Six Degrees of Tony Rezko

Another story of Blagojevian incompetence becomes a story of unbridled corruption.

CBS 2 toured the school's new facility, a commercial condo in the Loop the owners bought with the $1 million grant they never should have gotten.

CBS 2's background check on Loop Lab turned up some interesting facts, beginning with the grant. Mays, who signed the papers, checked that school was "not delinquent in its payment of moneys owned to any federal, state or local unit of government".

The grant was dated November 27, 2006. Three days later, on November 30, 2006, the IRS charged the school with failing to pay $29,000 in back taxes.

The school also has nine civil cases against it totally more than $67,000. On top of that, in 2004, a teacher at the school was accused of sexual harassment, and a year before, in 2003, the director, Dr. Chandra Gill, had a felony record for hitting a police officer.

Coincidently, in January 2007, shortly after the school had been approved for the $1 million grant, Gill was pardoned by the governor.

The school lost the harassment case, and questions about that pardon apparently caused Blagojevich to walk away.

Blagojevich again defended the "mistake" that sent the money to the school, which used the grant to buy a condo space in the Loop in May but has not yet reopened. But the governor left the unrelated news conference when he was asked about the Tribune's disclosure Wednesday about the pardon for Gill.

William Quinlan, general counsel to the governor, stepped forward to tell reporters that the January 2007 pardon for Gill "had absolutely nothing to do" with the Loop Lab School. He said Blagojevich pardoned Gill based on a unanimous recommendation from the Illinois Prisoner Review Board.

"I can say, officially, that it had absolutely nothing to do with the Loop Lab School," Quinlan said. "The first we found out about it was just recently."

But in her August 2006 petition for clemency, Gill said she was a volunteer at the school but could not assume a full-time administrative position held open for her at the school unless her felony record was expunged.

Oops.

Incredibly, Tony Rezko is all over this.

The head of the state grant-giving agency previously worked for Rezko, and the owner of the building where the school is moving was a Rezko business associate.

That man, as was established yesterday, was also convicted of fraud.

"The million dollars went to the wrong place."

Rod Blagojevich reaches the pinnacle of his career.

Gov. Blagojevich's administration sent $1 million to "the wrong place" last year in a move that failed to live up to his promise to help fire-ravaged Pilgrim Baptist Church rise from the ashes, the governor said Monday.

Blagojevich attributed the $1 million "bureaucratic mix-up" to the work of a couple of ex-staffers and pledged another $1 million -- on top of what was erroneously spent -- to help the Bronzeville architectural gem recover from a devastating 2006 fire.

"I woke up this morning to discover . . . the million dollars went to the wrong place; not to the church community, as it was intended to go. And so we're here to make that right," said Blagojevich, who canceled other plans Monday to confront the embarrassing disclosure.

Instead, the money was given to a private school that once rented space from Pilgrim Baptist, and planned to use it to prepare classroom space in another building. That space has not been finished out and there's no clear timeline for when that's supposed to happen, but the Blagojevich administration has no plans to ask for the money back.

"This really takes the cake. Of all the dumb things the governor has done, this one has to be way up there," said Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock), who intends to seek hearings on the matter before a House panel he chairs. "The man has to be stopped."

The Governor's office "lost" one million dollars of taxpayer dollars. What, did the school accidentally donate to his campaign?

Pilgrim Baptist is best remembered by non-Chicagoans as the church from The Blues Brothers.

Update: Interestingly, the school bought their new space from an FBI informant who was recently convicted of federal fraud and money laundering. Nobody has accidents as deliberately as Rod Blagojevich. He's the King Midas of corruption. (Via ReverseSpin)

World? Meet Nadhmi Auchi.

If there's anything the Obama campaign has accomplished, it has drawn national media attention to the vile world of the Chicago Democrats. Now, even the Times of London wades into the murky seas of Illinois corruption, and, in doing so, splashes it all over the Obama campaign.

A British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama's fundraiser just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender, an investigation by The Times discloses.

The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi, one of Britain's wealthiest men, helped Mr Obama buy his mock Georgian mansion in Chicago.

