Corruption, Politcs, and Illinois: when there is a there there, and when is there not
Here in Illinois, we talk about corruption a lot. As Jon Stewart pointed out when our last governor was arrested, Illinois governors have a better chance of going to prison than most murderers, with 3 of the last 7 ending up in prison … and now, with Blagojevich’s arrest, that makes 4 of 8 so - chances of going to jail: 50% as an Illinois governor, 48% as a murderer (http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-december-10-2008/-d-il--weed). And yet they keep thinking they can get away with it: not the brightest bulbs, our govs. More stories from other sources: The Wall Street Journal says one in five, or 20%, of our governors in the last century have been indicted or convicted of felonies (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122885197858492201.html), while MSNBC had a nice little article on more widespread corruption of politicians in Illinois (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28141995/). It's a spectator sport here in Illinois: we watch one corruption trial after another and marvel that neither politicians nor those who pay-to-play ever seem to learn anything from the process. We not only are used to corrupt politicians, but we have a fine scale of respect to no-respect that slides from those who are suspected of being corrupt but don't get caught, to those who are mind-blowingly stupid in their corruption and absolutely deserve to get caught.
To digress into the personal: I moved here in the mid-eighties from Vermont. My parents were living in Vermont when I was old enough to register to vote for my first presidential election. Since I was going to school not too far away, I registered to vote in Vermont. This meant I went down to the courthouse, raised my hand, and took a “Freeman’s Oath” (despite the fact that I am clearly not male) swearing that I would vote as a free and independent person. (Apparently this oath is still in effect: from the Vermont Secretary of State’s website, “You can vote in Vermont ONLY if you: 1. are a citizen of the United States; 2. Are a resident of Vermont and a resident of the town in which you apply to be added to the checklist; 3. take, or have previously taken, the Voter's Oath (formerly called the "Freeman's Oath"); and 4. are 18 years of age or older (or will be eighteen on or before the day of election). http://www.vermont-elections.org/elections1/registertovote.html More on the oath: “The oath is unique to Vermont. It was originally required in the 1777 Vermont Constitution. It was known as the "Freeman's Oath" until the Inclusive Language Revision Amendment of 1994, when it became the "Voter's Oath". The oath simply says that you will vote your conscience and not let anyone tell you how to vote.”) When I moved to Chicago a year or so later, I registered at a card table under the El tracks, no oath required. When I left Vermont, they were having a major scandal about one public official, a superintendent of schools, who was found guilty of widespread corruption in 1988 (in an odd turn, that official was elected via a write-in campaign in March 2009 to serve on the Bennington School Board - http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20090306/NEWS04/903060358/1003/NEWS02): everyone was shocked. When I came to Chicago: Operation Greylord was in full-swing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greylord). No one was shocked. By the end of Operation Greylord, a total of 92 people had been indicted, including 17 judges, 48 lawyers, ten deputy sheriffs, eight police officers, eight court officials, and a member of the Illinois Legislature (James DeLeo, who currently represents me as a State Central Democratic Committeeman: why let a little legal trouble keep you down?). We could go down a list of “operations” since then undertaken by the FBI and the United States Attorney’s office, most notably Operation Silver Shovel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Silver_Shovel) which took out six aldermen and two city inspectors as well as ten others …. but that not really the focus of this post.
