Downed trees were a very common sight in Coeur d’Alene after the prolonged intense winds on November 17. Some effects remain. Even today a few homes are still without power in our region. The outline of fallen trees still imprint home and car roofs. And many of those home’s roofs still intact show the paper underlayment of shingles blown to the ground.
So what’s next? Get ready for the next one. (more…)
OpenCdA’s earlier posts about the death of Council rancher Jack Yantis after his encounter with two Adams County deputy sheriffs on November 1 tried to explain that thorough investigations take time.
Here is a press release issued today by the Idaho State Police concerning an unrelated officer-involved incident in Middleton in March. It gives readers some insight into just how long officer-involved death investigations can take.
Thoroughness and clarity trumps speed.
Addendum on 11-12-2015 at 12:26 p.m.: Here is the Idaho Statesman’s reporting on the press conference. It includes a segment of the video and audio from the deputy’s body-worn camera/mic.
OpenCdA thinks that Idaho’s Adams County Sheriff Ryan Zollman deserves a sincere thank you from the 300 or so people who attended a town hall meeting in Council on Tuesday night — even if they strongly disagreed with him.
The purpose of the town hall meeting was to let the public directly and personally question Sheriff Zollman about the incident involving two of his deputies and Council rancher Jack Yantis on November 1. During that incident, Mr. Yantis was killed.
The investigation of the incident is being conducted by the Idaho State Police. The Idaho Attorney General’s Office has agreed to serve as a special prosecutor at the request of the Adams County Prosecuting Attorney. (more…)
Jack Yantis, a rancher who lived near Council, Idaho, was shot and killed on the evening of November 1, 2015, during an incident involving two Adams County Sheriff’s Office deputies. The initial report was in a November 2 Idaho State Police press release.
Though this story has received comparatively little coverage from our northern Idaho skews media, there have been several stories in the Idaho Statesman. It includes this one on November 7 headlined Idaho rancher’s wife: ‘I saw them murder my husband’. (more…)
Reading a Spokesman-Review post this morning captioned Idaho lawmakers to undergo ‘civil discourse’ training this year, OpenCdA did a double-take on this line:
“Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, asked that the Legislature contact the Idaho State Bar and pre-qualify the session as ethics training for continuing legal education credit, for lawmakers who are attorneys.”
So ol’ Bart, an attorney from Idaho Falls who will just happen to be in Boise on the public’s dime serving as a legislator when the course will be given free to legislators, wants the public to pay for his continuing legal education training credit course in ethics.
So ol’ Bart thinks its ethical for legislators to accept a freebie that would cost a pretty penny for non-legislator attorneys. We think Bart Davis definitely needs to take an ethics course or several — at his own expense, not the public’s.
An Afterthought on 11-08-15 at 3:45 p.m.: The more I think about this proposed training for our legislators, the less relevant it sounds. Certainly courtesy and civility are desirable, but our legislators are generally of an age that if they haven’t picked up those traits by now after decades of living and interacting, should we really expect a half-day charm school to develop them at this stage of their lives? Are there not possibly more pressing ethical issues to be addressed?
“Fraudulent steering” has nothing to do with automobile recalls.
It has everything to do with a dishonest Chicago Public Schools (CPS) official, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who was the putative decision-maker in deciding which two education consulting companies would get a $23 million no-bid contract to provide consulting services to CPS.
One of Babs’ criteria for fraudulently steering the contract to the companies was evidently how much they would be willing to kick back to her in return. The kickback netted her a cool $2.3 million.
And now the FBI is looking closely at what Babs did as the Chief Accountability Officer in the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) before she went CPS. The allegation filed in federal court is that she fraudulently steered a DPS textbook contract worth $40 million to a publishing house, Houghton-Mifflin-Harcourt, where she had formerly worked.
For an interesting take on Babs’ bribery, see the article headlined Blaming Byrd-Bennett won’t end CPS corruption in The Depaulia, the student newspaper of DePaul University.
Contracts do get steered to preferred vendors and suppliers. A red flag the size of a large empty hole in the ground should start waving when a contract is worth a lot of money and is awarded to a sole-source without honest competitive bidding. It’s a form of bid-rigging.
Fortunately, it only happens in Chicago or Detroit or Atlanta or … But it could never happen in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
The US Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission are looking at California businessman James Su’s company, G&E Studio Inc. to determine if the company is violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
Su’s company is in West Covina, CA, just east of Los Angeles. Federal law prohibits foreign governments or their representatives from holding a station license for a U.S. broadcast station. Su’s company does not own any radio stations, however it leases two 50,000 watt “blowtorch” stations, one that blankets the Washington, DC, area from suburban Virginia and one in Philadelphia. Additionally, his company provides nearly all the program content to stations in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Houston, Boston, Atlanta, Portland, Las Vegas, Dallas/TJ, northern California, and Hawaii. The program content is produced in his West Covina studio and by China Radio International, the Chi-Com state run radio system.
Su and his company are being scrutinized by DoJ because the FARA requires that anyone inside the US seeking to influence American policy or public opinion on behalf of a foreign government or group must register with the US DoJ as a foreign agent. Neither Su nor his companies are registered as Chi-Com agents. Su contends he is not violating US law because his and the CRI programs are run on radio stations his company leases but does not own.
For a very detailed examination of CRI’s operations, see the Reuters November 2, 2015, article headlined Exposed — China’s covert global radio network airs China-friendly news across Washington, and the world.
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