For those still following the absurdity unfolding around the family of ex-Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., we now have word that his decision to run for reelection (without campaigning) and then promptly resign will cost the taxpayers over $5 million — as if the taxpayers have not paid enough to the family of Jesse Jackson.
Some of us have long been critics of Jesse Jackson, Jr. and his family who have been the focus of corruption and misconduct allegations. Then there was the disappearance of Jesse Jackson Jr. as investigators looked into his use of campaign contributors allegedly to fix up his house and to buy a Rolex watch for a mistress. At the same time, investigators were looking into his wife, who serves on the city council. No one bothered to inform his constituents when their member disappeared and left only speculation for weeks on his whereabouts. Nevertheless, weeks later, Jackson checked himself into the Mayo Clinic and announced that he would still run for reelection even with a diagnosis of having bipolar disorder. He won handily without showing up to campaign in a district that clearly does not give a wit about substantial allegations of misconduct. (Ironically, Jackson took office in a special election after his predecessor Mel Reynolds left office in a sex scandal involving an underage campaign worker). He promptly promised his constituents that he would serve vigorously in Washington. However, once elected, Jackson reportedly demanded a disability pension in return for giving up his seat — essentially holding a seat hostage according to those reports. He then resigned a couple weeks after the election — triggering the need for two special elections.
The Illinois State Board of Elections calculated those elections cost $2,700 to $4,000 per precinct. With 590 precincts in Jackson’s 2nd Congressional District, an election would probably cost around $2,575,000. That comes to $5.15 million for both a primary and general election.
Just to give you an idea of the cost imposed by the Jacksons on the taxpayers, that cost would have save the entire page system. The over 200 years of page service in the House of Representatives was eliminated to save $5 million a year. It is also the equivalent for the federal subsidy for 20 million free meals for poor children.
Yet, again, Democrats are silent in criticism of Jackson or his family in fear of angering Jesse Jackson Sr. We will simply pay millions while Jesse Jackson Jr. has yet to be indicted for the alleged misuse of campaign funds. Keep in mind that the Justice Department prosecuted the late Sen. Ted Stevens (R., Alaska) for the use of lobbyist money to fix his home. The investigations into Jackson and his wife are continuing and Jackson is reportedly trying to reach a plea bargain. In the end, the criminal investigations, special election costs, and other collateral costs will make bring the final tab for taxpayers likely over $10 million even without the possibility of a criminal trial. Of course, common people can go to jail for years for stealing less than $1000, but they are not (it seems) part of America’s ruling class.
Many are awaiting the results of the reported plea negotiations with Jackson and the Justice Department to see if he will get one last deal from a less than grateful American people. [Update: How the dipolar analysis would factor into a criminal case is still unclear. There is an interesting conflict in the original position of Jackson that his illness would not prevented him from running for reelection and resuming his work in Congress. Yet it is likely that the illness will be used as a defense on any corruption or fraud charges. That creates a bit of a conflict. Being reelected certainly gave him a bargaining chip as part of the reported plea negotiations. However, it also contradicted a position that his illness did not make him responsible. By resigning, it would certainly help Jackson argue that the illness left unable to function adequately. It may also end the congressional inquiry into his involvement in an alleged effort to buy the Senate seat vacated by President Obama.
He may have a difficult time on the merits. The test of insanity as a defense is extremely high even with a diagnosis from the respected Mayo Clinic. If he cannot make a direct insanity defense, the most likely impact of the illness would be on mitigation of sentencing. If the case is a strong as suggested, he could opt for a plea and push for leniency on sentencing. The question will turn on his ability to function before he disappeared — with accounts of his schedule and behavior in and outside Congress. Courts commonly have defendants with some form of mental illness, but such illness rarely amounts to an absolute defense.
There is also the problem of others who may have been aware of any of the alleged criminal conduct from his wife to his accountant to his staff. The prosecutors may bring a huge amount of pressure on them to turn and testify for the prosecution if a case moves to the charging stage.]
