Selling license plates should be next for Blago

Note to Rod Blagojevich: If at first you don’t succeed, then just keep trying.
So you weren’t able to sell President Barack Obama’s senate seat to the highest bidder as you had hoped to. No big deal.
There’s always make-up or the manufacturer of the hair-care product you use to maintain that impeccable coif.
Better yet, how about selling license plates? This way you don’t have to risk committing a felony. And even if you did, what would it matter? You’d already be doing the time.
Considering the level and severity of the allegations against Blago—not to mention the empirical evidence stacking up against him—his next stop after impeachment ought to be a federal court room to face trial on charges of corruption and conspiracy to commit election fraud.
The Illinois legislature did the right thing impeaching and removing the democratic governor from office. The amount of incriminating evidence against him—including months of taped telephone conversations—is more than enough to warrant a vote of no confidence in the chief executive of Illinois. And it should be sufficient to bring about a criminal indictment as well. All that’s left unanswered is whether or not the Illinois politicians have the cojones to take their grand-standing to another level by condemning one of their own to a criminal court and possibly prison.
Indeed, how many of the state’s powerbrokers, including the attorney-general, might have skeletons in their closets, blood on their hands, and mud on their shoes that they wouldn’t want Blago exposing in a court of law? I mean, really, what’s to stop the now-disgraced former democratic governor? He’s got nothing more to lose. And besides, if he’s going down, then to hell with them all, he’ll take as many down with him as he can.
If Blago’s actions are taken beyond impeachment—and I think they should be—then get ready for the biggest circus show since the Ringling Bros., because you will see grand-standing, high-wire acts, juggling and political acrobatics like you’ve never seen before. Who knows? The whole rotten political system in Chicago could be exposed and brought to ruin thanks to its sacrificial lamb, Rod Blagojevich.
And if I were President Barack Obama, his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, or any other high-profile politician from Chicago, I’d better warm up the shredder and start paying off the right people now to keep their mouths shut or to shut the mouths of potential snitches. I’m not saying that the President is corrupt. But, then again, how do we really know he is or isn’t?
Up until last Thanksgiving, Blago was a hero of the people. He was looked up to, admired, and probably even worshipped the way Obama has been. Now, of course, Blago’s no better than a piece of disguarded gristle that has been chewed up, spit out, and generally rejected by the body.
And yet, the fallen Blago is not too terribly different from Obama.
Both appealed to the masses as candidates for the people. Both campaigned as harbingers of change, champions of social justice, and self-righteous opponents of political corruption. Both are young, relatively good looking, and ambitious. Both are Illinois state democrats. And both are from Chicago, which has a very long, dark history of molding ordinary people into corrupt politicians.
From former U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski to the Governors Ryan and now Blagojevich, the Windy City has a pretty poor track record of producing high-quality politicians.
Kind of makes one wonder about President Obama, Chief of Staff Emanuel, and others in the new White House Administration who hail from the city that Al Capone built. What skeletons are lurking in their closets, and who will be the unwitting stooges that open them?
I have yet to see a politician without dirt under his or her fingernails—especially one from a big city like Chicago.
The bottom line is that Blago isn’t alone in his corruption. He isn’t the first—and he certainly won’t be the last—politician caught doing something illegal. He has sufficient company.
Politicians seem drawn to corruption the way flies are to a pile of … well, you know.
There’s former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned amidst a prostitution scandal; former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, D-LA, who was caught on tape accepting a bribe and found with $90,000 in his freezer; former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-AK, who was convicted of felony corruption stemming from unproper political gifts he received; U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-ID, who illegally solicited gay sex in an airport public restroom; former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-FL, who resigned from Congress after he was caught sending sexually explicit emails and instant messages to teen-aged Congressional pages; Rostenkowski, who was convicted of mail fraud while serving as a democratic Congressman from Chicago at the time; and, of course, former democratic President Bill Clinton, who was found guilty of committing perjury in front of a federal grand jury as part of a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against him and was impeached by the House of Representatives.
There are so many other examples, of course, the list of which would be so long it would literally take an act of Congress to name them all here.
Speaking of an act of Congress, I have one: Why don’t We The People insist on a dress code for all elected federal officials? I’m thinking orange and yellow jumpsuits with a serial number across the chest and the acronyms “USC” or “USS” printed on the back—denoting, of course, U.S. House and U.S. Senate. Senators can be orange and representatives yellow, while the president and vice-president wear denim blue.
This would be one way to keep our politicians honest. They’d be dressing the part and they’d have no choice in the matter.