27Nov/11

Chicago’s New Media Outperforms Two Old Dying Papers

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Annabel Kent, Chicago Media Critic

It’s no secret that Chicago’s two major daily newspapers are circling the drain.

According to chicagoist.com, in 2011: 

Fewer Chicagoans are getting their fingers stained turning the pages of newspapers. Daily circulation for both the Tribune and Sun-Times for the six-month period ending Sept. 30, [declined] according to numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The Tribune's daily circulation fell by 2.7 percent to 425,370, while the Sun-Times' weekday numbers of 236,371 reflected a 7.2 percent drop. There was some good news for the Tribune. Their Sunday circulation numbers rose to 781,128. The Sun-Times' Sunday numbers fell slightly to 233,445.

Compare those numbers with these tallied by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), according to the Tribune, in the not too distant past.

Tribune March to Sept. 05 950,582 (S) 586,122 (M-F)
Tribune March to Sept. 06 937,907 (S) 576,132 (M-F)
Tribune March to Sept. 07 917,868 (S) 559,404 (M-F)
Tribune March to Sept. 08 864,845 (S) 516,032 (M-F)

Sun-Times March to Sept. 05 281,129 (S) 349,968 (M-F)
Sun-Times March to Sept. 06 264,371 (S) 341,448 (M-F)
Sun-Times March to Sept. 07 244,962 (S) 326,018 (M-F)
Sun-Times March to Sept. 08 255,905 (S) 313,176 (M-F)

In the seven years from 2005-2011, the Monday-Friday circulation of the Trib went from 586,122 to 425,370.  For the Sun Times, the numbers declined from 349,968 to 236,371.  In the old math, that’s a 27% decline in daily circulation for the Trib in the last 7 years, and a 32% decline for the Sun Times.

In short, Chicago’s two major dailies are in a drag race to the cliff.

Causes for their decline abound. People are increasingly looking to the internet for news. TV cable channels have multiplied with outlets offering up-to-the-minute, 24-hour news.  Younger generations have grown up with cell phone where they can now read the news while commuting on the train, keeping their fingers clean of ink.

There’s another reason the two big old dailies are dying.

More and more readers are less and less trusting of the veracity of what they read there. Case in point:

During the run-up to the 2008 Presidential election, both Chicago dailies served as shills for the Obama Campaign.  The vetting of candidate Obama was powder-puff league quality, rather than hardball major league reporting. Puffery prevailed.

Sure, Chicago’s long been a Democrat Party town, and many Trib and Sun Times readers support the bias. But others, particularly those in the burbs, live where Democrat water doesn’t run as deep as in the City.

For the Fourth Estate, there’s a price to be paid for playing fast-and-loose with the news. Even those in sympathy with a bias, whatever it may be, eventually lose their underlying confidence in a news source the spins the story line, drives a meme, and promotes a political theme.

Let’s say it aloud: The two Chicago dailies helped Senator Barack Obama become President Obama.

The Tribune cooked the news somewhat more so than the Sun Times, but both outlets promoted his election.  And as his presidency fails, some of the blame is falling at the feet of the Chicago print media that helped put him in the White House.

Today, if readers want to more fully understand Chicago and national politics they must expand the horizons of their news sources to include Chicago’s New Media.

If the people of Northern Illinois want to stay abreast of stories like the Rezko and Blago trials, they need to visit outlets like the Chicago Daily Observer and Citizen WElls.  Both websites are linked in the margin of this website, along with Steve Bartin’s Newsalert, a running, updated compendium of current articles covering a variety of topics of interest, specializing in political corruption. A national pastime these days.

These are the news sources of the future – Chicago’s New Media.  For the Old Media is dying a slow, self-inflicted death.  And the New is just now being born.

Meanwhile, there will always be homes that welcome the old ink and paper media.

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25Nov/11

Chicago Tribune Writes “Top Blagojevich adviser Tony Rezko gets 10½ years”

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Introducing Annabel Kent, Chicago Media Critic

Tribune reporter Annie Sweeney wrote a nearly insightful piece on a former Governor Blagojevich “advisor” identified in the body of her piece as Antoin Rezko, and in the title as Tony Rezko.  Who is Annie writing about?

Is this the same Tony Rezko who served with Allison Davis and Valerie Jarrett as Barack Obama’s senate election campaign finance committee?  She doesn’t mention that.

