THE LOCAL AREA WATCH

DEFENDERS WHO DON'T DEFEND

Usually my interest isn't piqued by headlines touting the most recent study of how our bigoted self-indulgent couch-potato middle-class society called America oppresses the poor, disadvantaged, and disenfranchised.  This is not because there are not injustices and inquities in the land, some blame for which does result from a blindness brought on by our increasingly vulgar self-absorption.  It is because such studies are usually nothing more than propaganda pieces -- mindlessly reported by the mainstream media as legitimate news -- to justify shoveling taxpayer funds to the group who "discovered" the problem in order to solve it.

But that's not always the case.  Sometimes the grievance industry is onto a problem that does merit our attention.  For example, the Grand Rapids Press reported on yesterday's front page:  "Justice denied to poor, study says".  To wit, the National Legal Aid & Defender Association examined the public defender system in ten Michigan counties with the endorsement of the state legislature.  Their findings are available at the Michigan Bar Association's website, and they are not good.  Excessive plea-bargaining, lack of preparation, shoddy to non-existent representation, conflicts of interests are rife among lawyers taking public defender cases on the taxpayer dime.  We know from the Jack Crofoot incident (here and here) that it is not just another grievance-mongering fairy tale that rotten public defenders risk putting the innocent behind bars.

So, take a look at the NLADA study.  Of course, these guys are a special interest group who believe that the solution lies in giving their members more power and money to liberate the poor and disadvantage from our oppression.  However, the problem they report is real, and their identification of the routine ethical misconduct of many doing public defender work is a serious problem that is the responsibility of the legal profession and state oversight agencies to clean up -- not taxpayers forking over more dough.  Check it out.

CROFOOT VINDICATED

Last week Jack Crofoot contacted us with good news.

As you will recall, Mr. Crofoot was facing a trial on criminal charges pressed by the grocery chain Spartan Stores.  On the advice of Warner Norcross attorney Alex DeYonker, Spartan was trying to intimidate Mr. Crofoot into silence about his mistreatment by the company after one its security guards had falsely twisted a honest mistake into a shoplifting beef against him.  (Mr. Crofoot, who is legally blind, exited a Spartan grocery store with an unchecked item in his shopping cart.  The security guard accosted him when he was going back into the store to correct his mistake.)

Grand Rapids Assistant City Attorney Margaret Bloemers gleefully piled on to prosecute Mr. Crofoot, even after Spartan's security manager contacted her to drop the charges.  You see, the company's surveillance video proved Mr. Crofoot's innocence, and the security manager knew that.  This put Spartan Stores in a pickle:  They had falsely accused Mr. Crofoot of a crime, about which he had been making public complaints.  DeYonker tried to bully Mr. Crofoot into silence by hanging the possibility of future prosecution over his head if he didn't shut up, but Mr. Crofoot refused to be cowed.  So Spartan pressed on with charges, with Bloemers happily carrying their water in court.

This shouldn't have been a tremendous problem for Mr. Crofoot to overcome, because of the evidence of the Spartan surveillance video.  However, Spartan refused to release to the court the portion of the video that exonerated Mr. Crofoot, and Mr. Crofoot's public defender did not want to be bothered with defending his client.  (After all, that would mean working for his fee paid by the taxpayers, and who are they to expect anything like that?)  So, by the time Mr. Crofoot's trial was scheduled for the end of April, things looked bleak.

Fortunately, the American Council for the Blind stepped and sent an attorney to Mr. Crofoot to represent him.  All of the sudden, Bloemers folded and the City Attorney's Office signed an agreement dismissing all charges.  As for Spartan Stores, all Mr. Crofoot could say is that he signed an agreement to no longer publicly discuss the matter.  Therefore, we do not know what, if any, settlement has been reached between Spartan and him.  For what it's worth, I will say that a "gag order", like the one Mr. Crofoot spoke of, would indicate his lawyer got him a favorable settlement from Spartan.

