Croom Station Signal

Killer Drunk Driver's Best Friend in Annapolis

Aristotle believed that drunkeness never excuses crime, but actually increases guilty, because the drunken lawbreaker has willingly deprived himself of the ability to reason that alone can distinguish right from wrong, and separates men from beasts.

A different view is held by creepy Maryland State Delegate Joseph F. Vallaria, Jr. (D-Prince George's and Calvert).  Vallario thinks drunks should always get another chance to kill and injure, just so long as their DUI defense attorney (that would be Joe the Creep) gets his "fee."

According to the Washington Post, all but three states and the District now have some form of interlock law for drunk drivers. Virginia for example mandates their use for two-time offenders who want to keep driving.

But Maryland law merely says they “may” be used.  2009 legislation that would have changed "may" to "must" in many cases once again died in a House committee chaired by Vallario, well-known among the trial bar, insurance companies, and surviving relatives of citizens killed by drunk drivers and the drunk drivers best friend in the Statehouse.

"If you take the test and blow a 1.5 blood-alcohol level and you want an interlock, you can get it," Vallario told the Washington Post.  Vallario said mandating their use could cause problems for people convicted of drunken driving who "don't have a car because we can't compel them to buy a car and put one of these in it."

The few safe driving DUI enforcement measures that have struggled through Annapolis in the last few years have survived largely because failure to enact would have jeopardized federal highway funds.  

Chairman Joe’s M.O., according to the Washington Post is to threaten Judiciary Committee members privately to kill nearly every bill coming their way. Mothers Against Drunk Drivers consistently reported that for years Vallario vowed to kill any legislation raising the blood alcohol limit or keeping violently aggressive drivers off the streets. The Daily Record legal newspaper in Baltimore reported one year that Vallario claimed he was protecting driver’s rights, on the theory that making it illegal for a driver to refuse to take an alcohol breath test would constitute ” forced self-incrimination." In the 2009 Annapolis session Vallario also killed a bill calling for a Maryland reckless driving law that would have made it easier to prosecute violently reckless drivers. The bill called for drivers who were responsible for causing a motor vehicle fatality because they exhibited negligence leading to "substantial risk" of safety to be charged with a misdemeanor crime.  The penalty would be up to three years in prison. Currently, at least thirty states have laws that allow reckless driving charges even if the driver did not exhibit "gross negligence." 

In January 2009 Mary Gray, the mother of a 20-year-old man who died after being hit by off-duty Prince George’s County police officer Mario Chavez, testified in Annapolis in support of the reckless driving bill. Chavez had admitted to drinking on the night before the deadly wreak, but was never  charged in her son's death. The Prince George’s County state’s attorney found that there was insufficient evidence to charge Chavez, who had been a Hispanic diversity program recruit to the force, with vehicular manslaughter, an offense that requires proof that the driver was “grossly” negligent. Instead, Chavez was merely issued a traffic ticket for the deadly December 2007 accident.  The bill that could have saved lives like those of Mary Gray's son died in the Judiciary Committee for five years in a row due to Vallario’s despicable money-grubbing machinations.

 

The Joker Agenda Spotted in College Park

On July 21, the Prince George's County Council adopted Resolution CR-12-2009, entitled "Spending of Federal Economic Renewal Grants."  

CR-12-2009 finds that "the economic downturn is having a critical impact on everyday Americans who are struggling to maintain or find jobs"  and that "our taxpayer dollars should be spent to maximize the creation of American jobs and restore the economic vitality of our communities."

The resolution urges the County to spend Obama stimulus funds "wherever possible on products made in the United States or"  -- now get this-- "services performed in the United States."

The resolution reeks of hypocrisy.  PG County has gone out of its way to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund illegal alien day labor and unauthorized alien worker  service centers, while our American youth 16-30 unemployment rate is at  Depression-era levels. 

PG County's shameful cheap labor santuary laws are premised on the assertion that there are thousands of jobs in Maryland that "Americans won't do."

Please, show me a single elected county official who gives a rats' ass about saving the American worker.  Just try and file a complaint about immigration-related employment discrimination with the County Human Relations Commission or complain about illegal alien crime to the PG Police, or the illegal labor coolie centers in Langley Park and Oxon Hill. 

If you are a citizen, you can forget it.  You're on your own.

