There has been a fine hooha in the public prints the last couple days over a criminal complaint brought against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for auctioning off the Senate seat that Barack Obama is leaving behind. Chicago D politics are astonishing in their corruption, and sadly Chicago R politics often consist in wanting to get at the trough. When I first got there I was taken aback by all the police being on the take, all govt agents such as building inspectors being on the take, pretty much everything being up for sale. I finally figured out that Chicago was like Mexico and used that perspective as a key to understanding, but it didn't make me happy to know that an American city was so corrupt. Novelist Scott Turow, whose fictional Kindle County is obviously Cook County, has explored the nature of the corruption in his books. He has an interesting Op-Ed in today's NYTimes on the case prosecutor's case. Read it here. [A lawyer, Turow is the writer James Grisham would be if Grisham were a good writer.]
The prosecuting attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, is US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. He prosecuted the previous Illinois governor successfully and prosecuted in the Scooter Libby case. In other words, he is not afraid of the powerful.
I think that we should take a crummy billion dollars out of all the bail-out bucks floating around and establish under Fitzgerald a special prosecutor's office to investigate Wall Street misdeeds in the years leading up to the present market meltdown. Give him troops of forensic accountants, phalanxes of special agents, and let them smite the wicked. See them ol' big dogs shuffling out of the courtroom wearing shackles and ugly orange jailhouse jumpsuits … that'd make the IRA shrinkage a little more bearable.
[As a parenthetical addition, the paper tells us that Jesse Jackson Jr. was the potential Senatorial appointee whose purported agents were most engaged with the governor in the bidding. Oh, please, let it be true and let JJ Sr. be involved. We'll never get Senior for all the extortionate shakedowns he's committed over the last forty years, but maybe we could nail him, like OJ and Al Capone, for something else.]
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Someone turned on the light and the roaches are scurrying for cover. Your suggestion, a good one, would indeed restore some confidence to the people. Nothing like taking down some fat cats to make us common folk feel better. It may not be considered healthy, mental wise, but it is true.
This Blago dude is going to sing his song to everyone that will listen if it will save an inch of his own skin so anyone that is tied to this stuff better take the offense. I think that is what J.J. Jr. did yesterday. Someone said he sounded so sincere. Doh! So did OJ. I also heard someone suggest that convicted poli-tick-shuns should be treated like sex offenders. An offenders registry and they can never, ever be involved in public service again. Not as lobbyist, not as advisors, not in any way.
Go get'em Fitz.
PoC
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