So despite the mendacity of Spartan Stores, the thuggery of Warner Norcross, and the supine submission of the City Attorney's Office to the players in town, justice did prevail.  Mr. Crofoot is officially no longer a bad man.  We wish him well.

THE STORY OF JACK CROFOOT

Jack Crofoot is a bad man.  So bad he needs to be locked up in the joint.  At least that's what Spartan Stores, their attorneys at Warner Norcross, the Grand Rapids City Attorney's office, and apparently even Mr. Crofoot's public defender want you to think.  What did this bad man do?

Mr. Crofoot was a regular patron of Spartan's Family Fare grocery store near the intersection of 44th Street and Breton.  One day he missed a couple of items in his grocery cart when he checked out.  Before leaving the store, he noticed one of them, a bottle of bleach, and then went back and paid for it.  Then immediately after exiting the store, he noticed the other item, a bottle of rum he purchased for a family member.  (Mr. Crofoot doesn't drink.)  As he headed back into the store to pay for that, the store's security guard detained him and refused to let him do so.

Mr. Crofoot missed the bleach and the rum at the check-out because they were out of sight in his cart, and you see, folks, he is legally blind.  However, the Spartan rent-a-cop scoffed at his blindness and demanded that he sign documents confessing to theft.  Mr. Crofoot refused, and the rent-a-cop called in the Grand Rapids police.  As it happens, the rent-a-cop was also a cadet with the GRPD, so he had an incentive to make it appear to his colleague in blue that he was making a good bust and not a screw-up.  As it also happens, this conflict of interest is the very reason why the City of Grand Rapids prohibits its police officers from moonlighting as security guards within the city limits.  (More on that below.)

So the Spartan rent-a-cop persuaded his brother officer to cite Mr. Crofoot for shoplifting.  Understandably, Mr. Crofoot was unhappy about this and had the gall to complain.  In fact, his complaint did get the attention of Spartan's manager for security who then reviewed the store's surveillance video of the incident.  He concluded that Mr. Crofoot had told the truth and committed no theft.  So the security manager contacted the Grand Rapids City Attorney's office to drop the charges.  However, Assistant City Attorney Margaret Bloemers refused.

She was miffed that Mr. Crofoot had made a public complaint about the Spartan rent-a-cop's conflict of interest, which forced the GRPD to enforce the moonlighting regulations that its cadet had been violating.  So, Ms. Bloemers, who serves as the GRPD's legal adviser, decided to make an example out of Mr. Crofoot and show us slack-jawed yokels that we had better not get uppity when the cops make a mistake.  She pressed on with his prosecution in the city's district court.

Meanwhile, Spartan's security manager had been overridden by the grocery store chain's hired gun, Alex DeYonker of the law firm Warner Norcross & Judd.  Mr. Crofoot's public complaints about Spartan tarring his name with an unjust prosecution raised the prospect that he might have a meritorious lawsuit against the grocery store.  Thus, Mr. DeYonker decided to deter that prospect by bullying Mr. Crofoot into submission.  So instead of giving the man a simple apology and gesture of goodwill as the security manager had originally offered, Spartan's jackal -- ahem, Mr. DeYonker -- decided is was best to hold a suspension of the prosecution (rather than an outright dismissal of it) over Mr. Crofoot's head until he knuckled under to Spartan's settlement terms.

Mr. Crofoot didn't agree, because he wanted his name cleared.  So Spartan, Warner Norcross, and the City Attorney's office proceeded with his prosecution.  Living on a fixed income, Mr. Crofoot needed a public defender and the district court assigned one to him.  Unfortunately for him, his lawyer was one of those operators who collects his fee from the public defender's office and then does as little as he can get away with in exchange for it.  In fact, he told Mr. Crofoot that he would not enter a plea of "not guilty" on his behalf because it wasn't worth the trouble.  He claimed that he had already met with the judge who was determined to convict him.  Unsurprisingly, Mr. Crofoot made a big stink about this:  He wanted his lawyer to defend him!  Finally, his lawyer relented and agree to enter a "not guilty" plea, but he would not do any work toward his defense -- for example, subpoenaing the store's video surveillance tape or the security manager and the store clerks to appear as witnesses.  Mr. Crofoot's lawyer explained that such case preparation would take too much trouble.

