Pressure increased on newly-appointed Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) to resign today as more revelations surfaced and his own story changed once again. He should heed the calls and get out. The Senator is an embarrassment to the state and a disgrace to the office.
You can read the latest on this in his hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune. You can read another Tribune story on Illinois Governor Pat Quinn's blunt call for Burris to resign here.
At first Senate Democrats vowed they would not seat anyone appointed by soon-to-be-impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich. But Burris received outspoken support from African-American politicians. And he said he'd had no contact except one call from the Blagojevich camp. He said there was no mention of money because "he didn't have any."
Now it seems there were many calls between Burris and the Blagojevich camp. Several of these were to Ron Blagojevich, the former governor's brother. Burris then admitted he did try to raise some funds for the falling governor, but had not been successful. There have been calls in the Illinois Legislature to charge Burris with perjury.
Governor Pat Quinn, who succeeded Blagojevich after his impeachment and removal, was direct after these revelations. "I would call on my good friend, Sen. Roland Burris, to put the interests of the people of the Land of Lincoln first and foremost, ahead of his own, and step aside and resign from his office." He called Burris' acceptance of the appointment a "giant mistake." Burris' chief of staff Darrell Thompson has abruptly left the senator's service.
More ominous news came from Robert Gibbs, President Obama's Press Secretary. Saying the appointment was approved based on statements and testimony to the impeachment committee, Gibbs mentioned, "It has been reported extensively some of the stories seem at variance with what's happened and that the president is supportive of an investigation that would get some full story out." He advised, "I think it might be important for Sen. Burris to take some time this weekend to either correct what has been said and certainly think of what lays in his future." If that sounds like a threat I believe that is because it is so intended.
Given the thrust of his campaign and the delicate complexity of the issues ahead of him Obama needs honesty and openness in his old Senate seat. No taint can be tolerated. There is little doubt that the days of Roland Burris in the U.S. Senate are now numbered. His ambition for the position led him to compromise his ethics to get it. That will now cost him what he so prized, as it should. The only question is whether he will spare himself and Obama added embarrassment or whether he will go down in a blaze of scandal. One can only hope for the former, though given the record of his recent judgment the latter unfortunately remains a real possibility.
Showing posts with label Rod Blagojevich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rod Blagojevich. Show all posts
Friday, February 20, 2009
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The Bigger Picture
Reader Tom sent me an article by Frank Rich today. The New York Times op-ed luminary published a piece called "Two Cheers for Rod Blagojevich" in the December 13 edition of the paper of record. You can go to it here.
As the Times intro to the piece says, as bad as the corrupt Illinois pol is, he is but "a timely national whipping boy for an era of corruption and profound lack of accountability." Yes, the guy is a scum, if not literally crazy. They should impeach the rat and then throw the criminal book at him. But it's rather like Michael Vick or Scott Peterson. Kill some dogs or your pregnant wife or rob a liquor store and people are incensed. Kill thousands and squander billions and it somehow provokes less of a reaction. As Stalin once said, "Kill one person and it is murder. Kill a million and it is a statistic."
Blagojevich is a figure we can get at, unlike the seemingly invulnerable authors of the disasters that now place the national weal in peril. Where is our sense of proportion? As Rich points out, "Blagojevich's alleged crimes pale next to the larger scandals of Washington and Wall Street. Yet those who promoted and condoned the twin national catastrophes of reckless war in Iraq and reckless gambling in our markets have largely escaped the accountability that now seems to await the Chicago punk nabbed by the United States Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald."
George W. Bush neglected his duty to get the enemy who attacked us and used fear of it as a pretext to start an unrelated war against a different power. He justified it with a web of intentional deceit. He still even this week blames "the intelligence," ignoring the accounts of former administration insiders that attacking Iraq was on the agenda in the first month of the Bush presidency. As a result, thousand of Americans are dead, tens of thousands are maimed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead and at least $600 billion of our money is gone. These have all become statistics. And the original enemy still plots, schemes and kills. Yet the votes are not there for impeachment. It would be inconvenient.