What was Council Member Eric Olsen, the author of this loopy protectionist drivel, thinking? 

Seems the Joker Agenda is apparently thriving in College Park.

 

Donna Edwards, Cuba, and the Yanqui Dollar

Q: Why is Maryland Representative Donna Edwards (D-Ft. Washington) such a fanatic about a radical public option for health care reform?  

A: Because she is a committed ideological admirer of Cuba, and the Cuban socialized medicine system in particular.

So here’s what La Donna Fidelista has in store for Maryland:

Under the Cuban government's health care monopoly, the state has complete control of who gets help, and how much. Private, non-governmental health facilities, where ailing citizens could buy treatment, are illegal.

As a result, average Cubans suffer long waits at government hospitals, while many medical services and technologies are available only to the Cuban party elite and foreign "health tourists" (like Rep. Edwards) who pay with hard currency.

Even access to rudimentary medicines as antibiotics and aspirin is rationed.

Rep. Edward’s antipathy to private health care is deeply ideological.  From 2000 until her election in 2008, Rep. Edwards was the Executive Director of the Arca Foundation, a creepy foundation founded by an eccentric heiress, Nancy R. Bagley, daughter of the founder of the R. J. Reynolds tobacco company.

In 1968, one of his grandchildren, an archetypal Al Gore global elitist, gained control of the mid-eight figure endowment, gave the fund a new age moniker, and took it on a hard left turn, with an agenda of grants for pro-Cuba, pro-Sandinista, and anti-corporate groups, underneath a patina of yuppie-style environmentalism.

Prior to joining Arca, Rep. Edwards was the first executive director of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and largely responsible for the rabidly feminist Violence Against Women (VAWA) Act of 1994.

VAWA created the corrupt “battered immigrant” visa program, which allows illegal aliens to avoid multi-year waiting lists for green cards by denouncing their spouses as wife-beaters.  Under VAWA, the accused spouse is considered guilty until proven innocent and cannot confront or otherwise respond to the charges.

Thanks to Edwards 'vision', today a cottage industry in fabricating VAWA visa horror stories is flourishing, linked to open borders groups.   

Rep. Edwards also earlier headed the Center for a New Democracy, the “think tank” founded by d*ckhead Senator Gary Hart that lobbied for more government regulation of the middle class......

How Joe Vallario Fought for Maryland's Felons, Not for the Citizens and Crime Victims

Why would a judge turn a killer loose?  In an era when most citizens believe stiff sentences deter crime, Maryland operated a judicial scam in which the sentence handed down when the public is paying attention could be dramatically altered later. 

 

For more than 50 years until 2006, Maryland judges could reduce criminal sentences upon motion by the convict at any time for any reason—or for no reason at all.  There is no law that permits judges to do this.  Their authority derives from a procedural rule developed by judges without public debate.

 

Maryland Rule of Criminal Procedure 4-345, granting judges the power to reconsider sentences in a resentencing hearing, became a routine part of Maryland’s criminal justice system.  Defense attorneys asked Circuit Court judges to reconsider many of the tens of thousands of sentences they handed down each year, even sentences reached through plea bargain agreements.   

 

Every year, hundreds of criminal sentences were reduced, and dozens of felons released from prison on orders of a Maryland judge.  In many cases the reconsideration hearing was held years after the original trial, often without the victim’s knowledge.  Critics said some judges cynically imposed harsh sentences to pacify crime victims clamoring for long prison terms, intending all along to reduce the punishment later.

 

“It’s kind of the dirty little secret of the criminal justice system,” said Robert L. Dean, a former Montgomery County state’s attorney who also served as lead felony prosecutor in Prince George’s County, at the time.

 

For many years, the chief obstacle to closing down this “dirty little secret” was Delegate Joe Vallario, a leading PG County criminal and DUI defense attorney and Head Weasel on the House Judiciary Committee.

 

In 2000, Lt. Gov. (and then-Delegate) Anthony G. Brown introduced a bill that would have limited judicial reconsideration to one year after sentencing, except in extraordinary circumstances. Brown drafted the bill after reading about the early release from prison of Kenneth J. Lodowski, who was originally sentenced to die for the 1983 robbery-murder of an off-duty Prince George’s police officer, Carlton X. Fletcher, and a Greenbelt mini-mart clerk. Lodowski was released in January 2000 after serving 16 years for the two slayings.