Here in Illinois, we know corruption when we see it. After all, watching public official after public official go to trial and get convicted of various crimes related to corruption does give one an education. The things our public officials seem to have thought were normal business practices are astonishing. But everyone does these things, was often their defense, and they were surprised when the jury didn’t buy that justification for their own chosen criminal endeavors. It is amazing, after the trials we have had in the last five years alone, to find a public official who is surprised that getting cash gifts from anyone - especially his or her employees - is OK, a part of doing business, just part of life. (for example, see http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2010/01/brown.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=pingfm) Does anyone in the non-government world give a cash gift to their boss for Christmas? No. I get gifts from my two bosses (they’ve settled on mediocre chocolates as appropriate gifts these days), but I don’t give them anything. I don’t feel like I’m on those terms with them: plus, they get paid much more than I do - whatever would I give them? I don’t even know when either of their birthdays are: so much for birthday gifts. We also have a former governor accused of trying to sell the current President’s Senate seat - and the amazing thing about this case is that everyone in the world knew the Feds were bugging him - hell, even I knew the Feds were bugging him and I had absolutely NO inside knowledge. Let’s just say, if they weren’t bugging him they were falling down on the job (turns out, they weren’t). The rumors were rampant and clear to the even mildly interested (and I’m sure I couldn’t have gotten a bet on the likelihood of the Feds bugging Blago with anyone in Illinois, even with those who aren’t interested in politics and don’t pay attention to the news). And yet - he still talked. He still said completely inappropriate things on the phone to more than one person. He got nervous that perhaps his office phones were bugged, but it apparently didn’t occur to him that they would bug his home phones as well. This bit of smarts was from a man who worked in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office for awhile as a prosecutor when Richard M. Daley was the State’s Attorney. (more on Blago here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Blagojevich) His law degree is from Pepperdine: I would imagine he is not one of their star graduates. Not only did he talk on tape, he's still talking to anyone who will listen. One is grateful not to be his defense attorney, frankly. And yes, the governor before Blagojevich is now sitting in federal prison, thinking about his latest appeals for clemency, having been successfully prosecuted for what he thought of as "business as usual." So the point is, here in Illinois we understand what political corruption looks like (and I neglected to mention some of the city scandals of the last ten years that have sent some of Mayor Daley’s friends to jail … some of those convictions are being appealed, but they are really too numerous to go into here - Hired Trucks, patronage, the water department, the Hispanic Democratic Organization … oh, one could go on).
Then there is the appearance of corruption. What is that? Many people assume that Joe Berrios is corrupt. But wait, he has never been indicted of anything, as far as I know. Is this an unfair assumption? Joe is the Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party (right there, an assumption might be made without looking further, but let’s assume that pay-to-play has not been an integral part of Cook County Democratic politics for the moment). He also sits on the Cook County Board of Review, which handles tax assessment appeals. He is currently running to be the Assessor for Cook County. His day job is as a state lobbyist, including for some video poker clients. Michael Madigan is the Speaker of the House in the Illinois General Assembly. He is also Chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party. His day job is as a lawyer, with the firm Madigan and Getzendanner. The Tribune notes that the firm is the go-to firm for property tax appeals (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/ct-met-michael-madigan-0124-20100122,0,1771641.story). Where do those appeals go? To the Board of Review. Remember that Berrios’ day job is as a state lobbyist? If you are a state lobbyist, would you be interested in annoying the extremely powerful Speaker of the House? Perhaps not. Rumor has it that the relationship between Madigan and Berrios has been investigated, and no charges have ever been brought. Does it stink to high heaven? Definitely. Has anything illegal actually occurred? Well, apparently nothing that prosecutors thought they could make stick (in other words, it’s very likely that neither man crossed the line of illegality: both are very smart men and have the ability to figure out the boundaries between the appearance of impropriety and an actual criminal act. Important Note: Did I mention I have no inside information? Six degrees of separation between me and any investigations that may have gone on or may be going on does not even begin to cover it: I have no actual knowledge that any investigations have happened, and no insight into any discussions that may or may not have occurred about what is or is not a prosecutable offense and what evidence might be needed or lacking to support charges). Should this cosy relationship be a concern to Illinois voters? Well, if you believe that the cost of doing business should not include payments to elected officials to make problems go away (or assessments reduced, or to make sure video poker gets approved by the Leg …), then yes, voters in Illinois should be wary of this relationship. We can also think about why Mike Madigan’s day job involves him getting property taxes reduced for his corporate clients at a time when state and municipal coffers are going bankrupt and need all the help they can get (not that I’m advocating anyone overpaying taxes, mind you - but everyone, including corporate entities, should pay their fair share).
