Posts Tagged → Penn State
AG Kane exonerates Corbett with backhanded, ironic report
PA Attorney General Kathleen Kane “exonerated” Governor Tom Corbett with the most back-handed investigative report seen in a long time.
While acknowledging that Corbett, previously as AG himself, investigating Jerry Sandusky, did not politicize the Sandusky investigation, Kane still called Corbett’s choices in that investigation “inexcusable” and “inexplicable.”
Without question Penn Staters like me, who have followed the Sandusky debacle from beginning to end, we tend to feel like Penn State’s reputation never was considered by anyone involved. Well, it was the paramount consideration by former PSU president Graham Spanier, at a time when the school’s reputation should not have mattered at all, and the kid victims’s interests should have been advanced immediately and at any cost.
So, too little, too late for Penn State by everyone, including a majority of the PSU trustees, Louis Freeh, and state officials everywhere. If Corbett was guilty of failing to jump to Penn State’s defense, he was in damned good company. Pissed at Corbett? OK, then be pissed at many of the sitting trustees.
But what irks me is to see the most politicized AG in Pennsylvania’s history use the words “inexcusable” and “inexplicable.”
Kane’s behavior in the AG office has been both of those words and much much more.
My favorite misdeed is how she refused to pursue the unethical PA Liquor Control Board members, whose financial misdeeds have been widely reported.
What has not been reported is how her family, Kane Trucking, holds PLCB contracts worth millions of dollars. Kane’s failure to apply the law here could be due to a large financial incentive for her to not rock the PLCB gravy boat. Is anyone investigating THAT?
No. In fact, the establishment media has circled the wagons around Kane, with not one word yet mentioned in print about this ethical lapse of hers. In fact, a fawning, fluffy, cheerful, supportive interview with Kane was posted by the Patriot News two weeks ago, and worse yet, by reporter Charles Thompson, a writer I have long considered one of the last real investigative reporters in Harrisburg. Thompson made no mention of any of Kane’s lapses, or of her pending impeachment, in that unpaid advertising piece run by the Patriot News. She was even photographed laughing away, her head held high, her artificially white teeth flashing for the camera.
While people are still asking if Kane’s report on Corbett’s role as AG has any salience for the governor’s race, what informed citizens want to know, is: Why does it appear that Kathleen Kane is protecting Kane Trucking’s PLCB contracts? Now that is a real public policy question worth asking.
409
Legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno won 409 genuine college games. No one can take that away from him, the players, the team staff, or the proud PSU alumni, like me.
Child molester Jerry Sandusky is a scumbag, but the football program had zero to do with his crimes. But it was the football program the NCAA punished, disproportionately to any other football program in American history. Using Sandusky’s association (not employment) with the PSU football program, and Louis Freeh’s horrendously unprofessional report (analyzed in detail on this site) to support its blitzkrieg assault on Penn State, the NCAA coerced PSU trustees and incompetent, spineless top PSU staff to sign the consent decree that unfairly punished the football program.
Enter the courts, where facts actually can matter. And thus we have courts that are correctly beginning to cast doubts on the entire NCAA punishment of PSU football. This week a court held that further inquiry is necessary to determine if the NCAA not only operated consistent with its own charter, but also consistent with the facts of the Sandusky case vis-a-vis PSU football.
Daylight is seeping in, and I do not believe that the NCAA will survive the exposure, or the application of basic logic and rules of fairness.
Joe Paterno, my hero, had 409 Wins to his credit. Those wins remain, no matter what, but hopefully they will soon be reinstated after basic due process for ALL of the victims of Sandusky’s crimes.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kane actually drops investigation against her political buddies
An overwhelming number and percentage of Pennsylvanians voted for a new PA Attorney General in 2012, to the point where a record spread was achieved.
Democrat Kane beat Republican Freed by 15%, an unheard of, unimaginable number.
The primary reason that so many Republican voters voted for Kane was that she was seen as clean, fresh, a new antidote to the deeply insider Freed and the same-old-gang of Good Ol’ Boy Republicans who had controlled that office since its creation in the early 1980s. The Penn State – Sandusky scandal really hurt the Republicans in so many ways, and Kane was seen as the snake oil potion that would solve all of the problems, aches, worries, unfairness, baldness, and gout that was then plaguing Pennsylvania and Penn State.
Enter Kane the politician. Wow. If you had any questions about her political abilities and inclinations, wonder no more. She has proven herself to be as adaptable as a chameleon, and as trusty as a rake left tines-up in the grass.
