Blowback
I wonder what Abby Ottenhoff has to say about this.

More than 30 Canadian internet pharmacies have decided not to accept bulk orders of prescription drugs from US states and municipalities.

The move delivers a potentially serious setback to US politicians most notably Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry campaigning to give Americans easier access to cheap drugs from Canada.

...[G]rowing concern in Canada that growing exports to the US could lead to rising prices and shortages north of the border has prompted the Canadian International Pharmacy Association (Cipa), whose members include several of the biggest internet and mail-order drugstores, to act. "We don't want to give Americans the impression that we have unlimited supply for them to tap into on a commercial basis," said David Mackay, the association's executive director. Americans, he added, "can't get everything from Canada. We can't be your complete drugstore".

They did extort their mobster-like arrangements on the assumption that those prices would affect the Canadian market only.

Several states, such as Minnesota and New Hampshire, have set up websites directing residents to approved pharmacies in Canada. Cipa members would continue to service these customers, Mr Mackay said, but would not deal with states such as Illinois and Wisconsin that have proposed turning over their entire supply system to a Canadian internet pharmacy.

Cipa members make up about a quarter of the roughly 150 internet pharmacies operating in Canada, raising the question whether others will follow its lead. Mr Mackay said discussion had been heated at an all-day meeting of Cipa last month at which the new policy was approved. With pharmaceutical manufacturers seeking to restrict supplies and the US Congressional Budget Office recently saying that reimportation from Canada would have a "negligible" impact on US drugs spending, the internet pharmacies have already had difficulty meeting demand from south of the border.

...[P]ublic opinion appears to be gradually turning against the online operators. Canadian Treatment Action Council, a lobby group representing pharmacists and patients, is due to speak out today against drug exports to the US.

I've said it before: This could go the easy way, with an open market that reaches equilibrium and ushers in a new Golden Age for pharmaceutical research and entrepreneurialism, or it could go the hard way, with advocates of socialism defending their indefensible economic policies of blackmail to the death, quite possibly causing a trade war that threatens to cripple the industry and bring about a medical dark age.

CIPA, at least, has demonstrated which side they're on, and I expect others will follow, bringing up the third possibility, that reimportation will simply be a huge, humiliating failure for Blagojevich, Doyle, Kerry, and others.

Will they come to grips with the reality that everything they think they "know" is wrong, or simply find a scapegoat? (That's rhetorical.)

Drug reimportation could raise Canadian drug prices, says expert.
"No shit," says Aaron.

Prescription-drug import programs such as the one Gov. Rod Blagojevich recently launched could hurt Canadians, a policy expert said Wednesday.

Canadians could see the price of their prescription drugs jump "quite a bit" if the United States government OK'd importing drugs from Canada, said Jack M. Mintz, president and CEO of the C.D. Howe Institute, a Canadian public policy research organization.

Note that it's the Sun-Times that used the word "hurt". Neither Canada nor Europe would be hurt by playing fair in the marketplace, although it might be a bit of a shock at first. American drug prices would collapse by a much greater margin than theirs would increase, and the industry would be healthier, meaning we could reduce patent lengths and likely see more effective drugs coming to market faster. Whether people brainwashed on the rhetoric of socialized medicine who believe that their drugs were magically "made cheaper" by government decree will understand this or not, that's another matter.

Mintz told the Canadian Club of Chicago that Canadian citizens and provincial governments would be forced to pay the increased costs. "Is it good for Canada? I'm not sure," he said.

On the other hand, Mintz said he sees no reason that barriers must remain between regional economies. "If I'm a doctor in Ontario, why can't I have patients in Michigan?" he said.

I kinda like this guy.

Blagojevich's FOID-Fee Adventure
Chicago Tribune has an interesting piece on the dire state of the gun lobby in Illinois. (In the Tribune's perception, Blagojevich being deterred from raising the Firearm Owner's ID fee 10000%, to $500, is a testament to the "power" of the gun lobby.)

Yet lawmakers fear the NRA and the ISRA because they have a strong membership base in many Downstate legislative districts and have been effective in selling the message there that a vote for gun control is a vote against hunting.

A vote for gun control is also a vote against self-defense, something which, in the home state of one of America's murder capitals, Chicago (which has long since banned handguns altogether, to no avail), ought to be a front and center issue.