Of course, we can all marvel at the absurdity of this.  However, Mr. Crofoot faces the prospect of doing time, because everyone who should be putting things right by Mr. Crofoot has instead chosen to serve crass, rotten, venial interests that profit by his conviction, as unjust as that may be:

[1] The Spartan security guard vilified Mr. Crofoot to make himself look good to his superiors at the GRPD;

[2] Spartan and Warner Norcross have chosen to run a customer through a ruinious process to crush any prospect of a lawsuit for falsely detaining and defaming him as a thief;

[3] The City Attorney's office has put petty bureaucratic solidarity ahead of justice to smack down a citizen who rightly complained of a police officer's conflict of interest in the matter; and

[4] His public defender is peeved that his client should be so unruly as to demand that he actually defend him and so make him work for his fee.

Mr. Crofoot's real crime, folks, is that he had the temerity to complain when wronged.  He had the nerve to hold people accountable to the rules they claim to abide by.  He had the unmitigated gall to demand that his name be cleared by those tarring it.  Instead of fixing the problem, the Spartan security guard, Spartan Stores, Warner Norcross, the City Attorney's office, and his public defender chose to vindicate themselves at his expense -- which may end up including a jail sentence.  Their craven cowardice in refusing to admit a wrong to falsely justify themselves -- especially those who hold a public trust, like Assistant City Attorney Bloemers and Mr. Crofoot's public defender -- is despicable.

Such is the rule of petty bullies in River City and the supine go-along-to-get-along culture of our public officials, watchdogs, and local media that lets them get away with it.

THE FIXER ISN'T JOKING

Folks, you can't make this stuff up.

Charlie McCallum, local attorney of "The Fixer" fame, is not happy with all the lawyer jokes we tell.  He fears that we tell them because they are true -- and he would know.  So he wrote an article for the most recent edition of the American Bar Association's "Business Law Today" decrying the lack of professionalism in the shysterhood.  Charlie writes that one remedy is "a fanatic, almost compulsive, dedication to client service".

No doubt that professional fanaticism was what drove Charlie to ensure that as chairman, secretary, and corporate counsel for Butterworth Hospital (now Spectrum Health Corporation) that its legal business went to the law firm of Warner Norcross & Judd at which he could rely upon an attorney there, by the name of Charlie McCallum, to provide that compulsive dedication to the fat Butterworth account.  Well, what's a little conflict of interest between friends?

Apparently it was Charlie's insight into ethical issues like this that prompted the American Bar Association to annoint him as chairman of its Committee on Professional Ethics.  And lawyers wonder why they are the butt of our jokes.

DOOM, DESPAIR, AND AGONY ON US

That sums up what we can expect from the Grand Rapids City Attorney's office as it embarks upon another fool's errand.  Here are a few L.A.W. highlights of the City Attorney's past hijinks.

THE VELVET TOUCH FIASCO (first posted on April 14, 2005)

On Tuesday the Grand Rapids City Commission meekly acquiesced to a federal court order requiring the City to reimburse the Velvet Touch adult bookstore $125,000 for the attorney fees it incurred to stop the City Attorney's office from shutting it down.  Assistant City Attorneys Daniel Ophoff and Catherine Mish also racked up a similar sum in legal costs, including the retention of a private attorney out of Tennessee to help them.  Therefore, the Velvet Touch fiasco cost taxpayers a quarter-million dollars without a single benefit to be gained.

And a fiasco it was.  None of this would have happened had the City Commission been on the ball and modernized the zoning ordinance regulating adult businesses or had City officials not reneged on its original finding that the Velvet Touch complied with the existing ordinance.

