No

by Linda Sunkle-Pierucki

Created on: May 18, 2009

A hundred years ago, newspapers used to print serialized fiction on a weekly basis. That way, if there wasn't much news in Podunk that week, everybody still bought the paper to see if Arnold Trueheart managed to save the damsel in distress from her latest difficulties. Watching the serialized tragic-comedy being played out in Springfield and Chicago, one has to wonder if this isn't a ploy to increase the circulation of suffering print media in a down economy. Unfortunately for Illinois and the nation, it's deadly serious.

The reason much of the country can't figure this Illinois political thing out is that you have to live in a big city to understand patronage politics. Small cities seldom manage to approach this level of daily graft and corruption; it takes many years and many willing crooks to make it to the Big Time the way the Illinois political machine has. Small cities simply don't employ enough people to make it attractive or profitable. For the same reason, much of the country doesn't see why the political shenanigans going on in Illinois have major national impact.

The latest episode involves the Officials and Employees Termination Act of 2009 being pushed by House Speaker Michael Madigan. This bill proposes to terminate 3,000 employees and political appointments who obtained their jobs under disgraced Governors Ryan and Blagojevich. For those who may have missed an episode or two, you need only know that Illinois and Chicago leadership regularly ends their careers in a Federal jail cell someplace and business in the State never misses a beat. The Chicago Machine perfected the system of resurrecting the dead to vote multiple times. No one really knows if their vote was actually counted or if they were outvoted by dear departed Aunt Tillie; therefore, no one is quite sure they actually have representation that is responsive to their needs or the needs of whomever dug up the dead. Wannabe movers and shakers quickly fall into line, knowing they'll never climb the ladder without the "right" people behind them. If this seems a bit foggy in the way of an explanation, just read up on the history of Tammany Hall in New York City and realize it took the Federal Govt almost 150 years to break the stranglehold they had on city and state politics.

There's little point in rehashing the indictable sins of Gov Ryan, Gov Blagojevich or even the famed Daley family. All those stories do is prove that corruption in Chicago and in Illinois is truly bi-partisan: Republican or Democrat, you play ball with "the system" or you get thrown off the court. Madigan's plan to toss all of Ryan and Blagojevich's appointments out of the ring sounds good on the surface. It's an admission that many of those jobs were patronage-based: cleaning out the den of thieves, so to speak, would sweep away the taint of politically-inspired appointments and fresh air would, once again, blow through Springfield-at least that's how the rhetoric goes.

There's a problem with this type of simplified thinking and one doesn't have to go far into the archives to uncover it: remember Raymond Burris! When Blagojevich was threatened with indictment and before he was impeached as governor, he had the legal right to appoint Obama's successor to the recently vacated Senate seat. The anguished and sanctimonious cries arising in the Illinois General Assembly made one thing clear: Blagojevich was right with his assessment that "This seat is <bleeping> golden!" It wasn't so much that Burris had done anything wrong, or that he wasn't eligible to hold the position: it was that he apparently wasn't high enough up the ladder or indebted enough to someone in power to have the seat. He was too poor, too honest or too dumb.

The ruling party in the General Assembly had hit the jackpot, losing several prominent party players to Washington. And they didn't want to give up the treasured Senate seat for nothing. As Blagojevich said, the position was golden. Many well-known names wanted the seat-names we'd all recognize on the nightly news. But the only way the Illinois General Assembly could stop him would be to order an election for the open seat-and, without the proper time to prep the machine and grease the palms, they were afraid an election might allow a Republican to win. That couldn't be risked! And that's patronage-at its highest levels. Political cynics all had a good laugh as the big-haired boy governor outwitted the entire Democratic Party-and they couldn't do a thing!

There are some folks that have their eye on both Burris' seat and the governorship-and those people are not only "connected", they're related! In the incestuous world of Illinois politics, no one even batts an eye at the fact that Speaker Mike's daughter, Lisa Madigan, is being seriously considered for one or the other of those seats. No one is suggesting Attorney General Madigan isn't doing a good job or that she isn't qualified for either seat. But Daddy Mike does love his little girl and guaranteeing her the position she wants hinges on having a strong party machine providing the funds and the voting blocks. In terms of "getting out the vote" and "campaign contributions", those 3000 patronage positions are again, <bleeping> golden! Many of those 3000 employees have in turn hired people who owe loyalty-and their job-to those 3000 people. And those folks' loyalty is suspect: this makes a huge, whopping sector of the Machine untrustworthy and probably unreliable to raise either the money or the votes needed to assure any election "goes the right way". Especially in this tough economy, those 3000 positions can be parlayed into tremendous influence and cash donations. And it's not only the governor or Senate seat: other Illinois seats must be filled, like Rahm Emmanuel's seat in the Illinois House.

Anyone who doesn't see the national significance of this has apparently forgotten where the White House Gang came from. Blagojevich's impeachment and indictment created a spectacle of cabinet members' side-stepping and double-shuffling unsurpassed in American history. Every one of those folks climbed the Illinois political ladder the same way Blagojevich, and Burris and Mike Madigan did. Only a fool would believe that all of this can go on year after year, yet none of these folks saw it, knew it or participated in it. Only a complicit media prevented proverbial heads from rolling down the Capitol steps.

Preventing the General Assembly from removing these 3000 people won't end the patronage system. It simply makes it less likely that it will work to the benefit of Illinois Democrats. Leave them where they're at-unless someone gets the goods on an individual dead to rights. Many of them may well be entitled to those seats based on their merits - there is no way to know at this point. They probably can't be any worse than the group that replaces them-and it may assure, for once, that Machine politics has to actually make an effort to represent the voters. It should be interesting. Let them squirm-at every level.

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