Still waters run deep

Plunder Dome continues to lurch along, still brimming with GoodFellas intrigue. Perhaps if the under-fire Frank Corrente gets his requested change-of-venue and has Judge Ronald Lageux taken off the bench for his trial, we can bring in Joe Pesci to play judge while he's between films.

But with all the "ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing" posturing that is going on, with fingers pointed in every direction, and accusations and counter-accusations flying all the way up to the office of Hizzoner, Mayor Buddy "Vincent A." Cianci, a very interesting name popped up in the Sunday Urinal article of October 15, in which David Ead flat-out claimed that the Bud-I took bribes. The name is Thomas Deller, and P and J guess that he may be a key factor in the Plunder Dome case.

Deller, the former deputy planning director in Providence, who now has a similar post with the R.I. Housing and Mortgage Finance Corporation, a state agency, is held in fairly high regard by the planning and smart growth communities. He's most certainly not part of the inner circle of knuckleheads who are caught up in the polluted maelstrom of their own making at City Hall.

Mike Stanton's excellent article reported that Deller was contacted twice by Hizzoner in connection with favors resulting from bribes paid to Ead, which Ead said went into the Bud-I's wallet, oops, excuse us, we meant "campaign contributions." In one case, Deller arranged for a job to be created, where none existed, in the planning office to reward a Cianci "donor." The temporary job eventually became permanent. The other interaction involved the Bud-I instructing Deller to sell two lots to the now notorious Anthony Freitas for $1000 each after, according to Ead, Freitas dropped "10 big ones" into the campaign chest (cough, cough).

With Deller gone from City Hall and safe from reprisals (unless things reach Godfather levels of payback), he will be someone to watch in the future. As a noted professional out of the dirty money loop -- he even supposedly protested about Ead's involvement in the lot sale and was reprimanded by Cianci for speaking to his cash cow in that manner, Deller looks good. He resembles what US Attorney Meg Curran, and her boss, lead Plunder Dome prosecutor Richard Rose, will likely describe to the jury as "a very credible witness," not some bottom-feeder with his hand already in the trough who's trying to save his ass.

No shame

Phillipe and Jorge would like to present our Pete Rozelle Award to presidential candidates Dubya Bush and Al "Two-by-four" Gore, and the organizers of their third and final debate, a "town hall meeting" in St. Louis. They get this dubious honor for proceeding less than 24 hours after the air crash death of Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan, his son, and an aide, and only miles from where the plane went down.

As some might recall, Rozelle was the commissioner of the National Football League who had the NFL go ahead with its regular schedule of games just days after JFK was shot, and on the same day that Jack Ruby blew away Lee Harvey Oswald. Many, many people thought the decision tasteless at best, heinous at worst.

Somehow these words also came to mind when we saw the self-absorbed Dubya and Mr. Whore slough off the idea that a town meeting might be a bit offensive to the Missouri residents who made up the audience, given that the leading citizen of their "town" had just died. No doubt Alpha Al worried this might be his last chance to roast Junior Bush before a national TV audience, following his last sphincter-clenched media joust, and demanded that they push ahead.

Doubtless Dubya, given his death penalty execution record in Texas, his hideous gloating over frying James Byrd's killers (incorrectly, of course -- two are on death row and one got a life sentence), and his faux "compassionate conservatism," has long since determined human lives aren't worthy of too much of his time or concern.

Weygand's way

The whispering over at Halitosis Hall centers on why Representative Bob "Dorian" Weygand, candidate for US Senate, has pledged to stop running negative ads. The most extreme interpretation is that this is a defensive maneuver based on poll data, and that Dorian wants to at least end the campaign playing the "above-it-all" diplomat. This is because of his intention to run for the empty governor's seat in 2002. At least this is what some of the paranoid chatter is around both the Senate cloakroom and the lieutenant governor's office. It's no big secret that both "Iron Bill" Irons and he of the giant forehead, the affable Charlie Fogarty, have designs on the top job.

Of course, you don't stop running just because things are looking dire, but it makes good strategic sense for Weygand to go the defensive route. The strongest thing he's always had going for him is his Boy Scout image, and any more "Doggies on Lodine" stories threaten to blemish that. Not to mention the ill will engendered by some of the negative ads he's run in the primary, as well as during the contest with Linc Chafee.

It says here the only way he wins is if something really damaging against Linc is dredged up -- something a little more dramatic than pet frogs and toboggans. Or, if Linc says something really, really stupid, like, "One of the common denominators I have found is that expectations rise above that which is expected," or, "It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas."

