Plenty of blame to go around

Campaign Contribution Limits: Illinois is one of five states that have no limits at all. Give a grand, fifty grand, a million. Perfectly legal.

Various Limits (38 states + D.C.)
Ban on Corporate Contributions; No Other Limits (4 states)
Limit on Corporate Contributions; No Other Limits (3 states)
Ban on Monetary Contributions by Political Parties; No Other Limits (1 state)

WHITE STATES: No Limits from Any Source (5 states)

Let’s move past cringing in shame and embarrassment over the Blagojevich fiasco and look at how we got here. It’s not enough to blast the “culture of corruption” and wail with John Kass about the “combine.”

It’s structural. It’s also about people – the people who, because they everything to gain by the system as it is, hold hard and fast to the status quo. Who are they? The Dynasties.

Blago is the product of Dick Mell, though they have indeed since had a falling out. Todd Stroger, who has nearly his entire extended family on the county payroll, is the product of John Stroger. Daddy Stroger spawned an ocean of others who were indebted to him as well. Mr. Speaker For Life gave us Lisa. Emil has now provided us with his kid. Comptroller Hynes was created by 19th Ward Committeeman Tom Hynes. And Daley, famously known for saying “what’s the point of political power if you can’t help out your friends and family?” – well, enough said. Dynasties protect and promote their own.

And what have the dynasties created?

No limits on campaign contributions. Illinois is one of five states that allow the unbridled excess of unlimited campaign contributions – be they by political action committees (formed by parties, party leaders or interest groups), corporations, unions or individuals. Who in their right mind just loves some state pol so much that they would give them $25,000 – or hundreds of thousands. I can see it with Obama; there was a lot of love out there. But tell me Blago’s contributors were just loving him up. That’s not love. That’s paying for something in return. The dynasties and those who are indebted to them ensure these laws do not change. That's ****in' golden.

Opacity in government. Illinois does not have freedom of information; we have Guantanamo of information. It’s all locked up and locked down. It isn’t just Blagojevich. How about Todd Stroger’s gag edict on staff? Open meetings? Ha. Ever seen the state budget process? It’s all done (when it used to be done, that is) behind closed doors. Few object. The Dynasties love operating in the shade.

Over-reliance on the feds. Okay, Lisa Madigan deferred to Fitzgerald on the Blagojevich investigation, but there’s lots of corruption to go around. Do she and does the State’s Attorney really have to sit on their hands rather than investigate the stuff going on all around them? In other states, both the AG and state’s attorneys prosecute corruption. It’s not up to one guy – fortuitously nominated by an outsider who knew exactly what he was bequeathing Illinois.

And the people of the State of Illinois?

Is there pride in corruption? The people of Illinois almost giggle when they talk about corruption. The U.S. Attorney’s Office supplies some of the titillating jocularity as it names its investigations like they are B-movies: Operation Greylord, Operation Haunted Hall, Operation Silver Shovel, Operation Safe Roads, and now, Operation Board Games. We compete for the status of “most corrupt.”

Maybe, finally, it doesn’t seem so funny anymore.

Blagojevich - Some knew it before term one

My friend, Corinne is a bit exasperated that she is getting calls and letters from out-of-state friends to whom she feels obliged to respond that, though she lives in Illinois, Blagojevich is not her fault. It's not her fault.

But it is the fault of all those who failed to see what seemed so obvious back in 20002 -- that his rhetoric about "reform" and ending "business as usual" was a fraud, a fraud every bit as serious and devious as the allegations in the federal criminal complaint.

If voters didn't quite get that his reform rhetoric in 2002 was fraudulent, they had no excuse not to get it in 2006 when he ran for reelection. By then his penchant for selling seats (they are "f---ing golden") had already been established. In July 2004, the papers revealed that Blagojevich had taken $25,000 checks from two appointees to the state hospital board on the same day -- eighteen days before their appointment.

Unfortunately, this story got its legs broken by the very reporters who told it. The following January, the Governor’s father-in-law, Alderman Dick Mell, angry with him over a landfill deal, called him out for that and added that he had been “granting plum appointments in exchange for $50,000 campaign contributions.”

From that point forward, the reporters (both Trib and Sun-Times) retold this selling seats story as though it had originated with Mell’s accusation. That turned it into a family feud story and not so much a corruption story.

Most weren’t following this closely. Those happy with the Governor for expanding health insurance for the working poor (albeit without the approval of the legislature) and other labor and human services changes said they were suffering Stockholm Syndrome. Many knew the swirling and growing roster of allegations were true, but none would denounce him because, to them, he was still better than any Republican. And no Dem could touch him because by then Blagojevich had been paid to play in the tens of millions, many of which were in the $25,000 plus amount.

The press may have messed up the selling seats story (did they think the Jerry Springer-like family drama was hotter than fraud?), but the voters didn’t care. Sadly, in both elections, the issue of corruption was so far down on the voters’ priority list that it landed somewhere after highway tolls.

With the national and internation embarrassment Illinois has suffered since the arrest, might these priorities shift -- and even stayed shifted until real reform is achieved?

Blagojevich and Nixon

Since Blagojevich’s arrest, there has been just a bit too much of the Shocked, Shocked thing going on. Didn't at least everyone in Illinois know? How could they not?

I knew he was an ego-maniac, more corrupt than George Ryan could have dreamed, and way out of his league – even as a state rep.

Way back then, he told me then of his plan to be president -- of the USA. But I didn’t know he was full-out flat bats, nor till recently, that he was big fan of Nixon and even stalked him at San Clemente till he got an autograph and photo. Now it all comes together.

Figures, huh?

Illinois in the news: A governor is arrested

Yeah, it’s our turn (again).

It’s been just a month since the flag waving in Grant Park -- with the whole world watching and maybe even a little jealous. It was followed by day-after-day of orderly transition and press conferences (some say too orderly – they want free for alls) from Chicago, highlighting again Obama’s smooth, confident and focused work of putting an administration together.

Then, like a gang banger grabbing some bling off a kid around the corner, our governor with the giant mound of hair has to chase after his own bling – whatever he could get for a Senate seat, for approval of a gaming bill, for releasing committed funds to a children’s hospital, and a host of other sales of his office – and our state -- to whomever he could get to bid and pay.

This has been going on for years. To some of us, it is not news, even as the arrest is. We can exhale. Finally. But the timing is aggravating.

Blagojevich is now grabbing international headlines, too. In an entirely disgusting way. Due to his vainglorious and greedy idiocy, we are no longer the city of that magnificent, uplifting and peaceful night at Grant Park, but the Tribune's John Kass’s nightmare-land of venality and corruption. And, predictably, Kass will tie it to Obama – even if the string is as thin as a net of spun sugar.

The out-of-towners – the reporters hunkered in here for the duration of the transition -- will ruminate and speculate. Is there something about Chicago? Is it the Daleys? How is Obama implicated? How could he not be?

Well, for starters, while he didn’t “take on” the machine, he was hardly “of the machine,” let alone its creature. We have plenty of those – the dynasty families that give birth to and then get their spawn elected and elected again.

Obama’s deceased parents did not bequeath him seats in Illinois. And no matter how much that “godfather” label is given to statehouse senate prez Emil Jones in relation to Obama, he was more a church usher; Jones just opened the doors of the statehouse and directed the flock this way and that. He didn’t raise the guy.

So, the drama is still unfolding and will for a long time to come. Blago won’t resign. He’s too full of himself to even consider it. As we sit here gagging on his greed, he’s pouring over the headlines and rejoicing. Finally, he’s getting headlines like his hero Elvis.