Corrupt Governor Update, VIII

The Not-So Invisible Hand of the political marketplace.

In Illinois politics, the roaches are quick and they by-and-large know when to scuttle away back into the shadows.

But every once in a while the lights are snapped suddenly and unexpectedly on. And when that happens, you can sometimes capture a lovely little freeze-frame moment between the darkness-as-usual world of pay-to-play and the squirmy carapaces of startled "public servants" scrambling back under the government's floorboards.

One such moment looks something like this:

Dec. 17, 2008

By Eddie Baeb
Planned broadcast museum property for sale

(Crain’s) — The half-built structure in River North that was to be home to a splashy new Museum of Broadcast Communications has been put up for sale by the museum’s board of directors.

After being unable to raise enough private donations or secure a construction loan, the board voted last week to try to sell the site and half-built building, according to the museum’s founder and CEO, Bruce DuMont, a longtime broadcaster who hosts the syndicated radio show “Beyond the Beltway.”

Mr. DuMont announced the decision to sell with “deep regret” in a statement on the museum’s Web site. He also lashed out at Gov. Rod Blagojevich for not coming through on delivering millions in state funding that Mr. DuMont says the governor promised him three years ago.

“The failure of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to keep his $6-million promise to the Museum — and the economic downturn that followed that broken promise — has forced this decision,” Mr. DuMont says in the statement. “Much time and money has been lost due to the failure of the state to act. This is a very disappointing development.”
…

In the interest of full-enough disclosure, I have long had reservations about DuMont's program. On many of the broadcasts I've seen/heard, his politics -- very conservative -- appears to strongly inform his program's framing, which more often than not seems clearly drawn from the Fox New playbook, with "Liberal" guests often skewing timid or flighty, while "Conservative" guests are pulled (without on-air attribution) from our local reserves of tobacco/petroleum-industry-funded-"libertarian"-crackpots and "more tax cuts will solve everything"-goons.

Also, while I very strong antipathy for any of my tax dollars being earmarked for a Museum of Broadcast Communications under any circumstances, it is especially gagging that this promise would have been made while Illinois roads rot, bridges flake to dust and schools crumble.

That being said, DuMont got screwed here. Period.

All he did was accept in good faith a firm commitment from Governor Shakedown to fund a not-vital-but-not-unworthy project, and then break ground and begin construction based on that commitment. And once those plans were in motion, that’s when Blagojevich and his minions apparently decided to fuck with him, run him around and finally renege on their promise, all for what appears to have been the crassest of motives.

Leaving DuMont’s dream in shambles.

He will not be the first person who got jerked around and around and then slammed into a wall by some third-rate gummint orc with a corner office and a Napoleon-complex, and he won’t be the last.

He is, however, possibly unique in that he-who-got-run-over by the pay-to-play machine this time also has his own platform from which to strike back.

And if it is true that you should "never pick fights with anyone who buys ink by the barrel” then it is exponentially more true that you should really never cavalierly screw with and then kill the life-long dream of anyone who has a teevee camera, a radio show and a long-running political affairs program with a national audience.



Bwahahaha!

Nice job, Bruce.