A company related to Mr Auchi, who has a conviction for corruption in France, registered the loan to Mr Obama's bagman Antoin "Tony" Rezko on May 23 2005. Mr Auchi says the loan, through the Panamanian company Fintrade Services SA, was for $3.5 million.

Three weeks later, Mr Obama bought a house on the city's South Side while Mr Rezko's wife bought the garden plot next door from the same seller on the same day, June 15.

Auchi, a name beloved to Illinoisans in the know, is turning up elsewhere, as well, including RealClearPolitics.

You probably would have heard of Nadhmi Auchi by now if Sen. Barack Obama were a Republican.

A British citizen of Iraqi descent, Mr. Auchi, 70, is a billionaire, the 279th richest man in the world, according to a Forbes magazine survey last year.

A great deal of Mr. Auchi's money was made doing business with the regime of Saddam Hussein, much of it under the table. In 1987, Mr. Auchi helped French and Italian firms win a huge oil pipeline contract in Iraq, chiefly by paying off Iraqi officials, according to testimony given by an Italian banker to prosecutors in Milan. In 2003, he was convicted for his role in what was then the largest scandal in French history, involving payoffs from executives of the oil company now known as Total to political figures in Spain, Germany and Africa.

"The name Nadhmi Auchi was just another name for Saddam's intelligence service, or so we thought," said Nibras Kazimi, a former Iraqi dissident who is now a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C.

You may remember the French TotalFinaElf scandal, since Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien's family was deeply tied in to the company, which led some to speculate that perhaps Chretien's motives for opposing the war in Iraq were identical to those of Jacques Chirac.

According to Nick Cohen and other sources, Auchi also sold arms to Saddam's Iraq even after Saddam had Auchi's brother killed, and had, in his younger days, been tried as a collaborator in one of the early Ba'athist coup attempts. He appears to have been something of a prime mover in the Oil-for-Food scandal and the related European embezzling operations. In 2006, this blog referenced his role in the maintenance of the euphemistically codenamed "Satan" Swiss bank account used to launder Saddam's money, and Auchi's similar deal with Gadhafi. A Pentagon report described him as "Hussein's principle international financial manipulator and bag man." He and his daughter are even suspected of involvement in swindling millions from the NHS.

Today, however, Nadhmi Auchi's reputation seems to foster strong working relationships with Chicago Democrats: Tony Rezko first partnered with Auchi to build a power plant in Iraq, then went on to sell him a tremendous real estate development project in downtown Chicago. Rezko even had to be jailed in January for violating his bail after Auchi wired him millions of dollars, leading the court to fear he was preparing to flee the country to avoid trial. If, as Rezko claimed in court, he's broke and, among his debts, owes Auchi tens of millions of dollars, Auchi must be a very good friend to front him more money, ne'st pas?

As I've said before, the "coincidental" associations between Rezko and Obama have a history of occurring at an incredibly convenient pace. If Barack Obama's campaign has been taking money from an avowed Ba'athist sympathizer, especially one who seems to have been heavily involved in buying off the French government, it casts his protestations that he is "the only candidate who opposed the war from the start" in an entirely different light.

Of course, it'd probably merely enhance his standing with the anti-war crowd, but personally, I've given Obama the benefit of the doubt for quite some time on his more suspect affiliations. These "accidental" brushes with radicalism and corruption always raise the question of whether the man is actually a closeted corrupt radical, or just unbelievably naive and clumsy at politics to have let it happen. He portrays himself as the latter and, amazingly, capitalizes on it, but consider that if that naivety and clumsiness includes "accidentally" affiliating himself with someone like Auchi, that's a whole new level of trouble, one he may not be able to talk himself out of should the American press get half as excited about it as the British are. I couldn't help but notice this prescient January 31th post at Democratic Underground:

If they so much as tie Obama to Rezko's "friend" and "moneyman" Nadhmi Auchi, Obama is fucked.