 

But Vallario, Maryland judges and the state bar association all opposed Brown’s bill.  In mid-March, Vallario’s committee killed it on an 11 to 9 vote.

It was not until continuing citizen pressure, lead by public interest groups like the Maryland Crime Victims Resource Center, forced the Maryland Assembly to change the  rule by statute, effective 2006, were Maryland courts required to provide notice to victims of “subsequent” sentencing proceedings, to act only in open court modify a sentence, and to allow each victim or victim’s representative an opportunity to be heard.

 

Even today, reports emerge of victims shocked to run into the person who robbed, raped beat or hurt them walking free a few years later on the streets of their town.  This is because in an uber-liberal state like Maryland, many members of the bar and government officials retain a self-interested suspicion about the entire concept of victims rights.

26th Anniversary of the Disappearance of Kim Mileo

June marks the 26th anniversary of Maryland’s only unsolved murder case where no body has ever been found.

 

Kimberly “Kim” Christine Mileo, born June 12, 1962, was last seen alive in Croom, Maryland on June 9, 1983. She was the daughter of Michael Mileo, and at the time lived with him and her step mother in Kettering, Maryland.  Kim had previously lived in Croom through Middle School.

 

Kim was white, 4 feet 11 inches tall, 98 pounds and slender build, and had light brown shoulder length hair. She was last seen wearing a white tube top, black shorts, white sandals, and was carrying a white wind breaker jacket.

Kim had spent Wednesday, June 8, 1983 at the home of her girl friend, Kim Easley, also 20 years old. The two girls had known each other since early childhood. The Easley family had obtained tickets to the upcoming Beach Boys Concert on the Fourth of July, and they planned to give them to Kim Mileo as a 21st birthday present at a party planned for the following weekend.

With them that early summer day was Kim Mileo's boyfriend, Dana Hudson, age 24, who lived with his parents only a mile up the road. The three of them spent part of the day sitting around the Easley pool and later all three went for a drive in the rural setting of Croom, all arriving back at the Easley home later that afternoon.

Easley remembered that Kim "had been fighting with Dana a little, but it was nothing serious." At 11:00 PM, Kim left with Dana to go to his parents' horse farm at 16411 Mount Calvert Road, in Croom.

 

Kim's last words to her friend Easley were, "Call me in the morning."

 

But when Easley called the Mileo home the next morning and asked for Kim, she was informed that Kim had not returned from her trip to Croom. Kim's father, Michael called the Hudson home and spoke with Dana Hudson. Dana claimed to have no knowledge of Kim's whereabouts, but did offer that she "seemed suicidal" to him the day before. Kim's parents reported her as missing to Prince George’s County Police later that same day, Thursday June 9, 1983.  Kim was never seen or heard from again.

Members of the Hudson family later stated that Kim was in their house with Dana that evening, and that she left for home at 2:30 AM. Dana's father, Mr. Donald Hudson, said that he was awakened at that time by the sound of her car's broken muffler. A search and investigation was begun.

On Friday June 10, Dana Hudson was questioned by police. Later that day, Dana and a friend left town without telling anyone where they were going. When Dana returned two days later, he claimed to have driven to Ocean City, Maryland to look for Kim.

On Saturday May 11, Kim's car, a gray 1972 Chevrolet Vega, was found abandoned near 16301 Croom Road by Dana Hudson's brother Greg and/or a friend. That address is 9 miles south of the intersection of Croom Road and Mount Calvert Road - in the opposite direction that Kim would have taken to drive home.

When police began to question why the car had gone unnoticed for two days before Greg Hudson found it, another friend of the Hudson family came forth to state that he had seen it at 3:15 AM Thursday in the same place where it was later found by Greg Hudson. The car, when checked by police, was found to be locked. Kim's purse was inside and there were no apparent signs of a struggle or injury. It was in a working condition.

Police conducted a large scale search for the missing young woman in the area where the car was found, but it turned up no trace of Kim.

On Sunday, June 12, 1983, Dana Hudson was given a lie detector test, which he failed. He was then aggressively interrogated, but would not admit any guilt or responsibility in Kim's disappearance.

