Graft in Illinois Politics! Who Knew?
“If it wasn’t for graft, you’d get a very low type of people in politics, men without ambition, jellyfish!”
- The Great McGinty, 1940, One of the best movies ever made about politics
The layers are endless. This morning I was sifting through reports on UN “misconduct,” with a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac congressional hearing playing on C-Span in the background, and in comes a news flash that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and one of his aides have been arrested on federal corruption charges, including allegations that in a profanity-laden spree of criminal wheeling-and-dealing they bleep-ing tried to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat.
This is way beyond a three-ring circus. The AP offers a handy rundown of governors who have run foul of the law over the decades, including three previous Illinois governors who over the past 35 years have done jailtime.
Politics is a constant carnival, in which just a few of the recent acrobatics include –please note that all should be considered innocent unless actually convicted of something – Sen. Ted Stevens with his home renovations, Rep. William Jefferson with his cash in the freezer, Rep. Charlie Rangel under an ethics investigation by the House, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer with his furtive recreational interests, and that timeline of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac executives who collectively raked in hundreds of millions in pay, and are still collecting millions every year in pensions, for steering implied taxpayer mortgage guarantees — and the financial markets — right off a cliff.
Since I pay a fortune in cook county property taxes for microscopic services I would say there is little that is funny or dear in the ways of these filthy thieves. Just listen to the cultured voices of our Governor and his bride, nothing but base greed there.
I was reading this morning about the latest raid of Pakistani military at the camps of Jamaat ud Dawa – a group responsible of the Mumbai attacks, and how the United Nations have been supporting the same very groups and its camps in 2006 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5402756.stm) – when I saw the message on this Governor. Disgusting !!
McGinty was played by Brian Donlevy, a great actor.
I fear it’s too late for controlling the growth and size of our already out of control Jabba-The-Hutt government.
Nothing escapes its gigantic maw.
While generations of citizens have been subtly (and not so subtly) conditioned to believe that we, the sheeple, serve government and not that government exists at the behest of We, The People.
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
~James Bovard
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
~P.J. O’Rourke
Lot of fun stuff going on.—Just think Obama had no idea all this was going on. It is like a guy hanging around a pool hall for twenty years and then saying he did not know they played pool there.