Then he woke up, and his pillow was gone!
Another terrifying glimpse into the mind of Rod "I'm God" Blagojevich, this time in the form of a dream. What can it all mean?

The Chicago Democrat on Monday volunteered [his dream] during a news conference about prescription drugs...

"IF FREUD WERE alive, (imagine) what he would say about this dream," Blagojevich said.

"I'm with the security detail. This is shortly after what happened in Springfield happened. And in the dream we're in Rogers Park and for whatever reason we're there. And I tell the security detail, 'Stop the car. I want to get out. These buildings look like they'd be good investments. This neighborhood is gentrifying. OK?'

...OK, Mr. Man of the People.

"We get out of the car. A crowd gathers because the governor is there. People came up and started talking to me, and there was a young man who was very threatening.

Awww, so that's why he was staring at me like that on Tuesday... He's been dreaming about me!

And a friend of mine who I've known since I was a child happened to be with me. He comes up to me and says, 'The security detail is concerned about your security. We've got to get back in the car. We've got to get going.'

"And I said, 'I hear you. Let me just finish up.' So I'm finishing up a conversation. As I'm doing that, a taxi cab pulls up, stops and out of the car comes Barack Obama. This is my dream. I can't leave now. I say hello to Barack. We exchange pleasantries. I commend him on his Spartan campaign and frugalness for taking a cab.

Even in his dreams, Blago's full of shit. Obama's campaign is spartan and frugal because he doesn't have any solid opposition. He doesn't have to campaign, that's why he running around out of state flacking for Kerry.

"The friend comes up again and says, 'The security detail wants you to leave. It's really getting bad here.' I said, 'OK.'

"I'M ABOUT TO say goodbye to Barack (when) I see the cab has a flat tire, and Barack is going to go help fix the flat tire for the taxi cab. And I said to my guy, 'I can't leave now. If Barack's fixing that flat tire, I've got to help, too.'

"So as Barack and I are fixing that taxi cab and the security detail is getting more and more nervous about security, the taxi-cab driver gets out of the taxi cab and it was Alan Keyes."

That was when he woke up.

Good God.

Update: You know, there's a right place and a wrong place for these things. A press conference on your prescription drug plan is the wrong place. Can you imagine President Bush at a press conference on Iraq suddenly saying "You know, I had a dream the other night, get a load of this: I was falling, and I fell into a giant apple pie, and John McCain was there in the pie with me, but he was a donkey wearing an elephant costume, then he tried to eat me with a spork..."? This is hardly the first unintentionally hilarious personal anecdote Blagojevich has told, but is he trying to make it his trademark or something?

In the Face of Evil II
Today, this blog's archnemesis, Illinois Governor Rod "Corruptevich" Blagojevich, came to the town where I was born and raised: Herrin, Illinois. (As far as I know, it's the first time he's ever been.) He was in town, at the Williamson County Programs on Aging office, to talk about our new "I-SaveRX" prescription drug reimportation program. Among the highlights of the event, Blago praised one of America's most heinous acts of union violence and mass murder as part of Southern Illinois' "long history of standing up to big business". However, before I get to Blago "the man", I'm going to tell you what I've found about Blago "the plan", since it's pretty interesting stuff.

Illinois' drug reimportation plan involves buying back discounted drugs from the Canadian, British, and Irish markets. This is illegal, but Blagojevich is doing it anyway, and now Wisconsin has decided to tag along for the ride. Whatever problems the Irish had with it have apparently either been worked out or ignored. The way Blagojevich explained it, the plan includes about 100 popular brand name drugs, which you can order directly through the state's mail order system, which will draw on several dozen state-inspected pharmacies. There are no narcotics nor pharmaceuticals that might spoil in transit (insulin, etc), and the plan is only available for refills, you have to get your first run of the drug here at home and, as Blagojevich explained it, let your doctor "make sure it's working". There's also a turnaround time of a few weeks when you start your order.

