Is it possible these days to be a new, active conservative running for Congress for the first time and not know who Andrew Breitbart is? Me, I’d reckon that an in-the-know, new candidate who claims to be conservative and a spokesman for Tea Partiers could not possibly be so isolated that he is unaware of conservative media-crusader Andrew Breitbart. But there is a candidate in Ohio who displayed right on his own campaign website just such a display of ignorance on Breitbartania, Breitbartism, or Breitbartness… whatever you want to call it, it just appears that this guy is stone-cold out of touch with the current conservative movement not to know thing one about Andrew Breitbart.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are plenty of 90-year-old, Brahmin conservatives who get flummoxed at “the Facebookings.” I am sure there still exist out-of-touch, elder statesmen of the movement that just haven’t caught up with those newfangled Internet tubes that our friend Al Gore created. I am sure that there are more than a handful of aged establishment types shaking their fist at the Fox News and those darn websheets positive that they’ll never catch on, just as they were sure rock-n-roll was a passing fad. But can you be an up and comer in the conservative movement and be wholly unaware of one of the newest icons of conservatives everywhere?

I am here at CPAC this week and just ran into Joe “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher who was telling me about his run for Congress in the 9th Congressional District. Joe made me aware of a hilarious little example of the abject cluelessness of his opponent. So let me introduce to you one Mr. Steve Kruas. Professional auctioneer actually licensed with the Ohio State Ag Department with well over 300 “successful” auctions under his belt. I guess you don’t need the Internets, talk radio and TV news shows to sell used farm equipment.

Anyhoo, the “strong fiscal conservative” is running in the 9th Congressional District GOP Primary against Wurzelbacher both of whom are vying to face Marcy Kaptur (D, OH) in the general election this year. Steve is a bit miffed that Joe isn’t giving him much notice at this point in the campaign.

Certainly, Kraus is happy to link himself with the Tea Party and even helped put on an event in Sandusky, Ohio where he set himself up as a spokesman for those venerable homegrown activists.

But it’s Kraus’ website where all the action is. There Kraus attacks Joe as a scurrilous sort of scoundrel. Why? Well, because Joe claims to be a limited government guy but he and all his friends work for BIG Government, darn it!

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Recently, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation announced that it would longer offer funds and grants to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion mill operator. This decision has sent Planned Parenthood over the edge of both sanity and civility with a new fundraising letter that dispenses with its past staid talk about women’s healthcare and goes straight for thuggish threats of retaliation, finger pointing, and attacks on other women.

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, a well known breast cancer-fighting charity, decided to withhold further donations to the abortion provider for several reasons, one of which is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation by Congress for violating various state abortion laws.

Last month, the Associated Press reported Komen’s new criteria and why it is excluding PP. “Komen spokeswoman Leslie Aun said the cutoff results from the charity’s newly adopted criteria barring grants to organizations that are under investigation by local, state or federal authorities,” the report said. “According to Komen, this applies to Planned Parenthood because it’s the focus of an inquiry launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., seeking to determine whether public money was improperly spent on abortions.”

The foundation gave more than $569,000 to Planned Parenthood in 2010. (more…)

How much bailing out does one company need? After receiving some $50 billion in tax dollars from us courtesy of Obama’s “cash stash,” GM is claiming success with a “big profit” with last year’s third quarter report, and in his recent State of the Union Speech, President Obama claimed that GM was “back on top as the world’s number one automaker.” But true or not, if all is coming up roses for GM, why is the company now lobbying the individual states for mini bailouts?

That is exactly what is happening. The new “big success” automaker is spending millions hiring lobbyists to squeeze more millions out of state legislatures. As Justin Owen notes, GM has “turned to another, smaller government teat” by putting its hand out to the states. GM, Owen says, “has received another $1.7 billion in taxpayer-funded grants and tax abatements.”

This is no accident of timing, either. GM admitted to the Tennessee Watchdog that begging to the states for tax dollars is a concerted effort.

“We are increasing our activity with the states obviously, in the communities in which we operate. In doing this, we’ve invested more than $6 billion (throughout the states) during the last five years and brought 15,000 people back to work. So, the activity at the state level is important to us. Our lobbying is comparable to what our competitors are doing throughout the states,” said GM spokesman Greg Martin.