Back in August 2000 the Velvet Touch looked into moving its store to its present location on 28th Street in Grand Rapids.  The City zoning ordinance would not permit the Velvet Touch to locate there without a variance if it fell under the definition of an adult business.  Under the ordinance at the time, which had been drafted in the '70s, if 5% of a retailer's stock were sexually explicit printed materials, then it was deemed an adult business.  As it happened, only 3% of the Velvet Touch's stock constituted the offending materials.  Much of the remainder consisted of pornographic videos and sex toys, which the archaic ordinance did not address.  So interpreting the ordinance by its plain language, the City board of zoning appeals ruled that the Velvet Touch did not need a variance and could operate at its new location.

An owner of property adjacent to the Velvet Touch challenged the City's decision in Kent County Circuit Court.  Then the Grand Rapids City Commission revised the ordinance restricting the permissible locations of adult businesses.  The commissioners drafted the revision in such a way that there existed almost no place within the city limits where the Velvet Touch would be allowed to operate.  Indeed, they targeted the new ordinance at the Velvet Touch.  When City officials then tried to retroactively apply the new ordinance to the Velvet Touch to shut it down, the Velvet Touch sought protection from the U.S. District Court.

In stepped Ophoff and Mish and everyone's legal bills began to escalate.  The U.S. District Court invalidated the City's new adult business ordinance as unconstitutionally restrictive of businesses engaged in the sale of legal goods.  Ophoff and Mish appealed the decision to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio.  They hired an appellate attorney named Scott Bergthold out of Chattanooga, Tennessee, to handled the appeal.  Again the City lost.

So, the Velvet Touch continues to operate at its new location and the taxpayers are now on the hook for a quarter-million dollars for this fool's errand.  Had the City Commission been competent enough to draft a modern and constitutionally valid zoning ordinance, or had City officials simply honored their original decision, or had the City Attorney's office had the wits to advise the City Commission they were fighting a losing battle -- none of this would have happened.  Be assured, however, that only you, the taxpayer, will be paying for this fiasco.

RIVER RAT OPHOFF SHREDS DOCUMENTS (first published on May 9, 2002)

This is outrageous. Today Assistant City Attorney Daniel Ophoff told LAW’s attorney Peter Steketee that the City Attorney’s Office has destroyed the public records that LAW has asked the local court to disclose to it and the public under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Instead of turning these public records over to the court so that a circuit court judge can review them to decide whether to disclose them to the public, Ophoff had them destroyed.

These public records were minutes of closed sessions of the Grand Rapids City Commission held on March 6, 2001, and May 8, 2001, in which Mayor Logie and City Commissioners made decisions to NOT investigate the dumping of hazardous waste at the old Grand Rapids Water Filtration Plant located on Monroe Avenue, just north of Leonard Street. Because these decisions were made in secret instead of in an open meeting, where Boss Logie and the Empty Suits would have been accountable to the public and the media, it looked like those closed meetings were conducted in violation of Michigan’s Open Meetings Act.

Because I was twice tipped off by Commissar – ahem – I mean, Commissioner Jendrasiak (you know him, the self-proclaimed champion of the workingman who keeps his blue collar neatly tucked beneath his pinstripes) as to what transpired in those closed sessions, last June I, as your executive director, sent Boss Logie a FOIA request for those closed session minutes and other public records concerning the dumping of hazardous waste at the old filtration plant. After jerking me around for several weeks, City Manager Kurt Kimball finally refused to publicly disclose the minutes.

Consequently Peter Steketee filed a FOIA action in the Kent County Circuit Court (Local Area Watch v City of Grand Rapids, Case No. 02-00218-CZ) in January of this year to compel disclosure of the closed session minutes and other public records the City was withholding. LAW then made a discovery request of the City for those minutes and gave the City until the end of February to comply. When the deadline for producing the minutes came up, Ophoff asked Steketee for several extensions of the deadline because he needed the extra time to answer our discovery request.