And then there is the corruption implied but not proven. Not only not proven, but with wide gaping holes in the narrative of implied corruption. Today’s Tribune (April 24, 2010) ran a lovely headline about the failure of the Giannoulias’ family bank: BANK FAILURE A NAIL IN GIANNOULIAS BID. Alexi Giannoulias, currently the State Treasurer, is running for the US Senate (yes, indeed, that same seat that Mr. Obama once held, the one that former governor Blagojevich got in trouble over the appointment of a replacement once the President had resigned in order to … you know, be President of the United States). The Tribune is completely in the tank for Mark Kirk, Giannoulias’ Republican opponent (see various entries at Ellen’s Illinois Tenth Congressional District Blog http://ellenofthetenth.blogspot.com/: the 10th is the home of Kirk’s congressional seat, and Ellen has been following his exploits for years. Ellen and Carl have done a nice job of staying on top of the hypocrisy of both the Sun-Times and the Tribune on this matter). A sidenote: both papers are attempting to emerge from bankruptcy, and in the case of the Sun-Times, some of their financial troubles had to do with the mismanagement and financial improprieties of Conrad Black, now in prison for criminal fraud - coincidentally, put there by the same prosecutorial team now going after Blagojevich - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Black. In the case of the Tribune, most of their issues stem from the odd deal that was struck when Sam Zell bought the paper. For either newspaper to be criticizing someone else’s business decisions seems a bit … contrived. Strange. Self-serving, even. Apparently, hubris is not exclusively a fault of politicians. To return to the story on Giannoulias' family bank: what actually happened? Well, the bank, a community bank begun by Giannoulias’ father and still owned by his family, failed. You need only to follow Atrios’ blog Eschaton (http://www.eschatonblog.com/) for a few weeks to realize that this is an all-too common occurrence across the country these days (Atrios typically notes on late Friday afternoons how many banks the FDIC “eated” that day). Very few of these bank failures have anything to do with corruption, and most have everything to do with the sudden collapse of the real estate markets across the country. Maybe some bad decisions were made, but for most, they were caught up in a vortex of bad debt. Thank you, Mr. Bush, for leading the economy down the tubes! Oh, yes, and wasn’t the Republican Congress complicit in many of those bad decisions that led to the downturn in the economy? Not only by legislation, but also by refusing to do oversight on the regulators who were surfing for porn instead of doing their jobs (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/sec-pornography-employees-spent-hours-surfing-porn-sites/story?id=10452544)? Not to mention by approving an extremely expensive war and then refusing to do oversight on the costs of the war, whether by the military or by private contractors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War#Criticisms_and_costs; http://dpc.senate.gov/dpcdoc.cfm?doc_name=fs-110-2-173) . So you’d think, that if the newspapers were really interested in focusing on the candidate who has made extremely poor economic decisions that have affected millions of Illinoisians, they would be tearing Mark Kirk from limb-to-limb given his congressional record. Instead, they’re going after Alexi Giannoulias, whose family business just went under, like many other Illinois businesses during this downturn. So why is the failure of his family’s business a nail in his campaign? You’ll have to ask the Tribune: I have no idea. Giannoulias himself has been accused of no impropriety, he hasn’t been with the bank nor made decisions relating to it for at least four years, and one could hardly have expected him to disapprove loans to friends’ of his father’s (then the head of the bank) - some of whom are now accused of being a bit shady. As a friend of mine pointed out, banks don’t run criminal background checks on those they lend to, they run credit checks. Where is the criminal wrongdoing? Where is the corruption? I’m not getting it. Which would you rather see elected: a candidate whose formerly successful family business went under as the direct result of an extremely bad economy, who had some personal experience in the private sector, and has experience in understanding how government policy affects the average Joe business dude, a guy who has pretty successful run and modernized the state Treasurer's office, or the candidate who has never held a private sector job (oh, I’m sorry: he was with a law firm for all of a year once, between government gigs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kirk), who helped validate the lies that got us into a costly quagmire of a war, and whose governmental policies has lead to the collapse of economy? Because really, that’s our choice here. But neither the Tribune nor the Sun-Times can be bothered to critique Kirk’s record, and so they endlessly rehash issues that have been gone over before. To make the obvious Shakespearean allusion, much ado about nothing.