Now, I have mixed feelings about all this. On one hand, I think we're opening up our market to a lot of unknown variables. Other states are going to model on this system, and one way or another, this is going to exert harsh forces on the marketplace. Regulations of American pharmaceuticals in other countries have turned the American consumers of those products into victims of foreign socialism, and something certainly ought to be done about it. I'm suspicious of this scheme, though. On one hand, if the foreign governments involved stonewall on their price caps, they're heading for a major war with the pharmaceutical industry, which depends on the American market to make up for lost income. The negative effects that foreign regulations have on our market could be magnified several times over. On the other, if they don't, there are going to be a lot of angry Canadians, Brits, and Irish when they find that their drug prices are skyrocketing to meet our collapsing domestic prices somewhere in the middle in an open marketplace. They'll be picking up their share of the tab, but they're probably not going to be real happy about it, and this is going to have severe consequences for their government planned health programs.

Shockingly, Blagojevich says he subscribes to the latter theory, which is actually an admirable thing. In fact, he referred to it as "doing what our economic principles tell us to do anyway". I nearly shit myself. "Substantial savings can be realized!" he exclaimed, sounding somewhat like an overly formal used car lot commercial, although I don't think he quite admits that prices in the US will not bottom out at European or Canadian levels, but rather there would be an equilibrium, a balance somewhere inbetween. Blagojevich at least says that he believes that this is a well-constructed plan using capitalist market forces to fight socialism and solve the problem. That's so far out of character that I can't quite wrap my brain around it, but that's what he said. I also have a substantial issue with using a state-run mail order center to manage this whole cockamaimy scheme, but I'll cross that bridge in the narrative below. (Warning: Many anecdotes ahead. It's needed in order to mock Blagojevich as thoroughly as possible.)
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In the Face of Evil
He's here...

The Governor will continue his statewide I-SaveRx promotion campaign on Wednesday and Thursday, with stops in Herrin...

I've actually started tinkering with the notion of writing a book on the non-Governator. He's going to be in the place of my superhero origin, so it's only fair that I go look him in his beady eyes and hear him out on his prescription drug smuggling scam scheme.

Update: In a way, it's a shame I don't have one of my Governor Corruptevich t-shirts to wear...

Corruptevich Strikes Again
Heh.

Political insiders close to Governor Rod Blagojevich are showing up on the State Board of Education payroll just weeks after his takeover of the agency.

The Chicago Tribune reports in its Sunday editions that the new hires include a 24-year-old interim chief of staff who drove the media van for the governor's tour of rural Illinois last year. Also on the payroll is a budget chief who worked on the governor's 2002 campaign.

Meanwhile, over at the Illinois Lotto...

Danielle Ashley Communications of Chicago will help promote the lottery to Illinois' black residents. It will be paid about $1.1 million a year from now until June 2006. If the state exercises renewal options, the contract could last until 2009, The (Springfield) State Journal-Register reported Wednesday.

State campaign disclosure records show the firm made about $55,000 working for Blagojevich in October and November of 2002.

The records also show company president Tracey Alston made a $5,000 campaign contribution to the Blagojevich campaign this spring.

It's plausible, in the lottery case, that this really is just a coincidence, but it would break with the normal pattern. Besides, am I the only one who sees a problem, with how much our government spends trying to help poverty-stricken blacks, then turning around and spending more money to take whatever they've got in one of the worst gambling propositions available? Not exactly a noble cause they've got going over there.

Blagojevich of Evil
Remember the other day, in my post about the guard who was shot at the Illinois Statehouse, and how startling it was to hear Rod "I will make Illinois a gun free state!" Blagojevich admit that only having his own gun could've saved his life?

You may remember that I also said he was only so concerned about taking realistic safety measures because the thought occurred to him that that shotgun blast could've been meant for him.

Well, it turns out that Blagojevich has rushed to install a brand new metal detector at the Hussein-style palace where he spends all his time, Chicago's Thompson Center.

Illinois State Police installed a portable metal detector outside the governor's Chicago office shortly after a deadly shooting at the Capitol this week, but the Capitol itself is still without metal detectors and its security guards remain unarmed.

The portable detector...was installed late Tuesday in the state-owned James R. Thompson Center near a 16th-floor desk where a guard checks the identification of visitors to the governor's office.

The mind boggles.

For clarification, Governor Corruptevich is unwilling to leave Chicago in order to live in our state capital, so he and his mobster henchmen "work" out of the Thompson Center, governing by press release. When he's needed in Springfield, if he feels like showing up, he'll fly down in the morning and back at the end of the day on at taxpayer expense. Some of his cronies also maintain apartments in Springfield for which they are substantially reimbursed by the state, apartments which they claim are often so freakishly expensive that it's hard to believe they exist at all.