Now we know that Ophoff was lying to Steketee. Instead of using the extra time we had given him in good faith to produce the closed session minutes, he used that time to destroy the documents. So much for FOIA and the Open Meetings Act, the tools that the State legislature created a quarter-century ago for mere citizens like us to keep on an eye on our government if stooges like Ophoff can make toast of embarrassing records to prevent their public disclosure. If he and the City gets away with this, we’re just one step away from the Ministry of Truth here in ol’ River City.

Well, we’ll see. Steketee is teeing up an injunction request to stop Ophoff and the City from destroying any further evidence of what happened in those closed sessions. Keep your fingers and we’ll keep you informed.

TORMALA DENOUNCES GUTLESSNESS OF CITY ATTORNEYS (first published on March 1, 2005)

Last Tuesday City Commissioner Rick Tormala used his position on the Fiscal Committee to block a $7,500 settlement that Assistant City Attorney Margaret Bloemers had negotiated to resolve a personal injury claim brought by a Kentwood man arrested by the Grand Rapids police a few years ago.  The man, Raymond Gallagher, complained the police hurt his wrists when they handcuffed him.  However, there is no dispute that the police acted properly or that Gallagher was permanently injured.

Tormala is right to take the City's attorneys to task for their gutlessness in settling cases that have little going for them other than a feared (and not necessarily real) emotional appeal to a jury.  After all, it's the taxpayers' money being thrown down the drain when City attorneys run away from a jury when the law is on the City's side.

Then again, why is Tormala silent when a City attorney makes common cause with malefactors, such at the Toxic Towers polluters, in a personal vendetta, destroying incriminating public records, filing false statements with courts, racking up big costs for the City, and leaving the taxpayers exposed to potentially billions of dollars in fines once a jury sees videotape evidence of the very acts the City Attorney's office is denying happened?

Why the silence about such folly?  Oh, that's right.  Because the City Attorney's Office ordered Tormala and his fellow commissioners to say nothing.*  So who's really working for whom at City Hall?

________________________

* Both Mayor Heartwell and Commissioner Tormala informed me last year that all of the elected officials in the City government were prohibited from discussing the Toxic Towers case upon the orders of the City Attorney's office.

This is outrageous. Today Assistant City Attorney Daniel Ophoff told LAW’s attorney Peter Steketee that the City Attorney’s Office has destroyed the public records that LAW has asked the local court to disclose to it and the public under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Instead of turning these public records over to the court so that a circuit court judge can review them to decide whether to disclose them to the public, Ophoff had them destroyed.

These public records were minutes of closed sessions of the Grand Rapids City Commission held on March 6, 2001, and May 8, 2001, in which Mayor Logie and City Commissioners made decisions to NOT investigate the dumping of hazardous waste at the old Grand Rapids Water Filtration Plant located on Monroe Avenue, just north of Leonard Street. Because these decisions were made in secret instead of in an open meeting, where Boss Logie and the Empty Suits would have been accountable to the public and the media, it looked like those closed meetings were conducted in violation of Michigan’s Open Meetings Act.

Because I was twice tipped off by Commissar – ahem – I mean, Commissioner Jendrasiak (you know him, the self-proclaimed champion of the workingman who keeps his blue collar neatly tucked beneath his pinstripes) as to what transpired in those closed sessions, last June I, as your executive director, sent Boss Logie a FOIA request for those closed session minutes and other public records concerning the dumping of hazardous waste at the old filtration plant. After jerking me around for several weeks, City Manager Kurt Kimball finally refused to publicly disclose the minutes.

Consequently Peter Steketee filed a FOIA action in the Kent County Circuit Court (Local Area Watch v City of Grand Rapids, Case No. 02-00218-CZ) in January of this year to compel disclosure of the closed session minutes and other public records the City was withholding. LAW then made a discovery request of the City for those minutes and gave the City until the end of February to comply. When the deadline for producing the minutes came up, Ophoff asked Steketee for several extensions of the deadline because he needed the extra time to answer our discovery request.

