What's a governor to do? Having given the state's largest public employee union a no-layoff pledge until mid-2012, Pat Quinn is in a bind. So he has pursued another way of trimming payroll costs: He's offering to give members of the Illinois State Police early raises if they retire by Dec. 31.
Correction: Quinn is doing a favor for his own beleaguered budget by shifting part of his burden to … the state's pension system. Yes, the same state pension system that is pathetically underfunded. Worst in the nation, in fact. Too many governors have given too many sweeteners to too many public employees. The state's unfunded retirement obligations — overly generous pensions and overly generous retiree health care — total an estimated $130 billion that doesn't show up in the state budget. That equals about a half-decade of spending from the state's general operating funds.
In sum: Illinois is the poster child for how to run a pension scheme into the ground — and to stick future governors and taxpayers with the costs. Yet Quinn is handing that overwhelmed system an anticipated 70 to 90 more retirees who'll arrive bearing still another pension sweetener.
To be eligible for Quinn's offer, troopers need to be 50 years old with 25 years of service, or 55 years old with 20 years of service. They can use accumulated time-off credits to help satisfy their years-of-service requirements. And, on their last day of work in 2010, they'll receive 6 percent cost-of-living raises that are scheduled for calendar 2011.
Age 50? Think about that. Some of these retirees may spend the entire second halves of their lives — the next 50 or more years — drawing pensions from Illinois taxpayers. And while we have you: Has anyone offered you a 6 percent cost-of-living increase? In this time of low inflation? We didn't think so.
The governor's office told us Tuesday that many of these senior troopers were expected to retire as soon as they received their cost-of-living raises next year. Makes sense: Sticking around for those raises would feather their pension calculations with the highest possible final salary. Under this deal, the retirees don't have to work at all next year — and they get the juicier pension benefits pronto. In return, the state saves money by offloading these high salaries: If 70 percent of the eligible troopers accept Quinn's offer, the state expects to save about $500,000 in payroll expense.
If that were the end of it, Quinn's offer might make sense. But the governor's office couldn't provide one crucial number: What will the troopers' early arrival cost the state pension system? Taxpayers are on the hook for that, too, just as they are for the budget. We'll bet the governor lunch at any place of his choosing that he's shifting way more than $500,000 in burdens from his budget to the failing, flailing pension system.
In the big picture, we're not talking about a lot of money. Of course, that same lame excuse — In the big picture, we're not talking about a lot of money — is precisely how previous Illinois governors justified crippling the pension system. Those governors didn't have enough state revenue to buy labor peace with salary money, so they bought it with pension giveaways. Remember, the long-term health of the pension system is always future governors' problem.
Gov. Quinn, enough with special deals that leave taxpayers even more burdened than they were. Your state is broke, Illinois' pension system soon enough will be broke, and you need to stop the bleeding in both of those realms. Please, Governor, focus.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-quinn-20101207,0,1353372.story
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
Dems stand in way of Obama's tax deal
By Jeannine Aversa and Paul Wiseman Dec 8, 2010 11:35AM
The tax deal struck by President Obama and congressional Republicans essentially would give Americans a pay raise — pumping money into the economy almost immediately and probably creating hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next two years, economists say. The plan faces strong opposition from Democrats, making its passage uncertain.
The compromise already has economists raising their forecasts for growth next year, mainly because it includes a surprising one-year cut in Social Security taxes. The amount of that cut — 2 percent of pay for most American workers — instantly becomes more take-home money. Critics complain that the deal would further swell the $1.3 trillion federal budget deficit.
Two central parts of the agreement extend income-tax cuts that would have expired Dec. 31 and renew benefits for the long-term unemployed. Those were both expected. But they still give a psychological boost to shoppers in the midst of the holiday shopping season.
Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson said failure to extend the Bush tax cuts would have amounted to “an anti-stimulus.” The payroll tax cut will be “very helpful for the average person,” and reform of the alternative minimum tax means “millions of individuals are going to be excluded from that,” she said. “I think that’s a very good thing for a lot of people.”
The activist group Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that the plan would save the average taxpayer just under $3,000 next year. The top 1 percent of earners would save nearly $77,000 on average. And the poorest 20 percent would get an average tax break of $396.
Under the deal, the president and the GOP agreed to extend benefits for the long-term unemployed for 13 more months. That aid had expired Nov. 30. Up to 2 million unemployed people would have run out of benefits by year’s end. On long-term unemployment aid, the Labor Department says every $1 spent generates $2 in economic growth. The Center for American Progress predicts that extending those benefits through next year will generate or save 520,000 jobs.
Economists note that cutting Social Security taxes and extending unemployment benefits free up more cash for low- and moderate-income families who are most likely to spend it.
http://www.suntimes.com/2730969-417/deal-tax-benefits-average-economists.html
The tax deal struck by President Obama and congressional Republicans essentially would give Americans a pay raise — pumping money into the economy almost immediately and probably creating hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next two years, economists say. The plan faces strong opposition from Democrats, making its passage uncertain.
The compromise already has economists raising their forecasts for growth next year, mainly because it includes a surprising one-year cut in Social Security taxes. The amount of that cut — 2 percent of pay for most American workers — instantly becomes more take-home money. Critics complain that the deal would further swell the $1.3 trillion federal budget deficit.
Two central parts of the agreement extend income-tax cuts that would have expired Dec. 31 and renew benefits for the long-term unemployed. Those were both expected. But they still give a psychological boost to shoppers in the midst of the holiday shopping season.
Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson said failure to extend the Bush tax cuts would have amounted to “an anti-stimulus.” The payroll tax cut will be “very helpful for the average person,” and reform of the alternative minimum tax means “millions of individuals are going to be excluded from that,” she said. “I think that’s a very good thing for a lot of people.”
The activist group Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that the plan would save the average taxpayer just under $3,000 next year. The top 1 percent of earners would save nearly $77,000 on average. And the poorest 20 percent would get an average tax break of $396.
