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Is the “clout list” fake?
Wednesday, May 24, 2006 - Posted by Rich Miller Late yesterday, I told you that the governor’s office was claiming that the “clout list,” which has been reported on by several news organizations, but posted in full for the first time yesterday right here on my blog, was a fake. Both NBC5 and ABC7 did stories last night about the list being posted on this site. What some call a “clout list” or a “favors list” or even a “personal tracking list” was supposedly made public Tuesday. Not to quibble, but the AP published excerpts from the list, including names of political sponsors, last week, so I’m pretty sure they saw the whole thing. I assume the Sun-Times saw it as well, since they’re the ones who broke the story. Lee Newspapers claims to have obtained the complete list last Friday. Strangely enough, though, the governor’s people maintain that no reporters would share the list with them and they didn’t see it until yesterday, when I put the whole thing online. Governor Blagojevich and his staffers say they never saw the actual list until Tuesday, because the newspapers that had it refused to show them. […] Even weirder, none of the media outlets which originally reported on the list last week have reported today on the governor’s office claims that the list is a fake. Lee ran a story on the list this morning, but nothing about the denials was mentioned. Most, but not all, of the information on the list has already been confirmed by the media outlets which ran the original stories, so I’m not quite sure what’s going on here. I do know that there’s a lot more coming from the original source of this list, and that the list is supposedly just the tip of the iceberg. Stay tuned.
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- DOWNSTATE - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 8:51 am:
Does any of this lead to indictments?Or is this just another story to blog about.
- the Patriot - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 8:52 am:
This was a major mistake by the governor. Outright denial now gives the AG and Feds real reason to investigate. Now they don’t have to prove the list is wrong, just that it was made and he is caught in a lie. The governor really needs to get his lawyers involved and stop directing this like a campaign.
- DOWNSTATE - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 8:58 am:
Patriot let him go this might be the only way we can get rid of this jerk.If it comes to that Abby goes under the bus.
- ChicagoCynic - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 10:36 am:
Patriot,
It’s not a crime for a politician to lie and get caught. Hell, if it was, we’d double the prison population overnight. Perjury is a crime. Lying to the public is not.
- the Patriot - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 10:50 am:
How correct you are, lysing is not a crime which was my point. Lying is no crime, but proving he lies repeatedly to cover his tracks will destroy any credibility he has when he takes the stand at trial.
Besides, when a document shows you have been lying about political corruption surfaces and you answer it with more lies, it raises questions with what is under neath so damaging you have to lie about it.
He should have bucked up and admitted to the list.
“Yea, we kept track. I thought it would be a good idea to ensure we knew exactly what was going on to prevent the type of secretive political hirings of the past, it didn’t pan out like we had hoped, but now we at least know one more solution to cleaning up state government that didn’t work instead of ignoring the problem.”
If that is his answer this dies, but now he lied on top of lies. This is how the perjury charges take shape. ie, lying about a crime I may or may not have committed.
- ONE MAN CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 10:53 am:
The Governor’s office can denounce the list all the way to federal court if they want to. What they can’t denounce is the information on the list.
Whomever created the list had to have known that this information existed somewhere whether in list form or scattered all over the office. How did the author of this list get the salary information as it is written on the list? How did they get the “clout names”? Under the Freedom of Information Act, that’s a lot of Freedom of Information.
Whomever put the list together is a witness in the Office of the Governor’s upcoming corruption trial. The two employees that were fired for allegedly rigging state hiring are witnesses in the upcoming trial.
In addition, the Governor’s offices’ firing of the two employees only made them angry enough to eventually tell all. If the Office of the Governor were really smart “crooks”, they would have kept these two employees close to them and not given them reasons to go forward.
When you attempt to try and outsmart the system, as you may believe that you can, sooner or later it will come back to bite you.
In this case, it will be more sooner than later.
- FORMER STATE EMPLOYEE - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 10:54 am:
As someone who is familiar with hiring in one very large (DHS) department, I could easily add a few names and their sponsors to the “clout list”. This list should be much much longer!
- gojbt - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 11:02 am:
“To Former State Employee”
Wish you could be one of the witnesses against hairdo.
- Harley1211 - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 11:08 am:
If the “terminated employees” made that clout list, why would they have included themselves in the list? That is dumb. If the Governor’s office admitted to keeping a list, but not this one, then lets see the one they admit to!
- ChicagoCynic - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 11:25 am:
Patriot,
You said “If that is his answer this dies, but now he lied on top of lies. This is how the perjury charges take shape. ie, lying about a crime I may or may not have committed.”
What crime? And what lie did Rod say? His office admitted they keep lists, but now say this isn’t a list they kept. Whether true or not, please tell me what is the crime and when did Rod personally (i.e. not a member of his staff but he personally) commit it?
- Irresponsible Speculation... - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 11:35 am:
Claiming the list is fake doesn’t make a lot of sense…
…unless, in the early days last year — when the heat started coming — they had a shredding/file deletion party at the Governor’s office.
How else to explain the existence of list that someone close to state hiring has that you can no longer produce.
Just a thought….