Now we know that Ophoff was lying to Steketee. Instead of using the extra time we had given him in good faith to produce the closed session minutes, he used that time to destroy the documents. So much for FOIA and the Open Meetings Act, the tools that the State legislature created a quarter-century ago for mere citizens like us to keep on an eye on our government if stooges like Ophoff can make toast of embarrassing records to prevent their public disclosure. If he and the City gets away with this, we’re just one step away from the Ministry of Truth here in ol’ River City.

Well, we’ll see. Steketee is teeing up an injunction request to stop Ophoff and the City from destroying any further evidence of what happened in those closed sessions. Keep your fingers and we’ll keep you informed.

TORMALA DENOUNCES GUTLESSNESS OF CITY ATTORNEYS (first published on March 1, 2005)

Last Tuesday City Commissioner Rick Tormala used his position on the Fiscal Committee to block a $7,500 settlement that Assistant City Attorney Margaret Bloemers had negotiated to resolve a personal injury claim brought by a Kentwood man arrested by the Grand Rapids police a few years ago.  The man, Raymond Gallagher, complained the police hurt his wrists when they handcuffed him.  However, there is no dispute that the police acted properly or that Gallagher was permanently injured.

Tormala is right to take the City's attorneys to task for their gutlessness in settling cases that have little going for them other than a feared (and not necessarily real) emotional appeal to a jury.  After all, it's the taxpayers' money being thrown down the drain when City attorneys run away from a jury when the law is on the City's side.

Then again, why is Tormala silent when a City attorney makes common cause with malefactors, such at the Toxic Towers polluters, in a personal vendetta, destroying incriminating public records, filing false statements with courts, racking up big costs for the City, and leaving the taxpayers exposed to potentially billions of dollars in fines once a jury sees videotape evidence of the very acts the City Attorney's office is denying happened?

Why the silence about such folly?  Oh, that's right.  Because the City Attorney's Office ordered Tormala and his fellow commissioners to say nothing.*  So who's really working for whom at City Hall?

________________________

* Both Mayor Heartwell and Commissioner Tormala informed me last year that all of the elected officials in the City government were prohibited from discussing the Toxic Towers case upon the orders of the City Attorney's office.

Last Tuesday City Commissioner Rick Tormala used his position on the Fiscal Committee to block a $7,500 settlement that Assistant City Attorney Margaret Bloemers had negotiated to resolve a personal injury claim brought by a Kentwood man arrested by the Grand Rapids police a few years ago.  The man, Raymond Gallagher, complained the police hurt his wrists when they handcuffed him.  However, there is no dispute that the police acted properly or that Gallagher was permanently injured.

Tormala is right to take the City's attorneys to task for their gutlessness in settling cases that have little going for them other than a feared (and not necessarily real) emotional appeal to a jury.  After all, it's the taxpayers' money being thrown down the drain when City attorneys run away from a jury when the law is on the City's side.

Then again, why is Tormala silent when a City attorney makes common cause with malefactors, such at the Toxic Towers polluters, in a personal vendetta, destroying incriminating public records, filing false statements with courts, racking up big costs for the City, and leaving the taxpayers exposed to potentially billions of dollars in fines once a jury sees videotape evidence of the very acts the City Attorney's office is denying happened?

Why the silence about such folly?  Oh, that's right.  Because the City Attorney's Office ordered Tormala and his fellow commissioners to say nothing.*  So who's really working for whom at City Hall?

________________________

* Both Mayor Heartwell and Commissioner Tormala informed me last year that all of the elected officials in the City government were prohibited from discussing the Toxic Towers case upon the orders of the City Attorney's office.

WHAT A LIE COSTS ...

... According to Judge Enslen $1.6 million.

Yesterday Judge Richard Enslen of the U.S. District Court ordered former Metropolitan Health vice president Mary Scott to pay her ex-employer $1.6 million for lying to the court.  You may recall that Scott had brought a false claim lawsuit against Metropolitan hospital.  She alleged that it had filed false statements with the federal government to obtain fraudulent health care reimbursements from the taxpayers.  The hospital settled the suit two years ago by agreeing to return $6.25 million of those reimbursements.  Scott then received a bounty of $1.1 million from the federal government.

