Just days after shuttering several state parks and historic sites and asking for understanding from Illinoisans amid bleak economic times, Gov. Rod Blagojevich took his taxpayer-provided aircraft to Philadelphia to tell fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama how bad things are in the state they both live in.
Blagojevich spokesman Lucio Guerrero defended the trip and use of the state plane, noting that if the governor hadn’t gone, he’d surely have faced media criticism for his absence.
“This was a historic meeting that was attended by virtually every governor in the United States and our being there could help brings billions of dollars to Illinois,” Guerrero said Wednesday in an e-mail responding to Daily Herald questions. […]
“And, had we not gone out, I am sure you would question us on why we failed to go out and meet with the other governors and the President-elect,” Guerrero added. […]
“And lastly, it’s naive to think that we can just call a meeting with Obama because he ‘lives just a few miles away.’ The President-elect has made it very clear that no state - not even his home state - would get any special treatment or favors. The economic situation facing Illinois is real and we need help. The governor will take that message to the President-elect any way he can,” Guerrero said.
Blagojevich can’t call a local meeting with Obama because Obama wouldn’t attend. Barack ain’t no fool.
* It’s amazing to me that Blagojevich apparently didn’t learn from what happened to the Big 3 auto CEOs when they flew their corporate planes to DC to beg for money. Is he just completely daft?
“Hi, I am in desperate need of a federal bailout, which is why I spent thousands and thousands of taxpayer dollars to fly myself and my staff to this meeting.”
Ever heard of commercial flights, guv?
How do I know the governor took his staff to Philly? This is from the Philadelphia Daily News’ version of Sneed…
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich dined Monday with staff at Ralph’s (760 S. 9th). The table ordered veal and chicken parmigiania and fettucine Alfredo.
I sure hope we didn’t pay for that. [UPDATE: The governor’s office assures me that the state did not pay for the meal.]
* 4:33 pm - Attorney General Madigan today when asked about Sen. Durbin’s request that George Ryan’s sentence be commuted to time served…
“I respect the work that Dick Durbin has done for the people of the State of Illinois, but I think he is wrong to seek a commutation of Former Gov. Ryan’s sentence.
“As a prosecutor, we see the impact that crimes have on the victims. In this case, the 6 Willis children and the almost 13 million people of the State were harmed by what George Ryan did.
“His case was prosecuted and he was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison, he should serve his time. Every person who is sent to prison suffers as do their families. This is a consequence of committing a crime.”
* Plenty of rumors today - including from a national reporter acquaintance - that Secretary of State Jesse White is back on the governor’s short-list for the US Senate. But his spokesman just said - for probably the fiftieth time - that JW doesn’t want the job.
* I’ve asked that the Post-Dispatch post the audio of this interview, but for now we’ll have to settle for this quote from Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. regarding the appointment to Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat…
“I am the ideal, the best and the most qualified person,” Jackson said in an unusual conference call he requested with Post-Dispatch editorial writers this morning…
He’s so humble.
* This video clip posted by PI demonstrates why Chuck Todd is one of the best DC correspondents alive…
That Matthews guy is really difficult to watch, man.
* Sam Boyd at the American Prospect seems to be catching on to how goofy this appointment process has become, but he also seems to think that appointing Emil Jones to the seat would make everybody happy.
So Jones, who is retiring as president of the state senate, is a perfect choice. Didn’t he resign just in time for his ward boss buddies to install his son, Emil III, on the November ballot unopposed? Didn’t he help Blagojevich in his blood feud with House Speaker Mike Madigan, turning the General Assembly into a do-nothing quagmire of epic proportions?
So governor, pick your pal Jones.
In order to bring real change to Illinois, the public needs to get a lot angrier than it is. This will really help.
Yep.
*** UPDATE 1 *** Politico’s Josh Kraushaar believes he can read the governor’s mind…
Here are the five most likely contenders for the appointment
OK.
*** UPDATE 2 *** The complete audio of Congressman Jackson’s interview with the Post-Dispatch can be found at this link.
* I was getting regular phone calls from Bill Daley for months, almost like clockwork. He’d always tout his gubernatorial prospects and downplay any worries about a possible Madigan vs. Daley war. But Daley’s calls stopped a few weeks before the election and I haven’t heard from him since. I reached out to him this morning, but haven’t heard back yet, so I thought I’d go ahead and post today’s Sneedling…
Sneed hears rumbles that former U.S. Commerce Secretary Bill Daley, who’s on Barack Obama’s transition team, is less and less interested in running for governor.
• • To wit: And word is that Daley has no interest in moving to Washington, D.C. Hmmm. Stay tuned.
* Also, there was no real news in this story from today, but it’ll give you something else to chew on besides Daley…
State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias said Tuesday that he’s considering a run for governor in 2010.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he told the editorial board of The State Journal-Register in a telephone call from his Chicago office.
“You see what’s been going on in Springfield, and you see a lack of leadership,” said Giannoulias, 32, of Chicago. […]
“When you make those kinds of moves, you start thinking, ‘You know what? Why can’t we do the same thing in the governor’s office?’” Giannoulias said.
* You’ve probably already heard about the nation’s governors asking for money from Barack Obama…
Forty-eight governors met with President-elect Barack Obama [yesterday] to press their case for a federal package to help them weather the U.S. recession that began in December 2007.
The state executives want an assistance plan to create jobs through infrastructure projects, such as highways, and to aid with programs such as unemployment benefits, food stamps and health care for the poor, said Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, chairman of the National Governors Association. Rendell said more than $130 billion in infrastructure projects are waiting to go ahead if funding is secured.
“We’re not asking for the federal government to bail us out,” Blagojevich said. “We will do our part.”
* But Gov. Schwarzenegger says he wants to get his own house in order before asking for federal money…
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who declared a fiscal emergency yesterday in California, said the state won’t accept federal money until it balances out its books.
The governor has proposed $4.7 billion in increased taxes and fees and $4.5 billion in spending cuts to close a shortfall of $11 billion. He said he is hopeful lawmakers will approve his plan, and he won’t accept federal aid until the state balances its budget.
“I’m an optimist,” he said. “We cannot ask the federal government for help until we get our act together in California.”
* Gov. Blagojevich, on the other hand, wants federal money to patch existing holes in the state’s budget. The state’s fiscal crisis is spreading fast…
Urbana schools are owed more than $2.6 million by the state of Illinois, and if the state doesn’t start paying up, the schools will probably be broke by mid-March, said Urbana school district Business Manager Carol Baker.
At the school board’s Tuesday meeting, Baker and David Adcock, the director of Urbana Adult Education, said the funds were overdue since August.
Oy.
By the way, the state will probably be flat broke by mid-March as well. We’re heading for a huge crisis, campers.
Rates for most city parking meters will increase to $1 an hour starting Jan. 1 as a result of Mayor Richard Daley’s deal to lease the spots for $1.1 billion to a private firm.
Two-third of the city’s meters now cost 25 cents an hour, but once the paperwork is finalized, any metered spot costing less than $1 per hour will increase to $1 next year, city officials said today. And by 2013, those same metered spots will cost $2 an hour, according to City Hall.
The most expensive meters, which are found in the Loop, cost $3 an hour now. They will increase to $3.50 an hour next year and $6.50 by 2013.
Daley plans to use the nearly $1.2 billion in proceeds to pump $400 million into a long-term reserve fund, $325 million to help balance city budgets through 2012 and $100 million on programs to support residents in need. The remainder — about $324 million — would be a rainy-day fund “to help bridge the period until the nation’s economy begins to grow again,” he said.
* Eventually, the city is gonna run out of stuff to sell. But Daley will (hopefully) be long gone by then. This is a very good point…
REDFIELD: It’s an indication that the current revenue structure, property taxes, sales taxes, revenue sharing from the state, isn’t sufficient to allow the city to keep doing the basic things that it’s doing.
Kent Redfield teaches political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He says a lot of cities across the country are leasing assets. But Chicago stands out.
REDFIELD: Now we’re talking about six billion dollars or so of assets over a fairly short period of time.
Redfield says privatization can work, but there’s an inherent danger to it. That, essentially, the city is giving up control of things like the Skyway and parking meters, infrastructure central to transportation and getting around town. That can undermine other aspects of how the city operates, down to the basic level of industry and commerce. Despite what Redfield sees as dangers, some aldermen are still on board.
* Related…
* Shortage of road salt, soaring prices vex states
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald won’t say publicly what he thinks about some politicians’ calls to free George Ryan from prison. Fitzgerald’s office prosecuted the corruption case against the former Illinois governor.
FITZGERALD: The way the system is set up, if the White House or the Justice Department asks a U.S. Attorney’s office for their opinion, we’ll give them our candid opinion privately, but we’re not going to opine publicly.
It’s not too difficult to imagine what that “candid opinion” would be.
Rejecting an idea endorsed by two top Democrats, Republican North Shore Rep. Mark Kirk sent a letter to the White House [yesterday] asking President George Bush not to commute the federal corruption sentence of former Republican Gov. George Ryan.
* As does Kirk’s fellow GOP congresscritter Tim Johnson…
“I am 100 percent and strongly opposed to any pardon for George Ryan,” added Johnson.
An aide to retiring U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood of Peoria suggested LaHood probably would not return phone calls because the Ryan-Durbin dust-up isn’t a subject he wants to talk about.
Rock Island Democrat Phil Hare also didn’t want to get pulled into the matter.
“Congressman Hare believes that it is President Bush’s decision whether or not to commute Governor Ryan’s sentence and has no further comment,” spokesman Tim Schlittner noted in an e-mail message.
But you gotta figure that this issue will give Republicans an easy way to distance themselves from past GOP corruption. So, we can probably expect more statements of outrage.
* Here’s an interesting tidbit that I missed the other day, probably because it was buried at the very end of an article…
Durbin said he would not ask Obama to commute Ryan’s sentence if Bush doesn’t.
So, he won’t put his own guy on the hot seat?
* The Daily Herald quotes some folks who think the whole idea is a long shot at best…
Bush is an ardent death penalty supporter, having presided over more than 130 executions during his tenure as Texas governor.
It’s among the myriad reasons observers and experts doubt the effort to free Ryan will be successful, pointing to Bush’s general reluctance so far to use his clemency powers and a lack of political angles that would seem to make Ryan fit as an exception.
“I think it’s a long shot for a couple reasons,” said Dan Kobil, a law professor at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, who studies executive clemency. “One, he hasn’t served that much of his sentence.
“He doesn’t have the personal or the political connection with Bush that Scooter Libby had.” […]
“I don’t think Bush is going to do it because I simply don’t think he’ll want to do it. What’s in it for him?” said [Paul Green], director of Roosevelt University’s School of Policy Studies. “If there’s no political motive, it’s tough to figure out what Bush would do. There’s no, in my thinking, logic to any of this.”
Federal sentences are truer, but even when the evidence is overwhelming, as in the case of former Gov. George Ryan, judges are reluctant to hit elected officials with a maximum sentence. That’s why Ryan got a 6 1 / 2 - year term instead of the 10 years sought by federal prosecutors.
In the eyes of judges and lawmakers, corrupt government officials aren’t as bad as street criminals who rape, beat and murder people.
I contend their crimes are far worse. The damage they inflict on society is more widespread and longer lasting than any harm done by a violent criminal.
Indeed, if all the victims at a public corruption trial were allowed to testify at sentencing the line would stretch from Springfield to Chicago.
A West Side alderman is urging President Bush to pardon Larry Bloom, the City Council’s self-proclaimed “Mr. Clean” who got down in the mud with an undercover FBI mole.
Bloom, a former 5th Ward alderman, pleaded guilty in 1998 to a single felony tax charge stemming from the Operation Silver Shovel corruption probe. He served six months at the federal prison camp in Oxford, Wis., before being released on Nov. 1, 1999.
Now Ald. Ed Smith (28th) is urging President Bush to “expunge” Bloom’s conviction with a pardon.
“He committed a crime. He paid his dues. He got brought down. But he has the ability and the heart to be very productive and really help people. Why not let him do that?” Smith said.
* Related…
* For Sen. Durbin, triumph and tragedy - A senator at the top of his career. A father at the depths of his grief. A man at a crossroads.