Is this the same Tony Rezko who Obama said he only occasionally shared lunch with, but who federal mole Bernard Barton, AKA John Thomas, reported to have witnessed frequently meeting at Rezko’s office where Barton-Thomas worked while wired. She doesn’t mention Obama.

Is this the same Tony Rezko who helped Obama and Michelle buy that Hyde Park mansion near his home in Chicago, helped him expand his yard, helped him…well, you know all that.  She skips all that, too.

Or, was this the former governor’s “advisor” – it’s such a dignified word, “advisor” – who gave former Governor Blagojevich prescient recommendations on competent and knowledgeable persons he, Blago, should appoint to key state committees in order to best serve the tax-payers of Illinois?

Is this Tony Rezko the “advisor” who whispered in Blago’s ear giving timely and clever political advice – cause that’s what “advisors” do, you know – to Illinois’ Chief Executive Officer so that he might act, in all ways and in all things, on behalf of the greater interests of the people of the Land of Lincoln?

The Governor’s Advisor...

 

…and not Blago’s senior extortionist bag man and close friend of the President.

It’s just hard to tell from Ms. Sweeney’s article who she’s writing about.

She wrote, “Rezko opted to enter jail after his June 2008 conviction, but his sentencing was delayed because of the possibility that federal prosecutors would call him as a witness at other key trials connected to the probe of the Blagojevich administration, including the former governor's retrial over the summer.”

Does Ms. Sweeney really believe that this Tony Rezko was ever going to be called as a witness at “other key Blago trials” where, on cross examination, he might have been forced to elaborate on his relationship with Barack Obama and commit perjury when he lied?  Did Annie just move to Chicago from Bulgaria?

For whom does Ms. Sweeney work?  Oh, that’s right – the Chicago Tribune.  A newspaper that’s been covering-up for Chicago’s favorite son for a long time now.

Now we get it.

She also wrote, ”Prosecutors, in a filing Monday, also described how Rezko withheld information from them, undercutting their investigation.”

Sure.  We get that, too.

What’s “shill” in Bulgarian?

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23Nov/11

Dead Meat Walks the Plank December 6th

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Jontel Kassidy, Senior Capital Correspondent

Blago is next to be sentenced, on December 6.  Conventional wisdom among the Crook County media pundits is that, since Tony Rezko drew 10½ years, Dead Meat is facing the realistic prospect of even more time.

The prosecution said that Tony was “uncooperative”; even though he volunteered to go to jail before he was sentenced.  (Who gave him that advice?)  If the intent was to rack up goodwill points at his sentencing, it didn’t work.  All it did was give him a preview of the future – at least until his friend Barack springs him with a commutation of his sentence.  (Is Vegas posting odds on that yet?)

But for Dead Meat, there’s no commutation, no pardon, no escape on the horizon coming from the White House.  Blago and Barack didn’t have that special, symbiotic relationship built, literally, on bags of cash that once linked Tony and Barack at the wallet.

So what’s Dead Meat to do to mitigate the depth of the water he’s to fall into when he walks the plank on December 6th? How might he, unlike Tony, “cooperate?”

He can’t relate details about the former Chicago corruption days of the POTUS, and, thereby, shave off jail time. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has done a stalwart job of protecting Chicago’s favorite son through the whole sordid affair that’s whirled around Tony and Rod.  Blago starts talking about Chicago Obama and he might get life without parole!

He can’t squeal on Attorney General Eric Holder’s association, once upon another time, with the effort to endorse a mobbed-up casino in Rosemont. Holder is Patrick Fitzgerald’s boss. How would that work? – Blago fessing up that Holder’s law firm was to get $300 g’s for certifying that the people behind the casino were all former Eagle Scouts and fine, church-goin folks, when he knew otherwise. No joy there for Blago.

So does he tell on the current Governor’s Chief of Staff for what he might have done as Tony’s Chief Financial Officer? Naw, that’d be small potatoes. Besides, who cares? He has some dirt on the current Gov himself? Yawn.

Or, maybe he details how Rezko’s close business associates Dan Frawley and Dan Mahru participated in…oh, serial bad behaviors of interest?  Nope. You don’t use a big fish to catch smaller ones.

Okay, suppose Blago does a core dump on Illinois corruption, names names, give dates, outlines plots and pinpoints where the bones are buried, metaphorically speaking, of course.