Under the deal, the president and the GOP agreed to extend benefits for the long-term unemployed for 13 more months. That aid had expired Nov. 30. Up to 2 million unemployed people would have run out of benefits by year’s end. On long-term unemployment aid, the Labor Department says every $1 spent generates $2 in economic growth. The Center for American Progress predicts that extending those benefits through next year will generate or save 520,000 jobs.
Economists note that cutting Social Security taxes and extending unemployment benefits free up more cash for low- and moderate-income families who are most likely to spend it.
http://www.suntimes.com/2730969-417/deal-tax-benefits-average-economists.html
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
What happened to the 'warmest year on record': The truth is global warming has halted
By David Rose
Last updated at 4:17 PM on 5th December 2010
A year ago tomorrow, just before the opening of the UN Copenhagen world climate summit, the British Meteorological Office issued a confident prediction. The mean world temperature for 2010, it announced, 'is expected to be 14.58C, the warmest on record' - a deeply worrying 0.58C above the 19611990 average.
World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an everrising trend: 'Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far - 1998.'
Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits - an ambition that was not to be met.
Last week, halfway through yet another giant, 15,000delegate UN climate jamboree, being held this time in the tropical splendour of Cancun in Mexico, the Met Office was at it again.
Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap, which has seen some temperatures plummet to minus 20C, and that here 2010 has been the coolest year since 1996.
Globally, it insisted, 2010 was still on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began.
But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications - not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole.
Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US VicePresident Al Gore, is really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.
This isn't meant to be happening. Climate science orthodoxy, as promulgated by bodies such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), says that temperatures have risen and will continue to rise in step with increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, and make no mistake, with the rapid industrialisation of China and India, CO2 levels have kept on going up.
According to the IPCC and its computer models, without enormous emission cuts the world is set to get between two and six degrees warmer during the 21st Century, with catastrophic consequences.
Last week at Cancun, in an attempt to influence richer countries to agree to give £20billion immediately to poorer ones to offset the results of warming, the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute warned that global temperatures would be 6.5 degrees higher by 2100, leading to rocketing food prices and a decline in production.
The maths isn't complicated. If the planet were going to be six degrees hotter by the century's end, it should be getting warmer by 0.6 degrees each decade; if two degrees, then by 0.2 degrees every ten years. Fortunately, it isn't.
Actually, with the exception of 1998 - a 'blip' year when temperatures spiked because of a strong 'El Nino' effect (the cyclical warming of the southern Pacific that affects weather around the world) - the data on the Met Office's and CRU's own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years.
They go up a bit, then down a bit, but those small rises and falls amount to less than their measuring system's acknowledged margin of error. They have no statistical significance and reveal no evidence of any trend at all.
When the Met Office issued its December 2009 preThere-diction, it was clearly expecting an even bigger El Nino spike than happened in 1998 - one so big that it would have dragged up the decade's average.
But though it was still successfully trying to influence media headlines during Cancun last week by saying that 2010 might yet end up as the warmest year, the small print reveals the Met Office climbdown. Last year it predicted that the 2010 average would be 14.58C. Last week, this had been reduced to 14.52C.
That may not sound like much. But when one considers that by the Met Office's own account, the total rise in world temperatures since the 1850s has been less than 0.8 degrees, it is quite a big deal. Above all, it means the trend stays flat.
Meanwhile, according to an analysis yesterday by David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2010 had only two unusually warm months, March and April, when El Nino was at its peak.
The data from October to the end of the year suggests that when the final figure is computed, 2010 will not be the warmest year at all, but at most the third warmest, behind both 1998 and 2005.
There is no dispute that the world got a little warmer over some of the 20th Century. (Between 1940 and the early Seventies, temperatures actually fell.)
But little by little, the supposedly settled scientific ' consensus' that the temperature rise is unprecedented, that it is set to continue to disastrous levels, and that it is all the fault of human beings, is starting to fray.
Earlier this year, a paper by Michael Mann - for years a leading light in the IPCC, and the author of the infamous 'hockey stick graph' showing flat temperatures for 2,000 years until the recent dizzying increase - made an extraordinary admission: that, as his critics had always claimed, there had indeed been a ' medieval warm period' around 1000 AD, when the world may well have been hotter than it is now.
Other research is beginning to show that cyclical changes in water vapour - a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - may account for much of the 20th Century warming.
Even Phil Jones, the CRU director at the centre of last year's 'Climategate' leaked email scandal, was forced to admit in a littlenoticed BBC online interview that there has been 'no statistically significant warming' since 1995.
One of those leaked emails, dated October 2009, was from Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the US government's National Centre for Atmospheric Research and the IPCC's lead author on climate change science in its monumental 2002 and 2007 reports.
He wrote: 'The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.'
After the leak, Trenberth claimed he still believed the world was warming because of CO2, and that the 'travesty' was not the 'pause' but science's failure to explain it.
The question now emerging for climate scientists and policymakers alike is very simple. Just how long does a pause have to be before the thesis that the world is getting hotter because of human activity starts to collapse?
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1335798/Global-warming-halted-Thats-happened-warmest-year-record.html#ixzz17RHAni66
Last updated at 4:17 PM on 5th December 2010
A year ago tomorrow, just before the opening of the UN Copenhagen world climate summit, the British Meteorological Office issued a confident prediction. The mean world temperature for 2010, it announced, 'is expected to be 14.58C, the warmest on record' - a deeply worrying 0.58C above the 19611990 average.
World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an everrising trend: 'Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far - 1998.'
Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits - an ambition that was not to be met.
Last week, halfway through yet another giant, 15,000delegate UN climate jamboree, being held this time in the tropical splendour of Cancun in Mexico, the Met Office was at it again.
Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap, which has seen some temperatures plummet to minus 20C, and that here 2010 has been the coolest year since 1996.
Globally, it insisted, 2010 was still on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began.
But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications - not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole.
Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US VicePresident Al Gore, is really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.
