Thoughts, Background on Anthony Jones, Lon Burns

Dambala has a post up questioning Anthony Jones' rationale for holding a press conference today to discuss his appearance before a federal grand jury and the allegations swirling around him.

I think the reason for the appearance is to create just enough space for himself so that he can keep his job and salary at City Hall so that he can pay for the legal representation of Lionel "Lon" Burns.

FYI:

I've heard Burns does not have a whole lot of white collar criminal defense experience. Also recall that he was forced to resign from Harry Connick's office back in the day after he was caught planting evidence. See this, this, and this:

In January 2001, the state appeals court held that George Lee III's charges for sexual battery and kidnapping could not stand because New Orleans prosecutor Lionel Burns withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense and jury. In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Lee also alleged that Burns planted inculpatory evidence.

During Lee's October 2000 trial, Judge Arthur Hunter declared a mistrial and held Burns in contempt of the court after he asked a testifying officer to pull a wad of napkins out of the pants Lee was supposedly wearing during the assault. The state's evidence showed that Lee would use napkins to clean himself after an assault; finding napkins in Lee's pants helped the prosecution's case. Yet Burns had not disclosed the napkins' existence to the defense. Hunter sentenced Burns to six months in prison for contempt, which was reduced to a $500 fine on appeal.

Laughter Obscures Need for Introspection

Everyone has just had a ball teeing off on the corrupt Rod Blagojevich and crooked state of Illinois over the last week or so. Intelligent bloggers and bombastic blowhards came together to share a laugh.

How could he be so stupid?
In this day and age?
Hasn't he ever seen a movie or television show before?
Which state is the most corrupt?

Hardee har har.

I enjoyed it too, but at this point, I'm totally over it.

And no, it's not because I think Louisiana isn't getting enough credit for it's foibles.

It's because I think there is some wisdom to take away from the situation that is obscured when we marginalize Blagojevich or Illinois as anomalies.

Blogojevich is a thug and he should be put away for a good long while but I think it's useful to actually think about the different ways pay-to-play works instead of just laughing at Legojevich.


Everyone was just so appalled, not so much by the corruption but by Blagojevich's stupidity in getting caught. One of the things that I noticed some cable talking heads doing when discussing the Blagojevich scandal was a sort of half-hearted line drawing when it came to what was crime and what was just plain old politics. Some amount of political horse-trading is normal and sometimes necessary even, whereas trading a political horse for a personal money cow is a crime, or so the talking heads said on Hardball or whatever show I was watching.

But perhaps it's worth parsing this out a little bit.

I've noticed a pattern about the way some crooked or ineffectual politicians ultimately get taken down by the FBI. Guys like Edwin Edwards in Louisiana, Kwame Kilpatrick in Detroit, Vince Fumo in Philadelphia, or Rod Blagojevich in Illinois don't just get caught up in corruption indictments out of the blue. Rather, these politicians develop grand reputations for thuggery and graft far in advance of any kind of criminal investigation. That reputation coincides with a certain celebrity-centered political lifestyle. Power provides, reputation develops, power erodes and then lifestyle become unsustainable. This leads to increasingly desperate and risky shake-downs that often occur in earshot of federal investigators that have by this time found an actionable complaint from someone no longer intimidated or dependent upon the boss' political power.

This helps explain why politicians that develop vast public reputations for crookedness, even if they never end up getting accused of anything by a prosecutor become so defensive or walled off as time elapses. Ray Nagin might be demonstrating this kind of bunker mentality. Other good examples are former Mayor John Street in Philadelphia or, I dunno, President Bush and all of his lackeys. They exercise their right to remain silent, taking that route over the desperate 0-60 cliff dive demonstrated by Governor Blagojevich, or by former State Senator Shepherd, who had his own unique style.

Allegedly, one of things Blagojevich tried to do by leveraging this Senate appointment was to obtain a plum foundation board salary for he or his wife.

The governor, already dogged by allegations of crookedness and low approval ratings, was likely becoming quite concerned with his prospects for income after his term. Forget his delusions about running for President in 2016, I think the desperation for six figure cash is a way more telling indicator of where he really knew he stood deep down.

This allegation was for some reason treated as among the most shocking in Fitzgerald complaint. That's not to say the behavior isn't deplorable, because it is. But it isn't entirely out of the ordinary.

Or at least, it is treated as regular political behavior in some parts of the country.

Like in Louisiana.

I think back to District Attorney Eddie Jordan's resignation in October of 2007. The writing had been on the wall for quite some time at that point but he remained in office, determined to stay on the job even as veteran prosecutors quit and accused murderers were released on 701s.

Do you remember how his resignation was finally arranged?

Remember this headline:

Jordan's new job part of resignation

Jordan resigned from his post two weeks ago, saying he hoped his absence would allow people to work out some way for the judgment to be paid, forestalling a crippling shutdown of the office he led for almost five years. Though the settlement still looms over the office, Jordan's resignation assured him a private sector job arranged by business leaders.

"It is part of the package that was developed," said Robert Stellingworth, executive director of the New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation, a nonprofit group. The business community will pay for Jordan's consultancy, Stellingworth said.

The consulting gig, cemented through a contract signed last week, is not a full-time job, said Stellingworth, who declined to give the amount Jordan will be paid.