Maybe he exposes details of the nefarious world of a longtime, high-profile, corrupt, senior alderman.  Or, tell true tales about the Daley’s.  Rahmbo might like that, but it wouldn’t help Blago.

So just what information, what “cooperation”, does Blago have to offer now that he knows how deep the water may be when he walks off the plank on December 6th?

Is there even anything he can tell that will make the outcome any less catastrophic for him?  Or, would his prosecutors just as soon he say nothing and vanish quietly into the federal penal system? Sort of like Norman Hsu did – remember him? You probably don’t, and that may be just what the U.S. Attorney’s office is hoping for. That Dead Meat disappears down the federal rabbit hole and in, say, 15 years, no one notices when he walks out with short gray hair, his children grown, Patty remarried, a self-defeated man. Not a pretty picture.

Not looking good for Dead Meat.

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23Nov/11

Rezko Sentenced to Await Obama’s Pardon

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Hugo Floriani, Investigative Reporter

WOW!  Today Federal U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve sentenced Tony Rezko to 10½ years in prison!  That can’t be good news for Blago. He’s next.

This reporter is, frankly, surprised – astonished is a better word – that St. Eve came down so hard on Tony.  (But we don’t back off the analysis of the Sun Times article yesterday wherein a case was implicitly made by the reporter for giving him time served.)

Does this mean that Tony will do at least the federally mandated 85% of his time before being a free man again? Maybe. Maybe not.

Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama was considerably less than forthcoming and truthful when describing his relationship with Tony before the ’08 election.  In short, he lied. Illinois Pay-to-Play will elaborate on that assertion in the weeks ahead.

We expected that, today, Tony might be a free man, sentenced to time served. Or, that his sentencing might be postponed yet again. We were wrong. But that won’t stop us from sticking out collective neck again.

Rezko expects to be pardoned by his friend Obama. Whether Obama wins or losses (or doesn’t even run in) the next election, he will pardon his friend and financial benefactor Tony after the ’12 election.  Tony is expecting that, given two eyewitness accounts known to us wherein Tony said he expects Obama to pardon him.

We hope we’re wrong about that prediction, too. Very wrong. Tony did the crime – he should do all  the time.  And more.

It’s time that will tell.

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21Nov/11

The Sun Times Asks “How much time will Tony Rezko serve?”

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Hugo Floriani, Investigative Reporter

Natasha Korecki, Federal Courts Reporter for the Sun Times, asked that question in a recent article.

Tony is scheduled, once again, to be sentenced Tuesday, November 22, in federal court. We’re holding our collective breath.

The rest of Natasha’s piece is designed to prepare us for a sentence of “time served.”  Here’s what we’re told:

  • The U.S. Attorney, Patrick “Elliott Ness” Fitzgerald, wants Tony to serve 11-15 years for failing to cooperate. (That’s because Patrick’s what John Kass of the Tribune calls, the Exterminator of criminals.)
  • Tony’s lawyer says that Tony’s “talks with the government” help encourage others, like Lon Monk, to testify against Blago.
  • A defense attorney says that the judge could credit Tony for his cooperation (What cooperation?) even though he wasn’t called to testify against Blago.
  • The judge doesn’t have to follow the prosecution’s sentencing recommendation. (Oh, oh. Brace for impact.)
  • Meanwhile, “Rezko served about nine months in the most restrictive jail conditions at the downtown Metropolitan Correctional Center — a Special Housing Unit called the ‘SHU,’ where ‘high-risk’ inmates, including accused terrorists and currently a suspected high-ranking leader of a violent Mexican drug cartel, are held. High-profile defendants or those cooperating with prosecutors are also held there.”  (So now the Sun Times knows where Tony’s been. Who leaked this time? Chase again?)
  • Unidentified “legal observers” say the judge could credit Tony for having done jail time in harsh conditions. (Are you feeling set-up yet?)
  • A former Chief of Staff of former Governor, now inmate, George Ryan says that the SHU “should not be shrugged off.”  (Are you feeling Tony’s pain yet?)
  • Tony also spent time in a Wisconsin county jail (Really?) “…where he cannot go outdoors and has not had any physical contact with family.”  (OMG, such an ordeal for poor Tony!)

