Not long after the Illinois attorney general, Lisa Madigan, told a national television audience that Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois was thinking of possibly resigning here on Monday, the governor’s spokesman broke some news of his own.
Not only was Mr. Blagojevich not resigning, the spokesman, Lucio Guerrero, said, but he was planning to go to work on Monday and study a few bills that might at some point require either his signature or veto — including one that will be hammered out in a special legislative session in Springfield that would strip him of his coveted appointment power over President-elect Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat.
“He has no plans of resigning today or tomorrow,” Mr. Guerrero said on Sunday. “He still signs bills as governor, and he wants to see details.
Madigan, the daughter of Blago “frenemy,” Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, who has aspirations of her own for Blago’s job, and, who has officially called on Blago to resign, and who has initiated Supreme Court proiceedings against him, used her promotional face time on “Face The Nation” to engage in mainstream media gossip about Blag’s future plans.
Ms. Madigan is a longtime rival of Mr. Blagojevich who has expressed interest in the past of one day being governor herself, and she has requested that the State Supreme Court declare the governor unfit for office. Ms. Madigan acknowledged on CBS’s morning news show, “Face the Nation,” that her assertion was based on “rumors in the media.” But not before they set off a firestorm of speculation.
Her spokeswoman, Robyn Ziegler, said of her remarks after the television appearance: “She has no inside information about anything.”
Having grown up in Chicago, only to leave as a young woman to pursue my dreams, (and escape winter cold) I find the current consternation about the city’s corruption amusing. During his press conference with U. S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, charging Governor Rod Blagojevich with trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder, FBI agent Robert Grant referred to Illinois as “one hell of a competitor” for the title of most corrupt state in the country. USA Today, however, ranks Illinois as 18th, based on the number of per capita government convictions, asserting that North Dakota holds the title. However, that seems misleading. Basing corruption on the number of convictions is bass ackwards. A state that convicts officials for corruption obviously has a low tolerance for such behavior. That is not Illinois, or it’s largest city, by a long shot.
Chicagoans love corruption. It’s simply the way things are done, as they have always been. Corruption does not exist within the framework of Chicago politics, corruption is Chicago politics. They “don’t want nobody nobody sent.” ” Who sent you?” “Who do you know?” “What’s in it for me?” “Who do I make the check out to?” Need a job? See your alderman. Want a permit? Make a donation. Got a problem? Find “a guy” who “knows a guy.” That’s the Chicago Way.
Nobody comes through Chicago clean, because “clean” by Chicago standards is not the same as it must be in, say, North Dakota. “Will it come back on me?” No? Then it’s “clean.”
Peel back the layers in the Blagojevich “scandal” and you’ll find deals upon deals, with every player identified participating to one extent or another. A veritable soap opera of connections to connections, nepotism, cronyism, patronage and graft, with only outright theft being mildly frowned upon because it unneccessarily draws attention, not because it’s morally reprehensible.
Barack Obama chose the rough and tumble politics of Chicago over Honolulu, Los Angeles, Manhattan and Boston, all cities he has some connection to, while having none to the Windy City. Why? To clean it up, or maneuver through it? Both? Neither? Example: in September, during the run-up to the election, the Chicago Sun-Times and others took Obie to task for not backing pay-to-play ethics reform his “Godfather,” Emil Jones was blocking:
In the middle of a simmering Statehouse ethics battle is Obama’s “political godfather,” Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago), who triggered questions Thursday about whether he may allow the legislation to die after the Nov. 4 election.
Designed as a response to the “pay-to-play politics” that have flourished under Gov. Blagojevich, the plan would bar firms with more than $50,000 in state contracts from donating to the officeholder in charge of the deals.
But the governor entirely rewrote the plan, stripping out that language and putting it in an executive order. In its place, he inserted provisions into the original legislation to deal with how lawmakers award themselves pay raises and to bar the practice by some state officeholders of holding outside, non-elected government jobs.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has taken the unusual step of weighing in on a high-profile ethics bill in Illinois, legislation that had been held up by his political mentor, Sen. Emil Jones.
“Senator Obama called Senator Jones today to offer his strong support for the ethics reforms pending before the Senate and urged him to pass them at the earliest possible opportunity,” Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement.
All of which, supposedly, (charitably) lead to the arrest of Blagojevich:
In a sequence of events that neatly captures the contradictions of Barack Obama’s rise through Illinois politics, a phone call he made three months ago to urge passage of a state ethics bill indirectly contributed to the downfall of a fellow Democrat he twice supported, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich.
This is the way he navigated the murky waters of “the Chicago Way” well enough to form a springboard to the White House in no time flat. Like the legend of Milton Berle, just “do enough to win.” Neat trick, huh? The bottom line is, “reform” in Chicago means putting people you like in charge of passing out favors. So, as the Blagodrama unfolds, pay no attention to those who try to gloss over the city’s truth, watch the players scramble to answer the only pertinent question. Not “who did what?” but “what can they prove?”
Makes you wonder just what kind of “change” Washington’s going to get when it meets the “Chicago Way.” Whatever it is, it seems that, like Chicagoans, most Americans are just fine with it.
The New York Times is reporting that Governor Rod Blagojevich, recently arrested for his, “got a hot Senate seat for sale, cheap” scam as alleged by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, gave Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan a big raspberry in response to her suggestion that he was ready to resign:
Having grown up in Chicago, only to leave as a young woman to pursue my dreams, (and escape winter cold) I find the current consternation about the city’s corruption amusing. During his 
