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December 10, 2008
Rod's a tool
Blagojevich Rat, originally uploaded by hwky556.
As much as I want to talk about something, I can't really get away from the part where the Governor got arrested. I think my new term for him is Blago the Jag-O. [See #10.]
Now, it's no secret that politics in Illinois is corrupt. As an FBI agent said, it's probably the most corrupt state in the union. And the thing I don't get is that voters stand for it. The voters reelect crooks, idiots and the children of crooks and idiots. It never ends.
Elected officials in Cook County and Chicago are running the place into the ground. Mayor Daley says he barely has enough money to plow and salt the roads. Todd Stroger, the guy in charge of Cook County, thinks the County needs to borrow a few hundred million even though he managed to get our sales tax raised to over 10%, the highest in the nation. Will it change? I highly doubt it. The crap that Blago pulls goes on everywhere in Illinois.
The New York Times, however, has a nice article about the guy with the best chance to straighten things up in the Prarie State: US Attorney Pat Fitzgerald:
Patrick J. Fitzgerald on Tuesday unveiled the indictment of his second Illinois governor in five years, the latest in a streak of prosecutions that have made him a folk hero in a state beleaguered by official crime.
“He’s a relentless investigator,” said Joel R. Levin, a Chicago lawyer who worked for Mr. Fitzgerald as a federal prosecutor until earlier this year. “He leaves no stone unturned.”
Still boyish at 47, Mr. Fitzgerald became a familiar face nationally last year when he won the conviction of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, for perjury in the exposing of a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer.
But in Chicago, Mr. Fitzgerald has become a prominent figure as he has taken on the dark, cynical world of local government, where abuse of power appears to have become a way of life. It has become a cliché to compare him to Eliot Ness, the Chicago Prohibition agent whom television and movies made into a symbol of incorruptible law enforcement.
Here's hoping that the next president keeps him on the job. We in Illinois need it.
entry no. 1256
Posted at December 10, 2008 05:33 PM