For the Watchdog, Christopher Butler found that GM has received more than $1.5 billion from Michigan, $7.5 million in tax incentives from Kentucky, over $10 million from Texas, and over $2 million from Indiana. Ohio and Maryland have given to the GM bailout fund, too, with tax incentives and other giveaways. (more…)

It is more common everyday. A man buys a house, the market collapses and suddenly his house is worth less than the mortgage, then he loses his job until, as a single father, he finds himself in foreclosure with no place to raise his two preteen daughters. It’s a case made for the Occupy Wall Street movement to swoop in and right wrongs, right? Maybe not because the OWSers in New York stole this poor guy’s home away from him in order to give it to one of their own members. Confused? Read on.

A Brooklyn man living in an apartment with his two daughters was alerted to the fact that his in-foreclosure-home had been broken into and occupied by Occupiers, as in Occupy Wall Street activists. When he rushed to his home he found a group of strangers that had broken into his home claiming to have “reclaimed” the house and given it to another family.

“They’re trying to take a house and say the bank is robbing the people because the mortgage is too high — so contact the owner!” fumed Wise Ahadzi, 28, who owns the home at 702 Vermont St. in East New York.

Apparently Ahadzi had bought the house in 2007 for the princely sum of $424,500 but during the housing bubble of 2009 the house ended up being worth only half that. Then, when he lost his job and got behind on the mortgage, the bank foreclosed on the property.

Enter — illegally, mind you — Occupy Wall Streeters who discovered the home in foreclosure and decided that they’d steal it away from “the bank” with the ostensible goal of helping the needy.

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While the Old Media has been ecstatic over recent job numbers, claiming that some 200,000 jobs have been added to the economy, we should note that while Obama giveth Obama also taketh away. The media may be trying to claim the President has “created or saved” jobs (the latest weasel word is he’s created job opportunity) but his policies have also cost jobs. In particular his policies are costing jobs in the medical field.

Last week, layoffs were announced at the University of Mississippi Medical Center due in part to the 80 million dollars that it will cost to implement a new computer system named EPIC Systems, Obama’s newly mandated electronic medical records system.

Naturally, the system Obama is forcing on an entire nation of medical professionals and hospitals is the same system owned and operated by Judith Faulkner, one of his own big donors. Faulkner is also a big donor to the Democrat Party. Not surprisingly, besides affording her the lucrative, crony capitalist business deal, Obama also put Faulkner in a key role on the Health Information Technology Policy Committee, the committee responsible for implementing the President’s e-records policy. She has become known as Obama’s medical records czar.

As hospitals and doctors are forced to launch their own EPIC Systems portals, the costs are forcing hard choices for administrators. All to implement what many call a flawed system.

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Albany Police Chief Steven Krokoff came under heavy criticism by fans of the Occupy “movement” after he ordered the clearing of their downtown encampment pursuant to a court order. The arguments over the actions by police have raged since the December 23 conflagration with Chief Krokoff getting savaged repeatedly by the media and some city councilmen alike. But this week Krokoff confronted his critics, and he wasn’t gentle about it!

Chief Steven Krokoff (Image Credit: The Troy Record)

The big criticism arose when officers used pepper spray when the Occupiers became violent. Since then, several Councilmen, such as Anton Konev, have criticized the police, saying that their actions were unnecessary. Konev, for instance, has announced that he has no confidence in the Chief and is angling to have him fired. Naturally, Konev has been an open agitator for and supporter of Occupy Albany.

But on January 6, Chief Krokoff came before the city council with a strong defense of his and his officers’ actions, delivering a withering blast to some of the councilmen that have come to the defense of the lawless Occupiers.

In what the Albany Times Union called a “scorching offensive,” Chief Krokoff scolded members of the City Council for supporting the criminal element of the Occupiers instead of supporting their own police department. (more…)

On Tuesday, December 13 a rally was held near the LBJ Library at the University of Texas, Austin to highlight the attack on election reforms launched inside by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Holder went to Texas to denounce the Lone Star State’s voter ID laws and claimed that simple voter ID laws were somehow discriminatory. Holder ominously claimed that he would use the power of his office to “enforce civil rights protections” during the upcoming 2012 elections.