- the Patriot - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 12:34 pm:
I think you sort of made my point, but what did I expect from a chicago cynic. There didn’t have to be a crime for their to have been perjury. Just lying in the course of an ongoing investigation is enough. I wasn’t saying this is the perjury or crime, just that this is how the trap is laid. Consider administration statements:
1. Politics doesn’t enter into hiring decisions.
2. We do keep lists of who was hired.
3. This isn’t one of our lists.
The adminsistation is cross talking themselves into a corner. If they got to George, they will get to him.
- Woe is us - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 1:14 pm:
It seems that they are only denying that “this” list isn’t theirs. Beyond that, even if “a” list does exist no laws have been broken - only a promise to put an end to “business as usual”. Sorry Patriot.
- WARDOG - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 1:30 pm:
One has to only look at the names on the list to see where most of the corruption in this administration is at. Didn’t Fallwell keep a list that was a great factor in his and Ryans indictments and convictions. Remember the names of Cini, Monk, Roberson, Peters, Curry, Daly and even Tusk and many more. When it comes to hard jail time, the birds are going to sing. Blagojevich will make George Ryan look like a boy scout.. This list don’t even begin to touch people and names who have been favored. I know people that have been denied grades because of so-called inexperience and training by CMS when they were much more qualified than some of “those”. And, yes, some were veterans that were denied.
Pingback IlliniPundit.com » Blog Archive » Roundup (5/24/06) - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 2:43 pm:
[…] The Governor’s office is now claiming the clout list is fake. As Rich Miller points out, last week they said there was nothing wrong with keeping such a list. […]
- anon - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 3:45 pm:
Talk to Brad about that
- Playa' Hata' - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 5:04 pm:
now look here…there is nothing wrong with the list or most forms of patronage. what is wrong is that I didn’t get a $95,000 a year job after doing as much campaign work as some of the clowns on that list!!!
also, the governor’s office claiming it is a “fake” is the worse thing they could have said. I personally know three people on the list, and the sponsor indicated was right on the money…
- Disgusted - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 6:05 pm:
I want to know what part of the governor’s anatomy Mr. Ginsburg had to kiss to get a 324% salary increase to go to work for the real estate bureau.
I’d have settled for a third of that amount. Hell, I’d take another 4%, now that I’m nearing retirement. But us peons are just worker bees, not elites.
- James T Kirk - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 6:58 pm:
The governor’s peeps say they have a list but it’s not this list. Next question is when is Rod going to release his list…..
beam me up Scotty
- Brad Tusk's Ego - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 8:21 pm:
Am I missing something, but why has there not been more coverage of this story from Belleville News Democrat? http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/news/14635333.htm
It ties in some of the ongoing issues with the BLAGOS making Defraties and Casey their fallguys (and gals), but this stuff about the Floods taking care of their own, Civil Rights lawsuits by fired employees, confidentiality agreements with IDNR…well, this really starts to read like a movie, something akin to The Firm.
It all ties together. From Chicago, through Springfield, and into Southern Illinois, the BLAGOS have violated Rutan and are now screwing over their own hires to save their butts.
- cynically anonymous - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 8:30 pm:
Did anyone else notice the amazing number of “legislative liaisons” on this list? Or that positions that have been “vacant for years” suddenly needed to be filled?
No more business as usual…
- anonymous - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 9:40 pm:
The Feds should track down some of those folks on the Governor’s political campaign/hack/state worker list. What’s this about Anita Decker going from the campaign to the Department of Corrections with the backing of “MH” and then suddenly being put back on campaign? Is her new boss, Senator Obama, aware of all of this?
- anonymous - Wednesday, May 24, 06 @ 10:11 pm:
Is it wrong that Governor Blagojevich can hire people who are loyal to his political agenda? Or should he create new programs just to have them sabotaged by employees who don’t want them to succeed? And the employees from the prior administrations knew what they were doing before Jan 2003 as they scrambled and got themselves into a “safe” place. Investigate that, somebody! Who got moved immediately prior to the new administration? And are there salaries out there that surpass the salary cap for the position? Investigate that too, why doncha? The bell is always tolling in the press for the poor souls from the Thompson, Edgar and Ryan administrations while anyone hired in the Blagojevich administration is odious.
In terms of qualifications I know that many on that list are highly qualified. However,maybe a few did get their applications kicked back by a bureaucrat at CMS who deemed them unworthy. The whole CMS grading process is an arbitrary one that needs an overhaul as well as the testing system.
- quad cities - Thursday, May 25, 06 @ 12:18 pm:
Is Dawn DeFraetes talking about this infamous “clout” list to investigators? Does that connect all those folks to the investigation?
That’s fine. Investigate that. But also remember that taxpayers send $55 billion to Springfield and the top three issues are education, jobs and skyrocketing gas prices.
Make sure, bureaucrats, to keep your eyes on the big issues, too.
- mad man - Tuesday, Jun 6, 06 @ 6:17 pm:
Why does everyone assume that DeFraties is the only “disgruntled former state employee?” I am pretty sure that anyone who unfairly got axed is flashing whatever they can at the media too. I know for sure there are several current disgruntled state employees who are potentially more hazardous to Blago than the former runs……kepp talking about Defraties, Abby while your cohorts run out the back door with all your secrets!