Going After His House
ArchPundit
The forfeiture effort targets both his condo in DC and I believe personal residence though I have to double check the address.
Update: It is the Ravenswood home.
April 2009
Wife to Pollution Control Board
Rod wanted to get her on the PCB because it had a salary and Harris told him she wasn’t qualified. Rod tells Harris to get her a job so he goes out and they cook up a scheme to have her pass securities exams. Then he puts Harris on the trail of businesses that do securities work with the state.
Awesome.
Then he insisted two unhelpful institutions not get any more state business.
Indictments are Up
Damn refresh button was wearing out.
16 counts on Blagojevich
Harris,Monk, Kelly, Cellini & Rob Blagojevich all indicted as well.
Among the new factual allegations are that:
< beginning in 2002 and continuing after Blagojevich was first elected
governor, Blagojevich and Monk, along with Kelly and previously convicted
co-schemer Antoin “Tony” Rezko, agreed that they would use the offices of
governor and chief of staff for financial gain, which would be divided among
them with the understanding that the money would be distributed after
Blagojevich left public office;
< in 2003, Blagojevich, Monk, Kelly, Rezko and other co-schemers
implemented this agreement by directing lucrative state business relating to
the refinancing of billions of dollars in State of Illinois Pension Obligation
3
Bonds to a company whose lobbyist agreed to provide hundreds of thousands
of dollars to Rezko out of the fee the lobbyist would collect, and Rezko in turn
agreed to split the money with Blagojevich, Monk and Kelly;
< After it became public that Kelly and Rezko were under investigation and
ceased playing a significant role in raising campaign funds, Blagojevich
personally continued to trade his actions as governor for personal benefits,
including, for example, delaying a state grant to a publicly-supported school
while trying to leverage a U.S. Congressman, who supported the school, or the
Congressman’s brother, to hold a campaign fundraiser for Blagojevich; and
< in an interview on March 16, 2005, Blagojevich lied to FBI agents when he
said that he maintains a separation, or firewall, between politics and state
business; and he does not track, or want to know, who contributes to him or
how much they are contributing to him.
With a quick reading, the biggest bombshell here is that Blagojevich and the others conspired to split up the money after he left office. They were literally auctioning off state business.
And Finally The Big News Breaks
Jay Cutler to the Bears. Hot damn.
Bowen on the 5th District Race
Tom Bowen (Quigley campaign manager) writes a decent column on the 5th District and the disconnect between local and national progressive:
While Quigley had already assembled a coalition of progressives, Geoghegan was busy forming a different one, outside of the 5th District.
It’s true that Geoghegan brought fresh policy approaches to the table. And it’s always refreshing to see a candidate introduce new proposals into the debate. But a campaign is not just about ideas. As with policymaking, it’s about presenting constituents with clear choices, motivating supporters, building coalitions, surpassing countless hurdles, and finding a way to win.
When faced with a multi-candidate primary field like the one in the 5th District, progressives should ask the following questions before going with the “long shot”: Does this candidate’s agenda vary significantly with the rest of the field? Will he or she be able to push those other candidates towards more progressive positions? And if the campaign is ultimately unsuccessful, will there be lasting infrastructure left in its place?
I’m not entirely convinced about the lasting infrastructure bit, but I think there is something that national supporters missed beyond Quigley’s strong ties locally. This was probably the worst campaign to try at the worst time. Geoghegan is very smart and I think he’d make a good Congressman. That said, he’s a guy who didn’t have strong ties to local community groups and he was running in a very short time frame. Insurgent campaigns usually need time to overcome a money disadvantage and while Geoghegan couldn’t control that the open seat came up with only a special election, it makes a tough race even tougher.
Adding to it–is the Rod Blagojevich side show which pretty much shut out any earned media. Geoghegan even tried to sue for a Special Election for US Senate and the story dropped because of the Rod and Roland show.
It was pretty much a doomed effort given the short time and the media environment that pretty much ignored the race. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have run, but his chance to even change the debate was limited by the environment. He did run a fairly spirited campaign though and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Separate from Tom Geoghegan himself, I was disturbed by the tendency of national activists to dismiss Mike Quigley though. I stayed neutral in the race–I liked several of the candidates and had friends working for different campaigns and largely I saw the chance for generally good outcomes. I noticed, however, a real tendency to dismiss anyone else who wan’t Geoghegan nationally because of Geoghegan’s great credentials and strong mind. That wasn’t fair to Quigley who has been a strong voice for reform.
Quigley has been a progressive voice in Cook County and has fought some of the worst tendencies in machine politics. He took one for the team when he pulled out of the County Board Presidency race in favor of Claypool–a very classy move that made Claypool very competitive, if ultimately coming up just short.
His environmental record is incredibly strong and he’s fought for better management of the County health system. Those are not credentials to turn up your nose at. He’s not as intellectually grounded the way Geoghegan is, but he is a smart, stubborn in a good way, progressive politician. All politics are local and in local politics, Quigley really deserved credit for being the guy who put the hard work in over the years.
Trib Reports Blagojevich Indictment Coming Down Today
Merry Fitzmas!
Daily Dolt: Shimkus
I know I’m late to the party, but this bag of crazy needs more exposure:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdHjhJTf6RE[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7h08RDYA5E[/youtube]
Oh, and I don’t think we’d want oceans like they had during the time of dinosaurs:
Human pollution is turning the seas into acid so quickly that the coming decades will recreate conditions not seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, scientists will warn today.