Outside the LBJ Library nearly 200 citizens gathered to hear a multi-racial panel of six speakers denounce Holder’s partisan attempts to push the administration’s agenda to turn a blind eye to continuing voter fraud that consistently favors candidates from the Democrat Party.

The rally was sponsored by the Houston-based True The Vote, a grass roots voter integrity project staffed by volunteers. True The Vote is a nation-wide organization that has affiliates across the country, every day citizens interested in the integrity of the elections in their home district.

True The Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said she was thrilled by the turnout that was arranged on only a few day’s notice.

We gathered for the purpose of setting the record straight and people came from all over Texas to hear a host of speakers all representing different sides of the issue. All were clearly saying that the thought that photo voter ID laws would in some way suppress the vote or would in some way disenfranchise voters is on its face a farce. This is only being done to advance a politically motivated agenda that has at its core the themes of victimization and race baiting.

In his comments AG Holder cited one Republican in Maryland that was convicted of trying to trick black voters into staying home on Election Day, but what this single case has to do with voter ID laws was unclear. Holder’s intent, it seems, was to dismiss vote fraud from Democrats while shifting the blame to this one Republican. Holder did not mention such Democrat fraud as that seen in the 2008 Indiana primary, the New York Democrat that recently pleaded guilty to vote fraud, or any of the other such cases that can be easily found in the news.

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Government Motors has finally found its hottest car and the Chevy Volt is it. Unfortunately for Chevy, it isn’t because it is popular. It’s because the car seems to catch on fire a lot. Industry watchers are preparing for the Volt to undergo a recall to fix whatever problem the car’s lithium-ion battery pack has that seems to be causing the vehicles to spontaneously burst into flames.

Of course, this little catching on fire problem seems emblematic with everything about Government Motors. After President Barack Obama pumped $53 billion of our tax dollars into bailing out GM all we’ve gotten out of the deal so far is a stock tumble from $53 a share to under $25 (a $15 billion loss) and a badly selling “green” car that catches on fire every time you turn around. Such a deal.

As to the burning issue of the day, the Associated Press notes that an “investigation” has begun by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to determine why the cars are catching fire.

One Volt battery pack that was being closely monitored following a government crash test caught fire Thursday, the safety administration said in a statement. Another recently crash-tested battery emitted smoke and sparks, the statement said.

For its part, GM claims the cars are perfectly “safe.” Well, except for that whole catching on fire business, I suppose.

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Despite all the talk of fixing it, California’s budget is still a mess. One of those “fixes” was implemented last summer when the state Legislature increased revenue projections by $4 billion to avoid balancing the budget. Of course, the problem with using such “phantom money” is that it often has a habit of disappearing when you need it most. And it has disappeared just when money for schools is needed. Now deep cuts are on the table. The people lose again.

Naturally the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office recently reported that the state will receive virtually none of the $4 billion in projected revenue, forcing the state to make some tough decisions in the coming weeks. On the table are major cuts to the education budget, including shortening the school year by a week, not to mention cuts to in-home healthcare programs, and programs for people with developmental disabilities.

Obviously Californian’s budget needs all the help it can get but it looks like it’s business as usual in Sacramento. For instance, an upcoming ballot measure sponsored by a career politician would baffle anyone that truly understands the mess California is in. The so-called California Cancer Research Act coming before voters in June, asks California voters to raise taxes by nearly $1 billion for a whole new perpetual bureaucracy. That is unacceptable to voters. Maddeningly this new program doesn’t even guarantee that the money will be spent in the state! Apparently former state Sen. Pro Tem Don Perata, the career politician pushing the measure, thinks Californians who already paying some of the highest taxes in the nation should reach deeper into their pockets just to potentially send that money across state lines to benefit others. And all the while the budget for the education for those same taxpayer’s kids is about to be slashed.

So, what is the “solution” proposed by Democrats in Sacramento? Raise taxes, of course.

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Earlier this year, the state of Illinois moved to force religious-based children’s services to break their religious principles and give children in their charge to homosexual couples. Organizations such as Catholic Charities have been told by the state that they either break their religious principles or face being shut down by the state. So, pursuant to that agenda, the state has determined that all children currently in the hands of religious adoption agencies need to be removed immediately.