If you're wondering how Blagojevich got elected (aside from vote fraud), I'll tell you:

He's so short, that we thought he might be magical.

Blagojevich: "Guns for we, not for thee."
This is the mental larceny that passes for good government with the Chicago Democrats.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Tuesday that he supports the installation of metal detectors and arming Statehouse security guards in the wake of a fatal shooting Monday at the Capitol.

Blagojevich outlined in broad strokes his ideas for providing security to state employees and the estimated 250,000 visitors who pass through the Capitol each year. His announcement came the day after a gunman killed unarmed security guard William Peter Wozniak, 51, of Petersburg, Ill.

"I think the only thing that could have possibly given some level of safety to officer Wozniak is if the guards are armed," the governor said. "Other than that, I don't know if metal detectors or anything else we are proposing would have stopped some person with a shotgun from shooting a police guard."

The guards are not allowed to carry weapons now because they are not sworn peace officers.

Are we all on the same page with der Blagojenfuhrer, here? The only thing that can save a Statehouse guard from a killer is being allowed to carry a firearm, but the only thing that can save we, the people of Illinois, from a killer is not being allowed to carry a firearm.

If Blagojevich can see that Illinois' gun control policies got Wozniak killed, he knows full well that people are dying out in the streets because of them, too. The difference is that Corruptevich knows that the bastard who killed Wozniak could've been coming for him, instead. That concerns Rod. Murdered voters don't, because this is Illinois, where the dead are registered to vote Democrat anyway.

Update: For those interested, get your "How do you say his name?" t-shirts here.

AWB lifted, "Gang Bangers" on Rampage!
My Non-Governator, Rod Blagojevich, is upset because under the Assault Weapons Ban, nobody ever got killed in Chicago. Now, because "Bush let it lapse", the streets will run red with the blood of the innocent.

"I think it makes for better armed gang bangers, more dangerous gang bangers, more dangerous criminals. It puts our law enforcement personnel more at risk," said Governor Rod Blagojevich

This Governor do talk good Engrish! All he needs is a triple negative, but the Great Communicator II isn't done yet.

Some police departments -- notably Chicago -- are concerned that the sun-setting of the assault weapons ban will put more firepower into the hands of street gang members, but opponents of the ban say that Chicago's murder rate -- although now declining -- soared during the early years the ban was in effect.

"Once again we see the gun lobby terrorizing people into seeing something happen that's not going to happen," said Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

What does that even mean?! (Seriously, it's got to be out of context.) Blagojevich, of course, is apparently almost as badly misinformed as John Kerry.

"They're military-style assault weapons, are supposed to be used only for military purposes, they have no purpose for civilian population."

Of course, the "assault weapons" banned by the Assault Weapons Ban are essentially toys compared to actual military equipment, as there is no functional difference between what Clinton declares an "assault weapon" and those weapons that don't fit the classification. As we've been over time and time and time again, real "military purpose" weapons have been heavily regulated for decades. In Kerry or MoveOn's case, I know they're lying on purpose to fear-monger. In Blagojevich's case? He likely doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. He's just a patsy for Daley's crew.

"It's a really sad day when you think America is allowing more and more types of assault weapons," said Daley, who tried to persuade members of congress to extend the ban. "I just don't understand it. I feel sorry for police officers in the line of duty all over this country, worried about whether or not someone is going to have an assault weapon."

Argh! Bayonet lugs! Scourge of the Thin Blue Line! Many an officer lies awake at night, I'd imagine, wondering whether or not the future holds a massive charge from orderly columns of Gang Bangers (TM) with fixed bayonets!

"President Bush has said publicly that he supports the assault-weapon ban," Blagojevich said. "He ought to use whatever influence he can in a congressional process that is controlled by his political party, and get an assault-weapon ban passed."

Why? Why ought he to do that, Rod? Congress has decided to let it go. It's Bush's job as President to enforce their decisions, not vice versa. Perhaps if you applied the basic principles of seperation of powers here in Illinois things wouldn't be going to Hell on a handcart at mach 3.