This article reads like the storyline for a sequel to A Christmas Carol with Tony playing a grown-up Tiny Tim.  Patrick Fitzgerald is the legalistic Scrooge. The kindly Judge St. Eve releases Tony from the clutches of debtor’ prison and he limps into the sunset – a free man.

Sort of like…John Thomas. Another faux witness to corruption in Crook County, never called to testify.

Get ready for time served. Unless there’s another sentencing postponement. And what a shock that’d be!

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21Nov/11

Chicago’s Political Prisoner Partially Released and Then Gagged

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Thomas Barton, Illinois Pay-to-Play Political Commentator

On October 19 last, you read here of the continuing incarceration of former Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF) employee Annabel Melongo in the Crook County Jail. There’s been a new development in her case.

After 18 months in the slammer, Ms. Melongo has been released under house arrest.  But she’s forbidden to speak to the media.  Illinois Pay-to-Play has made no effort to contact her, not wishing to endanger her semi-freedom from jail, if not her freedom under the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

The website Sidebar posted a thank you note she sent to several bloggers who kept her case alive during the last 16 months.

Allegedly, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office continues to “investigate” the $853,709 state and federal dollars in grant monies received by the SALF, but not reported on their Form 990 to the state. Nor, presumably, reported to the IRS’s via the federal 990.  If you think there’s a real AG investigation underway into the matter, then check the classified ads for cheap Florida swamp land.

Hey, what’s less than a million missing government dollars in the greater scheme of the national version of Illinois’ Pay-to-Play metastasizing throughout the United States of America? Billions are slipping away in various green, GM, Fannie & Freddie, and other schemes. The redistribution of wealth is in full throttle – but not going to the poor, but to the players.  But that’s another story.

One wonders: What’s the Court afraid that Ms. Melongo might say about what she witnessed at SALF before it went belly-up in 2009? What names of prominent pols (at the state and federal levels) might she mention? And where did unaccounted for government grant monies representing nearly 10% of SALF’s receipts go over the years of its operation?

Melongo was in a position to see where the money went; now she’s gagged. After being framed for corrupting their computer system. It’s the Chicago Way.

These are questions that the relentless investigative reporters at the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times are probing even as you read this – ah...well, no they’re not.

Fact is, we’ll never know where the money went.  But, look, it’s chump change. Unfortunately, the citizens of Crook County and Illinois are the chumps.

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7Nov/11

Forbes Exposes How Chicago’s Pay-to-Play Works With Green Energy

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Thomas Barton, Illinois Pay-to-Play Political Commentator

Writing for Forbes’ on-line magazine, Larry Bell, an expert in climate, energy, environmental and space policy issues, explains how the Obama administration has deployed the Chicago Way in awarding contracts. His article, entitled “Obama Kick-Back Cronyism, Part 1: Stimulating Green Energy the Chicago Way” can be read here.

“This article is the first in a four-part series discussing the early formative Chicago political career days of Barack Obama as community organizer, lawyer, Illinois state senator, financial foundation executive, and U.S. Senate campaigner. Part 2 will emphasize his activities related to Illinois health care issues leading to Obamacare.”

You can read Part Two here. It’s entitled “Obama Kick-Back Cronyism - Part 2: Illinois Health And Human Disservices.”

It’s unclear whether Forbes will complete the four-part series with Parts 3 and 4.  Maybe they got a phone call.

 

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6Nov/11

Rezko’s Sentencing Recommendations, Who’s Zoomin’ Who?

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Thomas Barton, Illinois Pay-to-Play Political Commentator

The Jimmy Hoffa of federal prisoners may be getting ready to finally surface, in the flesh. Talk of Tony Rezko’s imminent sentencing is building. Suppose that means anything, this time?

After 3½ years of self-imposed incarceration, somewhere on the planet, he’s about to surface, according to the Chicago Tribune.  According to another source, Tony “has spent much of his more than 3½ years in jail in solitary, rarely getting fresh air and subject to a diet that has resulted in him losing 80 pounds, according to a defense filing unsealed Thursday.”  Poor Tony.  He’s been Steve McQueen in the 1973 movie Papillon.

Paa-leese.  We’re supposed to believe that Tony has been doing hard time at the…well, where has he been all this hard time? On a military base in Wisconsin playing golf in a light disguise four times a week?  Indoor tennis on rainy days? And where is he now? When will those relentless investigative reporters at the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times be able to ask him their piercing interrogatives?

