shankwitz replied.
Chris died later that day. Mr. Shankwitz and a colleague attended his funeral, in Southern Illinois, borrowing a pair of Illinois Highway Patrol motorcycles to accompany the hearse.

…

Mr. Shankwitz and five other people founded the Make-a-Wish Foundation in 1980, a few months after Chris’s funeral. It grew rapidly: Within a few years it had become a national organization, with state chapters opening almost monthly.

Posted in History, Nixon, Obits, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 3, 2021.

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021

Eugenio Martinez has passed away at the age of 98.

His death, at his daughter’s home near Orlando, was announced by Brigade 2506, a veterans group of Mr. Martinez’s fellow anti-Communist Cuban exiles. Their abortive invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 to overthrow the government headed by Fidel Castro was covertly supported by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Martinez was the last surviving Watergate burglar.

In January 1973 four of the five burglars — members of the so-called plumbers, an informal White House team assigned to plug information leaks — pleaded guilty so as to avoid revealing details of the bungled operation. They were convicted of conspiracy, theft and wiretapping.
The others, also Cuban-born, were Bernard L. Barker, a former Miami real estate agent and C.I.A. operative, who died in 2009; Virgilio González, a Miami locksmith, who died in 2014; and Frank A. Sturgis, a soldier of fortune, who died in 1993. (In 1971, the four had taken part in the break-in at the Los Angeles office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who disclosed the Pentagon papers to the press.)

E. Howard Hunt, who allegedly recruited them, served 31 months in prison.

They were led by James W. McCord Jr., a security coordinator for the Nixon campaign whose confession to the judge just before his sentencing precipitated the revelations of White House crimes and cover-ups that culminated in Nixon’s resignation in 1974. For aiding prosecutors in pursuing senior presidential aides in the scandal, Mr. McCord had his one-to-five-year sentence cut to less than four months.

…

In 1983, after his requests for clemency had been rejected by Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, Mr. Martinez — who, it turned out, had still been on retainer to the C.I.A. at the time of the Watergate break-in — was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan.
The pardon, which was granted because Mr. Martinez had been regarded as the least culpable of the defendants, restored his right to vote. Despite the ordeal, he prided himself on one Watergate keepsake — a golden lucky clover inscribed, in Spanish, with the words “Good luck, Richard Nixon.”

Posted in History, Law, Nixon, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 13, 2021.

Wednesday, January 13th, 2021

Adolfo Quiñones, street dancer. He was in “Breakin'” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo”, among other credits.

I got a whole bunch of stuff from Lawrence and other folks, so let’s start:

Sheldon Adelson, casino and resort hotel owner, and major donor to the Republican Party and conservative politicians in Israel.

John Riley. He was on “General Hospital” and also did a lot of appearances on non-“Mannix” 1970s detective series.

Jessica Campbell. She was “Tammy Metzler” in “Election”, and was only 38.

Lawrence sent over a report of the death of Julie Strain, “scream queen”, B-movie actress, and Penthouse Pet of the Year (1993). The site admits that she was mistakenly reported dead last year, so I would take this with a lick of salt (though they claim confirmation from multiple sources).

She was in a lot of Andy Sidaris films. (If you’re not familiar with those, and you like MST3K, you are missing a treat.)

Strain was also very much associated with fantasy comic book magazine Heavy Metal, where she was a frequent cover model, and eventually the wife of publisher (and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles co-creator) Kevin Eastman. Her image was that of the confident, assertive glamazon—at 6’1’’ plus heels she towered over many of her male co-stars. In fact, she essentially became the de facto face of Heavy Metal in 2000 when she contributed both the voice and likeness of protagonist Julie in the film Heavy Metal 2000 and its videogame spinoff Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.2.

Among her other movie credits was “Exterminator City”, which Lawrence will tell you (at the drop of a hat) is the worst movie he’s ever seen. Here’s a clip from the movie which does not feature Ms. Strain, just for illumination:

As Lawrence will tell you (again) that’s the best scene in the movie.

Finally, Diana Millay, actress most famous for “Dark Shadows”.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 12, 2021.

Tuesday, January 12th, 2021

Pat Loud, the mother in the 1970s reality show, “An American Family”. I touched on this at greater length when Bill Loud, her husband, passed away in 2018.

I’ve been holding this for a few days: Jim Bob Moffett. He was a prominent oil and mining magnate, and a large donor to UT.

He also made a whole lot of people angry back in the early 1990s when one of his companies planned a development in Southwest Austin.