Stealing elections, abridging the Constitution, torturing prisoners, abrogating treaties, spying on citizens without cause, politicizing the Justice Department, falsifying scientific research, selectively revealing classified information and identities for political gain while keeping the basic workings of government secret - these are the kinds of practices for which tin-pot dictators from third world countries eventually wind up getting hauled in front of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. For the "greatest democracy on earth" they are business as usual if the offenders work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The financial malefactors will likely suffer no real consequences either. One would think the reputations of people like Phil Gramm, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan would be ruined. Instead, the damage they caused was so severe it became imperative for the people at large to come to the rescue of the institutions they destroyed in order to prevent the total crashing of the entire economy. Instead of being held to account they are, in effect, being rewarded. Make sure to see Rich's article for a fuller list of the miscreants. The bottom line is that this has got to stop. Some people need to go to jail.
We cannot afford this kind of dishonesty and self-delusion any longer, either morally or financially. In 1945 the United States stood like a colossus over a ruined world. It accounted for 50% of the world economy and alone possessed the ultimate military weapon. Those days are long gone. Institutions with the power to misdirect our entire political system or the wealth to short-circuit our entire financial edifice have to be watched like a hawk and held to account. Gov. Blagojevich is a useful example, and the example should not stop with him.
As the Times intro to the piece says, as bad as the corrupt Illinois pol is, he is but "a timely national whipping boy for an era of corruption and profound lack of accountability." Yes, the guy is a scum, if not literally crazy. They should impeach the rat and then throw the criminal book at him. But it's rather like Michael Vick or Scott Peterson. Kill some dogs or your pregnant wife or rob a liquor store and people are incensed. Kill thousands and squander billions and it somehow provokes less of a reaction. As Stalin once said, "Kill one person and it is murder. Kill a million and it is a statistic."
Blagojevich is a figure we can get at, unlike the seemingly invulnerable authors of the disasters that now place the national weal in peril. Where is our sense of proportion? As Rich points out, "Blagojevich's alleged crimes pale next to the larger scandals of Washington and Wall Street. Yet those who promoted and condoned the twin national catastrophes of reckless war in Iraq and reckless gambling in our markets have largely escaped the accountability that now seems to await the Chicago punk nabbed by the United States Attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald."
George W. Bush neglected his duty to get the enemy who attacked us and used fear of it as a pretext to start an unrelated war against a different power. He justified it with a web of intentional deceit. He still even this week blames "the intelligence," ignoring the accounts of former administration insiders that attacking Iraq was on the agenda in the first month of the Bush presidency. As a result, thousand of Americans are dead, tens of thousands are maimed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead and at least $600 billion of our money is gone. These have all become statistics. And the original enemy still plots, schemes and kills. Yet the votes are not there for impeachment. It would be inconvenient.
Stealing elections, abridging the Constitution, torturing prisoners, abrogating treaties, spying on citizens without cause, politicizing the Justice Department, falsifying scientific research, selectively revealing classified information and identities for political gain while keeping the basic workings of government secret - these are the kinds of practices for which tin-pot dictators from third world countries eventually wind up getting hauled in front of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. For the "greatest democracy on earth" they are business as usual if the offenders work at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
The financial malefactors will likely suffer no real consequences either. One would think the reputations of people like Phil Gramm, Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan would be ruined. Instead, the damage they caused was so severe it became imperative for the people at large to come to the rescue of the institutions they destroyed in order to prevent the total crashing of the entire economy. Instead of being held to account they are, in effect, being rewarded. Make sure to see Rich's article for a fuller list of the miscreants. The bottom line is that this has got to stop. Some people need to go to jail.
We cannot afford this kind of dishonesty and self-delusion any longer, either morally or financially. In 1945 the United States stood like a colossus over a ruined world. It accounted for 50% of the world economy and alone possessed the ultimate military weapon. Those days are long gone. Institutions with the power to misdirect our entire political system or the wealth to short-circuit our entire financial edifice have to be watched like a hawk and held to account. Gov. Blagojevich is a useful example, and the example should not stop with him.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Illinois Corruption Implications
The arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris on corruption charges this morning should serve to wipe out the perception of an ethics advantage Democrats have enjoyed since their successful 2006 congressional campaign against the "Republican culture of corruption." And though it should hurt his party, so far the scandal has only served to improve Barack Obama's personal stature on ethics.
