2008

So Where Are We In a Blagojevich Investigation?

ArchPundit December 8, 2008 No Comments

There are two contradictory bits coming out over the last few weeks in regards to where an investigation of Blagojevich could be going.

First we had the news that Tony Rezko had his sentencing date set for January 6th.  That was not seen as a good sign for the investigation because one usually waits until after a trial for the person who the person is testifying against so the government can guarantee you do what you say you will. If Rezko is moving for sentencing in January, there’s a good reason to think he’s not cooperating as much as the feds will like or negotiations broke down.  For those of us who would like to get this over with sooner than later, not so good news.

However, last week and today brought two important pieces of news to the investigation.  First, it was reported that John Wyma has been cooperating and that cooperation led to Blagojevich being taped–though it was clarified that Wyma was not wired.  As many others have pointed out, John Wyma is a big deal because he is very close to the Governor.  He has been in business with Patty Blagojevich, was Rod’s Chief of Staff when Rod was in Congress, Campaign Director for the Governor’s race in 2002, and a lobbyist.

Today we get news that Joseph Cari is having his sentencing moved back. Cari was a witness against Rezko

Cari, who has admitted guilt in a corruption case, is a former campaign fund-raiser for Vice President-elect Joe Biden, U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Blagojevich. He was supposed to be sentenced months ago, after he testified against Tony Rezko, the former fund-raiser for Blagojevich and President-elect Barack Obama. But that was put off, and no new date has been set.

At Rezko’s trial, Cari testified that Blagojevich told him he planned to reward big campaign donors with state contracts. The governor has denied having that conversation.

Cari pleaded guilty more than three years ago to attempted extortion involving an investment company that wanted business from a state pension fund.

Part of these disclosures could be coincidental or they could have a specific purpose of pushing Rezko to cooperate. If Rezko understands the feds don’t need him as much as he thinks, he may realize he won’t get as good of a deal as we would like.  If the entire case doesn’t rest on him, Rezko’s leverage is significantly reduced.  That these two things came out almost immediately after Rezko had his sentencing date set could be by coincidence, but most leaks from the feds in Chicago of recent years aren’t random potentially suggesting a game of chicken with Rezko right now.

Either way, it’s bad news for Blagojevich. There is no one he can trust anymore and there are more witnesses who might bring home a conviction than just Rezko.

The Fundamental Problem of the Credit Crunch

ArchPundit December 8, 2008 No Comments

Most of us think of it as being harder to get consumer credit, car loans, mortgages, etc, but the real impact is on businesses where they take bridge loans to make payroll when they aren’t cash rich even if they are in otherwise decent financial conditions. The most obvious example being Republic Window and Doors where the Governor demonstrates even a stopped clock is right some of the time:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich said this morning the state of Illinois “will suspend doing any business with Bank of America” until the company restores credit to the shuttered Republic Windows & Doors company on the North Side.

Blagojevich made the announcement after meeting with former workers who have been staging a sit-in on the factory floor since Friday to protest abruptly losing their jobs. The governor said the state has “hundreds of millions of dollars” in dealings with the bank.

The tone deaf response from Bank of America is that they aren’t responsible for paying wages which is true, and utterly misses the point.  We are in the middle of bailing out companies with the hope that it frees up credit to avoid just these kind of problems.  BoA hasn’t received a ton of that funding, but would have been in serious hurt without it and it’s time to free up that credit in cases like this.

Cut the Fat

ArchPundit December 8, 2008 No Comments

Not so much fat out there:

But the far less soothing reality is that we could make legislators serve for free and barely ding the deficit. We could shutter five universities and close down departments that patrol our highways, guard and conserve our natural resources, serve senior citizens and veterans and protect the public health — and still not eradicate the red ink, let alone protect and invest in our children and in the roads, bridges and other infrastructure vital to economic development.