Now it was Scott's turn to be tagged as a fraud.  She filed a wrongful discharge lawsuit in Enslen's court claiming that Metropolitan had fired her for blowing the whistle on the hospital's fraud.  However, the court ruled that the basis of her lawsuit were false affidavits.  Furthermore, she knowingly concealed evidence detrimental to her wrongful discharge claim.  So Judge Enslen socked her with $1.6 million in sanctions payable to Metropolitan to cover its attorney fees in defense against her fraudulent lawsuit.

The Local Area Watch is pleased to see at least one judge in the Western Michigan district is willing to penalize fraudsters who pollute the judicial process with their lies.

REPROBATE UPDATE

Upon further reading of the daily dispatches from Detroit regarding the FBI's seizure of records from the law offices of personal injury lawyer Geoffrey Feiger, it looks like the feds suspect Feiger's law firm of having strong-armed employees, and their wives and children, into making contributions to the Kerry-Edwards presidential campaign last year.

Allegedly, one of Feiger's partners would instruct an employee to make a maximum campaign contribution of $2,000 in his name, his wife's name, and then in the names of each of their children.  The firm would then reimburse the employee for the contributions.  This would be an illegal way for an organization like Feiger's law firm to bundle campaign contributions and skirt the limits on the amount an individual can donate to a candidate for federal office.

If that happened, it's pretty sleazy.  Even if Feiger can make the case that he didn't know his partner was illegally bundling contributions, that doesn't speak well of his ability to manage a clean office.  I think that would be a minimum qualification for the state's top cop job which Feiger wants.

That said, I think the laws limiting how much you or I or Feiger can contribute to a political campaign should be abolished.  So long as all contributions are publicly disclosed and in the form a check or money order, what does it matter how much a person gives a candidate?  The crooked politicians would still be crooks and the honest ones would still be honest and, as always, it's up to the voters to decide the matter regardless of how much money flows through a campaign.

Plus, it's a canard that there's too much money going into U.S. election campaigns.  We actually spend very little on them compared to other types of publicity and advertising in this country.  All that capping contributions does is make it a lot harder for an outsider to get his message out to voters, because it is much more difficult for him than the established politician with all his connections and mailing lists to raise money in the form of thousands of small contributions.

Nevertheless, coercing employees in order to circumvent a lousy law is still reprehensible, and if Feiger had anything to do with the illegal bundling to support the Kerry-Edwards campaign, then he is a reprobate.

REPROBATES OF THE LAW

I haven’t been following too closely the soap opera between political rivals Republican Mike Cox, the current attorney general for Michigan, and Democrat Geoffrey Fieger, the obnoxious trial lawyer gunning to unseat Cox in the next year’s election.  I’m not one to pompously dismiss fistfights like this by drawing a moral equivalence between the combatants.  The fact is, even in a very ugly dispute, usually one side is right and the other is wrong – and so the distinction should be acknowledged.  However, this is the unusual case in which it’s safe to say both Cox and Fieger are reprobates.

Earlier this year Cox launched an investigation of Fieger to determine whether or not the politicking attorney had secretly dumped nearly a half million into an ad campaign last year to stop the re-election of Stephen Markham to the Michigan Supreme Court.  In turn, an associate of Fieger’s allegedly attempted to blackmail Cox into dropping the investigation by threatening to expose the attorney general’s extramarital affair.  Cox foiled the scheme a few weeks ago by publicly admitting to cheating on his wife.  Now last week, out of the blue, the feds have raided Fieger’s law offices apparently as part of a public corruption case.

Sure, it’s good that the attorney general’s office finally has public corruption in its sites, but then it’s curious that Cox is hammering a Democratic rival for his office while he has done nothing to clean up the sewer of bank fraud, environmental crimes, and official malfeasance in River City that has benefited area Republicans.  But then, how principled can a man be who breaks his vow of fidelity to his wife?  I’m no prude.  I just can’t get around the fact that a person cannot compartmentalize integrity.  If he’ll cheat here, he’ll cheat there.  So good riddance to Cox in next year’s election.