It should be known that Auchi is quick to threaten British papers that question his moral standing, and Auchi denies that he has ever done anything wrong in his entire life, criminal conviction to the contrary. In a scattergun-style denial, Auchi concludes:

The above is not an exhaustive list of the matters Mr. Auchi disputes and says are inaccurate in Observer and Guardian articles published in 2003. Mr. Auchi requests that the articles are not relied upon as an accurate source of information about him.

We've been through this stupidity so many times before with all of Rod Blagojevich's other friends and acquaintences, you'd think that Auchi, at the very least, would be the creative one. Next, like Dominic Longo, he'll be complaining that he's being persecuted by the media because he has a vowel at the end of his name.

The Adventures of Radioactive Man and Fallout Boy

The Chicago Sun-Times's Lynn Sweet noticed that Barack Obama is avoiding Rod Blagojevich.

Blagojevich radioactive; every Dem state official to stump for Obama except tainted Illinois governor.

The Obama Illinois campaign, in advance of the Feb. 5 balloting--where the Clinton team is making a run for Illinois delegates--is ramping up, with all the top Democratic office holders stumping for Barack Obama starting on Monday with one exception--Gov. Blagojevich. There's just too much heat on Blagojevich.

Ever-helpful Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff called Sweet to set her straight:

Blagojevich spokesman Abby Ottenhoff called to say that the Obama campaign has given Blagojevich an assignment, to woo six Democratic governors for Obama.

She also said that a new poll from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shows the governor has better ratings than the legislature and aked that this be noted.

I'm sure I'm more popular than they are, too, but that's not the kind of low standard you brag about at parties. Dan Curry asks the obvious question:

Why is Barack Obama accepting the support of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, whose two top fundraisers have been indicted and who the federal government has labeled Public Official "A" in the largest public corruption investigation in Illinois history?

Barack not only is accepting Rod's support, he's giving him an "assignment."

Maybe it's like the Farrakhan thing, where the support is just so overwhelming that Obama apparently can't bring himself to reject it. Still, with friends like Abby Ottenhoff, who needs Clinton campaign smear jobs?

"Yes you are." "No I'm not!" "Yes you are."

Back in 2005, former Democratic National Committee finance chair Joseph Cari identified "Public Official A" as the tip of the spear on the schemes to funnel state money to firms that donated money to his campaign. Public Official A was, obviously, Rod Blagojevich, a claim which the Blagojevich administration passionately denied.

"I have no involvement whatsoever in anything surrounding the alleged corruption at the teachers retirement system, and nobody close to me does either," Blagojevich said at a news conference.

"We don't operate that way," the Democratic governor said. "No one who is associated with me operates that way, and if they did, they understand I wouldn't tolerate that for a split second."

Blagojevich said Friday he did not know the identity of the public official cited in the plea agreements.

Now, a federal judge confirms that the newspapers had the right man.

A ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Amy St. Eve dispensed with an array of pseudonyms that had cloaked the identities of several people who allegedly benefited from Rezko's financial schemes, including Blagojevich. He had previously been referred to in court documents only as Public Official A.

The nine-page ruling was heavy on political names and dealmaking, revealing for the first time what Robert Kjellander, Illinois' Republican national committeeman, allegedly did with a controversial $809,000 finder's fee he got as part of a Blagojevich administration bond deal. Prosecutors contend much of the windfall ended up with Rezko associates, according to St. Eve's ruling.

Blagojevich has repeatedly denied that he was Public Official A, but St. Eve underscored the link Monday by saying prosecutors claimed he was the intended beneficiary of an alleged attempt by Rezko to extort a $1.5 million campaign donation from Chicago financier Tom Rosenberg.

The governor has not been charged with any wrongdoing, and St. Eve did not suggest that he was aware of the alleged extortion attempt.

Al Capone was also not "aware" of his bootlegging operations.

And Mayor Daley Is His Prophet

If Barack Obama is Jesus, then Rod Blagojevich is...

State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, a fellow Democrat, called him the "anti-Obama."

Lawmakers' dissatisfaction was clear Wednesday from the anemic applause that greeted Blagojevich when he entered the House chamber to deliver his State of the State address. The clapping ended long before he finished making his way down the center aisle to the podium.

That's never even happened to Bush.