Last Friday (never a strong day for media, so always a strong day for government news releases seeking minimal coverage of their actions), Kane officially terminated a three-year-long investigation of a bunch of obviously corrupt elected officials in Philadelphia. Caught on tape and camera taking bribes, these officials set the gold standard for how to make a great city fall to pieces.
But only days after she announced an indictment against a black state senator from the Philly area, Kane determined that there are “too many African Americans” involved in this sting, and that it is therefore racially biased. No kidding. Obviously, any future mob take-downs will be thrown out because too many white guys are involved, right? This is both an embarrassing example of the bad government caused by Political Corrrectness, and an embarrassing example of the corruption of AG Kane.
Look, lady, either someone behaves legally, or not. Either someone breaks the law, or not. Skin color has zero to do with it. And if skin color becomes the new standard for applying laws, then the country is going down the tubes, quick, because there’s a lot more Caucasian people overall, and more crime committed by Caucasians, than anyone else. Allowing all that crime to move forward because we want to apply some vague, bizarre notion of “fairness” will allow crime to take over. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Kane has proven herself to be just as political, just as capable of bad decisions as anyone else could have been in the AG seat. That honeymoon was short.
Questions you’re not supposed to ask #3
Why is Penn State University exempt from state open records laws?
Yes, PSU lobbied for this exemption, but who cares? Who would actually grant that?
And I ask as a faithful, loving, loyal PSU alum.
Penn State Pain
Players names on football jerseys just does not compute. Feeling mucho pain over the NCAA atomic bomb on PSU’s football program, watching games the past couple of years has been tough to do. Am I a loyal PSU alum? Sure. But with superlame trustees, the school has given up on nearly all it stood for over the past five decades. If the trustees don’t care, why should I fight so hard to clear Paterno’s name and values? And why should I be expected to cheer on something a mere shadow of its former self?
The Joe Paterno Empire Strikes Back
The family of late Penn State University football coach, icon, leader, and hero Joe Paterno has struck back at the “investigative” report by former US FBI director Louis Freeh.
Releasing an analysis of Freeh’s report that is similar to one posted on this blog last year (https://joshfirst.com/blog/2012/08/16/the-sandusky-disaster-kids-lose-penn-state-loses-ncaa-loses-theres-still-no-lesson-here/), the Paternos have taken an important step in regaining lost ground.
Lost ground was rapidly created by an uncritical press, willing to serve up maudlin caricatures of what may have happened around convicted child rapist Jerry Sandusky, rather than carefully scrutinize the facts and evidence we have in front of us, and then wait for the facts and evidence that we do not have but yet expect to see come out in the upcoming trials of Spanier, Curley, and Shultz.
A rush to judgment has never been so well documented, and then so well defended by a sea of armchair quarterbacks using 20/20 hindsight. Analyzing the comments on internet sites, like Forbes, ESPN, and any other reporting or opinion venue, you’d think that Joe Paterno was the real culprit, and not Sandusky.
Freeh’s report is as bad as a report can get. It is more representative of a Kremlin kangaroo court than the best America has to offer. After a career-start seven-year stint in Washington, DC, spent writing federal policy and law, my take on the Freeh report is that it is outrageously flawed.
Its worst defect is its use of wild conjecture (e.g. relying on hearsay in one email from Tim Curley to Graham Spanier and Gary Shultz about an unnamed “coach”). Nowhere does it say “While key facts are lacking or presently unknown, it is prudent to await casting judgment….” Rather, Freeh’s report is judge, jury, and executioner all at once, and it clearly aimed to destroy one person: Joe Paterno.
Importantly, Freeh’s report exonerated the sitting PSU trustees, most of whom had sat idly by and never challenged Spanier, even when one or two trustees began to ask him hard questions. Were those lazy trustees culpable? Why not?
Most important, Freeh was used by PSU and the NCAA to lower the standards bar, to decrease expectations in college football, rather than to elevate them. By arguing that Joe Paterno was deeply flawed and a hypocrite, Freeh made the classic morally relative argument that we are all pathetic losers, that there are no real heroes, that there are no really good men, and that no one should expect any to show up anytime soon.
Finally, if the PSU trustees fell down on the job and used the Freeh report to cover up their failings, one cannot escape the sense that at least some of the Paterno family members do not grasp the positive way that Joe Paterno is still viewed by many of us Nittany Nation members.