This isn't meant to be happening. Climate science orthodoxy, as promulgated by bodies such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), says that temperatures have risen and will continue to rise in step with increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, and make no mistake, with the rapid industrialisation of China and India, CO2 levels have kept on going up.
According to the IPCC and its computer models, without enormous emission cuts the world is set to get between two and six degrees warmer during the 21st Century, with catastrophic consequences.
Last week at Cancun, in an attempt to influence richer countries to agree to give £20billion immediately to poorer ones to offset the results of warming, the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute warned that global temperatures would be 6.5 degrees higher by 2100, leading to rocketing food prices and a decline in production.
The maths isn't complicated. If the planet were going to be six degrees hotter by the century's end, it should be getting warmer by 0.6 degrees each decade; if two degrees, then by 0.2 degrees every ten years. Fortunately, it isn't.
Actually, with the exception of 1998 - a 'blip' year when temperatures spiked because of a strong 'El Nino' effect (the cyclical warming of the southern Pacific that affects weather around the world) - the data on the Met Office's and CRU's own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years.
They go up a bit, then down a bit, but those small rises and falls amount to less than their measuring system's acknowledged margin of error. They have no statistical significance and reveal no evidence of any trend at all.
When the Met Office issued its December 2009 preThere-diction, it was clearly expecting an even bigger El Nino spike than happened in 1998 - one so big that it would have dragged up the decade's average.
But though it was still successfully trying to influence media headlines during Cancun last week by saying that 2010 might yet end up as the warmest year, the small print reveals the Met Office climbdown. Last year it predicted that the 2010 average would be 14.58C. Last week, this had been reduced to 14.52C.
That may not sound like much. But when one considers that by the Met Office's own account, the total rise in world temperatures since the 1850s has been less than 0.8 degrees, it is quite a big deal. Above all, it means the trend stays flat.
Meanwhile, according to an analysis yesterday by David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2010 had only two unusually warm months, March and April, when El Nino was at its peak.
The data from October to the end of the year suggests that when the final figure is computed, 2010 will not be the warmest year at all, but at most the third warmest, behind both 1998 and 2005.
There is no dispute that the world got a little warmer over some of the 20th Century. (Between 1940 and the early Seventies, temperatures actually fell.)
But little by little, the supposedly settled scientific ' consensus' that the temperature rise is unprecedented, that it is set to continue to disastrous levels, and that it is all the fault of human beings, is starting to fray.
Earlier this year, a paper by Michael Mann - for years a leading light in the IPCC, and the author of the infamous 'hockey stick graph' showing flat temperatures for 2,000 years until the recent dizzying increase - made an extraordinary admission: that, as his critics had always claimed, there had indeed been a ' medieval warm period' around 1000 AD, when the world may well have been hotter than it is now.
Other research is beginning to show that cyclical changes in water vapour - a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - may account for much of the 20th Century warming.
Even Phil Jones, the CRU director at the centre of last year's 'Climategate' leaked email scandal, was forced to admit in a littlenoticed BBC online interview that there has been 'no statistically significant warming' since 1995.
One of those leaked emails, dated October 2009, was from Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the US government's National Centre for Atmospheric Research and the IPCC's lead author on climate change science in its monumental 2002 and 2007 reports.
He wrote: 'The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't.'
After the leak, Trenberth claimed he still believed the world was warming because of CO2, and that the 'travesty' was not the 'pause' but science's failure to explain it.
The question now emerging for climate scientists and policymakers alike is very simple. Just how long does a pause have to be before the thesis that the world is getting hotter because of human activity starts to collapse?
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1335798/Global-warming-halted-Thats-happened-warmest-year-record.html#ixzz17RHAni66
Monday, December 6, 2010
Unusual methods helped ICE break deportation record, e-mails and interviews show
By Andrew Becker
Center for Investigative Reporting
Monday, December 6, 2010; 12:08 AM
For much of this year, the Obama administration touted its tougher-than-ever approach to immigration enforcement, culminating in a record number of deportations.
But in reaching 392,862 deportations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement included more than 19,000 immigrants who had exited the previous fiscal year, according to agency statistics. ICE also ran a Mexican repatriation program five weeks longer than ever before, allowing the agency to count at least 6,500 exits that, without the program, would normally have been tallied by the U.S. Border Patrol.
When ICE officials realized in the final weeks of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, that the agency still was in jeopardy of falling short of last year's mark, it scrambled to reach the goal. Officials quietly directed immigration officers to bypass backlogged immigration courts and time-consuming deportation hearings whenever possible, internal e-mails and interviews show.
Instead, officials told immigration officers to encourage eligible foreign nationals to accept a quick pass to their countries without a negative mark on their immigration record, ICE employees said.
The option, known as voluntary return, may have allowed hundreds of immigrants - who typically would have gone before an immigration judge to contest deportation for offenses such as drunken driving, domestic violence and misdemeanor assault - to leave the country. A voluntary return doesn't bar a foreigner from applying for legal residence or traveling to the United States in the future.
Once the agency closed the books for fiscal 2010 and the record was broken, agents say they were told to stop widely offering the voluntary return option and revert to business as usual.
Without these efforts and the more than 25,000 deportations that came with them, the agency would not have topped last year's record level of 389,834, current and former ICE employees and officials said.
The Obama administration was intent on doing so even as it came under attack by some Republicans for not being tough enough on immigration enforcement and by some Democrats for failing to deliver on promises of comprehensive immigration reform.
"It's not unusual for any administration to get the numbers they need by reaching into their bag of tricks to boost figures," said Neil Clark, who retired as the Seattle field office director in late June, adding that in the 12 years he spent in management he saw the Bush and Clinton administrations do similar things.
But at a news conference Oct. 6, ICE Director John T. Morton said that no unusual practices were used to break the previous year's mark.
"When the secretary tells you that the numbers are at an all-time high, that's straight, on the merits, no cooking of the books," Morton said, referring to his boss, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "It's what happened."
