Corrupt Ex-Governor Update

Milorad to begin the long walk towards the Big House.

Blagojevich, brother among six indicted
'Ryan was the minor leagues compared to this stuff'

April 3, 2009

BY NATASHA KORECKI, CHRIS FUSCO, DAVE MCKINNEY AND ABDON PALLASCH Staff Reporters

If true, it's a chilling tale of public corruption -- even by Illinois standards.

A federal indictment has lodged corruption charges against ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his brother Robert Blagojevich (inset). The indictment also names four co-defendants, two of which are former top aides and one is a prominent Downstate businessman.

Entering office on the heels of a major scandal by his predecessor, the now-ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich is accused of committing crooked acts in office before a jury was even seated in the federal corruption trial of former Gov. George Ryan.

According to a 75-page, wide-ranging federal indictment returned Thursday, Blagojevich, who won office by preaching reform and renewal, presided over a "criminal enterprise" during his six years as governor -- with the help of his older brother and others.

Robert Blagojevich, 53, a successful businessman from Nashville, was secretly recorded talking with his brother about how to land campaign cash in an alleged scheme to sell President Obama's then-vacant Senate seat. Now Robert Blagojevich could stand trial with his brother, who was arrested Dec. 9 but not indicted until Thursday.

The former governor is alleged to have used his office to try to make cash off of state appointments and state business in exchange for passing legislation and other official government actions.

"I'm saddened and hurt, but I am not surprised by the indictment," said Rod Blagojevich, who was vacationing in Disney World. "I am innocent. I now will fight in the courts to clear my name."

Blagojevich's indictment comes as George Ryan serves the second year of a 6½-year prison sentence for corruption.

"Ryan was the minor leagues compared to this stuff," said Patrick Collins, the former top prosecutor in the Ryan case. "That the trial was going on at the time makes it that much more brazen and egregious."

Blagojevich, 52, who faces significant prison time if convicted, is also accused of allowing those closest to him to have access and influence over his administration -- as long as they funneled campaign contributions or cash his way.

And after the feds asked about the allegations, he's accused of lying to them.
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This week Ex-Governor Shakedown got indicted for using his position to sell public office for personal power and private gain.

Last week, top Daley patronage lieutenant -- Al Sanchez -- was convicted of doing the same thing.

A few weeks before that, former Alderman Arenda "You want the alderman's support? You pay the alderman, you pay Arenda Troutman...And best of all, in the 20th Ward, everything's negotiable." Troutman was sentenced to a four year bit for, for, among other things:

"...taking $5,000 in cash -- with the expectation of another $10,000, along with $5,000 in campaign contributions -- in return for helping a "developer" convert 5730 S. Halsted into a mixed-use development. The developer actually was fictitious, and the go-between negotiating the deal was wearing a wire. Troutman also allegedly asked for a residential unit in that development in exchange for her help in getting the deal off the ground."

Now that she's Convict Troutman, Arenda now becomes just another one of the roughly 20% of all alderman since the 1970s who have ended up on the federal perp walk.

Ex-Governor George Ryan is currently in prison serving 6 1/2 years for of doing the same thing.

A year ago, the City of Chicago paid out 19.8 million dollars in settlement (after a review that cost 17 million dollars) for the actions of Torturin' Jon Burge whose betrayal of his public office was just as despicable but much more violent;

the "former Chicago Police Department detective and commander who gained notoriety for allegedly torturing more than 200 criminal suspects between 1972 and 1991, in order to force confessions."

The year before that, it was Robert Sorich -- "Mayor Daley's onetime patronage chief was found guilty on two counts of mail fraud and acquitted of two others by a federal jury this afternoon of fixing the city's hiring system. ..Sorich is a former high-ranking official in the Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs." -- who sold out the public to serve The Machine.

Sorich, for those of you who don't live here, was just the tip of the Hired Truck iceberg...

The Hired Truck Program was a scandal-plagued program in the city of Chicago that involved hiring private trucks to do city work. It was overhauled in 2004 (and phased out beginning in 2005) after an investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times revealed that some participating companies were being paid for doing little or no work, had mob connections or were tied to city employees. Truck owners also paid bribes in order to get into the program.

