Rock Island County Courthouse -- The Young Lady Grew Old

When I first saw the Rock Island County Courthouse in 1966, I was young, but she was already growing old. She was 69. We have both grown older together. Now that I have passed 69, I think I can fairly say that the years have been kinder to me than to her. At least, I haven't undergone the "operations" ("remodelings").

When I first saw her in September of 1966, she was open, airy and friendly. In those days, there were four courtrooms in the building.Then, you could freely walk from one end of the circuit clerk's office to the other, examine the files, and kibbitz with the clerks. I liked working there. Now there are so many employees, there is no room for any of that. Everything is chopped and blocked off.

The present courthouse was built in an era before electricity was generally used. Indeed, when I first met her in 1966, you could still find a few old gas fixtures on her rotunda walls. And of course, when she was built in 1897 computers and their cables were unknown. In the 30 plus years I roamed the building, my most vivid memory was the thermostats in the various offices -- not functional, but at least decorative!

The courthouse was dedicated on March 31, 1897. To gather facts for this piece, I visited the Rock Island County Historical Society and the county clerk's office to learn what I could about the plans for and the usage of the building in 1897 to contrast it with the usage today.

The original building plans for the 1897 courthouse called for:

-- 1. Two rooms for a sheriff's office;
-- 2. One room for a surveyor's office;
-- 3. County clerk's office consisting of a private office, a workroom (both 20 x 26 feet) and a vault;
-- 4. A county judge's office (16 x 20 feet ) and county courtroom (24 x 40 feet);
-- 5. Treasurer's office (24 x 32 feet) and a vault;
-- 6. Circuit clerk's office consisting of an office (26 x 30 feet), a workroom (20 x 26 feet), and a vault;
-- 7. Circuit courtroom (42 x 64 feet and 24 feet high);
-- 8. State's attorney's room; and
-- 9. Circuit judge's room.

Years later, a probate judge's courtroom and chamber (1S) were added by remodeling. Shortly before I arrived in 1966, the circuit courtroom (3rd Floor South) was chopped up to make a new small circuit courtroom, a hearing room, three judges' chambers, plus additional office space on the 4th floor.
Thereafter, another courtroom was created on 3rd Floor North. The county courtroom (2N) was turned into probation offices, and a new smaller county courtroom was built. Then, a small claims courtroom, and a 2nd hearing room were built at 1 North. Finally, the probate courtroom and chambers (1S) were remodeled into two traffic courtrooms.

The courthouse, which housed two courtrooms in 1897, and four in 1966, now houses eight shabby, unimpressive courtrooms.

In 1897, Rock Island County had the following elected officers (as best as I can determine): state's attorney, sheriff, circuit clerk, county clerk, superintendent of schools, treasurer, coroner, county surveyor and county judge. In addition, the courthouse was to be used by the circuit judge.

The December 1894 semi-annual fees report, pertaining to the three largest Rock Island County offices, shows that in three offices there were, perhaps, a total of eight employees. The courthouse, though some employee expansion was contemplated, was built to accommodate nine employees, and perhaps six or seven helpers. That's perhaps 16-20 people in all.

In 2013, the offices which haven't been moved to the Rock Island County Office Building, are staffed by the following number of officers and employees:

-- Recorder of deeds: 11
-- State's attorney: 27
-- Circuit clerk: 44
-- Office of the chief judge: 4
-- Sheriff's office -- security: 1

A building that accommodated about 20 employees in 1897, now accommodates at least 87.

The once beautiful domed-building long ago lost its dome. The gracious old county and circuit courtrooms have disappeared only to be replaced by drab, uninspiring hearing rooms which demean the dignity of the proceedings.

The once spacious offices are now chopped, cramped and crowded. And the rotunda is a major fire or murder waiting to happen. The two traffic courts -- never contemplated in 1897 -- now handle 30,000 cases per year.
The building has served better than was ever imagined.

But it is now physically and functionally obsolete. And given the historically low interest rates, the time has come to give Rock Island County a computer-age facility.

Posted Online:  March 21, 2013, 3:26 pm  - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

When Does Political Half-truth Become a Lie?

"Administration officials are coming forward with a grim compendium of jobs to be lost, services to be denied or delayed, military defenses to be let down and important operations to be disrupted. Obama's new chief of staff, Denis McDonough, spoke of a 'devastating list of horribles.'" -- AP

With each passing day of the Obama presidency, I am become more disillusioned with what I regard as the administration's reckless disregard for the truth, and the mainstream media's willingness to repeat the administration's propaganda, without making a semblance of an effort to fact check.

The president daily ticks off a "parade of horribles" that will occur once the sequester goes into effect. An obsequious press uncritically repeats whatever he says.

It is perhaps time for every American to read Wm. L. Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." From 1925 to 1932, Shirer served as European correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. In 1937, Edward R. Murrow, CBS' European manager, hired Shirer as European Bureau chief. Shirer lived and worked in Germany from 1934 to 1940 (the years during which Hitler consolidated his power, raped Austria and Czechoslovakia, and started WWII) -- the years during which the German press was made politically clean -- politically correct.

Shirer writes, "To be an editor in the Third Reich one had to be, in the first place, politically and racially clean. The Reich Press Law of October 4, 1933, which made journalism a "public vocation," regulated by law, stipulated that all editors must possess German citizenship, be of Aryan descent and not be married to a Jew. Section 14 of the Press Law ordered editors "to keep out of the newspapers anything which in any manner is misleading to the public, mixes selfish aims with community aims, tends to weaken the will of the German Reich, outwardly or inwardly, the common will of the German people, the defense of Germany, its culture and economy ... or offends the honor and dignity of Germany ...."