"The political difficulty of that in Illinois is comparable to what it is in Washington because Illinois is a microcosm of America," the governor said.

It's scary because it's true. God save Illinois. God help us all.

Official State Idiot
In my new ad campaign for this site, "Blagojevich of Evil", I describe Free Will as the sort of place where you can join me in waging "holy war" against the Chicago Democrats. Conveniently, the press has prepared several tidbits to help us in our divine Jihad against the Infidel Governor.
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Blagojevich: Sailing on a Sea of Ignorance
The Peoria Journal Star comments on the obvious: The more you know, the less you like Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

The interesting thing was the newspaper asked the respondents whether they kept up on news coming out of Springfield during the marathon overtime session. The people who said they did not follow the news gave Blagojevich higher marks than the ones who said they did keep up on things.

...Blagojevich's people may be onto something when they try to bypass the news media. Apparently, the less you know, the better the administration looks.

Kind of like the Kerry campaign.

Nightmare Scenario
I typically regard it as a foregone conclusion that the Centurion of Evil, Illinois Governor Rod Blaogjevich (D-9th Circle of Hell), will be disposed of handily in 2006. Meta Minton, an editor at the Southern Illinoisan newspaper, isn't so optimistic.

The runner: One thing I personally admire about the governor is that he is a fellow runner. In fact, he's a pretty good runner.

His personal best marathon (a 26.2-mile race) was 2 hours and 55 minutes set in Chicago in 1984. In contrast, my personal best was the 3-hour, 47-minute marathon I ran in Tucson, Ariz., in 1999.

The marathon is a long race which requires strategy, skill and stamina. A bit like politics.

Blagojevich reportedly already has $10 million to $15 million tucked away in his campaign warchest, earning interest every day. And the election is still a couple of years away.

Would a Democrat challenge a fellow Democrat who is the sitting governor in 2006? There's been plenty of buzz about the political potential of Attorney General Lisa Madigan, but mother-to-be Madigan is said to have her eye cast in a different political direction.

And who among the Republicans would be able to unseat Blagojevich? As the recent quest to find a U.S. Senate candidate demonstrated, the Illinois Republican Party is in a shambles.

Corruptevich's approval rating has hit 51%, up from 40% in May. Although the poll was run by none other than the Chicago Tribune and it's henchchannel, WGN-TV, it's still a plausible and frightening thought, especially given that the IlGOP these days is run much like a UN whorehouse.

God save Illinois.

Ireland: "Blagojevich is going to what?"
The Blagojevich administration gets more and more surreal every day. Now it turns out that his plan to reimport drugs from Ireland, Britain, and Canada comes as a total surprise to Ireland.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich's plan to help Illinois residents buy prescription drugs from Ireland has surprised Irish government officials and pharmaceutical company representatives, who say it is illegal to mail-order prescription drugs in their country.

"It just seems unusual, very unusual," said Siobhan Molloy, a spokeswoman for the Irish Medicines Board, the main agency involved with licensing and regulating prescription drugs.

Molloy told the Chicago Tribune that the board has never had any formal contact with anyone from the governor's office and the agency just learned of the plan this week through news reports.

"We haven't come across it before. We don't know the details at this point," Molloy said.

Blagojevich aides said they were aware of the Irish prohibitions and would work around them by buying drugs from wholesalers instead of pharmacies. The drugs would then be funneled through pharmacies in the United Kingdom, where such sales through the mail are legal.

However, Irish pharmaceutical groups don't seem to want anything to do with it.

...a representative of Ireland's largest pharmaceutical trade association said the plan was "unworkable and impractical" because it would strain Irish drug supplies, the Tribune reported in Thursday's editions.

"It probably sounds fantastic and it probably sounds as if Irish pharmacists and the Irish pharmaceutical industry here would be delighted with this," said Anne Nolan, chief executive of the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare association. "We wouldn't. It would cause enormous problems for us to meet our local obligations here."

Prescription drug imports are banned by the U.S. government, but Blagojevich and other lawmakers said they should be allowed at a time of skyrocketing prices for medicine in the United States. Prescription drugs are often cheaper in other countries because of government price controls.

Eventually, the governor hopes to encourage state employees and retirees to use the system by offering to waive their insurance co-pay, saving the state up to 50 percent on its drug costs, aides said.