There is no there there. The Tribune Company and the Sun-Times should take a deep breath, and get over it. Or else they should start reporting their stories against Alexi Giannoulias as in-kind contributions to the Kirk campaign.
To digress into the personal: I moved here in the mid-eighties from Vermont. My parents were living in Vermont when I was old enough to register to vote for my first presidential election. Since I was going to school not too far away, I registered to vote in Vermont. This meant I went down to the courthouse, raised my hand, and took a “Freeman’s Oath” (despite the fact that I am clearly not male) swearing that I would vote as a free and independent person. (Apparently this oath is still in effect: from the Vermont Secretary of State’s website, “You can vote in Vermont ONLY if you: 1. are a citizen of the United States; 2. Are a resident of Vermont and a resident of the town in which you apply to be added to the checklist; 3. take, or have previously taken, the Voter's Oath (formerly called the "Freeman's Oath"); and 4. are 18 years of age or older (or will be eighteen on or before the day of election). http://www.vermont-elections.org/elections1/registertovote.html More on the oath: “The oath is unique to Vermont. It was originally required in the 1777 Vermont Constitution. It was known as the "Freeman's Oath" until the Inclusive Language Revision Amendment of 1994, when it became the "Voter's Oath". The oath simply says that you will vote your conscience and not let anyone tell you how to vote.”) When I moved to Chicago a year or so later, I registered at a card table under the El tracks, no oath required. When I left Vermont, they were having a major scandal about one public official, a superintendent of schools, who was found guilty of widespread corruption in 1988 (in an odd turn, that official was elected via a write-in campaign in March 2009 to serve on the Bennington School Board - http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20090306/NEWS04/903060358/1003/NEWS02): everyone was shocked. When I came to Chicago: Operation Greylord was in full-swing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greylord). No one was shocked. By the end of Operation Greylord, a total of 92 people had been indicted, including 17 judges, 48 lawyers, ten deputy sheriffs, eight police officers, eight court officials, and a member of the Illinois Legislature (James DeLeo, who currently represents me as a State Central Democratic Committeeman: why let a little legal trouble keep you down?). We could go down a list of “operations” since then undertaken by the FBI and the United States Attorney’s office, most notably Operation Silver Shovel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Silver_Shovel) which took out six aldermen and two city inspectors as well as ten others …. but that not really the focus of this post.
Here in Illinois, we know corruption when we see it. After all, watching public official after public official go to trial and get convicted of various crimes related to corruption does give one an education. The things our public officials seem to have thought were normal business practices are astonishing. But everyone does these things, was often their defense, and they were surprised when the jury didn’t buy that justification for their own chosen criminal endeavors. It is amazing, after the trials we have had in the last five years alone, to find a public official who is surprised that getting cash gifts from anyone - especially his or her employees - is OK, a part of doing business, just part of life. (for example, see http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2010/01/brown.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=pingfm) Does anyone in the non-government world give a cash gift to their boss for Christmas? No. I get gifts from my two bosses (they’ve settled on mediocre chocolates as appropriate gifts these days), but I don’t give them anything. I don’t feel like I’m on those terms with them: plus, they get paid much more than I do - whatever would I give them? I don’t even know when either of their birthdays are: so much for birthday gifts. We also have a former governor accused of trying to sell the current President’s Senate seat - and the amazing thing about this case is that everyone in the world knew the Feds were bugging him - hell, even I knew the Feds were bugging him and I had absolutely NO inside knowledge. Let’s just say, if they weren’t bugging him they were falling down on the job (turns out, they weren’t). The