Source: ABC
The testing proposition does sound rather scary, idealist. Abraham Lincoln was said to be manic depressive.
Idealist is right. Too many pets spoil the broath.
Nothing is true nothing is false no one can dance on the head of a pin and Nineteen Eighty-four has come and gone and I cant recall who won the World Series. Put that up your PHd and dont shove it.
Interesting that as a cure for a political problem someone suggests an obligatory test for mental/social pathology indications. Does it remind you of a police state, type USSR? I think so.
Therefore I welcome the return of the nearest we have after MikeS to a Socrates, in the person of Dr. Harris.
I hope that at least some understood the value of using the Socratic method. The second essay was a form of overkill. But some need it, if it can penetrate—which is doubtful. There is as he said, that problem of non-existence of self-awareness.
Glad we have some others here who do not approve Prof. Turley’s blogs automatically. To expect his pets to do so is not to be expected.
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My Iranisn friend was here, back from a month at Grandma’s in Teheran. Thought you’d like to know that it is getting liberal there while reacttonary police
state increases here.
Justice Holmes, do you find yourself to be among the people who are mentally ill and unaware of being mentally ill because of your mental illness, such that you can condemn other people for being like you?
Were it up to me, I would prefer that you not be that way.
Can simple ignorance be a poor substitute for scientifically-verified accuracy of understanding?
I have come upon a few people who can grasp the following philosophical construction:
If there is no truth, then the statement, “There is no truth,” would necessarily be true; therefore, there cannot not be truth.
If there is no absolute truth, then the statement, “There is no absolute truth,” would necessarily be absolute truth; therefore, there cannot not be absolute truth.
If there is absolute truth because there is absolutely no other actuality, else actuality would hot have been capable of actualizing itself, might the process of actualizing actual actuality actually be the actual evolution of the creation of absolute truth and the understanding thereof?
How many actual actualities can dance on the point of a pin?
Or, is humanity pinned to an aleph-null set of aleph-null nested hypotheticals, none of which actually exists?
Do I exist because I not only do not exist, by not existing, I am incapable of realizing that I do not exist, and therefore exist only as a non-existent hypothetical incapable of recognizing non-existence because I would have to exist to be able to realize that I do not exist?
How many non-existent hypotheticals can dance on the point of a pointless pin that does not exist?
Is there a greater philosophical conundrum than the self-existence of self itself?
Where is to be found irrefutable objectivity within the less than infinitesimal confines of absolutely pure, unadulterated self-referential subjectivity?
Or, perhaps the late psychologist, Alice Miller, had something worthwhile to share,as in her book, “Thou Shalt Not Be Aware: Society’s Betrayal of the Child,” Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum, tr., New American LIbrary, New York and Scarborough, Ontario, 1984.
Nineteen Eighty-Four?
In defense of the third party:
So he ran for office to get a disability pension, what a leader! Was a plea deal a part of this package?
To those who think we should pity or sympathize with him because he is ill, I ask do you really believe he is? I don’t. It is a convenient defense to all the problems e is facing and because of who he is he gets a pass.
Of course he is no worse than others who have taken advantage of their constituents but it is still an outrage. 5 million dollars could feed a lot of kids or help a lot of families. I object.
Is it, or is it not, of a form of schizoid stance to deem someone to be mentally ill and then deny to the person the right to such conduct as defines what it is to be mentally ill?
Why on earth, or elsewhere, would a genuinely mentally ill person consistently make rational decisions if being mentally ill is contiguous with being unable to make rational decisions in one or more areas of significant social/personal functioning?
If people are to be tested for mental illness, would it be wise to first understand accurately what is, and what is not, usefully deemed to be mental illness?
What would compromise a test for mental illness that is totally free of every form of recognizable and non-recognizable bias?
Or, what would comprise an errorless test for perfect mental health?
