In case you were wondering who was trying to buy Obama's Senate seat, that would be Jesse Jackson, Jr. Yes, the son of the great racial shakedown artist himself. There is some question on whether or not Jackson knew the full extent of the extortion going on here, but it's unlikely he was completely in the dark, too. Anyway, Patrick Fitzgerald called the whole mess a 'political corruption crime spree' and an FBI agent of Illinois at the presser, "If it isn't the most corrupt state in the United States, it's certainly one hell of a competitor." They made very clear to specify that there was no connection between Blago and Obama, but that question is very much up in the air. We have no further to look than Obama's own top adviser, David Axelrod:
Shortly after President-elect Obama said this afternoon that he had had "no contact" with Gov. Rod Blagojevich regarding his vacant Senate seat, it was reported that Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said last month in a televised interview that Obama has "talked with the governor."
In a statement released tonight, Axelrod took it back. "I was mistaken when I told an interviewer last month that the President-elect has spoken directly to Governor Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy," Axelrod said. "They did not then or at any time discuss the subject."
Jake Tapper is proving himself to be far more competent than the rest of the media because he was the one who put those two statements together and raised the specter of fishy business. Nice catch, Tapper...better upgrade your home security system. I wonder if there will be any unauthorized records searches on Tapper like there were on Joe the Plumber?
Nevertheless, we push on. One obvious question is why the investigation was cut short. Both Rush Limbaugh and Byron York have looked into this, prompting others to check things out. Some of the thought processes from Rush's view:
Let me give you my take on this, because my take on Obama's involvement here is multifaceted. Now, Rick Moran, in fact, at American Thinker has opined on this as well. He says if you think Obama was stupid enough to get involved in these kinds of dealings with Blagojevich, you can forget about it. "Obama likely already knew of Blagojevich's incredible corruption because of his relationship with Tony Rezko, the convicted Chicago political fixer who was a valuable associate of both Obama and Blagojevich. In fact, it came out at Rezko's trial that Obama was present during a couple of meetings where Rezko alluded to his "pay for play" scheme that has now ensnared the governor. Obama no doubt gave Blagojevich a wide berth after learning about how interested the prosecutors were in the governor's wheeling and dealing," and took his own choice for the Senate seat out of the running.
Now, this stuff against Blagojevich, people are beginning to speculate now that he may be genuinely insane, or not mentally stable, 'cause he knew all this was going on, and yet he continued to offer the seat, first to the union, and, by the way, all these people are intimately involved with Obama, a union that helped get him elected, an offshoot of the union that takes Obama's favorite word and makes it a title of the organization, Change to Win or whatever it is. Blagojevich did say that he was willing to appoint himself. Quote, "If I don't get what I want, and I'm not satisfied with it, then I'll just take the Senate seat myself." This was said in recorded conversations, according to the prosecutors. And then of course he tries to illegally withhold some state funding from the Tribune Company in an effort to get them to fire the editorial board at the paper. Now, that's just silly. To think that that was going to happen, what must your mental state be? Not that we wouldn't love to see it, don't misunderstand. But what does your mental state have to be to think that you're going to be able to pull that kind of thing off? And then you're out there selling a Senate seat to anybody who will talk to you about it while you know that they're investigating you! Now, I find it hard to believe that once Obama found out this was going on he had anything to do with it. I think he backed off, I think he tried to keep his distance, and he pulled his pick out of the running, and we think that's Valerie Jarrett. But I want to go back to something that's, to me, quite interesting. I want to go back to a Pat Fitzgerald bite, ladies and gentlemen, from this morning in Chicago at his press conference. Listen carefully to these remarks.
FITZGERALD: We have a Senate seat that seemed to be as recently as days ago auctioned off, you know, to the highest bidder for campaign contributions, and Governor Blagojevich own words on the tape of the bug that's set forth in the complaint, talked about selling this like a sports agent. So we stepped in for a number of reasons, basically as I said before we are in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we want it to stop.
RUSH: All right, we're in the middle of a corruption crime spree and I want it to stop. Now, I, my friends, am not in law enforcement, but I have a question about this. If you see crimes being committed, if you are in the middle of a crime spree -- and these are nonviolent crimes, we're talking white collar corruption here -- you know for a fact because of what you already know that more people will be drawn into the crime spree, especially in the white-collar area. Why do you blow the whistle and shut it down? ... Now, this causes little neurons to start firing in my fertile frontal lobe. I don't know. It seems this was done to stop one thing, and that is Blagojevich making this Senate appointment. It seems like they moved in to stop this Senate appointment scandal. And why would they do that? Why would they stop the investigation? There's a crime spree going on. Why would Fitzgerald, or whoever's running him, move in and shut this thing down now? Just because they didn't want this corrupt individual, like we've never had one before in Chicago, naming Obama's replacement? Why would that be? Why would they want to stop this guy when there's a crime spree going on? Fitzgerald's words, we are in the middle of a corruption crime spree. We want it to stop. What's the rest of that sentence? We want it to stop before it ensnares X, Y, and Z, and who the hell knows who else.