Those savings will last exactly as long it takes for the prices to reach equilibrium in the countries which Blagojevich wants to dump into the American market. I, for one, won't shed too many tears when socialized medicine comes flying apart in these countries under the stunning weight of reality, but I imagine there are going to be a lot of very upset Canadians when they discover that their prices are skyrocketing to meet the new demands on their supply. (Provided this assinine thing ever gets off the ground.)

Interesting Priorities
Drug Smuggling Blagojevich is at it again.

The Democratic governor of Illinois has announced an initiative to help consumers in his state access cheap prescription drugs in Europe and Canada.

Governor Rod Blagojevich said the state was setting up an online portal to help residents shop for cheaper name-brand drugs in Britain, Ireland and Canada, to enable hard-up seniors and others to reduce their drug bills.

The State of Illinois intends to fly greasy mobster thugs inspectors out to Canada, the UK, and Ireland to collect bribe money inspect their facilities for safety standards. If they pay enough pass, they'll get licenses to sell into the new "Illinois system". This is, at best, quasi-legal.

Given that the lower prices are caused by artificial price caps negotiated with the drug companies, this whole thing strikes me a recipe for disaster. The United States subsidizes the cost of the health care industry for the socialist world, and something's going to give if we start importing back. I don't particularly have a problem with that, but it's going to be ugly when the system comes flying apart for Canada and Europe and America's liberals lose their delusional fantasy that they can increase the demand in a market ten-fold and not affect price.

More importantly, though, why is Blagojevich obsessed with this program? His original intent with importing drugs was only to provide them to State of Illinois employees to reduce the health insurance burden on the state.

Illinois isn't going through a drug crisis. We're going through a malpractice insurance crisis that really is killing people, and which Blagojevich has openly refused to address, even refusing to acknowledge crowds of hundreds of protesting doctors. Of course, that crisis doesn't sense to most people outside Illinois. Drug prices do.

Is Blagojevich trying to set up a national spectacle to position himself as a liberal celebrity for his fantasy-land 2008 Presidential bid? I know I've pointed this out before, but Blagojevich's Fight for Affordable Prescription Drugs website is pretty much a giant monument to himself.

Anagram for Mongo
You know your state is corrupt when your Governor gets a summons to testify on a drugged, dead racehorse.

The ghost of Mongo apparently will haunt the 2004 Illinois State Fair - not to mention Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Rick, Sue and Whitney Gray, who owned Mongo, a Maine-Anjou crossbred that was disqualified last year as junior grand champion steer at the state fair, are seeking compensation for the disqualification, which they say was improper.

The case is scheduled to come to trial Aug. 18, which is Governor's Day at this year's state fair.

Blagojevich is among those who have been subpoenaed to testify.

"We just received the subpoena recently, and we're reviewing it," Rebecca Rausch, spokeswoman for the governor's office, said Friday. "The governor will do what is required by law."

Mongo was stripped of his title after a urine sample confirmed the presence of Banamine, an anti-inflammatory drug that had been used to treat a sore foot. Banamine paste had been administered to the animal on the fairgrounds without the approval of the state veterinarian's office, as state fair rules require.

But the Grays' original suit said the agriculture department didn't follow its own procedures for publishing the rules to show at the Illinois State Fair. Kelley in February agreed, saying the steer's disqualification should be overturned.

Why is he being supoenaed? He couldn't keep his mouth shut.

The day after Mongo was disqualified, Blagojevich said, incorrectly, that the steer had been fed steroids. He also implied that the Grays had tried to cheat to win the grand championship.

Blagojevich also joked about the controversy in his budget speech, saying he planned to transfer authority over land and water resources from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Natural Resources in order to "help us pay the damages we now owe Mongo." (The transfer never took place.)

I would've posted this 4 days ago, but it took me this long to come up with a clever title. Heh.

Update: Yup, that's what I get for blogging late. Mongo was a prize steer, not a racehorse. The first version of the story I ever read had it wrong. (Mongo was still slaughtered.)

Don Blago and the Democratic Crime Family
Governor Blagojevich doesn't need to fret over not having a chance to loot the nation as Kerry's vice-President, because his diseased tentacles of corruption aren't just in Illinois these days anyway.

