Monkey Business

“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.  H. L. Mencken

The phrase “monkey business” is an offshoot of the nineteenth-century word “monkeyshine” and suggests morally questionable or otherwise objectionable behavior.  A 1952 comedy of that name starred Cary Grant as scientist hoping to invent an elixir to keep people from aging and co-starred Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe.  In 1987 unprincipled reporters looking to bring down Democratic frontrunner Gary Hart discovered that the married Colorado senator had boarded a pleasure boat named the Monkey Business with his attractive paramour Donna Rice.

Front page NWI Times headline: “Meer’s charges dropped.”  Shortly before last November’s Michigan City election, LaPorte County prosecutor John Lake charged two-time Mayor Ron Meer with six felonies in connection with allegedly intervening on behalf of his step-son, who was arrested for drug possession following a traffic stop. After Meers requested that the arresting officers be reassigned, Police Chief Mark Swistek and two assistants resigned.  Meer, a Democrat, subsequently lost his bid for a third term by 79 votes to Duane Parry, the first Republican mayor of Michigan City in 40 years. Defense attorney Scott King, formerly mayor of Gary, had called the charges a “political hit job,” and greeted the dropped charges wit this statement: “Nothing has changed my mind that these were political considerations made in the bringing of these charges literally of the eve of an election.”

For the past year the Merrillville FBI office has evidently been seeking to gather dirt on former Gary officials who had worked for Gary mayor Karen Freeman Wilson.  While no grand jury indictments have as yet been forthcoming, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana Thomas L. Kirsch recently charged longtime Whiting mayor Joe Stahura with using political donations totaling over $200,000 to pay off personal debts stemming from gambling at casinos and race tracks. He and his wife also redirected large sums of money to settle debts incurred by their daughter.  Mayor since 2004 and a council member for 20 years before that, Stafura helped develop a lakefront park, an annual Pierogi Fest, and an interactive children’s museum and Mascot Hall of Fame. U.S. Attorney Kirsch dubbed the case “another black eye” for Northwest Indiana but is recommending leniency in return for the defendant’s cooperation with the federal investigation into his finances. As part of a plea bargain, Stafura agreed to resign and no charges were filed against his wife.

If the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office decide to target a politician, they have unlimited resources at their command and can browbeat officeholders into accepting plea bargains or face long the possibility of lengthy prison terms.  No wonder their conviction rate is well over 95 percent.  As longtime county officeholder John Petalas told Jerry Davich, author of “Crooked Politics in Northwest Indiana,” there is much less local corruption than in the mid-twentieth-century, but now U.S. attorneys have much more power and are much more aggressive in seeking convictions.  Petalas added:

    There are hundreds of elected and appointed officials who work in Lake County.  It is not fair to label everyone a crook because of a small minority who betray the public trust.  Every time one of these guys gets in trouble, they make bigger headlines than a double murder investigation.  The bigger the headlines, the bigger the perception that all politicians are crooks.  There are some elected officials in this part of the state who went to jail for things that are completely legal for state officials to commit.

Davich quoted me as saying, “It’s outrageous how U.S. Attorneys have gone after people like former Gary clerk Katie Hall and lake County surveyor George Van Til for petty things – such as their staff selling candy bars or picking up a tuxedo – while millions in so-called “legal graft” are siphoned into law firms for attorneys’ fees.”

 After violating the Hatch Act for making the White House the backdrop for his acceptance speech with a thousand guests sitting close together without masks, POTUS appeared at a New Hampshire rally where supporters booed upon hearing from a state official that masks were required.  Brenda Ann Love wrote: “My Grams has stopped going to church. It was really the only place she’s socialized since my grandfather died. Most of her friends are dead, and, as she says, “the Trump Idiots won’t wear masks. They think this is a hoax.”  She’s lived through the Depression, WWII, several other wars, and says she’s never been this scared.  And she called me Brenda Ann, so I know she was serious.”

photo by Ray Smock

Ray Smock wrote:

    I am sitting on our deck drinking coffee while reading the news of the aftermath Hurricane Laura, the fallout from the Republican convention, the latest police shooting in Kenosha, and the story of thousands gathered on the Mall in DC, just as they did 57 years ago, to call for racial justice in America.  Maybe the four-year-long hurricane that Trump unleashed on our country will be over soon and we will experience some calm and the sunlight of Truth. I desperately want the Trump storm to subside. I want political calm again, even though politics is never ever completely calm.

    Donald Trump has caused the belittling of government and the destruction of our Constitution. He weakened government just when we needed its help the most. His ineptness to lead us out of the pandemic, resulting in more American deaths than in all our recent wars, and throwing millions out of work with no federal lifeline, has done more harm than a century of hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis.  We can rebuild from nature’s disasters. But how do we rebuild a whole nation back from the terrible, cruel, soulless winds of Trump? How do we find again the domestic tranquility mentioned in our Constitution?

    We can do this. We can restore our damaged political system. We need it now more than ever to work for all of us. We do not need chainsaws and bulldozers for this job. We need our ballots. We need to use them. Neither of our political parties is perfect. No one of us has all the answers of how best to fix major problems. But it should be clear to enough of us that the political wreckage all around us must be fixed and fixed quickly to get us out of a leaderless pandemic and restore our economy.

    We can fix it together in November with our greatest source of power, a power stronger than the worst dictator. We are a republic. We are the people. The power is in our hands.