The Hudson family had initially responded helpfully toward the police, but as soon as Dana Hudson became a chief suspect, they ceased cooperation entirely.  On June 30, 1983, Dana's younger brother, Todd was picked up by police and interrogated for several hours before being released at 4:00 AM on July 1. Since that day, the Hudson family has refused any interviews or assistance in the case. The family hired a lawyer and refused to speak to any police investigators, with the exception of an interview with a local reporter in which they criticized the county police and their investigation.

 

Kim Mileo's disappearance was officially classified as a homicide. But without a body, or other physical evidence, no one was charged and the case remains unsolved. 

 

''No, I don't think she's alive. She just wouldn't do this. It wasn't like her. She would never go anywhere by herself. She wouldn't even go to Ocean City by herself,'' said Louise Mileo, Kim's stepmother to the PG Journal newspaper in 1988. '' We just want to find her. We just want to know where she is.'' But Mileo's disappearance is the only one of its kind in the county; a presumed murder where no body has ever been found.

 

Kim Mileo disappeared about one year after another young woman from Croom, Stephanie Roper, was abducted, raped, tortured, murdered and mutilated. The men who had killed her were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to several life prison terms. But at sentencing, the Prince George’s County judge allowed the prison terms to run concurrently instead of consecutively. This mistake made the killers eligible for parole in as little as twelve years. However, St. Marys County prosecutors then charged the two with similar crimes in that jurisdiction, and this time the life sentences were set to run consecutively, effectively eliminating the possibility of parole.

The victims advocacy group called the Stephanie Roper Committee was founded after Stephanie's death and was in existence when Kim disappeared. Dana Hudson’s parents were reported to have been among the earliest supporters of that organization. 

 

The NCIC file number for Kimberley Christine Mileo is M-102855308.

Witch Way Outta Here? Jack Johnson's Sordid African Trade Partner

 

A savage African despot, who considers P.G. County Executive Jack Johnson as “brother,” “friend”, and business partner, was recently condemned by Amnesty International for hiring witch doctors to terrorize the tiny West African nation of Gambia.

 

The UK Guardian and the New York Times have recently reported that up to 1,000 Gambians were kidnapped by witch doctors hired by Gambian President Alhaji Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh and forced to drink hallucinogenic potions concocted from poisonous herbs at secret government detention centers.  Several victims died and hundreds of people fled in terror to neighboring Senegal.Police, army officers and members of Jammeh's presidential guard, known as the "Green Boys", accompanied the witch hunters from village to village in this backward West African nation, previously known best as the colonial-era slave entrepot where Kunta Kinte of Roots was kidnapped and sold to into bondage.

 

Reports indicate the alleged witches, many of them elderly, were abducted for up to five days. Made to drink unknown hallucinogenic substances, they were then forced to confess to witchcraft. Some were also severely beaten. “I experienced and witnessed such abuse and humiliation. I cannot believe that this type of treatment is taking place in Gambia. It is from the dark ages,” one victim told Amnesty International.

 

The witch hunters are reported to have arrived in Gambia from Guinea follow- ing the death of Jammeh's aunt.   Jammeh is said to believe that witch craft was used to kill her.

 

 

Belief in witchcraft is not uncommon in parts of rural Africa, and other heads of state such as Idi Amin of Uganda, Mobutu of Zaire, and “Emperor” Bokassa of the Central African Republic have been accused of employing or fearing the dark arts.  In this hemisphere, Haitian President for Life “Papa Doc” Duvalier gave voodoo, a witchcraft-based religion indigenous to the slave-exporting regions of West Africa, a prominent role in his repressive and ruinous regime.

 

Jammeh's crackdown is consistent with his prior misrule of the tiny West African state since a military coup in 1994.  In 2007, the 43-year-old president announced that he had found separate herbal cures for HIV, asthma and high blood pressure, and personally administered his treatment to patients. The UNDP representative was expelled from Gambia in 2008 after she expressed doubts about the superstitious claims. That year, the Muslim leader also gave an interview to Hezbollah TV in which he endorsed Iran’s nuclear weapons program. After the witch hunt was over, he imprisoned opposition leader Halifa Sallah on spying charges, for visiting villages where witch hunting had occurred.

 

Jammeh’s ties to Prince George’s County came about thanks to the naive prejudices of County Executive Johnson.  Johnson lead a Prince George’s County trade mission to Gambia in February 2005, and Gambian “officials” returned the visit in June 2005 and December 2006. Kwasi Holman, Johnson’s appointee as head of the Prince George’s economic development agency, emphasized that the County’s ties to the Jammeh regime were “a direct result of a trade relationship cultivated through the county executive's outreach to the African continent.”  Jammeh has previously been appointed Honorary Admiral of the Alabama State Navy by the Governor of that state, and awarded the Grand Order of Bravery by Libyan dictator Gadaffi.