The mayor of East Chicago, Ind., and 26 others -- including city councilmen, department heads and businesses -- were slapped with a federal racketeering and theft lawsuit Tuesday, alleging they raided city coffers in an effort to bolster the mayor's re-election effort.

Records show those named have given thousands of dollars to Gov. Blagojevich's campaign fund.

Mayor Robert Pastrick, who has run the small industrial town for 32 years, is being sued by Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter for $3 million in casino funds he says were intended for public projects, but were instead spent ensuring Pastrick's 1999 re-election.

It's the latest sweeping public corruption lawsuit leveled against those with East Chicago ties, including Pastrick's son, Kevin, who was indicted last year in a union pension fund scandal. Another son, Scott, is the former Democratic National Committee treasurer. Mayor Pastrick was a delegate at last week's Democratic convention.

In Tuesday's civil lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in South Bend, the state alleged the mayor and advisers Tim Raykovich and James Fife conspired with others, including city controller Edwardo Maldonado, to use millions of dollars intended for streets and sidewalks to instead pave the driveways and patios of Pastrick's supporters.

The scandal, referred to in the 2000 documentary "King of Steeltown," has already led to the indictments of seven city officials and three contractors. Prosecutors say it was a $2 million paving project that ballooned to $20 million because of political corruption.

Records show Blagojevich has received $2,650 from those named in Tuesday's lawsuit and their political groups. The money was given at fund-raisers held at the Munster, Ind., home of East Chicago native Milan Petrovic, who has been paid $187,831 to host Blagojevich fund-raisers.

While none of those indicted have gone to trial, Pastrick's son pleaded guilty this year, as did a defendant in his case, ex-Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Peter Manous. Records show Manous has given $7,500 to Blagojevich.

Add in the mob-money that was apparently sent Kerry's way, and one could easily draw the conclusion that the Democratic Party is pretty much an organized crime ring.

More Money Than Jesus
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (D-Daley) is just rackin' up his mobster-money left and right.

Even though he won't face an opponent until 2006, Gov. Blagojevich continued to raise campaign money at a record pace the first six months of this year.

Blagojevich raked in more than $4.9 million in cash and more than $121,000 in donations of flights, food and supplies for fund-raising events, state records show. The largest single cash donation - $100,000 - came from the Democratic Governors' Association in Washington, D.C., which raises money for Democratic gubernatorial candidates across the country.

Monday marked the deadline for Blagojevich and other Illinois politicians to disclose how much they raised and spent between Jan. 1 and June 30. All told, the governor ended the reporting period with $10.2 million in his war chest -- the largest amount by far of any state constitutional officeholder.

Most of the money raised so far this year came from a June 17 fund-raiser the governor hosted at the Field Museum, said Kelly Glynn, finance director for Friends of Blagojevich. The governor also went to California for a brief fund-raising swing in January.

You may remember this event, which the Governor famously said was neccessary because "We've been changing so many things here in Illinois, we're making so many different interests unhappy, that I have to do fund raising now in places like California." Later, he added that raising a lot of money "...gives you more independence; gives you more strength... [Thucydides] said that power is in question only among equals. The weak will do the bidding of the strong while the strong will forever exact their wills," arguing that his financial independance (presumably from the people of Illinois) makes it possible for him to "do your own thing".

This creepy theme of iron-fisted autocracy was reiterated by his spokesman.

"Fund-raising is a part of the political process that allows the governor to maintain his independence," Glynn said. "The governor doesn't like to do fund-raising, so we do one major event."

One big event, and all the Chicago gangsters, street thugs, and union bosses are invited. The good-ole-boys network of favored industrial players is on hand to help, too.

Governor Rod Blagojevich (blah-GOY'-uh-vitch) is getting help from political insiders and state contractors in his drive to raise campaign money.

They are paying for him to travel, providing hotels and meals -- even paying for cigars to give away at campaign fund-raisers.

The Blagojevich administration says there is nothing wrong with accepting help from companies doing business with the state. They say it does not influence which companies win state contracts and which don't.

Putting aside how sad it is that our governor's name requires a pronounciation guide, if you've ever tried to do business with a university, you know that that is complete and total bullshit.

But the practice bothers Cindi Canary of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform. She says it creates the impression that government contracts are for sale.

It looks that way because they are.