"I've never seen a governor receive such little respect and support as I saw this governor in this budget address -- from when he entered the building to when he left," Republican Sen. Bill Brady said.

"I can tell you, I now have a better appreciation for that old Hank Williams song I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry...," Blagojevich joked...

Hah. Hahahahaha.

Haaaaah.

"I think he tried to sound conciliatory, but the very fact that he was unwilling to release any details whatsoever of this speech -- as has been the case for every year prior to this -- says 'I don't really want to work with you,'" said Republican Sen. Christine Radogno of Lemont.

I think Christine is overanalyzing: It isn't that he doesn't want to work with the legislature, it's that he doesn't respect them as human beings.

Maybe the grownups should be in charge?

Various Illinois officials propose a solution to the state's continuing fiscal crisis: Stop using $100 bills to light cigars.

"[Blagojevich] needs to be straight with us," Comptroller Dan Hynes said Wednesday. "He needs to give a true reflection of where state finances are. How do you ask people to make tough decisions and deal with a problem you are not even admitting exists?"

Rep. Gary Hannig of Litchfield, the House Democrats' budget guru, offered his own assessment.

"If I were asked, I would suggest he put together a budget that reflects the money we have in hand," Hannig said. "That means we don't do any new programs to speak of. We try to get our spending down to the point we can pay the bills we owe."

"Each and every year, the governor has made his budget presentation and declared that the deficit has been eliminated," Hynes said. "Each and every year, that has proven to be untrue when the final numbers come out. There's a multi-billion structural deficit."

Since Blagojevich took office in 2003, Hynes said, tax collections for the state's general account have increased $5.6 billion, or an average of $1.4 billion a year.

"We were not investing some of this in paying down liabilities," Hynes told the editorial board of The State Journal-Register. "We were putting it all toward new programs and more money for education. It's hard to argue against that. Everybody wants that, but there's a consequence if the economy slows down."

Actually, it's not hard to argue against it at all. Some of us have been doing it for years.

Blagojevich spokeswoman Rebecca Rausch said the administration doesn't believe the deficit is as bad as portrayed by Hynes, in part because Medicaid costs are not just borne by the state. Federal reimbursements pay part of the bill.

She also said the administration isn't hiding anything.

"We're making it very clear we face a deficit. We're up front about that," Rausch said.

Blago's 2006 budget speech included the following passage:

"We dug ourselves out of the worst fiscal crisis in our state's history. We did it while investing more in education. We did it while giving more people health care. And we did it without raising the income tax or the sales tax," he said.

According to the same article, assembled state Republicans reacted to his claims with "jeers and laughter". Who was proven right?

"The budget doesn't require that (Blagojevich) spend all of that money," Hannig said.

No, it doesn't.

The Allegory of Bad Government

The house that Rod built is made of cards, and may be collapsing soon.

[Illinois State Comptroller Dan] Hynes on Monday released a "special report" on state finances that predicted sales-tax and corporate income-tax collections will continue to decrease. That, in turn, could further delay state payments to Medicaid providers, prompting them to stop serving the poor because they can't afford to wait more time to be paid.

"The fiscal outlook for Illinois is not optimistic," Hynes says.

"I don't think there's any more latitude in terms of pushing [Medicaid] bills off," he told the Sun-Times' editorial board. "Providers are starting to say 'We've had enough.' They're starting to walk away."

Longtime readers know that almost as long as this blog has existed, I've been warning everyone who'll listen that this was the inevitable outcome of the Blagojevich administration. The State of Illinois didn't have enough money to pay it's bills when Blagojevich was elected, and knowing that the state was already falling into a black hole, certainly aware of that economic slowdown that's been predicted for years, he constructed expensive new programs around populist nonsense, held the legislature hostage even as other Chicago Democrats tried to stop him, and brutalized the economy with countless new taxes, fees and arbitrary regulatory burdens, the worst of which, a $7.6 billion gross receipts tax, was mercifully shot down by a unanimous vote in the Illinois House. This, as he illegally siphoned money from special funds and private endowments to cover the shortfall, as millions of dollars went out the door to various politically favorable causes and ethically dubious "consultants" and lumbering bureaucracies supposedly tasked with trying to figure out why the state was losing money, while Blagojevich praised himself for fighting Springfield's culture of "failure and mediocrity" and compared his struggle to that of Abraham Lincoln.