ICE declined to make any officials available for interviews. In selected responses to e-mailed questions, spokesman Brian P. Hale wrote that the agency did nothing different from previous years but did not deny that ICE had focused on voluntary returns when it faced a shortfall weeks before the fiscal year ended. Rather, field offices were reminded of the voluntary return option, he said.
"ICE offered eligible aliens . . . the opportunity to accept voluntary return," Hale said. "The decision to accept VR [voluntary return] was the aliens'."
Those efforts did not appear to result in a spike in voluntary returns. Statistics provided by ICE show that voluntary returns peaked at 8,960 in June, before dipping and then leveling off in the last two months of the fiscal year. A total of 64,876 immigrants were voluntarily returned to their home countries in 2010.
Chris Crane, president of the American Federation of Government Employees National Council 118, the union that represents ICE immigration agents and officers, said offering voluntary return was not common practice for the agency. The union has been at odds with Morton over what it calls lax enforcement and gave him a no-confidence vote in June.
"It's breaking the rules to break the record," Crane said. "You don't change the way you do business to meet some quota. Morton said we don't do quotas. But that's what this is."
New accounting
On Oct. 1 - the start of fiscal 2011 - Robin F. Baker, an acting ICE assistant director, cheered field directors on to the finish line in an e-mail obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
"We are just 1061 shy of 390,000. However, we still get to count closed cases through Monday, October 4th so . . . keep having your folks concentrate on closing those cases," Baker wrote.
Starting in 2009, ICE began to shut its books for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 in the first few days of October. Any deportations that take place in one fiscal year but are confirmed after Oct. 5 are added to the next fiscal year's statistics.
Based on the new accounting approach, the agency counted 19,422 removals from 2009 in the 2010 statistics. In 2010 itself, 373,440 other people were deported.
Current and former ICE employees also point to an expanded U.S.-Mexico partnership as another way the agency increased overall deportation numbers.
Known as the Mexican Interior Repatriation Program, the bilateral effort between the U.S. and Mexican governments focuses on reducing the deaths of migrants attempting to cross the border during the scorching Arizona summer. Mexicans caught by Border Patrol agents in the Sonoran Desert region and southern Arizona are turned over to ICE agents, who carry out the removals to Mexico.
In a February memo, James M. Chaparro, ICE's head of enforcement and removal operations, called on field directors to "maximize" participation in the program, which he outlined as one of the ways to increase removals and "move us into position to meet or exceed the fiscal year goals."
Since its launch in 2004, the program had never started earlier than July 7. This year, the first flight full of Mexicans departed June 1. By starting in June, ICE tallied 6,527 returns that in the past would have been handled - and counted - by the U.S. Border Patrol. Overall, a record 23,384 Mexicans between June and September accepted flights back to Mexico City, and then a bus ticket to their home town, at a cost of almost $15 million.
ICE spokesman Hale said the agency started the program early because of available funds and a timely agreement between the United States and Mexico. He acknowledged that some of the immigrants removed through the program were caught or detained hundreds of miles from Arizona.
"Select individuals from west Texas were offered an opportunity to volunteer for safe return to their place of origin in the interior of Mexico," Hale said.
He also confirmed that Mexican nationals detained near Seattle - possibly as many as 500 immigrants, according to one local officer - were also included on the flights.
A year-end scramble
The surge to break the deportation record in the final weeks of the fiscal year consumed the agency, said a high-ranking immigration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
"They had everyone burning the candle at both ends to reach 390,000," the official said. "They were basically saying anything you can do to increase the overall removal number, that's what you should do - over everything else."
lIn the Seattle area, immigration officers were instructed to give the voluntary return option to immigrants who did not face mandatory detention and didn't have attorneys.
lIn the Atlanta area, ICE officers were told to persuade immigrants who had already asked to see an immigration judge to instead voluntarily leave the country.
lIn Chicago, officers were told to stop releasing eligible immigrants and monitoring them with electronic ankle bracelets, which might spur more to accept voluntary removals, according to a Sept. 22 e-mail.
"Due to our increase in funding for detention for the remainder of the fiscal year, do not release anyone on an order of recognizance at this time," James McPeek, an assistant field office director in Chicago, wrote in the e-mail to employees. "Another option is to offer a VR [voluntary return] and keep in custody - this will increase our removal numbers for the fiscal year."
An ICE employee in Louisiana, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, estimated that over a two-week period at least 100 to 150 Mexican nationals, some of whom had multiple drunken driving convictions, had their court cases reassigned as voluntary return, which was not common practice. ICE agents elsewhere reported similar numbers.
Several ICE employees said, however, that once the fiscal year ended, their offices reverted to infrequently offering the return option. In the Pacific Northwest, some employees received an e-mail stating just that.
"Effective immediately: do not offer V/Rs [voluntary returns] to aliens who have been convicted of or are pending DUI," ICE supervisor Elizabeth Godfrey wrote Oct. 4.
ICE's goal for 2011 is to remove 404,000 immigrants.
Andrew Becker is a reporter for the Center for Investigative Reporting. He can be reached at abecker@cironline.org. CIR is a nonprofit news organization based in Berkeley, Calif., dedicated to producing investigative journalism. Its stories have appeared frequently in The Washington Post and other newspapers.
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3078437581805316374
Center for Investigative Reporting
Monday, December 6, 2010; 12:08 AM
For much of this year, the Obama administration touted its tougher-than-ever approach to immigration enforcement, culminating in a record number of deportations.
But in reaching 392,862 deportations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement included more than 19,000 immigrants who had exited the previous fiscal year, according to agency statistics. ICE also ran a Mexican repatriation program five weeks longer than ever before, allowing the agency to count at least 6,500 exits that, without the program, would normally have been tallied by the U.S. Border Patrol.
When ICE officials realized in the final weeks of the fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, that the agency still was in jeopardy of falling short of last year's mark, it scrambled to reach the goal. Officials quietly directed immigration officers to bypass backlogged immigration courts and time-consuming deportation hearings whenever possible, internal e-mails and interviews show.
Instead, officials told immigration officers to encourage eligible foreign nationals to accept a quick pass to their countries without a negative mark on their immigration record, ICE employees said.