Environmentalists argued that Moffett’s development would wash building materials, dirt and pollutants that accompany everyday human life into the aquifer, ultimately fouling the springs. Rather than treat the situation as a political dispute in which both sides had legitimate interests — an approach that many activists said had led them to compromise too easily — activists framed the issue as cruel business interests threatening Austin’s most beloved civic feature.
The fight culminated in a City Council meeting June 7, 1990. It is widely considered the high point of Austin civic participation: 17 hours of songs, poems, threats and pleas persuaded a glassy-eyed City Council that had seemed likely to approve the proposal to unanimously reject it. From that decision rose the Save Our Springs Coalition (now the SOS Alliance) and landmark rules that limit development in that portion of Austin.

Posted in 1970s, Austin, Obits, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 1, 2021.

Friday, January 1st, 2021

Phyllis McGuire, last of the McGuire Sisters.

Ms. McGuire, with her older sisters Christine and Dorothy, shot to success overnight after winning the televised “Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts” contest in 1952. Over the next 15 years, they were one of the nation’s most popular vocal groups, singing on the television variety shows of Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle, Andy Williams and Red Skelton, on nightclub circuits across the country and on records that sold millions.
The sisters epitomized a 1950s sensibility that held up a standard of unreal perfection, wearing identical coifs, dresses and smiles, moving with synchronized precision and blending voices in wholesome songs for simpler times. Their music, like that of Perry Como, Patti Page and other stars who appealed to white, middle-class audiences, contrasted starkly with the rock ’n’ roll craze that was taking the world by storm in the mid-to-late ’50s.

Ms. McGuire was also famously linked aromatically with Sam Giancana. Yes, the mobster.

Ms. McGuire remained unapologetic about her relationship with Mr. Giancana. “Sam was the greatest teacher I ever could have had,” she told Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair in 1989. “He was so wise about so many things. Sam is always depicted as unattractive. He wasn’t. He was a very nice-looking man. He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t drive a pink Cadillac, like they used to say.”

Richard Thornburgh, former governor of Pennsylvania and Attorney General under Reagan and Bush.

Posted in Law, Music, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#56 in a series)

Thursday, December 10th, 2020

(Been a while since I’ve done one of these, hasn’t it?)

The Austin City Council has decided (based on a recommendation from the city’s Arts Commission) to “deaccession” several pieces of public art.

The big news is: one of those pieces is “Moments”. If you live in Austin, you know “Moments” better as “those blue panels bolted to the overpass wall on North Lamar Boulevard”.

“Moments” caused a stir from the beginning. It was the city’s first art-in-public-places project to be installed along a road, and its installation caused traffic backups. The piece was meant to evoke impressions of the moments contained in an experience or environment, Jean Graham, a city of Austin art in public places coordinator, told the American-Statesman at the time.
“The designer was thinking, well, you could think of the moments going by as you are waiting under the bridge in traffic,” Graham told the paper in 2003.
In [Carl] Trominski’s [the artist – DB] submission for the piece’s creation, he wrote that the site “is visualized as a Threshold between the Urban Austin and the Natural Austin. The underpass marks a journey through the city’s self-image. … This proposal intends to strengthen the expression and experience of this moment.” The signs were to “make abstract reference to musical notes, the motion of a row on Town Lake, and acts (as) a shadow indicator of the day’s progression.”

“I thought it would be fun to do something that people could ignore and not even notice,” Trominski told the late Statesman columnist John Kelso in 2006. Trominski, who beat out about 30 other entrants for the art project, continued, “I had no idea people would get angrier at that than they would at the traffic.”

For the record, the other artworks being taken off the list are…

… “Karst Circle” at Austin Fire Station 43/EMS Station 31 on Escarpment Boulevard; “Bicentennial Fountain” at the entrance to Vic Mathias Shores between South First Street and West Riverside Drive; “LAB” along the Lance Armstrong Bikeway from MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) to Airport Boulevard; and the Republic Square Fountain, which no longer exists and formerly was located at Republic Square Park.

Here’s a presentation with some photos of the art, if (like me) you were unfamiliar with these pieces.

Fountain is no longer exists. During recent renovation of Republic Square Park, it was thought to be a design element, and was removed. AIPP was not informed.

Posted in Art, Austin, Politics | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: December 7, 2020.

Monday, December 7th, 2020

As previously noted, I got a little behind yesterday, so I’m playing catch-up.

David Lander, prominent TV actor perhaps best known as “Squiggy” on “Laverne and Shirley”.

Interesting connections:

He and his comedy partner, Michael McKean, were members of the cast of “Laverne & Shirley,” a sitcom about boy-crazy brewery workers in 1950s Milwaukee, from its debut in 1976 until it left the air in 1983.