If the Governor is right, that his electorate doesn't feel that his incompetence and corrupt, criminalistic nature is "relevant to their lives", maybe they'll consider it "relevant" when state services begin grinding to a halt entirely.

Perhaps Illinois Democrats have finally elected a governor who can give them a beautiful death. (Via Reverse Spin)

Quote of the Day

Spotted on an Illinois politics discussion board:

In Illinois, you have to pass a constitution test to graduate from high school and another one to graduate from college. I do not see that this has done any good. Democrats still get elected.

Heh.

Oh God, I Can See Forever

Every time I see some passage like this one, I scream inside.

For years, Rod Blagojevich has projected two images that define his tenure as Illinois' governor.

Now, under the lights of a federal investigation, the distinctions are blurring, and the crony image is threatening to wash out the populist one.

For the first time, federal prosecutors have put the Illinois governor inside their widespread investigation of corruption in his administration. Blagojevich told one convicted federal informant, "You stick with us and you will do very well for yourself," according to a court document prosecutors filed.

The Governor's Office denied that he is "Public Official A," described in the document as offering state business to convicted political insiders.

While he has tried to put the blame on lawmakers, his credibility in Springfield already was damaged from a legislative stalemate that has left key aspects of the people's business unresolved: The Chicago Transit Authority is in near meltdown; education reform is in limbo, and the state's deteriorating roads and bridges aren't being repaired for lack of a way to pay for it.

Anyone who's been paying attention has been able to figure out the score from the very beginning. To act as though any of this is some kind of shocking revelation is self-delusion as performance art. Zorn was probably right.

"It certainly did, Ravi!"

Watch ABC7 Chicago anchor Ravi Baichwal's face closely, because at 17 seconds, a minivan is going to crash through the off-camera plate glass window to his right.


Heh.

"Speaking of analogies, which of these self-aggrandizing comparisons do you find the most absurd/offensive/apt?" asks the Chicago Tribune's Eric Zorn:

I take (the Tribune editorial suggesting voters in Illinois be allowed to recall their governor) as a very good sign. I have gone a long way being for the things I'm for and being against things the Tribune's for. And I am in good company. Franklin Roosevelt, who gave us Social Security, who led America out of the Great Depression, who led America victoriously through World War II, received more than a thousand negative editorials from the Chicago Tribune. More than a thousand! And in one editorial, the Chicago Tribune compared Franklin Roosevelt to Mussolini, Stalin and Adolf Hitler. When you compare me to Franklin Roosevelt, I think they're going easy on me - Gov. Rod Blagojevich

It would at this time venture to read out an excerpt of President Abraham Lincoln especially to all my listeners in United States. As an idealist, Abraham Lincoln had one consuming passion during the time of supreme crisis and this was to preserve the Union because the Union was in danger. Towards that end, he broke laws, he violated the Constitution, he usurped arbitrary power, he trampled individual liberties...We are also learning democracy...I look at this from this point of view... - Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf

Well, Blagojevich already said that Jesus backed his healthcare plan (comparing his monstrous tax proposal to the Battle of Armageddon in an irony that was doubtlessly lost on him) and compared himself to Abraham Lincoln.

"Look, I'm modest. You want me to pat myself on the back? I'm not going to do that...Not every military initiative from the Union Army was successful. It took a while to kind of get that together and get it right. But the whole purpose of what they were trying to do was absolutely right, keeping the country together and then emancipating the slaves and providing freedom to millions and millions of people."

Modest.

Obviously, he couldn't just go back and use Lincoln again. I wonder if he's considered invoking Huey Long?

Day Rued

The Chicago Tribune's Eric Zorn says Illinoisans don't need, or deserve a recall option.

You had your chance. Blagojevich has been a banquet-sized turkey as a chief executive -- our editorial cited "his reckless financial stewardship, his dictatorial antics (and) his penchant for creating political enemies" as well as the smog of scandal that's hovered over his administration -- but no one can argue that he was stealth turkey.