The option, known as voluntary return, may have allowed hundreds of immigrants - who typically would have gone before an immigration judge to contest deportation for offenses such as drunken driving, domestic violence and misdemeanor assault - to leave the country. A voluntary return doesn't bar a foreigner from applying for legal residence or traveling to the United States in the future.
Once the agency closed the books for fiscal 2010 and the record was broken, agents say they were told to stop widely offering the voluntary return option and revert to business as usual.
Without these efforts and the more than 25,000 deportations that came with them, the agency would not have topped last year's record level of 389,834, current and former ICE employees and officials said.
The Obama administration was intent on doing so even as it came under attack by some Republicans for not being tough enough on immigration enforcement and by some Democrats for failing to deliver on promises of comprehensive immigration reform.
"It's not unusual for any administration to get the numbers they need by reaching into their bag of tricks to boost figures," said Neil Clark, who retired as the Seattle field office director in late June, adding that in the 12 years he spent in management he saw the Bush and Clinton administrations do similar things.
But at a news conference Oct. 6, ICE Director John T. Morton said that no unusual practices were used to break the previous year's mark.
"When the secretary tells you that the numbers are at an all-time high, that's straight, on the merits, no cooking of the books," Morton said, referring to his boss, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. "It's what happened."
ICE declined to make any officials available for interviews. In selected responses to e-mailed questions, spokesman Brian P. Hale wrote that the agency did nothing different from previous years but did not deny that ICE had focused on voluntary returns when it faced a shortfall weeks before the fiscal year ended. Rather, field offices were reminded of the voluntary return option, he said.
"ICE offered eligible aliens . . . the opportunity to accept voluntary return," Hale said. "The decision to accept VR [voluntary return] was the aliens'."
Those efforts did not appear to result in a spike in voluntary returns. Statistics provided by ICE show that voluntary returns peaked at 8,960 in June, before dipping and then leveling off in the last two months of the fiscal year. A total of 64,876 immigrants were voluntarily returned to their home countries in 2010.
Chris Crane, president of the American Federation of Government Employees National Council 118, the union that represents ICE immigration agents and officers, said offering voluntary return was not common practice for the agency. The union has been at odds with Morton over what it calls lax enforcement and gave him a no-confidence vote in June.
"It's breaking the rules to break the record," Crane said. "You don't change the way you do business to meet some quota. Morton said we don't do quotas. But that's what this is."
New accounting
On Oct. 1 - the start of fiscal 2011 - Robin F. Baker, an acting ICE assistant director, cheered field directors on to the finish line in an e-mail obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting.
"We are just 1061 shy of 390,000. However, we still get to count closed cases through Monday, October 4th so . . . keep having your folks concentrate on closing those cases," Baker wrote.
Starting in 2009, ICE began to shut its books for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 in the first few days of October. Any deportations that take place in one fiscal year but are confirmed after Oct. 5 are added to the next fiscal year's statistics.
Based on the new accounting approach, the agency counted 19,422 removals from 2009 in the 2010 statistics. In 2010 itself, 373,440 other people were deported.
Current and former ICE employees also point to an expanded U.S.-Mexico partnership as another way the agency increased overall deportation numbers.
Known as the Mexican Interior Repatriation Program, the bilateral effort between the U.S. and Mexican governments focuses on reducing the deaths of migrants attempting to cross the border during the scorching Arizona summer. Mexicans caught by Border Patrol agents in the Sonoran Desert region and southern Arizona are turned over to ICE agents, who carry out the removals to Mexico.
In a February memo, James M. Chaparro, ICE's head of enforcement and removal operations, called on field directors to "maximize" participation in the program, which he outlined as one of the ways to increase removals and "move us into position to meet or exceed the fiscal year goals."
Since its launch in 2004, the program had never started earlier than July 7. This year, the first flight full of Mexicans departed June 1. By starting in June, ICE tallied 6,527 returns that in the past would have been handled - and counted - by the U.S. Border Patrol. Overall, a record 23,384 Mexicans between June and September accepted flights back to Mexico City, and then a bus ticket to their home town, at a cost of almost $15 million.
ICE spokesman Hale said the agency started the program early because of available funds and a timely agreement between the United States and Mexico. He acknowledged that some of the immigrants removed through the program were caught or detained hundreds of miles from Arizona.
"Select individuals from west Texas were offered an opportunity to volunteer for safe return to their place of origin in the interior of Mexico," Hale said.
He also confirmed that Mexican nationals detained near Seattle - possibly as many as 500 immigrants, according to one local officer - were also included on the flights.
A year-end scramble
The surge to break the deportation record in the final weeks of the fiscal year consumed the agency, said a high-ranking immigration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
"They had everyone burning the candle at both ends to reach 390,000," the official said. "They were basically saying anything you can do to increase the overall removal number, that's what you should do - over everything else."
lIn the Seattle area, immigration officers were instructed to give the voluntary return option to immigrants who did not face mandatory detention and didn't have attorneys.
lIn the Atlanta area, ICE officers were told to persuade immigrants who had already asked to see an immigration judge to instead voluntarily leave the country.
lIn Chicago, officers were told to stop releasing eligible immigrants and monitoring them with electronic ankle bracelets, which might spur more to accept voluntary removals, according to a Sept. 22 e-mail.
"Due to our increase in funding for detention for the remainder of the fiscal year, do not release anyone on an order of recognizance at this time," James McPeek, an assistant field office director in Chicago, wrote in the e-mail to employees. "Another option is to offer a VR [voluntary return] and keep in custody - this will increase our removal numbers for the fiscal year."
An ICE employee in Louisiana, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, estimated that over a two-week period at least 100 to 150 Mexican nationals, some of whom had multiple drunken driving convictions, had their court cases reassigned as voluntary return, which was not common practice. ICE agents elsewhere reported similar numbers.
Several ICE employees said, however, that once the fiscal year ended, their offices reverted to infrequently offering the return option. In the Pacific Northwest, some employees received an e-mail stating just that.