Last year, while communicating with one of the Paterno kids, I was struck by his inability or unwillingness to recognize the breadth of Joe’s legacy. That is, if Joe Paterno left a legacy, then it is beyond the family to solely claim, because it is carried by his believers. Joe’s legacy belongs to all of us, because he was representative of all of our values, hopes, and expectations, and our support is not about the family, but about the symbol that was Joe Paterno.
To that end, wouldn’t it be refreshing to see the family rally the troops, rather than look so deeply inward. Casting the Freeh report as a culture war attack on rare core values, rather than on a person, would more accurately frame this subject.
Unlike the vast majority of people with an opinion on this subject, I have actually read the Freeh report. It sucks. It is unprofessional. It is unworthy of Louis Freeh’s name, and it is unworthy of Penn State University’s name. It is nearly useless in understanding all of what happened with Jerry Sandusky, and how he continued to molest and rape little boys when some adults around him either suspected or had been told he was a pedophile. Shedding light on 33% of an issue raises more questions than it answers. Truth is not what was sought, but it is what is at stake. Bigger truths, like traditional core values that are under attack everywhere, suffer from this.
So, it is my hope that the Paterno family, and former governor and US Attorney General Dick Thornburgh, will continue their efforts, and also expand them to encompass the bigger picture. Good luck, folks, we are standing with you.
NCAA takes a shot to the gut
Good for Tom Corbett.
Pennsylvania’s governor has filed a lawsuit against the NCAA for its unfounded collective punishment of Penn State University, its students, its football players, and associated businesses and communities that depend on PSU’s reputation.
The indication that the NCAA has nothing to stand on is their spokesman’s response: The victims of Sandusky are “affronted.”
Say what? The NCAA is speaking for the kids now? What did anyone at PSU have to do with Sandusky? Two officials, maybe three, covered it up for a few years, and they will hopefully all rot in jail. But no one else out of the millions of people associated with the school had anything to do with it. Collective punishment is the domain of dictators, meant to instill terror. Invoking deep emotions instead of intellectual honesty shows the NCAA’s cowardice. A cowardly dictator? So much for the NCAA standing for much.
It’s my hope that the bizarre punishment levied against PSU will be tossed aside. Justice must be done, and done right. Here’s one step in that direction out of several steps that should include a public hanging of Jerry Sandusky and long jail sentences and huge fines for Shultz, Curley, and Spanier, none of whom should receive a public pension.
The Sandusky Disaster: Kids Lose, Penn State Loses, NCAA Loses & There’s Still No Lesson Here
The Sandusky Disaster: Kids Lose, Penn State Loses, NCAA Loses & There’s Still No Lesson Here
By Josh First
August 16, 2012
With the mish-mash medley of legal, leadership, and National Collegiate Athletic Association results spilling out of the Jerry Sandusky child rape conviction, you’d have to believe that justice has been done, lessons learned, and responsible adults have reasserted control over one of the world’s leading academic institutions, Penn State University.
Sadly, you’d be wrong; it’s just not the case.
Instead, the best opportunity in decades to talk about child molesters, sexual abuse, pedophilia, increasingly bizarre social norms, and educational institutions has been missed. Sandusky’s legacy is so painful, so gut-wrenchingly disturbing, that everyone seems to be looking the other way down the street. Scapegoats are in demand, and the PSU football program is serving handily.
After reading the related press reports and the Louis Freeh report, the only person who stands out as a leader is the one un-named Trustee who persistently dogged former PSU president Graham Spanier, demanding information and explanations along the way, even as Spanier sandbagged, obfuscated, lied, and blustered. Louis Freeh’s report is otherwise itself deficient enough to demand another analysis of the facts.
One of the Freeh Report’s biggest deficiencies is its preachy tone and clear aim to discredit Coach Joe Paterno. A real investigation dispassionately uncovers facts, leaving the inferences and judgmental conclusions to decision makers. Diverging from that mode, the now re-corrected Freeh Report uses damning language, and makes recommendations, inferences, and insinuations that aren’t supported by the evidence.
One example is how Freeh uses Paterno’s statement that he “didn’t want to interfere with their weekends” as evidence of Paterno’s supposed reluctance to address Sandusky’s brand-new crimes after Michael McQueary reported one to him at 2:00 AM. As though waiting from 3:00 AM to 9:00 AM Sunday morning is a shockingly long time to wait to tell the most senior school administrators that you’ve been told that a grown adult with the highest standing is really a child rapist. This demonstrates that Freeh either missed the irony in Paterno’s statement, or he deliberately took it out of context in an attempt to smear Paterno by making him seem reluctant to report, and more culpable for Sandusky’s actions. Either way, Sunday morning calls about a Sunday morning child rapist do ruin your weekend, and they were made nonetheless.