Representing Catholic Charities of three Illinois Roman Catholic Dioceses, the Thomas Moore Society filed an emergency motion to prevent the state from removing all the children in its care. Unfortunately, an Illinois appellate court refused to overturn the trial court’s decision to remove the children during the appeal process in which lawyers are now engaged (filings here and here).

Still, other motions made in the emergency motion were granted. Thomas Moore informs that the matter “is now on an expedited schedule for briefing in the Appellate Court.” The fate of the children remains unknown at this point.

So what was so bad that the State of Illinois felt it necessary to take all children away from religious-based organizations? Have there been cases of abuse? Perhaps children’s services from religious-based groups have been rated lowly? Have adopting parents complained?

None of the above. In fact, there is no substantive reason at all for this attack on religious-based children’s services in the Land of Lincoln. Well, no reason except for a left-wing, pro-homosexual political agenda, that is. (more…)

On Friday I attended an informative business roundtable meeting of Chicago-area small businessmen who came together to discuss how government intervention and its avalanche of regulations are killing jobs and businesses not only in Illinois, but nation wide. Some of the stories were chilling, to say the least. These trials go to show how anti-business the most famously capitalist country in the world has become. No wonder we can’t get out of this second great depression!

The event was held at the headquarters of The Rabine Group in Schaumburg, Illinois. The Rabine Group is a group of nationwide companies that specialize in driveway paving, roofing, and other contracting work. The company is headed by owner and CEO Gary Rabine. Filling out the panel was moderator, Brian Kelly of Bulk Lift International; Gary Rabine, The Rabine Group; Garrett Patten, Patten Industries; Randy Truckenbrodt, Randall Industries, Inc, and Former State Senator Steve Rauschenberger, Rauschenberger Partners.

The panel began with some of the regulatory horror stories experienced by the panel. Each story illustrated how government stands in the way of job creation, small business, and expansion, and how government is not working hand-in-hand with small business but actually fosters an inimical relationship. The panel showed how the oppressiveness of these regulations actually tempts business to break laws just to be able to carry on with business.

Gary Rabine began with his story of how the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) is all too often senseless in its rules. Rabine deals with construction and the waste materials from that work and as a building contractor he brought to the discussion one of these rules that simply makes no sense. Once a construction site is deemed “clean” by the IEPA — that the soil is not contaminated by any chemicals, etc. — there is a rule that all soil carted off a site (for instance from driveways or building foundations) must be tested for contaminants upon leaving the site. Then, that same load must be tested again when it is deposited wherever it ends up being dumped. Remember, this is soil that was already declared “clean” in the first place. So, the IEPA is requiring a contractor to perform expensive environmental tests on the same spoil THREE times! Rabine estimated that it costs upwards to $800 for every load to satisfy this particular regulation.

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A popular, veteran doctor from central Illinois has been sidelined by employer (Springfield-based) Memorial Health System because he has not become proficient with the electronic medical records system that they purchased and implemented. Patients are so incensed that they’ve started a Facebook page as well as a blog to rally to his defense. This situation brings into focus the problem of top-down medical solutions, calling into question the efficacy of healthcare by committee, not to mention Obamacare itself. Do we really want to sacrifice good doctors in favor of good followers of top-down rules? Do we want good computer operators or excellent doctors?

The doctor, Steven Kottemann, 63, was placed on paid administrative leave in September because he was allegedly not properly utilizing the new electronic medical records system that his employer, Family Medical Center, instituted. Kotteman initially tried to upload verbal recordings of his notes made when meeting with patients, but the system failed to accept the recordings. The only other option was to type in by hand all his patient notes. Kottemann tried to input the notes while actually with his patients but eventually came to feel that typing at a computer while trying to work with his patients was not conducive to good care.

Dr. Kottemann then began staying late after office hours to type in all the notes, but due to a stroke of his own, the effort became too much for him. “It got to the point where I was going in seven days a week to keep up,” Kottemann told the State-Register newspaper. For its part, the employer says that Kottemann’s lack of proficiency with the computer system was not the only reason they fired him, but Memorial Medical Center refused to comment further on this story when I contacted them.

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There has been a lot of talk comparing and contrasting the Tea Partiers and these Occupy-Whatever people. In Georgia, though, we can see a stark difference. Tea Partiers are law-abiding citizens, while the Occupy Atlantans are law breakers. Sadly, Capitol Police in Atlanta have sided with the Occupiers and against Tea Partiers.