Blagojevich ran for re-election in a primary and general election last year as a notorious self-basting holiday bird whose record for grandstanding, stubbornness and cronyism in his first term was widely reported.

Democrats could have supported his primary opponent, the smart, decent, independent but woefully underfunded Edwin Eisendrath whom Blagojevich refused to debate. Instead, they rewarded the incumbent with 72 percent of the vote.

In 2002, I voted in the Democratic primary for the express purpose of voting for Paul Vallas. Sometime after that fell through, I left the state entirely. So don't look at me.

The general electorate, then, with eyes presumably wide open, chose Blagojevich last November over Republican Judy Baar Topinka and Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney.

You may be disappointed by the pettiness, paralysis, polarization and general gobble-gobble-gobble in Springfield, but, unless you weren't paying attention last year, you can't be surprised. And you can't, in good conscience, ask for a re-do just because Blagojevich is running true to form.

Even if he weren't, you, the voters, have given us no reason to think you'd make a better decision choosing his replacement.

Here are some words of wisdom from a letter copied to me last week:

We do not need to act in anger at politics gone wrong. Instead we need to hold ourselves accountable for the people we elect in the first place.

The author? Edwin Eisendrath.

That's some industrial-sized bitterness right there, but not unfounded. Good people rarely run for state office in Illinois because good people rarely show up to elect them. As I said before, there's really no reason to believe that better candidates will show up in a recall election than they do in the normal ones, unless they intend to break the power of the party machine, which the party machine will never allow. There's nothing wrong, though, that a constitutional convention couldn't fix.

Meanwhile, at the Blagocave:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich's wife received the real estate commission in a $650,000 condominium sale from a businessman who since has won $10 million in no-bid state contracts.

It is the third time the Tribune has disclosed similar commissions earned by the first lady and her home-based real estate business, revealing a steady income to the Blagojevich household from key political supporters, fundraisers and state contractors.

The governor and his wife have declined to personally answer questions or provide a detailed accounting of Patricia Blagojevich's real estate income and clients. In his only comment on the matter to the Tribune, the governor last year called the questions..."sexist."

...but of course.

There's Time Enough For Rest In The Grave

Wait a minute, what just happened here?

Beginning today, public schools across Illinois are required to offer students a moment of silence to pray, ponder the day or otherwise reflect on their lives.

Such moments have been allowed under state law for years, but this year a group of lawmakers -- all Democrats -- decided to require it.

Did they do it just to spite Blagojevich, or was it mainly motivated by some bizarre feel-good bureaucratic impulse?

Gov. Rod Blagojevich rejected the plan this summer, but in recent days, lawmakers cast aside his veto, the final stroke coming Thursday when the House voted 74-37 to support the moment of silence.

Supporters said a little silence in the hectic classroom wouldn't hurt and said this has nothing to do with religion in the classroom.

"Our children today are bombarded by noise," said state Rep. Monique Davis, a Chicago Democrat and supporter.

Other critics questioned why lawmakers would spend so much time and energy on something that state law already allowed and even now includes no penalties for non-compliance. Meanwhile, a financial crisis looms for the region's mass transit agencies and school funding remains unaddressed, as does tax help for Cook County homeowners.

The time to contemplate your day is in the car, on the way. Given that the time students spend in the classroom is ridiculously expensive, maybe this moment, and as many other moments as possible, should be spent teaching? I'm just throwing it out there. The classroom might seem a bit less hectic if they weren't cramming it full of ineffective social programs and other purely non-academic material.

Perhaps the moment of silence is actually the perfect metaphor for so much of what's wrong with public education: Students and teachers gathered together, staring at each other, accomplishing nothing.

On Friday, "students still talked (during the moment of silence), explaining to one another why it was happening or complaining about how they felt it was stupid. Overall, the actual moment of silence was relatively short and left many students wondering how one can reflect on the day or pray in a short amount of time.

"The students were generally confused. I heard many thinking it was specifically to honor those who had fought/died for our country.