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The scandal has been damaging to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, whose brother sold insurance to three major trucking companies. Additionally, 25 percent of all Hired Truck money went to companies from Daley's 11th Ward power base and $108,575 in campaign contributions flowed to the mayor from companies in the program beginning in 1996.

In February 2005, Daley denied complicity in the unfolding scandal saying, "Anyone who believes that my interest in public life is in enriching my family, friends or political supporters doesn't know or understand me at all. My reputation and the well-being of this city are more important to me than any election."[4]

In February 2006, John Briatta, whose sister is married to Cook County Commissioner John P. Daley, the mayor's brother, pleaded guilty to taking at least $5,400 in bribes to steer Hired Truck work to a trucking company.

The litany of cases of bribery grew to include former City Clerk James Laski, who was charged in January 2006 with taking bribes and obstructing justice after federal agents caught him on tape encouraging witnesses to lie to a grand jury and deny that they had been giving him $500 to $1,000 a week in cash bribes to keep getting business from the Hired Truck program. Laski resigned his $135,545-a-year job and gave up his law license. In March 2006 he pled guilty.

Laski came into office as a reformer after his predecessor, City Clerk Walter Kozubowski, was convicted in a ghost payroll scheme for paying a total of $476,000 to six "ghosts" for little or no work over a dozen years.[citation needed] Kozubowski was sentenced to five years in prison. In June 2006, Laski was sentenced to two years in prison.

It was also revealed that tons of asphalt paid for by the city were stolen by truck drivers in the Hired Truck program. The asphalt was then used on private jobs.

And before that, there was City Treasurer Miriam Santos, whose wild gavotte though the political and criminal justice systems -- convicted, removed, conviction reversed, reinstated to office, office used to engage in retribution against the people who put her behind bars, new trial held, re-convicted, re-removed -- remains unmatched for sheer, Diva Dervish ridiculousness:

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One thing that sets Illinois apart from other states is the almost complete lack of limits on political fundraising. That has bred a high stakes money game where the line between legitimate fundraising and extortion is razor thin. Savvy politicians dance on the edge by adopting a wink-and-a-nod code with special-interest donors.

A decade ago, then-City Treasurer Miriam Santos skipped the nuance and went to prison for ordering a city contractor to "belly up" with a $10,000 contribution—or else. The irony was that Santos tried the squeeze to meet a fundraising quota demanded of her by state Democratic Party Chairman Michael Madigan, who was not implicated.

Next month it will be someone else.

The month after that it will be someone else again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church named it "simony":

"...the ecclesiastical crime of paying for holy offices or positions in the hierarchy of a church, named after Simon Magus, who appears in the Acts of the Apostles 8:18-24. Simon Magus offers the disciples of Jesus, Peter and John payment so that anyone he would place his hands on would receive the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the origin of the term simony[1] but it also extends to other forms of trafficking for money in "spiritual things""

Simony was considered to be among the worst, most despicable forms of betrayal, and if you believe as I do that public service is an honorable calling, then the analogy is even more painfully accurate.

Chicago, we are told, is now so broke that it has no choice but to jack your parking meter rates through the stratosphere, boot your car after a second ticket, randomly lay off a nearly 1,000 politically unprotected public servants and then a few hundred more, strap Revenue Cameras to every pole and pylon, and in a dozen other ways shake you down every time you set foot on one of our ruined sidewalk or drive down one of our pothole rubbled streets.

Sure, times are very tough, and any/all of those cost-savings/revenue-raising measures may, in the end, be necessary.

But ask yourself how much more money might be available to attend to the public's business if the City, County and State weren't run by criminals?

If they didn't piss away jobs and cash paying for the antics of torturers and political hacks?

If they didn't keep any public accounting of their cash-rich Tax Increment Finance piggy bank shielded from public view?

Da Mare is famous for saying that he wants Chicago government to be run more like the private sector.

What he doesn't mention is that -- resting as it does on the behaviorial spectrum smack between the felonious, insider back-scratching profligacy of Enron and the corrupt fiscal hocus-pocus of AIG -- it already does.