At the very least, the Capitol Police in Atlanta have definitely been treating these two groups unequally. These officers of the law have turned a blind eye to law breaking by the Occupy folks, allowing them to do anything they want, but did not extend that courtesy to those Tea Party groups that also protested at the Georgia Capitol House.

Notice in the video that the Tea Party group the Capitol Police were harassing was made up of both blacks and whites? And the young man in the video being forced to take down his flag was Matthew Perdie, who was known for his momentous freedom walk in 2010.

Now, as you can see, the Occupy people have been allowed to break nearly every law on the books governing protests in Atlanta. They’ve not been required to take out permits, have not been required to observe vagrancy laws, have not been forced to observe the time limits put on protests and have also not been required to follow the law on how long poles for signs and flags are supposed to be. (more…)

As a result of years of budget deficits and wasteful spending by the state legislature, California faces difficult budget challenges for the next ten years. This bad news is courtesy of a recent analysis of the state’s long-term debt obligations by state Treasurer Bill Lockyer. The analysis adds to a growing list of bad fiscal news for California, a state already struggling under the nation’s worst credit rating and suffering the highest unemployment in the country at 12%.

Even as California deals with this financial crisis, a career politician is pushing a ballot measure that would raise taxes by nearly $1 billion — but doesn’t allocate one penny to balance the state budget, pay down its debt, or to fund existing critical programs like education and public safety. This measure, the so-called California Cancer Research Act, would mandate a new bureaucracy with six political appointees that can spend tax money on buildings, salaries and benefits. This includes $16 million spent on overhead and $117 million on new buildings and facilities. These are not one-time expenditures, as such spending will continue year after year.

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The Greater Boston Food Bank intended to have a fundraising event in Boston’s Dewey Square over the weekend of the 14th of October. It was to be called the “Greenway Mobile Food Fest” and was supposed to help raise funds to feed the poor and needy. However, due to the tantrums being thrown by the Occupy Boston protestors, the event had to be canceled.

Despite the selfishness of these pointless, clueless protesters, though, conservative bloggers stepped in and raised over $3,000 for the food bank. An important question is, where is the media on this story? Isn’t this a perfect sort of human-interest story that media types usually love?

The media should love this. It’s got clueless, uninformed, cretins hurting an organization that helps feed the needy. It has a more caring group rising to the challenge to help replace those lost donations. Perfect story, right?

Ah, except that it is conservatives in the role of good guy and the Old Media can’t have that, now can they?

Now, the anti-capitalists of the so-called “Occupy” events pretend that they are for the downtrodden, the low man on the totem pole, but in Boston the Occupy-Whatevers were more interested in their tantrums than in actually helping anyone. So, the food bank and the small-business festival associated with it lost out to those selfish whiners that claim to be for “the little man.” Nice, eh? (more…)

Another in a long line of explosions and other catastrophic safety failures occurred at the end of September when a natural gas pipeline built and owned by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) ruptured in Roseville, California. This is just of a piece of the failure of PG&E to ensure public safety, a failure that the so-called government watchdog agency set up to watch the utility, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), has seemingly done little to mitigate.

Now, not only has PG&E failed to safeguard the public, but the company is insisting that ratepayers foot the bill for repairs and new safety programs to the tune of some $2.2 billion. Government watchdog CPUC seems wholly content to stand aside while they do it.

Michael R. Peevey, President of the CPUC, has been at the helm of the regulatory commission during many of the worst failures of public safety. Yet, even as he’s claimed he intends to make major changes in the agency, Governor Jerry Brown has not sacked Peevey, whose term ends in 2014. Taxpayers are left asking, why not?

Peevey has been a disaster. He has reigned over some of the most disastrous failures which have caused the deaths of nearly a dozen Californians. His soft stance seems to have allowed PG&E to act with impunity and arrogance, all to the detriment of ratepayers’ pocketbooks and their very safety. (more…)

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D, Illinois 9th District), whose husband has been convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion, was recently interviewed by the far-left website “truthout” and served up some rather unsettling thoughts on economics and the role of government.