"We believe he can add some perspective" to the foundation's work, Stellingworth said. The business community has remained in talks about the legal settlement but committed no private money to pay it. Lapeyre, who described himself as an "adviser" to the city on the issue, last week sat in on a meeting between Mayor Ray Nagin and Landrum-Johnson.

Quite literally, the former District Attorney Eddie Jordan nearly forced a total shut down of the criminal justice system, relenting only when he was able obtain a well-paying foundation job for himself.

Mayor Nagin needed to call in "the business community" to do him this favor, to find a job for Eddie Jordan. And "the business community" came through for the Mayor, placing him under Richard Stellingsworth at the Police and Justice foundation. His salary would be paid, not by the foundation, but by "the business community," all as arranged by "adviser" Jay Lapeyre, President of the New Orleans Business Council.

Isn't this exactly what Mr. Blagojevich was trying to arrange for himself in Illinois in exchange for the Senate seat?

Here in New Orleans, we allowed the same exact thing to occur out in the open. It was reported right there in the paper and nobody really batted an eye.

We never did learn if Mr. Lapeyre or "the business community" asked for or received anything in return.

Lucky for us Mayor Nagin doesn't get to pick Senators. He only gets to decide municipal policy.

Public Corruption Day!

In honor of William Jefferson and Rod Blagojevich, I declare today to be Public Corruption Day. This new tradition calls for the whimsical recounting of hilarious and sad true tales of public corruption from across the land.

I'll start it off.

From time to time, I've alluded to my old political arch nemesis in Philly, State Senator Vincent Fumo. In many ways, he is the last old style political boss. Representing my district, you just didn't get anything done in the City of Philadelphia without kissing his ring. The man's reputation as a corrupt official was basic public knowledge sort of the way everyone in town knows who the head of the mafia is. His longtime feud with the boss of the IBEW local, my other childhood nemesis, Jonny Doc, is the stuff South Philly legend.

A few years ago, Fumo's lifestyle started to catch up to him. At one point, it was discovered that he had been borrowing yachts from the Seaport Museum to take his girlfriends out on cruises up and down the Delaware. At another point, it came out that his home, a literal castle on a hill, had been underassessed by several million dollars for years. He finally started to really come undone after one of his charities was exposed as a front for a personal slush fund.

Now he's on trial and it's been a pleasure to take in all of the salacious and sensational details. After being victimized by his corruption for my entire life, I do feel a tad bit entitled to celebrate the scandal at this point.

For instance, now we get to take in the testimony of one of Fumo's ex-girlfriends:

Though she insisted that she still loved Fumo, Dorothy Egrie-Wilcox spent 51/2 hours on the stand corroborating previous testimony about his turning government aides into personal servants.

And, at last, Egrie-Wilcox was revealed to be the source of what has become the iconic allegation in the case: the federal charge that Fumo boasted of spending "OPM," or "other people's money."

"He used it quite a bit," she testified. "When we'd go out to dinner, he would say, 'Let's use OPM.' "

To back up her account, prosecutors showed jurors a 2004 e-mail in which the senator himself used the acronym while talking about buying an ornamental globe.

Fumo signed off by writing, "Love You."

Egrie-Wilcox kept hundreds of such e-mails and turned them over to the FBI. Now they are evidence against the once-powerful Democrat.

But my favorite, or least favorite, juicy tidbit came from Fumo's neighbor in the Fairmount neighborhood:

Liza is a female mixed-breed beagle - a 10-year-old cutie owned by Nick Pappas, Fumo's neighbor on Green Street.

But Liza was just a pup when Fumo moved into his overhauled brownstone, the walls of which touch Pappas' home from the second floor up.

Apparently, Liza barked a bit. As Marrone testified in Fumo's corruption trial last week, the indicted state senator claimed that the dog howled through the night, a situation that Marrone was ordered to resolve.

And, as we all know, when the senator, whose staff slogan is "We get s--- done," gives an order - no matter how petty - his toadies pounce on it like the city will implode if they don't.

Marrone said that he spoke with a Fumocrat on City Council as well as a captain in Fairmount's 9th Police District about whether Liza's barking violated nuisance ordinances. The SPCA even got involved.

Fumo got so fed up, Marrone testified, he installed video-recording equipment outside Casa Fumo in an attempt to capture Liza serenading the neighborhood through the night.

Finally, Marrone testified, Fumo suggested putting some poison on a piece of meat and giving it to Liza.

Fumo literally ordered a hit on a dog and wanted his taxpayer funded staffer to do the deed. Pappas claims that his dog Liza is actually quite well-behaved.

As for me, Liza didn't yip once the entire time I visited. She did, though, wag her tail and lap at my hands like they'd been dipped in gravy.

So, I ask Nick, if Liza was always this quiet, what was going on with Fumo?

He launches into a tirade about the disruption that Fumo's home rehab caused, during the long months that the senator spent renovating the once-tumbledown manse into a showplace that now sports a greenhouse, shooting range, roof deck and elevator.

"The workers were here all the time, on my property," says Nick. "They set up their ladders in my yard without asking me.

"Bricks were falling down in my yard. Trash was everywhere. I'd tell them to clean up and they'd say, 'Tell it to the senator.' "

I miss Vince Fumo already and his trial isn't even over yet.