Alan Keyes accidently tells the truth

[lil-petunia]

He claimed that Illinois politics was thoroughly corrupt.

Well, duh, how does he think he got the appointment in the first place?

Illinois, on both sides of the aisle has always been seedy, bribe-driven, corrupt and filled with corruption. Let's look at this year alone. A school union election which was rife with fraud. SCHOOL FRAUD? The hospital construction board - filled with graft, conflict of interests, bribes, etc. Mayor Daley's Lease Truck scam.

The list goes on and one.

[demnan]

1. He thinks that from Maryland he has a right to talk?

What's up with that?

[lil-petunia]

2. well, Illinois is pretty corrupt. No, really corrupt.

so he has a point. But so do the federal prosecutors who are kept so busy in this state.

I wrote a friend in Maryland and asked if they want him back if he loses. He offered real money if we would keep him.

[barb162]

3. are we any more corrupt than elsewhere?

How do you measure that?
I go back to Clinton's many, various investigations which never found anything fishy $$$wise on whitewater, travelgate, etc. Meanwhile, there are no investigations of Bush, really, because the Congress is owned by the GOP. So Halliburton, Enron, etc., ties to this administration have gone really nowhere. But I think this current administration is REALLY corrupt.

[lil-petunia]

4. Just the facts, jack

For ex, in Chicago we indicted at least one aldercreature per year for 25 years running.

Some even sought re-election while in jail.

Greylord.

Leased Truck

Hospital construction

Down state hotel construction and funding

heck, I could name at least another 25 serious cases of fraud, bribery, graft, mismanagement and public corruption before we even get to the modern times of representatives like Lipinski.

It is a cesspool here like no other.

[barb162]

5. I lknow all this as I have lived in Chicago and /or area all my life.

But how do you know LA isn't worse, for example. And what I am also saying is that some city or state can be extremely corrupt but the "authorities" never do anything about it. I look at DuPage which to me is WORSE than Cook County but they really really hide it well and nothing is ever done about it.

[lil-petunia]

6. but barb, you are comparing apples to apples

Duppage and Cook are simply the reverse sides of the same corrupt coin.
Dems agree that GOP keeps its fingers there, and vice versa.

Upton Sinclair wrote the jungle about Chicago. And the same seamy story can be applied to politics as well as sausage.

[barb162]

7. okay poor example

however, when you have a supposedly clean place like DuPage which is really very dirty, out of state it can be the same. How do you gauge it all. WHat I am saying is that Indianapolis or LA or, or, or can be as bad as IL but investigators don't investigate. SO outside of IL,they don't have their Operation Greylords but maybe the investigators would find far worse if they did investigate. Bush, for example, is very dirty, I believe, but as long as the Congress has a GOP majority there won't be any investigations. And for Clinton, these same hypocrites were investigating him for Whitewater etc with one special prosecutor after another for almost the entire time he was in office.

[lil-petunia]

8. you make a very good point

I have to admit, I enjoy the shear spectacle of it all. The brazen fumbling of the english language by Daley, the craven outright evil from the entire duppage clan, the bumbling, fumbling Ryan saga, and all his little cronies.

I started getting angry at politics when I worked for a firm that did some Med mal defense. Fat Georgie came by with the president of the medmal ins. co that was sending us business and said,

"If you want to continue getting this kind of work, cough up."

That was when I started making my plans to escape that kind of evil. Succeeded so far.

Keyes, now, that's entertainment!

[barb162]

9. I take it you mean the ex guv? (Fat George)

If so, did you find it interesting that he worked on the death penalty stuff, pardoning those guys, etc. (I gotta ask, because I guess I never considered the ex guv as fat, so I want to make sure).
If you advise we are talking one and the same person, I got a story for you about the prisons.

The story on "coughing up" sure is brazen. wow.

A lot of people hate Daley but I am always impressed how things roll off his back, Like his father. Like the porch deck collapse and that nightclub thing where all those people got killed. He has a huge amount of common sense. When people were outraged about the porch collapse he came out (and gets more outraged) and said something like who the hell does this...it's a porch, for pete's sake and he starts getting really upset. So I started thinking about it when I lived in the city and talked to another friend the same age and we both came to the same conclusion, yeah we'd never have a party out there, that they were never intended for huge numbers of people, on and on. They were for storing yard stuff and beer cases only. The problem with that deck though... it was made to look like it could support a lot of people.
You know what else? I LOVE MILLENIUM PARK. And that was Daley's big push. Money like that should have been spent elsewhere, okay, the homeless, the schools, the poor, the streets, etc., but then you go to Millenium Park and the sheer genius of the Gehry pavilion and the other things there... chalk it up to Daley. He doesn't seem to care at all what happens west of the Dan Ryan / Kennedy.

[lil-petunia]

11. Even in evil there can be good. sounds like

something I want to repeat in a book.

Anyway, Ryan had two faces, one power-driven, old-school, gutter politics practiced by people who would do anything to anyone to get ahead. The other, he really wanted to be gov and thought he would do ok.

It was a brave, unpopular and correct step he took, kicking the lid off of the scams that called themselves murder trials. With a history that includes CPD Commander Burge (200 credible accusations of forced confessions leading to convictions, including 20 or so murder convictions) a states attorney office in Cook and DuPage counties that served as little more than avenues to political advancement, and some individuals who cared only about their conviction record, not their duty as officers of the court, he certainly had a big task in front of him.