You’ll remember truthout for its scoop back in 2009; it was the first site to report the big news that Karl Rove had been indicted. Unfortunately for this “news” site, Karl Rove was never indicted. That was a spot of bother, indeed, impugning the site’s veracity just a bit. You may also know that original editor, Marc Ash, was ousted from the site by a coup from within when it was discovered he was making $140,000 a year off the donors and left-wing foundations supporting the site. But he’s all for the downtrodden masses, ya know?

Now that we have established the forum upon which Schakowsky appeared, let’s look at some of the extreme things she said.

The interview began with the most likely of subjects given the national debate: as Joe Biden said, that three letter word–jobs, jobs, jobs. Schakowsky, of course, stuck to that debunked idea that government “creates jobs” and indulged her inner Keynes in every answer.

Saying she just couldn’t understand how people could say government doesn’t create jobs, Schakowsky indulged in the typically Keynesian fantasy that all left-wingers wallow in. She imagines that jobs created by the government are economic boosters because the money such people are paid will be spent in the general economy. This, she absurdly says, means that everyone is a “job creator” because they spend money. (more…)

A middle school in Smyrna, Georgia included in an assignment material that essentially shows 7th grade children that Islamic polygamy is a perfectly legitimate concept and that there is nothing wrong with the strict dress codes used to oppress Muslim women the world over.

The material was presented to the 7th graders at Campbell Middle School as part of a discussion of the school’s dress codes, apparently meant to use the ideas of Islamic culture for women’s clothing as some sort of example to compare how the school regulates clothing for its students in Georgia.

The concepts were presented in the lesson as a letter from a fictional 20-year-old Muslim woman named “Ahlima.” In this letter “Ahlima” tells readers that she wouldn’t mind if her husband took a second wife and also extolled the virtues of the burkha. She claims that American women are “horribly immodest” in the way they dress.

As to polygamy, the fictional Ahlima says, “I understand that some Westerners condemn our practice of polygamy, but I also know they are wrong.”

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In a good sign for blogger free speech, a lawsuit against a high profile conservative blog in Illinois has just been tossed out. A political contributor brought the lawsuit over a story about property tax reassessments and political contributions. This is a victory for free political speech as well as a victory for the status of blogs in the world of “journalism.”

I’ve been aware of this story for some time but the folks at Illinois Review, the blog in question, asked me to sort of keep it all quiet. There were all sorts of legal questions being thrown about and since the folks that run the blog don’t have deep pockets and the whole thing was being born at their own expense, they wanted to be sure this whole mess didn’t escalate and hurt them too bad financially.

The lawsuit meant to silence the blog was a convoluted one, to be sure. Illinois Review had posted a story that revealed that former Ill. State Rep. Paul Froehlich (R, Schaumburg) had sought campaign contributions from property owners who had won property tax relief claims that the Representative had assisted in getting settled. But after the story went live, due to the notoriety the county assessors office reversed those tax relief decisions.

One of the property owners mentioned in the original story was Satkar Hospitality. Illinois Review reported the facts of the case, noted that Satkar got a favorable property tax reassessment, and speculated that Satkar made “in-kind contributions” to Rep. Froehlich.

For his part Rep. Froehlich claimed that there was no quid pro quo and said he’d known the folks at Satkar “before they even opened their hotel and long before they contributed to my campaign.”

Satkar sued the Illinois Review for defamation — naming Fox News and others as coconspirators.

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Now this is the sort of corruption we are used to seeing in Illinois, eh? This week the Chicago Tribune and WGN TV have found up to 23 retired union operatives that are collecting millions in taxpayer dollars because they had pals in government tweak the state’s pensions laws to favor them.

These former government workers that were government union members got pliant politicians to alter the pensions laws to say that their pension remuneration would be calculated not on the lower pay they received when they retired from government, but from the much higher salary they received when they worked as union operatives. These folks worked as union bosses at the same time as working on the clock for government.

The “luck” of former union boss and Dept. of Streets and Sanitation worker Thomas Villanova is a typical example. Villanova last worked full-time for the city in 1989 and made $40,000-a-year. But he was also a union big wig making $198,000 annually upon his retirement in 2008 at age 56. His city pension, it appears, was calculated on the union salary of $198,000 instead of his real salary of $40,000 — itself obviously a no-show job in the first place.

Villanova stands to make millions off the taxpayers.

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