Now, this stuff against Blagojevich, people are beginning to speculate now that he may be genuinely insane, or not mentally stable, 'cause he knew all this was going on, and yet he continued to offer the seat, first to the union, and, by the way, all these people are intimately involved with Obama, a union that helped get him elected, an offshoot of the union that takes Obama's favorite word and makes it a title of the organization, Change to Win or whatever it is. Blagojevich did say that he was willing to appoint himself. Quote, "If I don't get what I want, and I'm not satisfied with it, then I'll just take the Senate seat myself." This was said in recorded conversations, according to the prosecutors. And then of course he tries to illegally withhold some state funding from the Tribune Company in an effort to get them to fire the editorial board at the paper. Now, that's just silly. To think that that was going to happen, what must your mental state be? Not that we wouldn't love to see it, don't misunderstand. But what does your mental state have to be to think that you're going to be able to pull that kind of thing off? And then you're out there selling a Senate seat to anybody who will talk to you about it while you know that they're investigating you! Now, I find it hard to believe that once Obama found out this was going on he had anything to do with it. I think he backed off, I think he tried to keep his distance, and he pulled his pick out of the running, and we think that's Valerie Jarrett. But I want to go back to something that's, to me, quite interesting. I want to go back to a Pat Fitzgerald bite, ladies and gentlemen, from this morning in Chicago at his press conference. Listen carefully to these remarks.
FITZGERALD: We have a Senate seat that seemed to be as recently as days ago auctioned off, you know, to the highest bidder for campaign contributions, and Governor Blagojevich own words on the tape of the bug that's set forth in the complaint, talked about selling this like a sports agent. So we stepped in for a number of reasons, basically as I said before we are in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we want it to stop.
RUSH: All right, we're in the middle of a corruption crime spree and I want it to stop. Now, I, my friends, am not in law enforcement, but I have a question about this. If you see crimes being committed, if you are in the middle of a crime spree -- and these are nonviolent crimes, we're talking white collar corruption here -- you know for a fact because of what you already know that more people will be drawn into the crime spree, especially in the white-collar area. Why do you blow the whistle and shut it down? ... Now, this causes little neurons to start firing in my fertile frontal lobe. I don't know. It seems this was done to stop one thing, and that is Blagojevich making this Senate appointment. It seems like they moved in to stop this Senate appointment scandal. And why would they do that? Why would they stop the investigation? There's a crime spree going on. Why would Fitzgerald, or whoever's running him, move in and shut this thing down now? Just because they didn't want this corrupt individual, like we've never had one before in Chicago, naming Obama's replacement? Why would that be? Why would they want to stop this guy when there's a crime spree going on? Fitzgerald's words, we are in the middle of a corruption crime spree. We want it to stop. What's the rest of that sentence? We want it to stop before it ensnares X, Y, and Z, and who the hell knows who else.
This does look a bit odd, doesn't it? Here's Rick Moran's article that rush mentioned above, in case you're interested. The overriding question is: how high does this go, and will Fitzgerald climb all the way to the top of the heap? We'll see.
So, what would the motivation be for all of this madness? The old truthism always applies in politics: follow the money. One idea is that Blago was maneuvering to get himself set up as an infrastructure czar, controlling vast amounts of government money. Another is simple union political machinery:
Unions expect the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress to pass the Employee Free Choice Act within the first few months of 2009. They claim that employees can't organize effectively with a requirement to use secret ballots in organizing elections. After this revelation from the indictment against Rod Blagojevich, the largest public-sector union in the US certainly looks untrustworthy with that kind of power...
The largest public-sector union — the one that works most closely with governments — has officials in it that see nothing wrong with bribing public officials to get their preferred Senate candidate into office through a corrupt appointment. If Blago's arrest reflects poorly on Illinois state government, then the involvement of this SEIU official says volumes about the way workers there and everywhere else get represented and organized, as well as how their union dues get used.
If they're willing to flat-out bribe a governor, they'll be happy to use Card Check to intimidate workers into unions and increase their dues. They'll then use those dues to buy more politicians, just as we see in this indictment. Card Check is nothing more than a Trojan horse to fund corruption and abuse on the largest possible scale.
The largest public-sector union — the one that works most closely with governments — has officials in it that see nothing wrong with bribing public officials to get their preferred Senate candidate into office through a corrupt appointment. If Blago's arrest reflects poorly on Illinois state government, then the involvement of this SEIU official says volumes about the way workers there and everywhere else get represented and organized, as well as how their union dues get used.
If they're willing to flat-out bribe a governor, they'll be happy to use Card Check to intimidate workers into unions and increase their dues. They'll then use those dues to buy more politicians, just as we see in this indictment. Card Check is nothing more than a Trojan horse to fund corruption and abuse on the largest possible scale.
The union angle is not a surprise - I've blogged before about how the unions spent big money to get Obama elected so he would push through their strong-arm card check wishes.
The real question is: was Obama involved in this, and if so, how deeply? Obama says no, but Axelrod threw a wrench into the works as you read above. Even more interesting, the facts of the case also lead one to believe there is at least some element of involvement. For the best summary of the entire timeline of this mess, check out the Volokh Conspiracy's coverage. Their bottom line: pretty much everything fits except Obama's denial that he knew nothing about it.
We'll see where this goes. I'm certain this will be a story with legs, and we'll be following it for some time. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama remained untouched regardless of his level of involvement, for various reasons. He is playing for keeps and has the upper hand on Blago, and has now thrown his former ally under the bus. I'm sure this must suck for the disgraced Governor, but he's got a lot of company, including Rev. Wright, Rev. Pfleger, Obama's grandmother, and just about everyone else who has ever become inconvenient to the Great Uniter, Barack the Obamessiah.
It's crowded under there already, but I'm sure there's always room for more. After all, Obama hasn't even taken office yet - we've got at least four years of inconvenience to go!
There's my two cents.
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