The rapid acidification is caused by the massive amounts of carbon dioxide belched from chimneys and exhausts that dissolve in the ocean. The chemical change is placing “unprecedented” pressure on marine life such as shellfish and lobsters and could cause widespread extinctions, the experts say.
The basic problem this sort of nonsense misses is that the problem is not just change, but the rapid nature of the change and the unpredictable consequences it has on the environment. Over time, the Earth can adapt, but in the case of the time of the dinosaurs we are talking about a period of time of about 160 million years starting 230 million years ago.
So in the case of high CO2 in the atmosphere, that occurred over a very long period of time and there was plenty of time for life to adapt. In the case of global climate change we are seeing rapid (incredibly rapid in terms of Earth’s history) change in the environment that is leading to radical changes in human environments as well as a potential 6th Great Extinction event. New species and habitats will evolve from such an event–but that’s over millions of years–not in the couple hundred years we are currently worried about.
Of course, Shimkus may well believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old and is denying the great gift of intelligence God gave him.
Campaign Finance and Ethics Reform
Rich has a very good post up at Capitol Fax discussing the ethics commission recommendations.
Frankly, the commission’s proposed $1,000 trigger for disclosure of statewide contributions within 5 business days and the $500 trigger for other campaign committees may be a bit too high and too long.
I tend to agree on the too high issue, but the 5 business days may be too short in between cycles. If a State Senator is at year two in his term and gets a $500 donation in the middle of April–the Senator may not have a political staffer in place and mailed donations might not even be opened in such cases for a while. The answer is relatively simple though–require 30 day reporting of donations outside of the cycle and then go to 5 days during the cycle and even 2 days in the last 30 days. All of this can be solved by relatively easy technical fixes however.
A very real positive step would be to improve reporting on expenditures as well. They lag far longer than contributions.
Best of all, Madigan is largely in favor of greater and faster disclosure so this general recommendation is very doable.
* The campaign contribution caps are, of course, controversial. Steve Chapman makes a good point against them…
…under the 1st Amendment, the Supreme Court has ruled, contributions may be limited but independent expenditures may not. If an asphalt contractor wants to give $100,000 to an incumbent governor’s campaign, the state can forbid it. But not if he wants to spend $100,000 buying ads praising the governor or attacking his opponent. I’m willing to bet that if a candidate will sell favors in exchange for contributions, he will sell favors in exchange for independent expenditures on his behalf.
I also agree that the suggested donation limits are too low, but there are a couple aspects here that are important to keep in mind.
First, donating $25,000 to a campaign is a lot more useful to the campaign than spending it on your own. If you spend it on your own it may or may not be on message and as effective so the donating directly is far more valuable to a candidate. In this way, independent expenditures are somewhat a good thing. If someone is ideologically wanting to support a candidate, they are free to do so, but the pressure to do it is a lot different than when contractors are approached for cash and pushed to donate large amounts. That alone would have limited Blagojevich–not stopped him, but limited him.
A second thing to consider though is what does limiting contributions do to interest groups. Currently, I think one of the healthier aspects of Illinois campaign finance is that there aren’t the ridiculous efforts to ‘not’ coordinate between campaigns and interest groups. Instead, interest groups can simply making in kind donations as they wish and the benefit of this is that it keeps the candidate accountable.
Once you limit that relationship, then it becomes in everyone’s interest to try and find ways to skirt the law and instead of full coordination, pretend to not be coordinating and this leads to an immense amount of time for both the campaigns and the State Board of Elections to try and police the coordination which is a waste of time for all of us.
So what to do about caps? I don’t know. Caps aren’t some magical cure all, but they can reduce the degree of corruption. Blagojevich exploded the number of high dollar donations and in doing so put the state up for sale. There’s no doubt he would still have been crooked, but his auctions for state contracts would have had a ceiling at least.
On the other hand, caps create all sorts of perverse incentives in terms of interest groups and campaigns. Is the reduction in harm created by caps outweighed by the regulatory fiasco created by the caps? I’m not sure I have the answer.
Finally, the real way to reform government in the Illinois General Assembly is to limit the flow of funds between leadership and members. This won’t happen, but if we want to reduce the power of the Four Tops to set the agenda, reducing that connection and the top down funding of candidates is critical. The current funding model allows the majority’s leader (Speaker or President) to bottle up almost anything in Rules or simply let legislation die without a real home.
But even this isn’t without fairly high costs. We can complain about the leadership power that is so concentrated in Illinois, but the alternative are weak parties that cannot agree on important legislation. A rather dramatic example of how this looks from within the Lege is when Tom Cross was given back the power they stripped the Republican leader of after the Lee Daniels disastrous reign. Cross appeared rather agnostic about the whole thing, but the rank and file didn’t want to hassle with it and found a strong leader a more effective model.
What to do then? Increase transparency at both the campaign level and within government. One of the things Blagojevich did to maintain his crime spree, was to hide behind exceptions to information requests. He always lost, but it would take years for that to happen in some cases and better access to such information would have led to the public figuring the guy out a bit quicker. Improving access to information about internal state government workings is just as vital as improving campaign finance.
While the report discusses the issue of transparency in government in general, it’s not the highlight of the report and it should be.
The reality is that with modern technology, transparency is far easier than it ever has been. Quinn has indicated a fairly strong interest in opening up government, but I tend to see many of the basic ideas either too ambiguous to be helpful at this point or stuck in a pre-internet mindset of individuals having to ask for information–the current state of technology really makes it easy to provide information by default.