…

Lenny and Squiggy were not the brainchild of the show’s creators. Mr. Lander and Mr. McKean invented them in college (Squiggy was called Ant’ny then) and had been performing as those characters with the Credibility Gap, a comedy performance ensemble that also included Harry Shearer.
The characters sometimes broke away from their own series. Mr. Lander and Mr. McKean appeared on the fictional talk show “America 2-Night,” hosted by Martin Mull.
Portraying two imaginary actors who supposedly played Lenny and Squiggy (but looked and talked just like them), they made small talk and sang “Creature Without a Head.” That song was also on the 1979 album recorded by Lenny and the Squigtones, their imaginary musical group (which included Christopher Guest on guitar). Principal Squiggy (Mr. Lander) appeared in “Scary Movie” (2000), and Squiggy himself turned up on a 2002 episode of “The Simpsons.”

Of course, Guest, McKean, and Shearer were all in Spinal Tap. I kind of wonder why Lander wasn’t involved. (According to Wikipedia, Guest was actually credited as “Nigel Tufnel” on the Lenny and the Squigtones album.)

Lawrence sent over an obit for Pamela Tiffin. She had what seems like an odd career: Billy Wilder’s “One, Two, Three”, “Harper” (a Ross MacDonald adaptation), “State Fair”. “The Hallelujah Trail”…and a bunch of Italian movies.

Paul Sarbanes, the man who put the “Sarbanes” in “Sarbanes-Oxley”.

Also by way of Lawrence, and this is breaking as I write it, so no links yet: Fred Akers. Links probably tomorrow.

For the historical record: NYT obits for Warren Berlinger and Walter E. Williams.

Posted in Law, Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 3, 2020.

Thursday, December 3rd, 2020

Valéry Giscard d’Estaing est mort.

I’ve seen very little reporting of this elsewhere, but Lawrence has posted a nice obit for economist Walter E. Williams.

Posted in History, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 24, 2020.

Tuesday, November 24th, 2020

An obit roundup, because I’m a little behind.

Jan Morris, British writer and historian. I haven’t read any of Morris’s work, yet. But John Crowley in his beautiful novella “Great Work of Time” cites Morris’s history of the British empire as a major source, and I’ve been hunting for reasonably priced copies. (Like I need three more volumes of history to read, in addition to Gibbon and the two volume history of the Canadian transcontinental railroad.)

Ken Spears, co-creator of “Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!”. The other creator, Joe Ruby, passed away in September.

Daniel Cordier, one of the legendary figures of the French Resistance. He was 100.

David Dinkins, former mayor of New York City.

Posted in Books, History, Obits, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#68 in a series)

Friday, November 20th, 2020

Alexander Sittenfeld of the Cincinnati city council was arrested yesterday.

Prosectors said Mr. Sittenfeld had accepted six checks totaling $40,000 from federal agents posing as real estate investors and had stashed the money in a political action committee that he secretly controlled.
According to a six-count indictment, Mr. Sittenfeld accepted the bribe money in 2018 and 2019, while promising to “deliver the votes” and perform other official acts for the downtown development project, which needed City Council approval.

…

At a meeting in November 2018 set up with Mr. Ndukwe’s help, Mr. Sittenfeld went for lunch at a downtown Cincinnati restaurant and indicated to undercover agents that he would shepherd votes for the real estate project, prosecutors said.
He presented voting data showing that he was politically popular in Cincinnati and said he was likely to be the next mayor, according to prosecutors.
“I can move more votes than any other single person,” Mr. Sittenfeld said, according to the indictment. On another occasion, in December 2018, he said, “Don’t let these be my famous last words, but I can always get a vote to my left or a vote to my right,” according to prosecutors.

Nr. Ndukwe is Chinedum Ndukwe, a former player for the Bengals, who was one of the people behind the downtown development project.

Bonus #1: Mr. Ndukwe was also working with the Feds.

Bonus #2, and I’m embarrassed to admit I missed this: Mr. Sittenfeld is the third member of the nine-member city council to be indicted this year.

The first blow came in February when Tamaya Dennard, the president pro tem of the Cincinnati City Council, was arrested and charged with accepting $15,000 in bribes in exchange for a vote on the Council. She pleaded guilty in June and faces up to 20 years in prison when she is sentenced in federal court next week.
The second landed last week when Jeffrey Pastor, another member of the City Council, was charged with taking $55,000 in bribes in return for promising to help city development projects, including the redevelopment of a downtown building. Mr. Pastor has pleaded not guilty and has resisted calls to step down.

Apologies for linking to the NYT. I prefer to link to local sources whenever possible, but the Cincinnati Enquirer is unreadable and unlinkable without a subscription.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Memo from the legal beat.