Tony’s attorneys want him sentences to time served. (Where was that again?)

Patrick Fitzgerald’s office wants him sentenced to from 11-15 years because – get ready for this – he failed to cooperate with prosecutors.  That’s why, we’re to believe, Tony wasn’t called as a witness in the Blago trial. After 3½ years, the U.S. Attorney finally decided that Tony hasn’t cooperated. Geeze, Louise. Buying that requires…a willing suspension of disbelief. (The Tribune’s John Kass will buy it, though. For him, Fitzgerald is the Great Exterminator.)

Sentencing by U.S. Judge Amy St. Eve is set, yet again, for Nov. 22.  Waiting for St. Eve to sentence Tony is like waiting for Gogot. Birthdays pass while waiting. Wanna bet it’ll be postponed again?

But what if it isn’t postponed? Will her Honor throw the book at Tony? Or, sentence him to time served.  Or, maybe 4 months in a federal pen where, for the 3 months he has to put in, he can work on his backhand tennis return.

The best way to watch all this is to pull up an easy chair, get a bag of popcorn and enjoy the show. Cause it’s all theatre, folks.  Tony’s friend Obama is going to pardon him eventually anyway.  After all the money Tony passed his way, Tony deserves some executive clemency. Tony’s mentioned he expects a pardon to two former associates.

Aretha Franklin asked the relevant question about all this…

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30Oct/11

Chicago Media’s Complicity in Nationalizing Illinois’ Pay to Play

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Introducing Jontel Kassidy, Senior Capital Correspondent

As the nation wakes up to the systemic corruption of the Obama administration, and James O’Keefe outs journalistic fraud at the New York Times, it’s only a matter of time until the Chicago mainstream media comes under scrutiny for ignoring the background of the once junior Senator from Illinois during their coverage of the ’08 election.

Not because Chicago’s media luminaries didn’t know his associations with persons of questionable political ethics.  Not because they didn’t know of his lack of experience at running anything as large as a White Castle franchise.  And, not because they didn’t know of his friendships with, let’s say, person with less than conventional beliefs about the nation he was campaigning to lead. Not for any of those reasons will the Chicago media come under popular indictment for journalistic malpractice.

Their professional veracity will be, and is already being, questioned because they were like the piano player in the bordello. He banged away on the keyboard every day while the banging in the building went on upstairs. And then the day after the police raided the place – someone forgot to pay protection – he said, “You mean Gertrude really isn’t their aunt? And the nieces are, are…women of ill repute?  Who could have known?”

The Chicago Tribune’s John Kass wrote the perfect piano player piece last September 11th.  It began:

The Solyndra scandal cost at least a half-billion public dollars. It is plaguing President Barack Obama. And it's being billed as a Washington story.

But back in Obama's political hometown, those of us familiar with the Chicago Way can see something else in Solyndra — something that the Washington crowd calls "optics." In fact, it's not just a Washington saga — it has all the elements of a Chicago City Hall story, except with more zeros.

Wow! What a journalistic revelation! You mean the politician from Chicago, now in the White House, is metastasizing Pay-to-Play across the nation and the folks back in Chicago knew it was coming?  And they didn’t warn the rest of us? That takes your breath away, don’t it?  Coming as it does from Chicago’s most prominent living reporter.

It brings to mind that scene from the movie Die Hard where Bruce Willis throws a dead terrorist out the window of the besieged building in order to get the attention of the Twinkie-munching patrol officer.  When the body lands on the hood of his black-n-white and the shooting starts, Willis yells, “Welcome to the party, Pal.”

Well, welcome to the party, Kass! You didn’t know that Pay-to-Play would metastasize throughout the nation with a President Obama? Or you did know and didn’t say?

While you're writing about solar corruption these days, here are some other tumors you might check out. Start with the Daily Calleryea, I know, it’s one of those amateur media outlets you pros look down on – and learn about First Solar, SolarReserve ($737 federal loan), SunPower Corporation and Abengoa SA. They’re part of the solar power scam. And Barry has buds there, too.  What a surprise!  More Pay-to-Play.

Just one more lead, cause you don’t need to be over-worked: Whatever happened to Cathy Zoi, former acting undersecretary of Energy at the Department of Energy? (Here’s a clue.)