"Effective immediately: do not offer V/Rs [voluntary returns] to aliens who have been convicted of or are pending DUI," ICE supervisor Elizabeth Godfrey wrote Oct. 4.
ICE's goal for 2011 is to remove 404,000 immigrants.
Andrew Becker is a reporter for the Center for Investigative Reporting. He can be reached at abecker@cironline.org. CIR is a nonprofit news organization based in Berkeley, Calif., dedicated to producing investigative journalism. Its stories have appeared frequently in The Washington Post and other newspapers.
http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3078437581805316374
Rahm Emanuel ballot challenges to be heard today
Posted by Kristen Mack at 7 a.m.
A hearing is scheduled to take place this morning on the slew of challenges attempting to knock former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel off the Chicago mayoral ballot.
The Chicago Board of Elections has set an 11 a.m. hearing to be presided over by Joseph A. Morris, an attorney who once unsuccessfully ran for Cook County Board president as a Republican.
"We look for people with a good working knowledge of the election code, who have no possible conflicts and who, most importantly, can conduct a fair and impartial hearing," said Jim Allen, an elections board spokesman. "Mr. Morris fits all those qualifications."
The objections to Emanuel's candidacy largely center around whether he meets the residency requirements. Emanuel says he meets the standard because he owns a home here, has voted here and always intended to move back from Washington. Election law attorney Burt Odelson, who filed the major ballot challenge says the fact that Emanuel rented out his home, instead of leaving it empty, means he’s not a resident.
Morris, the hearing officer, will make a recommendation to the city elections board, which will rule on the various attempts to knock Emanuel off the Feb. 22 ballot.
The elections board today also will begin the process of hearing the more than 300 additional objections lodged against 19 other mayoral candidates and dozens of aldermanic candidates
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/12/rahm-emanuel-ballot-challenges-to-be-heard-today.html
A hearing is scheduled to take place this morning on the slew of challenges attempting to knock former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel off the Chicago mayoral ballot.
The Chicago Board of Elections has set an 11 a.m. hearing to be presided over by Joseph A. Morris, an attorney who once unsuccessfully ran for Cook County Board president as a Republican.
"We look for people with a good working knowledge of the election code, who have no possible conflicts and who, most importantly, can conduct a fair and impartial hearing," said Jim Allen, an elections board spokesman. "Mr. Morris fits all those qualifications."
The objections to Emanuel's candidacy largely center around whether he meets the residency requirements. Emanuel says he meets the standard because he owns a home here, has voted here and always intended to move back from Washington. Election law attorney Burt Odelson, who filed the major ballot challenge says the fact that Emanuel rented out his home, instead of leaving it empty, means he’s not a resident.
Morris, the hearing officer, will make a recommendation to the city elections board, which will rule on the various attempts to knock Emanuel off the Feb. 22 ballot.
The elections board today also will begin the process of hearing the more than 300 additional objections lodged against 19 other mayoral candidates and dozens of aldermanic candidates
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2010/12/rahm-emanuel-ballot-challenges-to-be-heard-today.html
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Bp. Paprocki Defends Faith; Corrects Gov. Quinn
Thomas F. Roeser 3 December 2010
The column I did yesterday about usage of the “Fundamental Option” dodge…the heresy that one can go ahead and do whatever he/she wants on moral questions and escape guilt if the sinner does not abjure God…is illustrated vividly today by Catholic Gov. Pat Quinn. He said on passage of civil unions “my religious faith animates me to support this bill.” Indeed? He also supports abortion in its many forms to equate with the current decadent tastes of liberal, rudderless politicians who do everything possible to be elected.
Therefore it was heartening to see Quinn’s Springfield bishop, Thomas Paprocki, counter with this statement: “If the governor wishes to pursue a secular agenda for political purposes, that is his prerogative for which he is accountable to the voters. But if he wishes to speak as a Catholic, then he is accountable to Catholic authority and the Catholic Church does not support civil unions or other measures that are contrary to the natural moral law.”
Regarding Quinn’s declaration that “religious faith animates me to support this bill,” Bishop Paprocki said wryly, “he did not say what religious faith that would be—but it is certainly not the Catholic faith.”
The battle over civil unions which passed House and Senate and awaits Quinn’s signature which he has said he would supply—earning him standing applause from the Democratic-controlled legislature—has been one of the finest hours not just for Francis Cardinal George but for an unsung hero of the fight—the Illinois Catholic Conference’s Robert Gilligan. I was a lobbyist himself—27 years in Washington for The Quaker Oats company—and I have never, ever, seen a staffer with better acumen on strategy combined with an eloquence of statement to the media. Consistently Bob Gilligan has been foremost in public as well as private advocacy, pointing out in testimony and to the media that the legislation threatens to substantially alter the legal definition of what constitutes a family, predicting that future generations might have to learn harsh lessons about the unintended consequences of social engineering.
He has pointed out that while individuals may enjoy this lifestyle and maintain that it is a “right,” a culture cannot sustain itself by approximating homosexual or heterosexual shacking-up with marriage—the consequences leading to a European model of living and ultimate diminution of lifetime commitment, leading to chaotic coupling that provide a shrinking population and family breakdown.
Gilligan’s fine work has been duplicated by other pro-family lobbyists such as Paul Caprio, Ralph Rivera and the Rev. Robert Vandenbosch—but for the purpose of this website which concentrates on Catholic advocacy, Bob Gilligan’s attainments are noble and eloquent.
It is instructive to see how sectors of the relativistic Left in the
Church have responded to Paprocki-George-Gilligan in posts to websites. I’ll show a few (there are less intelligible ones linked) to demonstrate how Catholic training in theological verities have declined:
“If the majority of Catholics support this belief [passage of civil unions], which they do, then it is a Catholic belief. The beliefs of a few old men carry no more weight than any similar number of other Catholics and certainly these pseudo celibate old men cannot claim to speak for God.” Meaning that moral law is what a majority say it should be.