But the worst example is Freeh’s reliance upon two emails from former Athletic Director Tim Curley, in which Curley invokes the paraphrase “Coach wants to know” to either pry information from VP Gary Schultz and Spanier or to encourage a decision about Sandusky’s future. In those two emails, Curley represented to Spanier and Schultz that he had communicated with former Coach Joe Paterno about their collectively developing understanding of Sandusky’s crimes, and he hinted that Paterno was apprised of the facts that we all now know after all of the reporting, investigation, and trial.
The problem with drawing damning inferences about what Paterno did nor did not know from just these two opaque emails is that lots of people misrepresent what public figures say and what their bosses say, said, believe, or want. They do it especially when they know that getting that person’s actual opinion will be difficult. I have participated directly in the politics of PSU’s Old Main, both as a PSU student leader and as a professional decades later. Like all educational institutions, that administrative wing is rife with intrigue, lies, posturing, one-upsmanship, deceit, conceit, gigantic egos backed up by zero, undeservedly high salaries, and worse. For Curley to invoke Coach Paterno in the emails without actually consulting him on a personnel issue, as opposed to a recruiting issue, would be par for the course. It would actually make Curley more human.
Those two emails tell us nothing about Paterno’s knowledge of the situation, only what Curley said.
But the Freeh report relies on them almost exclusively to establish that Paterno was not only tracking the Sandusky developments, but then actively quashing any public decision or exposure about them. By mistakenly (falsely?) claiming that Paterno maintained that detailed level of involvement, the entire football program has, by extension, become smeared and then punished.
In its rush to condemn Paterno, and by extension the entire PSU football program, the NCAA has relied on Freeh report’s single most judgmental, problematic word: “Culture.” As in “A culture of reverence for the football program that is ingrained at all levels of the campus [sic] community,” surprise, surprise; find me a top college football program that is any different. As in, Freeh’s inference goes, a university-wide culture of lying and cover-up; which is unsupported by the facts.
The problem with Freeh claiming that a culture of cover-up and sacrificing little boys’ bodies and souls on the altar of college football existed at Penn State is that no one outside of four senior people really knew what was going on with Sandusky. And one of those people, Paterno, not only followed protocol and notified his superiors, but also then spoke openly with a reporter and others in a way that indicates he believed he did what was required and regretted not doing more. Not to mention the 1998 police cover-up and Ray Gricar’s failure to prosecute Sandusky and then his mysterious disappearance….
Note to Louis Freeh and the NCAA folks: Three or four people do not make an entire university culture. Rather, The Culture that Joe Built was, and still is, made of millions of adults, nearly any one of whom would have gladly taken a baseball bat to Sandusky, and then notified the police that a pedophile had been discovered and justice had been administered. The great call to arms against Penn State is that, supposedly, the real culture beneath the surface is one of lies and deceit. The open horror within the PSU Alumni community at Sandusky’s crimes and at the cover-up by three leaders there belies Freeh’s insinuation and the NCAA’s grotesque penalty.
The NCAA’s rush to judgment, to be PSU’s judge, jury, and swift executioner without any due process, is clear evidence of a truly deficient culture, the same culture that Freeh decries about Spanier’s own similar leadership style.
The PSU Board of Trustees’ rush to embrace the NCAA’s ridiculous penalty is a shallow mea culpa and self-expiation through supposed self-sacrifice by a bunch of weak people who lacked the strength of character to act when they should have acted decisively, back in 1998, 2001, 2008, and 2010. Any Trustee wishing to now demonstrate his or her agreement with the NCAA’s penalty should immediately resign from the PSU board as a true sign of self-sacrifice. Current PSU president Rodney Erickson is cut from the same pathetic cloth, and he is also tainted by his long, weak-kneed proximity to Spanier: Resign immediately, Mr. Erickson. Get away from us.
And about that un-named Trustee: Whoever you are, I nominate you to be Penn State’s next president. You alone have demonstrated the strength of character and leadership that has been missing from the beginning until the end of this debacle. Please step up, whoever you are.
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Joe Paterno Dies of a Broken Heart
One of America’s greatest idols and sports leaders has died today. The immediate cause was cancer. We all know that the real cause was the unfair firing he experienced from the Penn State board of trustees.