As for what set you off – i.e., Solyndra – no worries there, John.  As you wrote, “The FBI is investigating what happened with Solyndra.” Right, and Eric Holder is their boss. We all remember how Eric had such a stellar legal reputation that Dead Meat planned to pay his law firm $300,000 to certify that the mob mutts who were going to build a casino in Rosemont were really all upstanding troop leaders for the Boy Scouts.

You Chicago media boys and girls, keep bangin’ on your pianos, while Rome burns.

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19Oct/11

Annabel Melongo, the Machine’s Political Prisoner For Over 18 Months

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Thomas Barton, Illinois Pay-to-Play Political Commentator

Annabel Melongo has been locked-up in the Crook County Jail since April 10, 2010.  Yet, she’s been convicted of no crime.  Her bail, originally set at $500,000 (!), is now $300,000.

Annabel’s a single, legal immigrant from Cameroon.  She has no family here.  She can’t make bail.

Melongo’s a political prisoner.

Her story, and the saga of the now-defunct Save A Life Foundation (SALF) where she was once employed as a computer specialist, has been covered by several new media outlets including the American Thinker, Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government and Big Journalism, the Cincinnatibeacon.com and the Chicago Daily Observer.

Melon-go’s problems with the Cook County State’s Attorney began back in 2006. The Cincinnati Beacon summarized the beginning of her ordeal.

“Annabel Melongo is a computer professional, born in Cameroon, who has lived and worked in the Chicago area since 2003. From December - April, 2006, she worked for the Save-A-Life Foundation (SALF), a nonprofit whose charter was to teach first aid to children in public schools.

Founded in 1993, SALF was a member organization of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and over the years received close to $9 million in federal and state funding. Since November 2006, SALF has been the subject of about a dozen news reports around the country that raise serious concerns about the organization’s claims, activities, and finances.

In October 2006, Annabel was charged with destroying SALF’s files, among them financial records. Those charges were entirely based on claims made by SALF’s founder/president Carol J. Spizzirri of Grayslake, IL. According to multiple news reports, Spizzirri has a history of serious fabrications, including the false claim that she is a Registered Nurse; that she worked as a renal transplant nurse in a Milwaukee hospital; and that she earned a BSN degree from a Wisconsin college whose name she misspelled on her CV. According to a recent sworn affidavit, in 1985 a Milwaukee court-ordered psychologist, Dr. Burton S. Silberglitt, diagnosed Spizzirri as ‘paranoid schizophrenic.’”

SALF collapsed in 2009.  Spizzirri moved to California. And, after being made aware that the organization failed to account for $853,709 in state and federal (CDC) grant money, the granting of which was facilitated by several Illinois politicians – mostly Democrats – the Illinois Attorney General’s Office is supposedly investigating the organization’s finances.  Raise your hand if you believe there’s a real investigation underway.

The missing money is approximately 10% of government monies received by SALF during its lifetime.  Can we say Pay to Play?

Melongo was originally arrested on a complaint from Spizzirri that Melongo corrupted the organization’s computer records from off-site, after she’d been fired.  Those charges have been put in legal limbo.  Then she was arrested for audio-taping two brief innocuous, procedural conversations with a court clerk pertaining to questions she had about her case, and for posting those conversations on her website. Not smart, for sure.  Annabel went to trial and the result was a hung jury.  The Cook County States Attorney’s Office has decided to go to a re-trial on those charges. Why would they do that ?

Meanwhile, she’s been sitting in the Crook County Jail now for over 18 months.

The mainstream Chicago media isn’t interested in her story.

In July 2010, a writer of the aforementioned Big Journalism article reported this comment from a Sun Times investigative reporter.

“‘My bosses aren’t interested in tackling the story [of Melongo].’ That’s what a top investigative reporter at a major Chicago newspaper said when I asked why the story of Annabel Melongo – former Save A Life Foundation employee – wasn’t being covered. ‘We’d have to spend a lot of time to get it right.’ The reporter explained how, with a limited staff of investigative reporters tasked to write one ‘investigative story’ each week, there aren’t enough resources to focus on the Melongo case.”

Of course they aren’t interested in Melongo’s story. Just too many well-connected Chicago area pols were associated with the SALF.

Meanwhile, Joseph Cari was sentenced to three years probation for attempting to extort millions from a state pension fund for school teachers.  Go figure.

According to the on-line Crook County Jail’s Inmate Report, Melongo comes before a judge again on October 25.  Stand-by.

 

 

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