Monday, October 5th, 2020

Two Austin legal stories from the past couple of days that I wanted to cover:

1) A former employee of the Austin Public Library has been charged with stealing $1.3 million from the library.

Now, I’m sure you’re asking yourself: “How do you steal that much money from a library?” Answer: according to the indictment, he was purchasing printer toner with a city issued credit card and reselling it online.

“The library’s poor practices and procedures provided an opportunity for Whited to steal from the city during his tenure, leading to waste and overspending by the department,” according to the report. “Whited took advantage of poor purchasing reviews by his supervisors, former Financial Manager Victoria Rieger and Contract Management Specialist Monica McClure. Whited also took advantage of several other purchasing and budget-related shortcomings, such as having a role in the approval of his own purchases and insufficient oversight of the Library’s budget by Rieger and Assistant Director Dana McBee.”
As an accounting associate, Whited was responsible for making and approving purchases, cash receipts, billing, and other accounting transactions, the report states.

Bonus: this wasn’t his first go-around at the rodeo, but somehow the library put him in charge of all that stuff.

2) Strippers. Always with the strippers. A group of them are suing some of our finer local “gentleman’s clubs” (specifically, The Yellow Rose, Perfect 10 and Palazio, if you know Austin strip clubs).

The basis for the lawsuit is kind of unsurprising: the strippers claim that they were improperly categorized as “independent contractors” rather than employees.

The women signed documents agreeing to be independent contractors rather than employees, records show. However, Ellzey said the clubs treated them like employees — requiring them to work a certain shift, setting prices for dances and charging the women late fees if they did not arrive on time.
Under labor laws, that makes them employees, Ellzey said.
“The law looks to the conduct of the club … not the documents cooked up by the clubs,” Ellzey said. “The documents have no real legal significance.”

The responses from the clubs are about what you’d expect: the strippers wanted it that way.

Yellow Rose’s management also said that it’s in the dancers’ best interest to work as independent contractors.
“All Yellow Rose employees make at least minimum wage and generally far more than that,” the club said in a statement. “This case involves three — we have no clue who the fourth person in this lawsuit is — entertainers who knowingly and willingly worked as independent contractors, all of whom made a great deal more money than what they would have made had they been minimum wage employees. They now claim they were/are ‘actually’ employees and are due compensation directly from the Yellow Rose. We disagree.”

…

Bishop said the independent contractor agreements gave performers the opportunity to avoid turning over their tips to the club. However, Ellzey said that, despite this, the club often required the performers to divide their tips among other employees, such as the DJ, the security guard and management.
“The performers are typically younger,” Ellzey said. “They go to work in these clubs, and the money they’re making on stage is sometimes really surprising. I think when an older club owner or a manager with apparent authority says, ‘This is what you have to do. This is what everyone does. You need to split your tips, you need to pay house fees,’ then a younger, more vulnerable dancer is just going to believe them.”

This is also another “not the first go-around at the rodeo” affair: there was a previous settlement in another lawsuit filed against four clubs in Houston.

I’m no employment lawyer, but: if they control your schedule, set prices, and charge “late fees”, that kind of sounds to me like the strippers may have a case.

Posted in Austin, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#67 in a series)

Monday, October 5th, 2020

Missed this over the weekend, but Mike the Musicologist gave me the heads-up: the mayor of Rochester, New York, has been indicted on campaign finance charges.

Sandra Doorley, the Monroe County district attorney, said Ms. Warren participated in “a scheme to defraud” related to her official campaign fund and a political action committee working to help her get re-elected.
The indictment accused Ms. Warren, as well as her campaign treasurer and Rochester’s finance director, of “knowingly and willfully” working to evade contribution limits as well as engaging in “a systemic and ongoing course of conduct with the intent to defraud more than one person.”

…

The investigation into her campaign finances had dogged her since two candidates who unsuccessfully ran against her in 2017 complained to the state Board of Elections. A subsequent investigation by the board led to a March report that Ms. Doorley said found “considerable evidence” of possible crimes.
At issue are transfers made from Ms. Warren’s political action committee to her campaign committee that far exceeded the $8,557 limit that a campaign could receive from an individual donor, the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester reported. That limit also applied to the political action committee.

More from the local paper. Local TV coverage.

Warren, along with Albert Jones Jr. and Rosiland Brooks Harris, were each charged with first-degree scheme to defraud and violation of Election Law 14-126(6). Both counts are Class E felonies. If convicted, each person could face 1 1/3 to 4 years in state prison, or a range of sentencing options from probation to restitution.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »