Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi can stop clucking now. For the last three
years, Democratic leaders cheered GOP ethics woes. Dean accused
Republicans of making "their culture of corruption the norm." Pelosi
touted cleanliness as a liberal virtue. But with the eye-popping
pay-for-play and bribery case against Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod
Blagojevich topping a year of nationwide Democratic scandals, the
corruption chickens are coming home to roost.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald called the breadth and depth of
charges against Blagojevich and his Democratic Chief of Staff John
Harris "staggering." That's an understatement. Anything that breathed
was a potential shakedown target. It's the Chicago way. Democrat
Blago's so dirty he'd hit up a children's hospital for money. Oh, wait.
He's accused of doing that, too.
Democrat Blago allegedly conspired to use his power to appoint
President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat as a bargaining chip
for financial payment. He explored trading on that authority for an
appointment as Health and Human Services secretary or as an ambassador
or for installment in a cushy union position. (He discussed his trading
scheme with an unnamed "SEIU (Service Employees International Union)
official" and unnamed "various consultants" in Washington.)
According to the criminal complaint released yesterday, he also tried
to leverage his influence over the sale of Wrigley Field (owned by
Tribune media company) in an attempt to get Chicago Tribune editorial
writers who called for his impeachment fired -- which illustrates the
very perils of media/government entanglements I warned about in my
newspaper bailout column last week. His wife, Patricia Blagojevich, was
apparently in on the thuggery, too. Taking a break from her first lady
duties advocating "on behalf of women and children," she is heard in
taped discussions about the Chicago Tribune/Wrigley Field deal telling
a governor's aide "to hold up that f**king Cubs sh*t. … F**k
them."
Pelosi, champion of women as political cleaner-uppers, was unavailable for comment.
Fitzgerald says President-elect Obama was not implicated in the
plethora of charges against Democrats Blago and Harris. The national
media went out of their way to absolve him, too. But declaring Team
Obama's hands clean -- especially with Blago crony and indicted Obama
donor Tony Rezko in the middle of it all -- is premature. (And if
you're wondering why I keep putting "Democrat" in front of the accused
corruptocrats, it's because the mainstream newspapers can't seem to
remember to identify their party prominently the way they do when
Republicans are nabbed.)
Chicago's Fox affiliate reports that Obama Chief of Staff and Chicago
hometown heavy Rahm Emanuel was the catalyst for the Blago takedown and
suggests Rahm-bo tipped off the feds. If so, this raises more questions
than it answers about who on the transition team may have talked to
Blago and his shakedown artists about what and when. Needless to say,
if it were the Republican Bush administration tied to the Blago bust,
the White House press corps would be frothing like a pack of Michael
Vick's pit bulls.
Democrats and the media can no longer rest on the old rationalization
that Blago is an exception to the "we're cleaner than thou" rule. 2008
was the year of Democratic Reps. William "Cold Cash" Jefferson, Charlie
"Sweetheart Deals" Rangel, and former Detroit Mayor Kwame "Text Me"
Kilpatrick. It was the year Democratic Massachusetts State Senator
Dianne Wilkerson got caught stuffing bribes from an FBI informant down
her shirt. It was the year 12 Democratic leaders and staffers in
Pennsylvania's state Capitol were stung in a massive corruption scandal
involving cash, sex and abuse of public office. And it was the year of
multimillion-dollar embezzlement scandals at Democratic satellite
offices of ACORN and the SEIU.
The Democrats have met the culture of corruption, and it looks like it
ain't just elephants among the jackasses soiling public office.