"One student brought up how she thought it was ridiculous how legislators spent so much time discussing the law, instead of spending their time on things that the students actually need, like supplies and air conditioning."

From the mouths of babes.

Update: In an escalation of this rampant stupidity, someone is suing to have the moment of silence declared unconstitutional, because they're afraid of students using it to pray on their own initiative.

The Blue Bush

It's "in" to hate Blagojevich, says Rich Miller:

Just 23 percent of voters said they approve of the way Blagojevich is handling his job, a recent Wesleyan University poll found. A different survey, from the respected Rasmussen Reports, found that only a tiny fraction of the population -- just 5 percent -- rate the governor's job performance as "excellent."

It's to the point where Blagojevich probably wishes he could move "up" to Richard Nixon's ratings. And he's very close to George Ryan's job approval ratings as the soon-to-be prison inmate was leaving office under a cloud of federal investigations.

Only 29 percent of voters in overwhelmingly Democratic Cook County said they approved of Blagojevich's job performance, according to the Wesleyan poll. By contrast, 67 percent of Cook voters gave the thumbs up to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and 67 percent said they will vote for a Democrat for U.S. Congress. The governor's doing better with county voters than President Bush, but statewide the two are locked in a dead heat.

Not a single demographic in Illinois, whether it's race, party affiliation, gender, ideology, income or region, gives the governor a majority or even a plurality of support.

That's diversity.

I guess this makes me at trend setter. Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune wonders how to get rid of the autotheistic Governor.

He shows no inclination to resign from office. And while the state constitution does allow for his impeachment by the Illinois House and trial by the Senate, it's doubtful legislators could bring themselves to such drastic action. So the realistic question becomes this: Given the multiple ineptitudes of Rod Blagojevich -- his reckless financial stewardship, his dictatorial antics, his penchant for creating political enemies -- should citizens create a new way to terminate a chief executive who won't, or can't, do his job?

The odds are not great that a process for removing inept governors can be initiated in time to remove this inept governor. But that effort, which must begin in the Illinois General Assembly, would be worth the burden it creates, possibly including a special election to replace Blagojevich with a new governor.

In practical terms: The earliest that voters could be asked to add a recall amendment to the state constitution is the November 2008 general election. If the amendment is worded properly, there would be time to recall Blagojevich before voters get a chance to dump him the old-fashioned way: in a 2010 primary or general election, should he seek a third term.

There wouldn't have been a second term if the GOP had nominated a decent candidate. I'm not sure a recall mechanism can fix the dearth of talent interested in the position.

A Metaphor For The Entire Administration

An accurate description of Rod Blagojevich, as overheard in Springfield:

It's a bird . . . it's a plane . . . no, it's SuperPopulist!

On Tuesday, the governor played that Halloween game on the lawn of a very nice family in the 2200 block of West Winona to protest the Legislature's refusal to make permanent a 7 percent cap on property taxes, passing instead a three-year program that provides the level of relief sought by the governor only in the first year. Blago called what lawmakers did "Treat, then Trick." That prompted one lawmaker to later acidly observe, "What did the governor call his doomed, gigantic gross receipts tax proposal? A razorblade in an apple?"

I thought that's what people called his election.

As pressing as the tax issue is, for the moment -- repeat -- for the moment, the Legislature has managed to give the governor some of what he wanted, a continuation of the tax relief at least for one year. That will mean some help for homeowners on their 2006 property tax bills. A majority will save up to $250. Higher-end homeowners will do even better.

Like the governor, for instance.

For 2005, the Blagojevich family paid $9,789.40 in property taxes. But this year, the first couple will see a whopping 18 percent reduction. They will pay, according to county records, just $7,996.85 for 2006.

How's that for a load of candy dumped in your pumpkin, trick-or-treaters?

I don't think that's candy.

Joe Nobody

How corrupt is the City of Chicago?

So corrupt that the president of the Chicago Crime Commission and the executive director of the Better Governmant Association say they can't be trusted with a casino license.

Meanwhile, for some strange reason, it appears that whenever people try to investigate people connected to Governor Rod Blagojevich, they face "political interference" designed to sabotage their investigation.