More than 90 percent of general revenue funds support education, health care, services for the needy, law enforcement and pensions.
Even while in the grip of an unemployment-escalating, insecurity-abetting economy, can we diminish or even continue to tolerate substandard resources for youngsters in any corner of Illinois and abide academic achievement gaps between whites and burgeoning minorities without ultimately yielding good jobs to other states and countries that offer better educated and trained workers?

Can we gut already insufficient funding for community-based mental health and substance abuse treatment without betraying our shared humanity, allowing potentially productive citizens to become chronically dependent and filling our jails and prisons at far greater cost to taxpayers?

We should excise spending excesses, resist new government initiatives until we fund existing ones and insist on reforms and better results, especially in education. But Illinois is not going to regain sound fiscal footing and well serve coming generations without a regimen of tax increases and budgetary discipline.

One of the basic things many people don’t understand is that the money is already spent. While Illinois has technically balanced its budget each year, that has no relationship to reality where bills are put off for the first of the next fiscal year to be on the next years books and everything is moved back and back and back to where we are now near a breaking point.  On top of that, the pension obligations are underfunded and need to be caught up.

It’s not a matter of raising taxes for more programs, it’s a matter of paying the bills we have already incurred.

Via Rich too.

The Kwame Tsunami Continues

ArchPundit December 8, 2008 No Comments

Never let it be said I can’t drive a joke into the ground:

Via Rich:

Benjamin Sarlin does a relatively short profile on Kwame Raoul:

As Barack Obama leaves the Illinois political scene (taking fellow Chicagoans Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett with him), the state known for its mad power scrambles has a doozy on its hands. The prize is Obama’s U.S. Senate seat, and it seems like every state Democrat is not-so-subtly announcing that he would like to have it. One name that has surfaced, if as a long-shot candidate, is Kwame Raoul, who already occupies Obama’s old seat in the state senate. You might call Raoul Obama’s Mini-Me. He’s young (44 years old), African-American, and has the kind of steely ambition that would have him follow Obama to Washington.

“We had pretty good success with a state senator the last time,” Raoul told The Daily Beast.

I actually think Kwame would be a good choice given the different problems with a variety of candidates and thus, because I think so, I doubt he has any chance in hell.   That said, I think we’ll be hearing a lot more out of Kwame over the years. Sarlin mentions his work on a bill concerning gun sales to minors, but he has also been leading on an effort to get rid of the flat tax provision on income taxes in Illinois and has toured the state to discuss education funding reform.

Zell On Earth

ArchPundit December 8, 2008 No Comments

With all apologies to the Daily Show…

Sam Zell is looking to take the Tribune Company into bankruptcy

Nobody could have predicted…

The JJJ Show Phones it Into The Post-Dispatch

ArchPundit December 4, 2008 No Comments

Via Rich

Over at the Post-Dispatch scroll down for the audio.

In March of 2002 I ran into JJJ at Rolling Thunder, a kind of progressive carnivale of sorts put together by Jim Hightower in Austin.  Jackson was there and was very good with the crowd.  I ran into him at one point chowing down on corn on the cobb and said with his style he could easily run downstate if he could identify the Cornjerkers–the point being he needed to spend time downstate to get people familiar with him and show he had some interest in the whole state.  He looked at me like I was crazy–not an unreasonable thing to do given the context of some random guy talking about Cornjerkers in Illinois while standing in Austin. That said, it would be a good question for the press to start with in terms of how he views the entire state of Illinois.

Why Are We Even Talking about George Ryan?

ArchPundit December 3, 2008 No Comments

He is a convicted felon who the only difference between him and others is that politicians happen to know his family well.  I can understand the empathy for his wife, but frankly there are plenty of women in the same position and they pull through.

It’s a bad day for me when I’m agreeing with Tim Johnson and Mark Kirk over Dick Durbin.

The Politico Blesses Us With the Five Frontrunners to Replace Obama in the US Senate

ArchPundit December 3, 2008 No Comments

Via Rich
Shaar enters the mind of madness and comes back a bit crazy.
The five:

1) Duckworth

2) Jones

3) JJJ

4) LMadigan

5)  Davis

Nevermind that Lisa has said she has less than a zero percent chance of getting the spot–go ahead and opine it anyway.