Actually, these two quotes come from George W. "Is our children learning?" Bush. But he can get away with this because we have already embraced the Republican presidential nominee as a moron. In Vo Dilun, we have higher standards for candidates, because (to paraphrase Dubya again) in the Biggest Little, "We make the pie higher."

Meanwhile, our guess is that the bogus drug prescriptions for Canine Casey Weygand and Linc's pet frogs and toboggans "scandal" pretty much cancel each other out. These embarrassing mini-matters are decidedly minor league.

One-day scandals

Speaking of one-day mini-scandals, we'd put Monday's front-page Other Paper story, on congressional candidate Jim Langevin's brief, unfortunate foray into the world of pyramid sales of long-distance phone service, into the same category. Yes, it was kinda dumb of Jim to show up at a meeting of local Excel Communications salespeople and blurt out, "Excel sounds like a very interesting concept and a good company." But considering the long list of public servants in the Biggest Little for whom "the appearance of impropriety" is their most attractive feature, Langevin's gaffe is small potatoes, indeed.

I am a doctor, but . . .

If you want to assess the cynicism of Rhode Island Hospital's management in their ongoing negotiations, which feature serious differences over the appalling issue of mandatory overtime, just check out hospital president Joe Amaral, and any of the nursing management people he trots out beside him at his frequent press conferences.

Invariably, Amaral and his cohorts are wearing white lab coats from the Dr. Kildare collection, no doubt to give TV viewers and those who see their photographs in the local press the impression that they have just raced out of surgery or the bedside of an ICU patient. Where's the stethoscope and rectal thermometer pocketholder, Joe?

Anyone with a positive IQ should know that Amaral is hardly patrolling the wards 24/7, and that his negotiators are lawyers and bean counters -- the same folks who have gotten our health care system into the sorry state it's in. The floor nurses, the angels on earth who are the backbone of quality care, aren't walking the picket lines in their RN uniforms. Nor should Amaral, now just another corporate exec, continue playing doctor to trump up a sympathetic but superficial pose for the public. We're sure you've got a suit, doctor. But maybe it's a better analogy that it's now empty.

Valentine's day

In a nostalgic moment, P&J are quite pleased to see the New York Mets make the World Series under manager Bobby Valentine, even if he is one of the smuggest, most self-satisfied people you'll ever see. He had a right to be.

Phillipe and Valentine just happened to meet on the baseball field a number of times in Connecticut, when both were captains of their respective high school teams. Young Bobby was quite simply the best prep player P ever saw, and P almost had his hand taken off while spearing a line drive off Valentine's bat.

Bobby was equally good at football, a four-year All-Stater who was recruited to play at USC, where he was met at the airport on a school visit by then-Mayor Sam Yorty and star running back and future murder suspect, O.J. Simpson. Valentine opted for baseball, and he was the first overall pick in that year's draft by the L.A. Dodgers. Unfortunately, a gruesome leg break ended his major league career virtually before it got started.

That said, P is rooting for the Yankees. Sorry, Bobby.

More fuzzy math

On Monday, Texas Defender Services, a non-profit group of lawyers who give free help to death row inmates in their appeals, released a comprehensive report on the Lone Star State's death penalty mania. The report refers to the system in Texas as "thoroughly flawed" by, among other things, "racial bias, incompetent counsel and misconduct committed by police officers and prosecutors." While we all know that Dubya's Domain is way out in front in killing people (since the death penalty was revived in 1976, 232 people have been executed in Texas. The next closest state is Virginia, with 80 state-sanctioned deaths) but the Defender Services' look into the appeals process is absolutely chilling.

The analysis showed that in 79 percent of the death penalty appeals studied, judges at the initial stage "affirmed the verdicts and sentences without conducting hearings, basing their decisions merely on whatever documents were submitted by defense lawyers and prosecutors." And, "In 83 percent of those first-stage appeals, the judges' findings were identical or virtually identical to the findings proposed by the prosecution -- and in nearly all the cases, the same findings were later adopted by higher state and federal appellate courts."

As for the racial element, although almost 25 percent of murder victims in Texas are black males, only 0.4 percent of the prisoners put to death in Texas since 1976 have been executed for murdering black victims. Needless to say, Dubya and company don't see any problem with judicial fairness or racial bias. Answering reporters' questions, Bush campaign spokesman Ray Sullivan dismissed all criticism. "In each case, defendants have full access to the courts of appeal," Sullivan said. "There are significant safeguards built into the process." Of course, Sullivan acknowledged that he hadn't read the report (and we can assume that Dubya hasn't either, since it hasn't yet been established that he does read), but, what the hey!

If, as P&J have said before, the US penal system is a moral disgrace in our allegedly "civilized" nation, Texas has got to be the worst of the worst.

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