The [Medicaid] fraud investigation, which involved a half-dozen investigators from three state agencies, ended last year with no charges and no state sanctions.

"Everyone was really frustrated," said Abbey Romanek, the former senior assistant attorney general. "It was a case in which we felt there was something wrong, and we kept running up against roadblocks."

Illinois State Police dismissed as unfounded the allegations of improper political influence after what the agency describes as a "thorough investigation."

But the pharmacist, Harish M. Bhatt, and the pharmacy regulator, Yashwant Amin, both say they were never interviewed by state police about interference allegations. State police refused to provide the Tribune reports to buttress their findings about the interference allegations.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) insists its fraud investigation was thorough but likewise refused Tribune requests for investigative records or other documents to confirm those assertions independently.

That's because there are no such documents. In fact, nobody, including the Governor, knows nothin':

Bhatt, 57, who described himself as "Joe nobody from Joliet," denied that he exerted any political influence and said he was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing because the probe was error-ridden and without foundation.

A spokeswoman for Blagojevich did not answer detailed questions but said in a written response that the governor had no knowledge of the investigation of Bhatt's Basinger's Pharmacy stores. She acknowledged that Bhatt is among a number of the governor's Indian-American supporters.

"The governor has said on a number of occasions, to a number of communities, that he wants a diverse and inclusive administration. He believes state government should reflect the people it represents," spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said in an e-mail.

Criminals are diverse.

The Hammer of Rod

Governor Blagojevich has found the ultimate weapon to use against the legislature: cancelling law enforcement.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich is threatening to lay off 1,800 of the state's roughly 2,000 Illinois State Police troopers in January unless lawmakers approve key budget legislation soon.

Just as Illinois thought they'd escaped the "Mad Max" future, Blagojevich finds a way to put that back on the table.

The State of Illinois is almost completely controlled by Chicago Democrats. This is what that looks like: gridlock isn't a matter of partisanship, it's a matter of imbecility.

Don't Tase Him, Bro!

Somewhere in Chicago, there are still people who want to punish Steve Bartman.

On that fateful night, Bartman, then 26, was escorted for his safety out of the park by security guards after he deflected the ball. He was wearing a Cubs cap, glasses and radio headphones - a look that became a Halloween fashion here that year.

Murtha said a subsequent episode of "Law and Order" involved a character called "the foul ball guy," who was murdered in a bar. "It was gratuitous," Murtha said.

Last week, in bars outside Wrigley, fans who were asked to discuss the Cubs mentioned Bartman without prompting.

Dan May, a law student watching on TV last week at Murphy's Bleachers as the Cubs closed in on the division title, said: "If he came in right now, I wouldn't shoot him. But I'd break his knees."

I think the guy has suffered enough.

DON'T LET THEM TOUCH YOU!

Barack is in imminent danger of contracting Blagojeleprosy.

Becky Carroll, deputy chief of staff to Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and a veteran of Illinois political campaigns, this week moves to the Barack Obama presidential campaign as director of Women for Obama.

Carroll's experience includes time as a communications aide to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. She also was communications director for Chicago congressman Rahm Emanuel's crucial first campaign for his seat in Congress.

Longtime readers know that back in the day, this blog was so in-depth on the subject of Rod Blagojevich's ultra-corruption that I probably could've taught Blagojevich Theory at the graduate level. Carroll's work with Blagojevich has been almost as hilarious as the Iraqi Information Minister, including her announcement in 2003 that we should apparently be honored to subsidize her decision to continue living in Chicago and instead, with the help of taxpayer funds, rent a second home in Springfield.

Carroll said workers like herself are making a financial sacrifice that actually saves the state money. "I make more money than some average people do. Because I really enjoy being a public servant, I'm willing to incur a little extra fiscal distress" by paying rent in two cities, she said.

Carroll had billed the state $975 for her $325/month apartment during "the final months" of a legislative session. (Carroll does get points for restraint, however: Two other aids had rented an apartment that cost $1,256 a month, presumably built in an actual Ivory Tower, given Springfield rents, and only chipped in a total of $360 between themselves.)