Given how much Joe loved Penn State, the college students there, the State College community, and setting the high standards that most Americans quietly sought to emulate, Joe was broken hearted after receiving a scribbled note to make a call, and after making the call, being fired 40 seconds later, when he was hung up on.
Joe Paterno did not abuse the kids who Jerry Sandusky abused. He did not stand idly by while the horrors continued. Joe Paterno reported what he was told, within 24 hours, to his superiors, and was not responsible for what happened afterwards. He was one of the only people, maybe the only person who knew something, who actually acted on the information about Sandusky to someone in a position of power. Since last November, Joe has been shouldering the entire incident, as though child and family services, The Second Mile, Curley and Shultz, the 1998 police investigation and unwillingness by the Centre County district attorney to press charges, and others are exonerated of what they knew and their failures to act over the years. Blaming Joe is a dis-service.
Lots of people attacking Joe as though he was responsible demonstrates the failure of a large segment of American culture.
In the spirit of modern America, the faster a hero dies, the better we all feel about our own weaknesses and failings, as though our heroes weren’t really so superior after all.
Sure, Joe could have done more. Can’t we all say or do the same for something we have witnessed, like a car stalled by the side of the road that we pass by? A person struggling with heavy groceries, or bills? Someone engaged in nefarious behavior, but we look the other way because we “don’t want to get involved”?
Lots of arm chair sheriffs and would-be vigilantes have been spawned by the Sandusky scandal. Lots of “Why, I woulda socked him in the jaw, and then thrown him down, and then handcuffed him and led him to the police myself, if only I had been there…” Lots of that phony cyber hero crap, and that’s what it is, crap, has been written, not only out of frustration with Penn State’s failure to snag Sandusky early, but with Joe’s “moral failing” to do more.
Sure he could have done more. But so could the PSU board of trustees, long ago, when the first reports came out about Sandusky in 2002. By tearing down one of America’s great icons, the trustees enveloped themselves in a mantle of superiority…more crap.
Joe Paterno died of a broken heart because his one awww shucks destroyed an incredible 60-year career filled with nothing but atta-boys, with generous giving and building that set the highest standard for loyalty and commitment.
Joe deserved better than he got in the end, and he died from having his will to live broken. I will miss you, Joe, we all will miss you.
Rest in peace, hero.
Santorum Opportunism Pisses Off Penn Staters
I like him, but last week, presidential candidate Rick Santorum appeared to be riding the Penn State scandal as a wave to carry along his campaign. Penn State should not play in a bowl game, Santorum said, regardless of the football team’s final standings.
As I write this, Penn State has just defeated Ohio State and looks to be headed to a well-deserved bowl game.
Why would Santorum have anything to say about the scandal beyond some well-placed and justified reflections on the university’s failed leadership? Why would anyone seek to punish the players, whose hard work deserves to be rewarded?
Well, over the years Rick has made a name for himself as a voice for morality and clarity in a world full of moral relativism, and I often support him. Even when I occasionally disagree with a particular position he may take, I appreciate and support his outspoken advocacy for morally clear decision making in government.
Rick certainly has a lot of friends in Pennsylvania, and he can normally count me among them.
However, I share the reaction among many Penn Staters who are pissed off at Rick over his recent criticism. It appears to be nothing more than political opportunism by a candidate seeking to get his name into the headlines. By criticizing the Penn State football team, Santorum appears to many to be trying to take advantage of a difficult situation to make himself look good, or to attract attention to himself.
He would not be the first political candidate to do that, but for someone who has been rightly recognized for having clear thinking, this looks like aberrant and mean-spirited thinking.
In 2000 and 2006 I was a volunteer on both of Santorum’s re-election campaigns, and if he were doing better in the polls, I might volunteer for his presidential campaign now. But what I am looking for right now is a statement from Rick that he mis-spoke, and that he does not want to punish a group of people who had nothing to do with the scandal, or further damage Penn State.
Penn State is already going through a lot of difficulties, and it will continue to do so for years to come, not to mention the kids who were (allegedly) subjected to Sandusky’s abuse. Santorum’s criticism does nothing to remedy the situation; it only throws fuel on the fire, punishes more innocent people, and further damages Penn State’s standing.
Come clean, Rick, admit that you made a mistake. If you do that, I think you’ll prove to people that you are indeed a good guy, and not the opportunistic headline grabber that you recently appeared to be.