“Sounds like the Bishop is a right-wing Republican. Maybe such unions are natural. If they are, the law would seem to accord with the Natural Law.”
In essence both comments proclaim that whatever you do that seems natural is the Natural Law.
That whirring you hear is Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine and the entirety of philosophers of the Judeo-Christian Westspinning in their graves.
**
Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/bp-paprocki-defends-faith-corrects-gov-quinn/
The column I did yesterday about usage of the “Fundamental Option” dodge…the heresy that one can go ahead and do whatever he/she wants on moral questions and escape guilt if the sinner does not abjure God…is illustrated vividly today by Catholic Gov. Pat Quinn. He said on passage of civil unions “my religious faith animates me to support this bill.” Indeed? He also supports abortion in its many forms to equate with the current decadent tastes of liberal, rudderless politicians who do everything possible to be elected.
Therefore it was heartening to see Quinn’s Springfield bishop, Thomas Paprocki, counter with this statement: “If the governor wishes to pursue a secular agenda for political purposes, that is his prerogative for which he is accountable to the voters. But if he wishes to speak as a Catholic, then he is accountable to Catholic authority and the Catholic Church does not support civil unions or other measures that are contrary to the natural moral law.”
Regarding Quinn’s declaration that “religious faith animates me to support this bill,” Bishop Paprocki said wryly, “he did not say what religious faith that would be—but it is certainly not the Catholic faith.”
The battle over civil unions which passed House and Senate and awaits Quinn’s signature which he has said he would supply—earning him standing applause from the Democratic-controlled legislature—has been one of the finest hours not just for Francis Cardinal George but for an unsung hero of the fight—the Illinois Catholic Conference’s Robert Gilligan. I was a lobbyist himself—27 years in Washington for The Quaker Oats company—and I have never, ever, seen a staffer with better acumen on strategy combined with an eloquence of statement to the media. Consistently Bob Gilligan has been foremost in public as well as private advocacy, pointing out in testimony and to the media that the legislation threatens to substantially alter the legal definition of what constitutes a family, predicting that future generations might have to learn harsh lessons about the unintended consequences of social engineering.
He has pointed out that while individuals may enjoy this lifestyle and maintain that it is a “right,” a culture cannot sustain itself by approximating homosexual or heterosexual shacking-up with marriage—the consequences leading to a European model of living and ultimate diminution of lifetime commitment, leading to chaotic coupling that provide a shrinking population and family breakdown.
Gilligan’s fine work has been duplicated by other pro-family lobbyists such as Paul Caprio, Ralph Rivera and the Rev. Robert Vandenbosch—but for the purpose of this website which concentrates on Catholic advocacy, Bob Gilligan’s attainments are noble and eloquent.
It is instructive to see how sectors of the relativistic Left in the
Church have responded to Paprocki-George-Gilligan in posts to websites. I’ll show a few (there are less intelligible ones linked) to demonstrate how Catholic training in theological verities have declined:
“If the majority of Catholics support this belief [passage of civil unions], which they do, then it is a Catholic belief. The beliefs of a few old men carry no more weight than any similar number of other Catholics and certainly these pseudo celibate old men cannot claim to speak for God.” Meaning that moral law is what a majority say it should be.
“Sounds like the Bishop is a right-wing Republican. Maybe such unions are natural. If they are, the law would seem to accord with the Natural Law.”
In essence both comments proclaim that whatever you do that seems natural is the Natural Law.
That whirring you hear is Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine and the entirety of philosophers of the Judeo-Christian Westspinning in their graves.
**
Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer
http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/bp-paprocki-defends-faith-corrects-gov-quinn/
Santo gave Chicago his heart
Cubs legend with passion and with no apologies
My brother Peter, one of two Cubs fans in our baseball-divided family, called to leave a one-word message on a cold morning that was about to get even colder.
"Santo," he said, and I knew.
Many of you most likely received a call just like it, or made one yourself, and said the name just like my brother said it. Santo.
In Chicago, Ron Santo is a name that is all about heart. He wasn't the prettiest baseball player at third base, or the smoothest broadcaster. He wasn't tricky or slick. Sometimes he'd groan in the booth, or cheer, and sophisticated baseball snobs derisively called him a homer because he was such a fan.
Such baseball snobs often treat the game — and all sport — as if it were a bone-dry cathedral built on cold logic, reason and statistics. But if it is a church of sorts, then the fans know it is built on passion and tears.
So, Santo put his heart out there honestly and without reservation every day for decades, on the field and behind that microphone. And by putting his heart out there, he risked it, and Chicago understood and loved him for it.
The calls went out on Friday morning, baseball fans tolling the news that he was gone. Perhaps your heart broke a little, for Chicago and the Cubs and for baseball, and maybe for your own youth, too, if you were lucky enough to see the man play ball.
He'd stand at the plate in the days before batting gloves, stooping to pick up a handful or two of dirt. He'd rub his hands with it, rubbing them past the wrists, to dry them of sweat. Then he'd pick up his bat and stare into the cold eyes of pitchers with names like Gibson, Ryan, Koufax and Drysdale.
Baseball is a game of numbers, and Santo's numbers put him right up there at the top of the game. He was a dangerous hitter in the years of the high pitcher's mound, when dominant pitching was more important to the Lords of Baseball than the pharmaceutically enhanced muscles they embraced years later.
The fact that Santo isn't in the Hall of Fame — after a career of five consecutive Gold Gloves, nine All Star appearances and 342 home runs — is an indictment of baseball. Sure, they'll rush to enshrine him now that he has passed away, and further damn themselves for their selfishness.
Yet whatever the Lords of the Game know or don't know, we fans knew. Most of us out in White Sox country on the South Side and in the south suburbs liked him too.
When we were kids — even us Sox fans — we'd go up to the plate at our own fields and pick up the dirt and wash our hands and stare at the pitcher and do a Santo.
"It's that feeling he gave me when he played," my brother said. "Ronnie's uniform was dirty. He'd get the ball and make the play. He did what he had to do."