rumors were rampant and clear to the even mildly interested (and I’m sure I couldn’t have gotten a bet on the likelihood of the Feds bugging Blago with anyone in Illinois, even with those who aren’t interested in politics and don’t pay attention to the news). And yet - he still talked. He still said completely inappropriate things on the phone to more than one person. He got nervous that perhaps his office phones were bugged, but it apparently didn’t occur to him that they would bug his home phones as well. This bit of smarts was from a man who worked in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office for awhile as a prosecutor when Richard M. Daley was the State’s Attorney. (more on Blago here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Blagojevich) His law degree is from Pepperdine: I would imagine he is not one of their star graduates. Not only did he talk on tape, he's still talking to anyone who will listen. One is grateful not to be his defense attorney, frankly. And yes, the governor before Blagojevich is now sitting in federal prison, thinking about his latest appeals for clemency, having been successfully prosecuted for what he thought of as "business as usual." So the point is, here in Illinois we understand what political corruption looks like (and I neglected to mention some of the city scandals of the last ten years that have sent some of Mayor Daley’s friends to jail … some of those convictions are being appealed, but they are really too numerous to go into here - Hired Trucks, patronage, the water department, the Hispanic Democratic Organization … oh, one could go on).
Then there is the appearance of corruption. What is that? Many people assume that Joe Berrios is corrupt. But wait, he has never been indicted of anything, as far as I know. Is this an unfair assumption? Joe is the Chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party (right there, an assumption might be made without looking further, but let’s assume that pay-to-play has not been an integral part of Cook County Democratic politics for the moment). He also sits on the Cook County Board of Review, which handles tax assessment appeals. He is currently running to be the Assessor for Cook County. His day job is as a state lobbyist, including for some video poker clients. Michael Madigan is the Speaker of the House in the Illinois General Assembly. He is also Chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party. His day job is as a lawyer, with the firm Madigan and Getzendanner. The Tribune notes that the firm is the go-to firm for property tax appeals (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/ct-met-michael-madigan-0124-20100122,0,1771641.story). Where do those appeals go? To the Board of Review. Remember that Berrios’ day job is as a state lobbyist? If you are a state lobbyist, would you be interested in annoying the extremely powerful Speaker of the House? Perhaps not. Rumor has it that the relationship between Madigan and Berrios has been investigated, and no charges have ever been brought. Does it stink to high heaven? Definitely. Has anything illegal actually occurred? Well, apparently nothing that prosecutors thought they could make stick (in other words, it’s very likely that neither man crossed the line of illegality: both are very smart men and have the ability to figure out the boundaries between the appearance of impropriety and an actual criminal act. Important Note: Did I mention I have no inside information? Six degrees of separation between me and any investigations that may have gone on or may be going on does not even begin to cover it: I have no actual knowledge that any investigations have happened, and no insight into any discussions that may or may not have occurred about what is or is not a prosecutable offense and what evidence might be needed or lacking to support charges). Should this cosy relationship be a concern to Illinois voters? Well, if you believe that the cost of doing business should not include payments to elected officials to make problems go away (or assessments reduced, or to make sure video poker gets approved by the Leg …), then yes, voters in Illinois should be wary of this relationship. We can also think about why Mike Madigan’s day job involves him getting property taxes reduced for his corporate clients at a time when state and municipal coffers are going bankrupt and need all the help they can get (not that I’m advocating anyone overpaying taxes, mind you - but everyone, including corporate entities, should pay their fair share).
