“I’m blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived,” Blagojevich said. “I saw it all growing up.”
On Monday, Blagojevich said the comment was “stupid, stupid, stupid.”
He said it was meant as a metaphor for his disappointment with Obama, whom he accused of doing more to help Wall Street than Main Street.
I was going to do a post today about how his apology revealed more about his jury strategy than anything else, but Mark Brown beat me to it and is exactly right on the money…
What’s just as obvious is that Blagojevich was particularly worried he might have offended those in the African-American community he has worked so hard to cultivate since his arrest — Exhibit A being the appointment of Roland Burris to replace Obama — in hopes of getting at least one person on his jury who might take pity and vote to acquit.
And if this stuff about Attorney General Lisa Madigan is, indeed, on the federal wiretaps, jurors are gonna be horrified…
Playing cute with what he could say about the government wiretaps, Blagojevich let this drop to Esquire about the deal he says he proposed to send Lisa Madigan to the Senate:
“In conversations over the telephone, without me saying what’s on it, because I can’t, but I recall over and over I’m saying things like, ‘If I can get this, how much do I love the people of Illinois to make that [bleep] senator?”
The magazine didn’t bleep out the c-word, but Blago was caught off guard when reporters asked him about using it, admitting he hadn’t read the article yet.
“I don’t think I said that,” he offered, getting that worried look he gets in his beady little eyes when he’s been caught.
He better not have used that word because female jurors will revolt. Steve Brown, a spokesman for the AG’s father, gave his usual response…
“The former governor is a very confused and troubled human being,” said Steve Brown.
“If everyone looks up the word sociopath on Google I think they’ll have a better understanding of what’s going on.”
* Congressman Bobby Rush will endorse Cook County Board President Todd Stroger today. According to a press release, Rush will be “surrounded by a dynamic coalition of clergy,
civic, elected officials, community leaders and the candidate.”
Rush is infamous for his race-baiting ways, but he’ll have a tough time topping a group called “Soldiers for Stroger,” headed by Gator Bradley, which is distributing some pretty nasty fliers on behalf of the board president…
* Rep. Jan Schakowsky endorsed Toni Preckwinkle for county board president yesterday, calling the Alderman “the only progressive in this race.” Have a look…
* The Cook County Board President candidates debated yesterday and threw a bit of mud…
Preckwinkle bashed Brown on several fronts, including the clerk’s receipt of gifts from her employees and Earnfare workers passing her nominating petitions. Preckwinkle characterized the clerk as having “stumbled from one crisis to the next.”
Brown said the incidents Preckwinkle cited “relate to others and not myself.”
Brown said she got rid of the Earnfare campaign worker as soon as she learned of the problem.
As far as employees giving her gifts, Brown said: “I gave them gifts, too. That wasn’t reported. We’re like a family. We give each other gifts during the holiday time period.”
Terry O’Brien, head of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, asked incumbent Todd Stroger about a July 2009 Better Government Association study that found of 11 county service contracts only three went to the lowest bidder and all were tied to political donations.
“You claim to sponsor a number of reform initiatives, is that what you’d consider reform?,” O’Brien asked.
Stroger responded during the City Club of Chicago-sponsored debate that he didn’t know “exactly what contracts you are talking about.”
Brown asked Metropolitan Water Reclamation District President Terrence O’Brien how he got to be a millionaire on his $80,000 government salary, suggesting it was in doing consultant work for polluters. “I do not apologize for being a successful businessman,” O’Brien said, adding, “Terry O’Brien does not protect polluters.” He called those charges, previously leveled by Preckwinkle as well, “defamatory.”
Meanwhile, it seems top Republican leaders are turning on Palatine Township GOP Committeeman Gary Skoien as he seeks re-election following a domestic incident involving his wife and two other women at his Inverness home.
Challenger Aaron Del Mar, a freshman Palatine councilman, says he has landed the backing of both Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady of St. Charles and Cook County GOP boss Lee Roupas. Roupas has the seat Skoien had from 2004 to 2007 when he famously put a bounty on Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s head for evidence that would lead to his conviction on corruption charges.
Meanwhile, Del Mar has never voted in a Republican primary. According to voter records, the 31-year-old has only voted in one primary - a Democratic one.
Del Mar tells Animal Farm that is because he is young. He hasn’t had much time, he says, to cast primary ballots. He says he voted in the 2008 Democratic primary to help drag out that parties internal battles leading into the general election.
The proposal announced by the mayor and the governor calls for giving convention center officials more control over labor rules and taking some of the power away from the many trade unions that work at the convention center, including the right to strike. The proposal also includes an effort to restructure the crushing debt schedule facing the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which owns and operates the convention hall and Navy Pier.