Shirer goes on to describe the effectiveness of the law:

"I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris and Zurich ... and though I listened regularly to the BBC and other foreign broadcasts, my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day combing the German press, checking the German radio, conferring with Nazi officials and going to party meetings. It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one's inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsification and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it. No one who has not lived in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home or office, or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a restaurant, a beer hall, a cafe, I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasion one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized how useless it was to try and make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were."

In America, we still have the First Amendment. But everyday advocates of political correctness, including administration officials, seek to stifle what they deem "politically incorrect," or "untruthful."

Recently, the administration in the stolen valor case, U. S. v. Alvarez, argued "that false statements have no value and hence no First Amendment protection."

Fortunately the court ruled against the government, but had the government prevailed, this government, which is already in the business of "redefining" what is and what isn't "religious activity," could quickly have gone into the business of defining what opposition statements are "false" so as to suppress them.

People who tell lies that are 100 percent false are almost always perceived to be liars. But the liar who skillfully weaves a fabric, by blending lies with truth,can dupe almost everybody. I do not believe that President Obama and his officials knowingly say things they know to be 100 percent false, but I do believe they operate on the principle that the "ends justify the means," and as such weave a blended fabric.

But there still is a problem. When the government, day after day, engages in hyperbole, exaggeration, and character assassination and mixes in a modicum of truth to give veracity to what otherwise could only be described as "untruthful," the government undermines the democratic process.

A majority fed a steady diet of half-truths can hardly be expected to make right and critical choices for the welfare of the nation. Shirer saw that first hand.

I suggest that where the government lies, and where the press repeats the lies, it makes little difference whether the press is controlled by law, or by its own pro-government bias.

Posted Online:  March 06, 2013, 11:18 am  - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

Income Redistribution? Blame Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun

Income Redistribution? Blame Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun

President Obama will probably be remembered as the great proponent of income redistribution. But income redistribution was really the unintended offspring of two of America's "outstanding senators" Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun!

I use the term "outstanding senators" advisedly because in 1957, a special Senate committee, chaired by John F. Kennedy, identified Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun as one of the nation's "five outstanding deceased senators."

You will probably ask how the committee could possibly name Calhoun -- the leading proponent of slavery -- one of the five greatest senators. It happened because the committee had agreed to judge candidates "for acts of statesmanship transcending party and State lines" and had defined statesmanship to include "leadership in national thought and constitutional interpretation as well as legislation."

But Calhoun was the proponent, not of one, but two lost causes. And while no American would espouse his views on slavery in the 21st century, his mature views on income redistribution are as relevant today as they were when he made them in 1828.Indeed Calhoun's views are alive and well in the tenets of the Republican Party.

Calhoun's first great lost cause was not slavery. It was the tariff -- a tariff Calhoun had strongly espoused in his early years in Congress -- during his nationalist period (c. 1816) when he served as one of Speaker Henry Clay's principal lieutenants, and worked to enact Clay's "American System."

It called for a protective tariff, first, to insure profitable home markets for the American manufacturers and, second, to finance "internal improvements." It was Calhoun's belief that a system of road and canals would appeal to the self-interest of farmers desirous of moving their produce to market as well as merchants engaged in commerce, and would thus bind them all to the national government.

But what Calhoun didn't foresee was that manufacturing would take hold only in the North (New England primarily) and not in the South. He did not foresee that the tariff would benefit only New England by keeping English manufactured products out of the country.

The tariff had the effect of denying cheaper English manufactured goods from entering the South, thus forcing the South to buy more expensive goods made in New England. It was this, that led to Calhoun to do a 180, abjure his earlier tariff position, and develop his doctrine of "nullification."

Calhoun came to believe that without states having power to nullify Congressional actions which they deemed unconstitutional, the majority in the North would bleed the minority in the South dry.

In 1791, Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the Treasury, in his Report on Manufactures to the House of Representatives, had written, "The power of Congress to authorize the expenditure of public moneys is not limited by the direct grants of legislative power found in the Constitution, but is in addition thereto."

Mr. Hamilton further asserted that it belonged "to the discretion of Congress alone" to determine which "objects ... concern the General Welfare, and for which an appropriation of money is proper."

In 1828, Calhoun, in his South Carolina Exposition and Protest, assailed Hamilton's position. Calhoun did not deny the Constitution gave Congress power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States."

But he argued the Constitution gave Congress the power to "lay imposts and duties" only for the purpose of raising revenues for the "general" welfare, and not to raise revenues to benefit one section or class at the expense of another.

"The act of Congress of the last session, The Tariff of 1828 ... imposing duties on imports, not for revenue, but the protection of one branch of industry at the expense of others, is unconstitutional, unequal, oppressive, and calculated to ... destroy the liberty of the country. ...

"The opposing interests of the community would engender ... hostile parties, organized on this very diversity of interests, the stronger of which -- if the Government provided no efficient check -- would exercise unlimited and unrestrained power over the weaker."

He clearly saw the danger of the majority using the taxing power to enriching itself at the expense of the minority. He saw no difference between the majority using tax laws as a weapon to take from the minority and a highwayman using a pistol to despoil the occupants of a sumptuous coach.

But Calhoun was helpless to undo what he had done. The majority in the North fell in love with the benefits of the Calhoun/Clay tariff of 1816. Thus, as strange as it seems, President Obama walks in the shoes of Alexander Hamilton and John C. Calhoun!

Posted Online:  Feb. 28, 2013 at 3:03 pm - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2012
John Donald O'Shea