That’s no welcome to Fieger.  He is a self-aggrandizing egotist who hungers for the respectability of high office.  He has had enough scrapes with the law and professional ethics to give plausibility to the current accusations against him.  If Cox is abusing his office to settle political scores, his target Fieger is not the man of law and order to replace him.  After four decades under the control of that hack Frank Kelley, the Michigan Department of Attorney General shriveled into an office of cheap political stunts too impotent to fight the sophisticated white-collar and organized crimes that are beyond the ken of local law enforcement.  Neither Kelley’s successor, a man who can’t keep his pants zipped, nor his rival, a rich trial lawyer who thinks public offices exist to be bought, are the lawman to make the attorney general’s office into the crime-fighting institution it ought to be.

A pox on both these reprobates of the law.

SUPREME COURT TWO-FACED ON INVESTIGATIONS OF JUDGES

We're on a mailing list that advises us of changes in Michigan court rules.  One big change is that information regarding the investigation of a judge by the Judicial Tenure Commission, including the mere fact of an investigation, is now privileged information that cannot be publicly released except in extreme circumstances.  Previously, investigations were deemed confidential but could be disclosed to the public by various means.

Last year the Michigan Supreme Court, which is responsible for the JTC, ruled that it had to disclose investigative files because they were not privileged information under the court rules.  In Michigan law, only very special types of communication have been regarded as privileged -- for example, priest-penitent, doctor-patient, and attorney-client -- and meriting full protection from public disclosure.  So it wasn't odd that the JTC's investigative files weren't covered by privilege.  After all, it is an adversarial process.

However, having ruled for public disclosure, the Supreme Court, which is also responsible for the court rules that govern the JTC, implemented a sweeping change that now makes the investigation of judges privileged material.  This creates a very high wall against releasing this information to the public.  So, when facing the public, the Supreme Court rules in favor of disclosure, but when it goes behind closed doors to hash out the rules regulating themselves and their brethren, they zip things up tight.  Rather two-faced of the high court, if you ask me.

Now it's true that the fact of an investigation and certain documents related to it will still be disclosed to the public should the JTC, upon completion of an investigation, decide to prosecute a judge.  However, it is the extraordinary complaint that leads to a prosecution by the JTC.  Most are dismissed as unworthy of any serious investigation by the JTC, and the rest usually result in an exoneration of the judge.  This is not to say the JTC's decisions are incorrect, but there is now almost no way for the public to review the actions of this public body.

But what should we expect of an imperial judiciary that has learned it doesn't have to account to the public?  And why is that?  Well, when was the last time you voted a judge out of office?

SHERIFF ROLLS OVER ON FIRED DEPUTY

The Grand Rapids Press reports that Kent County Sheriff Larry Stelma has put fired deputy Michael Tanis back on the payroll.  Tanis, the son of Kent County Commissioner Art Tanis, was booted by Stelma back in April because the sheriff determined that he had made false statements concerning an arrest in which he pepper-sprayed a suspect.  Apparently Kent County prosecutor William Forsythe found Tanis to be so lacking in credibility that he could not use the deputy as a witness at trial.  Compromised by his dishonesty, Stelma fired Tanis.

So Tanis's union went to bat for him and brought the firing to an arbitrator.  Last week the arbitrator ruled that Tanis should be reinstated with his seniority intact, but no back pay.  It seems integrity was dead letter for the arbitrator, and now for Stelma too because he agreed to take Tanis back instead of appealing the ruling.  Meanwhile, the public who is paying for all of this is stuck with a deputy who can make arrests but the prosecutor can't use as a witness, because every defense lawyer with a clue can now challenge Tanis's credibility.

Well, folks, since when did you believe that "protect and serve" meant you?