Author: George Thiem
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Finance, Public
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
Orville Enoch Hodge was the Auditor of Public Accounts (predecessor to the office of Comptroller) of the state of Illinois from 1952 to 1956. During his term of office, he embezzled $6.15 million of state funds, mainly by altering and forging cheques that were paid on the state's account. This book details how the embezzlement scheme was cracked by the Chicago Daily News, whose reporting team was awarded a 1957 Pulitzer Prize for their investigation.
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking and Currency
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Banks and banking
Languages : en
Pages : 996
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Book Description
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking and Currency
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1274
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Author: James L. Merriner
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 080938731X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226
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Book Description
George H. Ryan, Illinois governor from 1999 to 2003, became nationally known for two significant and very different reasons. The first governor in the United States to clear out his state’s death row and put a moratorium on the death penalty, he was also convicted and sent to prison on corruption charges. The Man Who Emptied Death Row: Governor George Ryan and the Politics of Crime details the career of a man who both enhanced and tarnished the image of the highest office in Illinois and examines the political history and culture that shaped him. Author James L. Merriner explores the two very different stories of George Ryan: the brave crusader against the death penalty and the petty crook. An extensive analysis of the official record, exclusive interviews, and previously undisclosed incidents in Ryan’s career expose why the governor pardoned or commuted the sentences of all 171 prisoners on Illinois’s death row before leaving office and how he later was convicted of eighteen counts of official corruption. This biography traces Ryan’s family history and the Illinois political climate that influenced his development as a politician. Although Ryan championed “good-government” initiatives—organ donations, tougher drunken-driving and lobbyist disclosure laws—he never overcame a reputation as a wheeler-dealer, notes Merriner. Merriner goes beyond Ryan’s life and career to explore the politics of crime, highlighting the successes and failures of the criminal justice system and suggesting how both white-collar fraud and violent crime shape politics. A fascinating story that reveals much about the way Illinois politics works, The Man Who Emptied Death Row will help determine how history will judge Illinois governor George Ryan.
Author: David Kenney
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809318223
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292
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Book Description
This latest revision of a classic text presents a comprehensive view of government in Illinois. David Kenney and Barbara L. Brown begin by describing the role of states in the federal system and the basic nature of Illinois as a governmental entity. Next they offer a thorough description of the policy-making process in government. They discuss the three political regions of Illinois--Chicago, Cook County and the collar counties, and downstate--and they outline recent trends in Illinois voter turnout, ticket splitting, party organization, the election schedule, voter qualifications, and the regulation of campaign finance. The problems created by the decennial redrawing of district lines, including the redistricting of 1991, are covered in Kenney and Brown's treatment of the legislative branch of the government. Special emphasis is given to the question of who goes to the General Assembly and who its leaders are, along with a full description of the legislative procedure. Turning to the executive branch, Kenney and Brown first focus on the office of governor. Considerable attention is given to the multiple terms of James R. Thompson, Illinois' longest serving governor, and the election in 1991 of James Edgar. The authors conclude the chapter with a description of the administrative structure of the executive branch. The Illinois court system and the jurisdictions of its three levels are presented as Kenney and Brown turn to the judicial branch of government. They provide biographical information on each of the current justices of the Illinois Supreme Court with particular emphasis on their partisanship. The judgeship selection process is carefully considered and Operation Greylord, which revealed pervasive corruption in the Cook County courts, is discussed. As is the case in each of the chapters on the branches of government, Kenney and Brown offer detailed descriptions of current public officials. Basic Illinois Government also includes chapters on local government, state and local finance, and policy-making issues in education, corrections, welfare, and transportation. In the local government section Kenney and Brown make clear the powers and functions of counties, townships, special districts, and municipal corporations, giving special attention to Chicago and Cook County. They compare the taxing and spending policies of Illinois to those of the rest of the United States and review in detail the controversial income tax increase of 1983 and 1989 with its extension in 1991.
Author: James L. Merriner
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809324736
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
The story of Dan Rostenkowski's rise and fall provides one of the keys to how power is sought, won, exercised, and distributed in contemporary America, argues political journalist James L. Merriner. A literal son of the Chicago political machine, Rostenkowski was installed in politics by his father, Alderman Joseph P. Rostenkowski, and by his mentor, Mayor Richard I. Daley. In his thirty-six year congressional career, he served nine presidents, forming close friendships with many of them. His legislative masterpiece was the 1986 tax reform law. Eight years later, he was indicted on federal charges for misusing tax dollars and campaign funds. In his dealings with the man who tumbled dramatically from his high position as chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee all the way down to a cell in a federal prison in Wisconsin, Merriner finds Rostenkowski candid, straightforward, and authentic-- "except when it came to his own finances." Rostenkowski is not a complex man in need of psychoanalysis on the part of his biographer, and Merriner does not indulge in much of that. Purely, simply, and openly, Rostenkowski wanted power. He wanted wealth. He got both, and Merriner shows us how. Merriner sees mythic qualities in Rostenkowski, characterizing him as the "tall bold slugger" of Carl Sandburg's 1916 poem about Chicago. Noting that this master politician climbed to fantastic peaks only to fall hard and fast, Merriner points out that "Rostenkowski's life ascended from power in the political science sense to tragedy in the classical sense." The Justice Department and the electorate sacrificed Rostenkowski as an embodiment of the excesses of big government. Like the Greek chorus of tragedy, major media reported the scandal to the masses. Yet Merriner does not strain to make his subject fit a classical mold. He tells instead the "story of a great man who was also a little man, a statesman and a crook, an emotional man, an American original." This was also a man unbeaten by his troubles, a man who emerged from prison unabashed. This illustrated biography is not authorized by Rostenkowski, who declined Merriner's interview requests after June 1995. His sources are the public record, previous interviews with Rostenkowski and with many other sources before and after 1995, and his own political acumen gained from decades on the political scene.
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking and Currency
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Banks and banking
Languages : en
Pages : 996
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Book Description
Author: David Kenney
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 9780809315499
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
A biography of William G. Stratton, covering Illinois politics from the 1920s through the 1950s.
Author: James Deakin
Publisher: Berkley
ISBN: 9780425127742
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking and Currency
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Banks and banking
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