But in Springfield, lawmakers threw cold water on the idea of giving any more authority to the current McPier managers, appointed by the mayor and governor. Instead, a House committee sent a bi-partisan message with an 11-0 vote for a bill that would dump the current McPier board and put in place a smaller interim panel to examine the growing expenses and loss of convention activities.
“We’re at a crisis, a crisis of management,” said House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago, Madigan’s top lieutenant. She said lawmakers would not consider going along with the work rule changes or giving the convention authority more borrowing power until they know what went wrong.
“It’s time for a little new broom, a little sweep clean,” Currie said. “If they can convince us that it makes economic sense to extend the taxes or extend their borrowing power, well, we have the opportunity to come back and do it.”
“A few hundred workers in one building” would lose some rights, McPier Chairman John Gates said, but in exchange, “Thirty-five thousand (industry) workers would save their jobs.”
One top labor leader, Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon, had a mixed reaction to the proposal.
Auditing contractors is a good idea, one that workers have sought for many years, Mr. Gannon said. But despite several questions on the subject, he declined to take a position on the public employment/no-strike clause. “I need to run that up the flagpole with the unions down there (at McCormick Place),” Mr. Gannon said.
Prosecuting attorneys would receive advance warning about the early release of prison inmates under legislation a House committee approved Monday.
As proposed, the Department of Corrections would have to notify the relevant state’s attorneys at least 14 days before an inmate could be released early. State law presently proscribes only that state’s attorneys get “reasonable” notice before an inmate is let out before the scheduled date. […]
The amendment approved Monday also will require inmates to serve at least 60 days in the state correctional system before review for early release.
State Rep. Jim Sacia, a Republican from Pecatonica, said he would like to see another addition that would require victims, too, be notified.
* A committee also advanced a bill to allow the state to borrow $250 million to help ease the financial crunch on human service providers…
Gov. Pat Quinn could get the ability to borrow additional millions to make health care payments under legislation that gained initial support from lawmakers on Monday.
Quinn’s attempts at short-term borrowing have been thwarted by Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes, who’s criticized the governor for being inconsistent in his plans and having no real way to pay off the loans. […]
Lawmakers entered the picture on Monday when an Illinois House committee voted to let Quinn access federal health care money to leverage additional borrowing since Hynes has not gone along. If the House and Senate were to approve this deal, Quinn may not need Hynes’ approval.
Although they rejected the idea in October, the Illinois House is again mulling whether to give Gov. Pat Quinn extra time to craft a proposed state budget.
In action Monday, a House committee endorsed legislation that could eventually push Quinn’s budget address into March. Usually, the governor’s budget plan for the fiscal year that begins July 1 is presented in mid-February.
Republicans Monday continued to push an idea to give people a penalty-free chance to catch up on back taxes in order to generate some quick cash for the struggling state budget.
Republicans first floated the so-called “tax amnesty” plan last year as a chance to get $100 million immediately to pay for the state’s largest need-based college scholarship program.
Democrats largely ignored the idea then, and lawmakers approved spending $200 million on the Monetary Award Program without a way to come up with the money.
At a hearing Monday, a House panel discussed the tax amnesty plan again, but declined to vote on it.
Downstate hotel owners, including those in Springfield, will have to wait to see any adjustment in state reimbursement rates.
The latest effort to get a change went nowhere when it was presented to the Governor’s Travel Control Board in December. […]
In an e-mailed response, Alka Nayyar of the Department of Central Management Services said lodging rates for downstate hotels are set by the Travel Regulation Council, which hasn’t raised downstate rates since 2003.
The Springfield state rate is $70 per night. The federal lodging rate is $83.
* In legislative campaign news, the Chicago Reader has a very good article about how the IVI-IPO endorsement process was subverted by the 47th Ward regulars…
On December 29, a group of north-side members of the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization gathered to endorse attorney Dan Farley as their candidate in the upcoming Democratic primary for 11th District state representative. This was a coup for Farley, a first-time office seeker. North-side candidates covet the group’s stamp of approval, which gives them an aura of machine-fighting progressivism popular with voters.
The joke of it all is that there was hardly a real independent in the room that night.
In fact, leading the charge for independence was none other than 47th Ward alderman Eugene Schulter, one of Mayor Daley’s most loyal north-side City Council allies.
The IVI-IPO’s endorsement process is a joke.
* And GOP state Rep. Suzie Bassi’s primary opponent has a new Internet video criticizing the incumbent for missing 242 votes during her last term. Take a look…