Who would be qualified by absolutely total absence so much as a hint of any trace of an iota of mental illness, so as to be unambiguously competent to design, administer, and score such a for the errorless identification of people who are so perfectly without mental illness as to be capable of excluding the whole realm of mental illness from their lives; and, were there to be such people, how would they have the slightest clue as to what it would be like to be mentally ill for want of any actually lived experience as a mentally ill human?
To borrow from the object relations school, delusional projection of the internalized bad objects of one’s cathected, idealized parent imago may be fraught with personal and social peril.
What is an optimal approach to decathecting internalized bad (anti-libidnal) objects?
Anyone else who posts comments here have, read, and worked to understand the late Jeffrey Seinfeld’s book, “The Empty Core”?
It appears to ,me that mental illness, not completely unlike dementia, may have two contrasting basic forms. In one form, the person who is mentally ill or demented is aware of the mental illness or dementia, perhaps because the brain cells needed for such self-awareness remain functional. In the other form, the person who is mentally ill or demented is unsware of the mental illness or dementia, perhaps because the mental illness or dementia sufficiently damaged or destroyed brain cells needed for functional self-awareness.
To what extent are people who harshly judge the mental illness or dementia of other people to be found only among those people who are mentally ill or demented in ways that deny to them sufficient self-awareness as would allow them to understand their condition?
To what extent does being incapable of accurately being aware of one’s own condition render people functionally incapable of accurately being aware of other people’s conditions?
Did I once come upon a story of someone with a beam in an eye attempting to remove a speck from the eye of someone else?
Gene
Forcing new elections…..selfish, yes. Inconvenient, yes. Poorly considered, yes. Frustrating, a needless expense, outrageous, etc.. yes. .
But you haven’t explained how he gains financially.
Will you spell it out for me, along with the “extortion” attempt? I hope you are not relying on Turley’s unsubstantiated “disability” claim that was widely reported by Fox, The Blaze, and Daily Caller. You’re not about to call a plea deal extortion, are you? And I wonder about your use of the phrase “the only rational reason to stay… ” when we are talking about a guy who was hospitalized for mental illness and was under some heavy pressure from the feds. I believe he was probably hospitalized because he Wasn’t rational.
And what is so upsetting that he did not run an campaign? Unorthodox, yes. But the results prove he didn’t need to. He won with 63% of the vote against two opponents. And as so often pointed out, it is Chicago. And he’s won that seat time and time again.
Also, I’d be most interested in learning who else in the Congress is a sociopath or psychopath (will you limit it to just those two afflictions?) and who will serve on the diagnostic panel. Shall we say that anyone who goes on the Sunday shows three times and tells three lies is a sociopath? This is going to be fun because that’s going to get rid of a lot of guys that are very annoying. Can we also get rid of the guys who insist that Obama is a socialist and that lowering taxes in a struggling economy creates jobs? However, I do worry just a little bit if Mitch McConnell, Michelle Bachman, or Louie Gohmert get to call the shots. You wouldn’t let that happen, would you?
But I had better tread carefully since your definition of sociopathic behavior could be applied to me at various times during my long life. Yes, I confess there has been a time or two when what I wanted was more important than what was right. A behavior that is quite unusual for an ordinary American citizen.
Gene,
It’s a good idea worth kicking around.
Supposition. Maybe if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its butt on the ground when it jumps. You might have a point if his announcement/extortion attempt had come several months after the election, but with this timing and how he ran an absentee campaign? I’m not buying the after the election argument at all.
Gene: Maybe he found out something else AFTER the election.
Eeyore,
If his health was his primary concern, he knew he was sick before the election, then he should have dropped out. The only rational reason to stay in is to maximize financial gain just like he has after the election by effectively holding the office hostage and forcing new elections regardless of cost and inconvenience to the constituents. That’s precisely the kind of behavior a sociopath would exhibit – putting what he wants over what is right.