In the run up to the 2006 election Republicans were at the center of a flurry of embarrassing corruption incidents. Scooter Libby, Tom Delay, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Larry Craig and Mark Foley headlined an all-star rogue's gallery that, combined with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's constitutional transgressions, badly tarnished the GOP's reputation that year. In conjunction with public disillusionment with the Iraq War, the result was the Democrats gaining the majority in both houses of congress for the first time in 12 years.
The Blagojevich scandal has broken right after the December 6 defeat of Democratic Louisiana congressman William Jefferson, who had been indicted for bribery in 2007 after a raid on his Capitol Hill office in 2006 found a wad of $90,000 in campaign cash.
As the soon-to-be party in power, the Democrats will be the ones primarily having to play defense on ethics, and expect the Republicans to quickly seize the initiative on the issue, particularly since Blagojevich hails from the same state as President-elect Barack Obama.
Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of Libby trial fame today announced the specific charges as mail and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit bribery in trying to sell his appointment to the Senate seat being vacated by Barack Obama to the highest bidder. The fraud charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years and the bribery charge 10. A Reuters report picked up by Yahoo News spells out the details. You can read it here.
So far, Barack Obama has come out of the incident on the moral high ground. Top former Republican strategist Ed Rollins comments on NPR that Obama receives high marks for refusing to deal. In the taped sessions Blagojevich rails against Obama for offering only "appreciation" should the governor appoint Obama's preferred choice, reputed to be Valerie Jarrett. See the NPR story here.
In fact, Obama may have indirectly spurred the urgency of Blagojevich's bribery efforts by acting to tighten up Illinois' ethics laws. A week before his first debate with John McCain and when he was under Republican attack for his associations, Obama called Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones and asked him to pass a law he had long backed, "banning the so-called pay-for-play system of influence peddling in Illinois." Jones, a Chicago Democratic power and Obama mentor, changed his position on the bill and got it passed 55-0. Blagojevich, who had also opposed it, could do nothing to stop it since his veto would have been overridden. Instead, as the charges read, he became frantic to extort what benefits he could for the appointment before the new law goes into effect on January 1. To see the New York Times story on this click here.
In the run up to the 2006 election Republicans were at the center of a flurry of embarrassing corruption incidents. Scooter Libby, Tom Delay, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Larry Craig and Mark Foley headlined an all-star rogue's gallery that, combined with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's constitutional transgressions, badly tarnished the GOP's reputation that year. In conjunction with public disillusionment with the Iraq War, the result was the Democrats gaining the majority in both houses of congress for the first time in 12 years.
The Blagojevich scandal has broken right after the December 6 defeat of Democratic Louisiana congressman William Jefferson, who had been indicted for bribery in 2007 after a raid on his Capitol Hill office in 2006 found a wad of $90,000 in campaign cash.
As the soon-to-be party in power, the Democrats will be the ones primarily having to play defense on ethics, and expect the Republicans to quickly seize the initiative on the issue, particularly since Blagojevich hails from the same state as President-elect Barack Obama.
Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of Libby trial fame today announced the specific charges as mail and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit bribery in trying to sell his appointment to the Senate seat being vacated by Barack Obama to the highest bidder. The fraud charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years and the bribery charge 10. A Reuters report picked up by Yahoo News spells out the details. You can read it here.
So far, Barack Obama has come out of the incident on the moral high ground. Top former Republican strategist Ed Rollins comments on NPR that Obama receives high marks for refusing to deal. In the taped sessions Blagojevich rails against Obama for offering only "appreciation" should the governor appoint Obama's preferred choice, reputed to be Valerie Jarrett. See the NPR story here.
In fact, Obama may have indirectly spurred the urgency of Blagojevich's bribery efforts by acting to tighten up Illinois' ethics laws. A week before his first debate with John McCain and when he was under Republican attack for his associations, Obama called Illinois State Senate President Emil Jones and asked him to pass a law he had long backed, "banning the so-called pay-for-play system of influence peddling in Illinois." Jones, a Chicago Democratic power and Obama mentor, changed his position on the bill and got it passed 55-0. Blagojevich, who had also opposed it, could do nothing to stop it since his veto would have been overridden. Instead, as the charges read, he became frantic to extort what benefits he could for the appointment before the new law goes into effect on January 1. To see the New York Times story on this click here.
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