 

Johnson then hosted a “State Dinner” for President Jammeh in College Park. “Our people are your people and the waters have not divided us,”Johnson gushed during the VIP reception.  Jammeh responded, “We are your brothers, sisters, and your friend.”  At the celebration, it was reported that both men expressed their love for small towns.  “I'm uncomfortable in the city. I'm a village man,” declared Jammeh. Johnson said, “I go to a little island in South Carolina” to contemplate “the future of the world's wealthiest majority-Black county.”   Uh oh…

PG Democrats Fantasy Economy Spells Ruin for All

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on January 9^th that the national unemployment rate surged to the highest in nearly 16 years in December, as employers cut more than half a million jobs. The unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent, the highest since January 1993, from 6.8 percent in November, the BLS reported.

The U.S. economy lost a devastating 1.9 million jobs in the past four months alone, marking the biggest drop in employment in more than a half century.  In all of 2008, 2.6 million people lost their jobs, the largest slump since a 2.75 million drop in 1945, when wartime industries shut down after V-Day—and the biggest crash in my lifetime.

The slump was driven by massive layoffs in all major sectors except government, education and health. The means that although unemployment numbers in Maryland and Prince George's County have nearly doubled since a year ago, (to 5.3 percent in PG County in November 2008), the worst is clearly yet to come. 

The delay in shrinkage in government payrolls means the bloodletting will just be starting in 2009, as property and business tax revenues collapse, busting the pork and patronage-heavy budgets of the People’s Republic of Maryland, and dragging our beloved beltwaystan down with it. Watch out for the state and local statistics for December, which won’t be issued until January 27^th. 

So what’s fearless leader Jack “Brainiac” Johnson doing?  For one thing, he’s making sure that his existing coterie of “consultants” (read: cronies) are producing more b.s. for each tax-dollar misspent. Remember his “Envision Prince George’s” economic forum last fall at UMD College Park?  The Democratic “creative class” were out in full force, all babbling on about how “human creativity” has replaced physical resources as the basis for the American economy. Yep, folks, this is gonna be a change “as big as the Industrial revolution.”  Planning Board sachem Samuel Parker explained that in PG County, economic creativity means an increased focus on “undeveloped land.”  Environmentalists call this “cornucopia”-ism,” the cult-like belief that the laws of physical science and the traditions of American society are irrelevant to prosperity and limitless growth in the 21^st century. “Now is the time. Everything is changing too fast to wait,” Parker burbled.

So, as the tax base collapses, leading to a permanent budget crisis, the Democrat’s solution is to encourage “creative thinkers” to move to PG County by weakening planning standards to build more tract homes and commercail sprawl on "undeveloped land."  The new sprawl will of course require a massive taxpayer investment in new roads, schools, hospitals, etc. Does it matter that we are decades behind on providing infrastructure and basic services for the “less creative” class –those dummies like you and I who are already living here? Naw.

Remember the great Jack Johnson-Jesse Jackson “partnership” to save young black males, announced at Central High School back in 2007?  Naw, we can build these new developments with illegal aliens from Langley Park, who are “hard working” and “do the jobs Americans won’t do” – Americans in this case being – you guessed it—young black American males.

I suppose the most “creative” aspect of the Democratic Cornucopia 2009 program is make those thousands of foreclosed homes in PG County--the ones that were “sold” to illegal aliens and “uncreative” poor African-Americans, by that unholy alliance of affordable housing pimps and greedy financiers--just disappear from the equation.  "I think some of us just overbought into the American dream," said Stan Brown, a Largo real estate lawyer and Johnson crony who serves as “people’s zoning counsel” told the Post in 2007. Pardonnez my French, but that is just b.s. The “creative class” – players like Brown and Parker and Johnson -- have put stupid greed, blind ambition, and multi-culti hubris first for years.

If you don’t think “creative class” Democrats are capable of destroying the modest economic base and quality of life of Prince George’s County, just remember what they did to the public school system over the past half-century.  //Sources – Reuters, PG Sentinel, Washngton Post//