And then there is the corruption implied but not proven. Not only not proven, but with wide gaping holes in the narrative of implied corruption. Today’s Tribune (April 24, 2010) ran a lovely headline about the failure of the Giannoulias’ family bank: BANK FAILURE A NAIL IN GIANNOULIAS BID. Alexi Giannoulias, currently the State Treasurer, is running for the US Senate (yes, indeed, that same seat that Mr. Obama once held, the one that former governor Blagojevich got in trouble over the appointment of a replacement once the President had resigned in order to … you know, be President of the United States). The Tribune is completely in the tank for Mark Kirk, Giannoulias’ Republican opponent (see various entries at Ellen’s Illinois Tenth Congressional District Blog http://ellenofthetenth.blogspot.com/: the 10th is the home of Kirk’s congressional seat, and Ellen has been following his exploits for years. Ellen and Carl have done a nice job of staying on top of the hypocrisy of both the Sun-Times and the Tribune on this matter). A sidenote: both papers are attempting to emerge from bankruptcy, and in the case of the Sun-Times, some of their financial troubles had to do with the mismanagement and financial improprieties of Conrad Black, now in prison for criminal fraud - coincidentally, put there by the same prosecutorial team now going after Blagojevich - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_Black. In the case of the Tribune, most of their issues stem from the odd deal that was struck when Sam Zell bought the paper. For either newspaper to be criticizing someone else’s business decisions seems a bit … contrived. Strange. Self-serving, even. Apparently, hubris is not exclusively a fault of politicians. To return to the story on Giannoulias' family bank: what actually happened? Well, the bank, a community bank begun by Giannoulias’ father and still owned by his family, failed. You need only to follow Atrios’ blog Eschaton (http://www.eschatonblog.com/) for a few weeks to realize that this is an all-too common occurrence across the country these days (Atrios typically notes on late Friday afternoons how many banks the FDIC “eated” that day). Very few of these bank failures have anything to do with corruption, and most have everything to do with the sudden collapse of the real estate markets across the country. Maybe some bad decisions were made, but for most, they were caught up in a vortex of bad debt. Thank you, Mr. Bush, for leading the economy down the tubes! Oh, yes, and wasn’t the Republican Congress complicit in many of those bad decisions that led to the downturn in the economy? Not only by legislation, but also by refusing to do oversight on the regulators who were surfing for porn instead of doing their jobs (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/sec-pornography-employees-spent-hours-surfing-porn-sites/story?id=10452544)? Not to mention by approving an extremely expensive war and then refusing to do oversight on the costs of the war, whether by the military or by private contractors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War#Criticisms_and_costs; http://dpc.senate.gov/dpcdoc.cfm?doc_name=fs-110-2-173) . So you’d think, that if the newspapers were really interested in focusing on the candidate who has made extremely poor economic decisions that have affected millions of Illinoisians, they would be tearing Mark Kirk from limb-to-limb given his congressional record. Instead, they’re going after Alexi Giannoulias, whose family business just went under, like many other Illinois businesses during this downturn. So why is the failure of his family’s business a nail in his campaign? You’ll have to ask the Tribune: I have no idea. Giannoulias himself has been accused of no impropriety, he hasn’t been with the bank nor made decisions relating to it for at least four years, and one could hardly have expected him to disapprove loans to friends’ of his father’s (then the head of the bank) - some of whom are now accused of being a bit shady. As a friend of mine pointed out, banks don’t run criminal background checks on those they lend to, they run credit checks. Where is the criminal wrongdoing? Where is the corruption? I’m not getting it. Which would you rather see elected: a candidate whose formerly successful family business went under as the direct result of an extremely bad economy, who had some personal experience in the private sector, and has experience in understanding how government policy affects the average Joe business dude, a guy who has pretty successful run and modernized the state Treasurer's office, or the candidate who has never held a private sector job (oh, I’m sorry: he was with a law firm for all of a year once, between government gigs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kirk), who helped validate the lies that got us into a costly quagmire of a war, and whose governmental policies has lead to the collapse of economy? Because really, that’s our choice here. But neither the Tribune nor the Sun-Times can be bothered to critique Kirk’s record, and so they endlessly rehash issues that have been gone over before. To make the obvious Shakespearean allusion, much ado about nothing.
There is no there there. The Tribune Company and the Sun-Times should take a deep breath, and get over it. Or else they should start reporting their stories against Alexi Giannoulias as in-kind contributions to the Kirk campaign.