Blouise,
There are several standard inventories for both psychopathic and sociopathic personality disorders, but I’d need to talk to our resident expert on these matters before narrowing down some candidates. However, I think I will take your suggestion and do a blog post on that topic some time soon. As far as the how? When you file, you must submit to the testing before you are put on the ballot. Make it just like any other filing requirement. I think they should have a random choice from valid tests though to minimize any chances at preparation. I also think it should apply across the board though – state and Federal. It’s doable via legislation, but personally I think it’s important enough to possibly think about the basic requirements for mental health testing in public officials as a potential Constitutional amendment (even though legislation would be an easier row to hoe).
Gene,
I read that link before but a refresher was needed. If a test for mental health is instituted, and at this point I believe there is some validity to the idea, how and what? It would be an interesting topic to explore for a GB. 😉 Maybe even a collaboration of two or more GB’s.
(I see the kids are on thanksgiving break)
Gene
I don’t get the “maximum financial benefit”. If he is convicted, will he be allowed his pension because of this election? Will his pension be increased by winning re-election? Maybe his campaign coffers continued to grow, so that may have increased the financial benefit. But would the Big Money continue to give when the candidate is hospitalized with a disease that makes him unstable? Does resignation after re-election get him a better lobbying job? Does his re-election increase the odds that his wife will win his seat? (I think she is likely to be charged as well.) If that was the plan, it would have been better to withdraw and have her run once he was hospitalized in June.
It’s lousy that another two elections will have to be run. But if the guy is bi-polar and we understand that most, er, normal congressmen have to be dragged out of office kicking and screaming (especially when facing jail), why do we expect that he will do the right thing? He was da*n sick. Isn’t it possible that he was convinced that “everything will be okay” and he’d achieve some mental relief if he just got re-election out of the way? Don’t you suppose that everyone on his staff was urging him to stay on so they could stay employed?
The above is just a lot of supposition. I’m open to your arguments – but I need something more than “it’s the hallmark of a sociopath” – that doesn’t explain the plan for “maximum financial benefit”.
The comments above by Idealist 707 are well stated. I dont see any meat on the bones of the JT articles which have appeared on this blog denouncing Jesse junior. This is not even to the level of throwing rocks. An innuendo is not a rock. There is thus far no evidence that Jesse was not bi polar and no evidence that he is holding up Congress for some pension. It does not satisfy the Best Evidence Rule to merely quote some similar allegation in Politico. I would rather have Jesse Junior for my Congressman than the schmuck that I am stuck with. And my Congressman aint no grizzly bear or a two arctic bear. I will accept a diagnosis of bi polar, as set forth in my prior comment from the Mayo Clinic website, over some notion that Jesse is a drunk or drug addct and is living off the public tit.
What OS said. You can bet this was planned out to leverage maximum financial benefit for Jackson. It’s also hallmark behavior for psycho- and sociopaths.
I downloaded an paper this morning to read this weekend called
The Corporate Psychopaths Theory of the Global Financial Crisis by Clive R. Boddy from The Journal of Business Ethics, 2011, Volume 100, Number 3, Pages 367-379. The abstract reads “This short theoretical paper elucidates a plausible theory about the Global Financial Crisis and the role of senior financial corporate directors in that crisis. The paper presents a theory of the Global Financial Crisis which argues that psychopaths working in corporations and in financial corporations, in particular, have had a major part in causing the crisis. This paper is thus a very short theoretical paper but is one that may be very important to the future of capitalism because it discusses significant ways in which Corporate Psychopaths may have acted recently, to the detriment of many. Further research into this theory is called for.”
I think the same thing should be studied and considered for public office holders. We all know that psycho- and sociopaths are at the root of many of our problems not only in the business world, but in the world of public service as well. While the Constitution prohibits any religious test for holding office? It says nothing about mental health tests for holding public office. After the evidence of the last forty-ish years (if you go back to Nixon)? I think it is high time we as a society start considering erecting such testing barriers for running for and holding public office and/or holding appointed public office.
If you want to read the article in question, it can be found here:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/9072633443675517/
It would be a pleasant treat if JJJr was made an example of in his district. Like poppa like son, they all thieving, living off the white mans money.
Hopefully people in his district will learn from this. He should be made an example of.