* Here’s a great example of how screwed up the replacement process is for President-Elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Late last month, Congresscritter Luis Gutierrez said he was out of the running because he only wanted the slot for two years…
Gutierrez met with Gov. Blagojevich and told the governor he would like to be a “caretaker” senator for the next two years working to get comprehensive immigration reform passed in the Senate instead of fund-raising to get re-elected to the Senate in 2010, Gutierrez said.
But Blagojevich said he was looking for someone who wanted the post long-term, Gutierrez said. “It’s basically over — unless he calls me back,” Gutierrez said.
* Lynn Sweet talked to His Eminence by phone yesterday and Gov. Blagojevich said Gutierrez was mistaken…
“Not a deal-breaker,” the governor said. While Blagojevich has a strong preference to pick someone who will try to keep the seat, he said if he found “the right person,” it “wouldn’t necessarily preclude him or her from being the choice.”
Maybe he was just telling Gutierrez that Luis wasn’t “the right person,” or maybe the governor changed his mind, or maybe Gutierrez misunderstood, or maybe we can’t believe anything. I lean towards the latter.
* Sen. Dick Durbin disclosed recently that when he finally spoke with Blagojevich, the governor mentioned about 20 possible appointees. That’s a long list, and anybody could be on it, which is one reason why I cracked that joke to Laura Washington at Thom Serafin’s party last week…
The joker is wild. The joker, aka Gov. Blagojevich, is at the center of the state’s hottest political adventure. Last week, amid the chattering din at political operative Thom Serafin’s holiday soiree, I put the question of the season to Rich Miller: “Who will Blagojevich anoint as Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate replacement?”
“Who knows?” replied the Springfield wise man who runs the Capitol Fax news service. “Maybe you.”
Gasp. Seriously, Rich.
“Who knows? Who knows? Who knows?”
So I ran down just a few choice names out of the many in the hopper: Davis, Schakowsky, Gutierrez, Madigan, Duckworth, Chico, Jackson, Giannoulias, Jones, Raoul, Peters, Collins, Seals, Pritzker . . .
Who knows, who knows, who knows?
Miller, who has expertly skewered Blago’s missteps for years, knows that this joker is wild, unpredictable and having a ball. Illinois may be in an economic meltdown, and the feds may be hovering, but the governor is enjoying the speculation spotlight. He’s taking calls and dangling names. In one brief chat with U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, the gov tossed around 20 possibilities.
Who knows?
* What I also tried to explain to Washington was that the governor has not acted rationally for a very long while. To those, including myself, who have said in the past that the governor would make a choice which is in his best interest, I now say: How can a six-year governor with a 13 percent job approval rating truly understand what’s in his best political interest?
In a phone interview, I asked Blagojevich if he considered the vacancy an African-American seat. “I think it is a factor of a great deal of weight in my mind but it is not the only factor or the only consideration, and somebody could be the next Barack Obama who happens not to be the African American, and that person would be hard not to make a U.S. senator.”
There is no “next Barack Obama” in Illinois. He’s one of a kind.
“it would be very good if all the factors converged and if an African-American candidate would fit that bill . . . and that certainly would be the best of all worlds, and that’s possible, but that by itself is not the only consideration.”
Clear?
* But the race factor is heating up as an issue. Bobby Rush attended a press conference this week and laid down the gauntlet…
Rush said it would be a “national disgrace” if Obama’s seat were not filled by an African American.
* There are plenty who say that African-Americans shouldn’t view this as a “black seat.” That has some weight in local politics, but there are no other African-Americans in the US Senate right now, so it is a legitimate national concern.
The problem is whom should Blagojevich pick? Black politicians seem pretty united in the view that there should be an African-American replacement…
“We need someone there that’s going to represent us and have a voice,” said State Rep. Mary Flowers, (D) Chicago.
“We think we ought to replace one with one. And so that is our request,” said Jerry Butler, Cook Co. Commissioner.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) is waging an overt drive. I asked Blagojevich what he thought of Jackson’s public campaign.
Blagojevich offered a response I took as lukewarm, but I may be reading too much into his measured comments.
“He’s got a right to do it,” Blagojevich said, “and he obviously believes in himself as a candidate for the United States Senate and his public campaign is, you know, something he obviously believes appropriate and helpful, and all power to him.”
It’s quite a spectacle. Perhaps Laura Washington would be the best choice after all, but I’m sticking with Bill.