This is a primary and general of one person–a person who has achieved a 13 percent approval rating and thinks he still can run for a 3rd term.  That kind of thinking defies logic and reality as one should assume his thinking about a replacement will.  He’s not seeking out advice from others and even when done relatively quietly such as Durbin has done, Blagojevich through his people threw a hissy fit that Durbin was grandstanding (oh, the irony was thick).  There are no likely replacements, there are possibilities–several million of them who are over 30 years of age, are US citizens and have been for 14 years (that’s off of memory so sue me if I’m off on the number) and will be citizens of Illinois on the day they are appointed (presumably leaving me in the running since I could move back).

I know everyone wants to chime in on the decision and such and I’m no different.  However, this is one of the few cases where there really is no point.
Though if the mad man chooses Hull or Raoul, I’m taking credit.

Emil Jones the non-controversial choice

ArchPundit December 3, 2008 No Comments

Rich laughs off Sam Boyd’s suggestion at Tapped that Blagojevich should appoint Emil Jones as a non-controversial appointee to Obama’s Senate seat.  As Rich points out in comments, Jones has many issues:

So, his wife’s redesignation to get a pay raise, his stepson’s millions of dollars in state contracts, his son’s last-minute appointment to the ballot, “food stamps,” “pay raise,” recall, multitudinous failures on his supposedly pet issue of school funding reform, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. are all nothing to be concerned with?

The man is probably the single most reviled politician in Illinois next to Todd Stroger. And you bring up Auchi? Please.

In fairness to Boyd and Nate Silver who suggested it before, Illinois politics is a bit hard to figure.  That said, Emil Jones would be tremendously entertaining as a US Senator and short of Alan Keyes, would probably be the best thing for bloggers (oh Alan, how I miss ye!).

Jones is a crusty, old-time pork barrel politician who also happens to be fairly liberal on social issues so most liberals look the other way because with all of the outrages in Illinois politics, he’s a rather benign figure in the sense he at least supports liberal causes more than many other party leaders. He’s particularly entertaining when he gets someone like Phylis Schlafley rambling about unisex bathrooms and the bit about needing food stamps if he didn’t get a pay raise was funny, just not appropriately so for the Senate President

But let’s make it clear, there are two big downsides to appointing Emil Jones as a caretaker.
First, who knows what the hell he’ll say next.

Second, who knows what the hell he’s done previously enriching friends, relatives, Governor’s State and any other pet institution.  He picked out Obama early on because he’s smart and crafty and he wanted a capstone to his career in electing a US Senator and probably figured he’d benefit from that.  He did a bit better than he expected.

Jones sees politics as a way to help his community. It’s just that he sees his community as primarily friends and relatives.  There’s nothing new there and I think it’s fair to say he has often been a target of extra criticism because he’s kinda different than previous Lege leaders in one important way.  But  that doesn’t makes him innocent or somehow above the dirty work of politics in Illinois.  He’d be an awful choice as a US Senator unless you enjoy spectacles.  So, yes, I’m sort of rooting for it, but I don’t expect it.

Humbled? I Doubt It…

ArchPundit December 3, 2008 No Comments

JJJ says he’d be humbled to be appointed Senator. From this embarrassing spectacle he has created, I’d say that’s damn near impossible.

Progress Illinois catches Chris Mathews blabbering about Jackson and Chuck Todd nails the situation:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf_JYNFpbpg[/youtube]

Rich makes the point that Todd is one of the best DC correspondents alive and frankly that may be underestimating him.  The Hotline is probably the best training for a pundit.  Maybe Mecurio is next (he’s still not as good as Todd though).

At this point, Blagojevich might appoint a Jones ally just to piss off JJJ.

Thus the Kwame Tsunami!

(I highly doubt it will be Kwame Raoul, but I love using the nickname).