And that included playing with diabetes and keeping his mouth shut about it until later, when he realized that he could help kids and others suffering from the disease just by talking about it. What was even more impressive is that he did it all without complaint, without seeking any sympathy.
Later, I turned on WGN radio as ace broadcaster Dave Kaplan — another great Cubs fan with one of the biggest Cubs hearts around — was talking about giving Santo a ride home after a Cubs victory.
Santo had gone through that first amputation, and the early prosthetic was causing him problems. There was some bleeding. So, he removed the fake leg and propped it in the car as Kaplan drove.
Dave told him how he'd worn Santo's No. 10 as a Little Leaguer, then looked at the prosthetic and told Santo how sorry he was.
"What are you complaining about?" Santo said. "We won the game, didn't we?"
An entire generation knew Santo from his work in the Cubs broadcast booth on WGN radio as the color man, the analyst, the fan.
But he was a player first, and though he finished his career with the White Sox, he was always a Cub, with 14 years at Wrigley. And he played like he announced.
For those of you who weren't here to understand, back when Santo played in the late 1960s, the city was going to hell. There were riots and protests and more riots and fires. Violence and anger, racial and political, were the lyrics of summer in Chicago.
Then 1969 happened, and for most of that magical season, the Cubs were in first place and the wild enthusiasm helped heal things. And every game would start with the late Jack Brickhouse's immortal phrase, "Santo, Kessinger, Beckert and Banks, the infield third to first."
After every home victory, Santo would jog toward the clubhouse jumping and kicking his heels for joy.
"I'll never forget how he kicked his heels," Peter said. "The feeling he had when he did it. That feeling he gave us."
And that's how many of us want to remember him, on a baseball field. Jumping for joy, heels clicking like a kid, that great heart pumping.
jskass@tribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-1205-20101205,0,2842101.column
My brother Peter, one of two Cubs fans in our baseball-divided family, called to leave a one-word message on a cold morning that was about to get even colder.
"Santo," he said, and I knew.
Many of you most likely received a call just like it, or made one yourself, and said the name just like my brother said it. Santo.
In Chicago, Ron Santo is a name that is all about heart. He wasn't the prettiest baseball player at third base, or the smoothest broadcaster. He wasn't tricky or slick. Sometimes he'd groan in the booth, or cheer, and sophisticated baseball snobs derisively called him a homer because he was such a fan.
Such baseball snobs often treat the game — and all sport — as if it were a bone-dry cathedral built on cold logic, reason and statistics. But if it is a church of sorts, then the fans know it is built on passion and tears.
So, Santo put his heart out there honestly and without reservation every day for decades, on the field and behind that microphone. And by putting his heart out there, he risked it, and Chicago understood and loved him for it.
The calls went out on Friday morning, baseball fans tolling the news that he was gone. Perhaps your heart broke a little, for Chicago and the Cubs and for baseball, and maybe for your own youth, too, if you were lucky enough to see the man play ball.
He'd stand at the plate in the days before batting gloves, stooping to pick up a handful or two of dirt. He'd rub his hands with it, rubbing them past the wrists, to dry them of sweat. Then he'd pick up his bat and stare into the cold eyes of pitchers with names like Gibson, Ryan, Koufax and Drysdale.
Baseball is a game of numbers, and Santo's numbers put him right up there at the top of the game. He was a dangerous hitter in the years of the high pitcher's mound, when dominant pitching was more important to the Lords of Baseball than the pharmaceutically enhanced muscles they embraced years later.
The fact that Santo isn't in the Hall of Fame — after a career of five consecutive Gold Gloves, nine All Star appearances and 342 home runs — is an indictment of baseball. Sure, they'll rush to enshrine him now that he has passed away, and further damn themselves for their selfishness.
Yet whatever the Lords of the Game know or don't know, we fans knew. Most of us out in White Sox country on the South Side and in the south suburbs liked him too.
When we were kids — even us Sox fans — we'd go up to the plate at our own fields and pick up the dirt and wash our hands and stare at the pitcher and do a Santo.
"It's that feeling he gave me when he played," my brother said. "Ronnie's uniform was dirty. He'd get the ball and make the play. He did what he had to do."
And that included playing with diabetes and keeping his mouth shut about it until later, when he realized that he could help kids and others suffering from the disease just by talking about it. What was even more impressive is that he did it all without complaint, without seeking any sympathy.
Later, I turned on WGN radio as ace broadcaster Dave Kaplan — another great Cubs fan with one of the biggest Cubs hearts around — was talking about giving Santo a ride home after a Cubs victory.
Santo had gone through that first amputation, and the early prosthetic was causing him problems. There was some bleeding. So, he removed the fake leg and propped it in the car as Kaplan drove.
Dave told him how he'd worn Santo's No. 10 as a Little Leaguer, then looked at the prosthetic and told Santo how sorry he was.
"What are you complaining about?" Santo said. "We won the game, didn't we?"
An entire generation knew Santo from his work in the Cubs broadcast booth on WGN radio as the color man, the analyst, the fan.
But he was a player first, and though he finished his career with the White Sox, he was always a Cub, with 14 years at Wrigley. And he played like he announced.
For those of you who weren't here to understand, back when Santo played in the late 1960s, the city was going to hell. There were riots and protests and more riots and fires. Violence and anger, racial and political, were the lyrics of summer in Chicago.
Then 1969 happened, and for most of that magical season, the Cubs were in first place and the wild enthusiasm helped heal things. And every game would start with the late Jack Brickhouse's immortal phrase, "Santo, Kessinger, Beckert and Banks, the infield third to first."
After every home victory, Santo would jog toward the clubhouse jumping and kicking his heels for joy.
"I'll never forget how he kicked his heels," Peter said. "The feeling he had when he did it. That feeling he gave us."
And that's how many of us want to remember him, on a baseball field. Jumping for joy, heels clicking like a kid, that great heart pumping.
jskass@tribune.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-1205-20101205,0,2842101.column
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)