JUNE 28, 2011
BRUCE A. BRENNAN BLOG FROM THE WORLD AND MY MIND
The news as I see it and the views as I want them.
June 28 is … Paul Bunyan Day
As I was driving to the Courthouse on Monday I saw a large lumberjack riding a larger blue ox. Did anyone else see this? It was on Sycamore Road near Hopkins Park. Let me know.
Will this finally end the long, annoying great hairdo caper? Jurors deliberating in the corruption trial of ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich told a judge on Monday that they have reached a verdict on 18 of the 20 counts against him, and attorneys in the case have agreed that the verdict should be read. Judge James Zagel said that will happen Monday afternoon.
The verdict came in at 2:10 p.m. It is Guilty on 17 Counts, Not Guilty on 1 Count and a hung jury on two Counts. When added to the previous felony conviction our ex –governor was convicted of he now has been convicted of 18 felonies. Sentencing has not been set but it should happen before Thanksgiving.
He will see significant jail time. All of the convictions could result in prison time. Most likely, the prison sentences will run concurrently, meaning if he gets jail time on all 18 Counts he will effectively be serving 18 years every year. I predict he will serve between eight and ten years meaning he will get out of prison in time to see his youngest daughter graduate high school and he will be in his mid sixties.
The most significant event ever to occur on June 28th throughout history was in 1914 Assassination of the heir to the throne of Austria, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia, in Sarajevo by a Serbian Nationalist,Gavrilo Princip. This incident precipitated a war with Serbia, eventually starting WW I.
The rich just don’t get it sometimes. The owners of the Dodgers are trying to get a divorce and they cannot agree about that. A California Court will not do its job, conduct a hearing and end the bitter divorce proceedings. Now the disagreements between two people who seem to be quite self-centered have brought Major League Baseball into the picture more than it already was. MLB should just go to the Bankruptcy Court and buy the team. Mr. and Mrs. McCourt are screwing MLB, the players and the fans because they cannot get along and made a bad investment they cannot divide in a divorce proceeding. MLB needs to step up to the plate and screw the McCourts.
A mere three days before the payroll comes due — payroll that Frank McCourt can’t meet — the Dodgers have filed for bankruptcy, reports Richard Sandomir. With that, the legal game begins.
Obviously the situation is fluid, and more details will stream in as the morning and day progresses, but for the time being, this could buy McCourt some time. Why? Because a bankruptcy filing puts a halt on all legal action with respect to the bankruptcy estate (i.e. the Dodgers). McCourt will certainly argue that this will prevent a takeover from Major League Baseball, though the court may decide differently when it gets a chance to weigh in, likely in the next few days.
The problem for McCourt is that the kind of bankruptcy the Dodgers have certainly filed is designed to reorganize the financial house. Frank McCourt, however, does not have a plan available to him to do such a thing or else he would have already done it. The filing isn’t yet circulating, but my guess is that he’s going to ask the court to order that the Fox TV deal be executed assuming Fox wants to still do it, which it has been reported it may not thereby providing funding.
The problem with that, of course, is that the bankruptcy court won’t approve of anything that is not seen as in the best interests of the Dodgers, and it’s obvious that Major League Baseball and others would come in and make a strong case that the Fox deal is disastrous for the Dodgers or, at the very least, not the best deal they could make.
If McCourt can do no better, the court may very well order a sale of the team. Perhaps auctioning it off, Texas Rangers-style? Which, by the way, would also put Major League Baseball in the same position it was in with respect to the Rangers: less-able to control who owns the team than it would otherwise be. Mark Cuban bid on the Rangers, after all. If his or some other non-chosen person’s money looked green to the bankruptcy court in such a scenario, Bud Selig would be hard-pressed to stop them from participating in a team auction.
But let us not get ahead of ourselves. For now, we simply have Frank McCourt where he was inevitably headed: bankruptcy court. And some time has been bought. A little time anyway. The end game for McCourt, however, doesn’t look all that better than it did before.
Today is also Route 66 Day. My family owned a motel on Route 66 in Bloomington, IL. It was named The Prairie Travler Motel. The word traveler was misspelled as travler. This was because when the sign company installed the large green neon sign spelling out the name, it probably stood fifty feet tall, they misspelled traveler, leaving out an “e”. The cost to replace it was prohibitive so the name was changed instead. American ingenuity at its best. We were at the forefront of a currently common occurrence where people misspell many words or names just to be unique or because they really do not know how to spell.
Just a couple of thoughts I had and you should too.
BRUCE A. BRENNAN
DEKALB, IL 60115
COPYRIGHT 2011
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Go to web sites below to buy books by Bruce A. Brennan. It is still a good time to purchase any of my books. The books are interesting and inexpensive reads. My third book should be available later this year, in late 2011. More information will be forthcoming.
www.ebookmall.com (Do search by my name or book Title)
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Book Titles:
Holmes the Ripper
A Revengeful Mix of Short Fiction
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea! - incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage." - Mark Twain