But give him all the credit. He did the right thing. He acted properly. He saved innocents from death. For that, I honor him. For his politics and political history, the man should fry.

As for Little Big Man, the Economist just called Chicago the best city in America. Hard to argue with that. Except, sometimes, it is inspite of him, not because. Millenium park (Which millenium are they celebrating?) rocks. The lakefront is the most stunning in the world. By far. Some of that happened because of Daddy Daley, not sonny. Most important was a guy named Burnham. His plan made this city what it is. His footprint and foresight caused, no, forced, even our aldercreatures to remain within the striped lines.

[barb162]

15. when

DuPage prosecutors were going after Rolando Cruz I was going crazy. WHen that judge finally threw out the whole case and they let Cruz get out of jail after how many years, oh, what a relief. But they took so many years away from him and those other guys they finally let go. Joe Birkett and Jim Ryan as prosecutors were real sociopathic types.

[lil-petunia]

17. yeah, a great example of

the bullshit that was tied to death penalty cases.

Entire police squads lying. Prosecutors hiding exculp information. man.

[dansolo]

10. I suspect Texas and Florida are much worse

Do you honestly believe that the corruption in Illinois (I don't deny that it exists) is any worse than many other states?

[lil-petunia]

12. bah. Amateurs. Mere shadows of true professionals.

A very few parts of Florida (Miami - Dade) come close. many parts of Texas try to emulate our incredibly effective and profitable system. but few places get you from crib to grave and afterwards. Not with the professional graft and cronyism that has been perfected over the decades here in Illinois.

How many states can count a number of former governors who spent serious forced vacation time at tax payer expense? it takes two hands, maybe three to count em here. And how many of their aides, key advisers spent time in the cells next door? Too many to count. One guy, a secretary of state was creative enough to keep his bribes in shoe boxes. When he died, (late in the 60s) they found close to a million in small bills. Remember, that was 40 years ago. Money meant something in those days.


Just a hint:
let's go backward.
you die. Does that stop you from voting? Hell, no. not here. I won't even get into the corruption in some of the city cemeteries and "placement" issues. Nor will I name which wards make the most money off that stuff. Need a sidewalk, trash collected, water hooked up, electricity, cable TV, or construction permits? huh. just try to do it if you support the wrong local candidate.

[barb162]

13. but TX

produced Bush and Delay. They are my definition of primal scream.

[lil-petunia]

14. DeLay yes

but you guys had to import the shrimp. Ours are all home grown. they are born, bred, trained, elected, indicted, then their kids are put into office to follow in their greedy clawsteps.

[barb162]

16. my cousin was in high school

with Mayor Daley and he said the priests used to knock him around. Guess corporal punishment didn't work.

[ieoeja]

18. You got something against the dead?

What are you? Some kind of deadist?

Did those people consistently vote a straight ticket? Isn't it a safe bet that they would have continued voting a straight ticket if they hadn't died? Does Illinois law specifically remove an individual's right to vote by reason of being deceased?

If the answers to those questions are, "yes", "yes" and "no" then since state law requires our counting any vote where the intent of the voter can be determined, it should be perfectly legal for the dead to vote.

Dead hating bigot!

[barb162]

19. speaking of voting (or deadists or whatever

the hell it is we're talking about) this one time I tried voting and the voting people said I wasn't registered. So I went home and got my voter's card, went back there and showed it to them. They said I still couldn't vote because I wasn't on the computer list they have in front of them. This was all very strange since I voted in all of the previous elections and hadn't moved. Anyway, I called the police, the voting board , etc., that day but of course I couldn't vote. I was SO DAMNED MAD! This is DuPage and I have gotten dirty looks and sneers when I asked for the Dem ballot in primaries.

[lil-petunia]

20. damn you dead lovers

I only have 14 albums. ISNT THAT GOOD ENUFF???

still, I'd like the dead to have just a modicum of control over their votes.
or, if the vote is abused, a direct line to the person responsible, let's say, for every waking moment, for 3-4 weeks?

[davsand]

21. Paul Powell's famous shoe-boxes!

Wow, I figured I was one of a few on here that remembered that far back in the illustrious history of Illinois politics!

I have to admit, there are very few places on earth that come close to the long history of graft and corruption that we have here in Illinois. Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed might come close-but even that was fairly short lived next to all that we have seen here in Illinois.

A few years ago Miami had a Mayoral election that came close to Chicago style politics-but those guys got caught at it--so it doesn't count by our standards. I don't recall that they had as good a turnout from the "Dead Vote" and I think they were pretty cheap with the bribes--which ultimately led to their downfall.

True story, a couple of years ago I was across the table from a Chicago attorney who did property tax defense cases. His job was to go in and defend lowering valuations on commercial properties. He was appearing down here representing some commercial client. He walked into the hearing and asked where the Board of Review kept our "re-election fund" collection containers.

We explained that we were appointed and didn't need "re-election" funds.

He got all freaked out. "But in Chicago you ALWAYS count on plunking down at least a couple of grand at the hearing! It is a cost of doing business." The Illinois Dept of Revenue hearing officer was not terribly amused by this, however he DID confirm that he'd heard this story from other lawyers out of Chicago.

I always wondered if that lawyer was planning to leave the state since he talked willingly and openly about that little business practice in Cook...


Laura

[barb162]

22. NJ

also might surpass IL

[lil-petunia]

23. (insert sign for ROFLMAO)

Hey, we are talking varsity squad here, not some mamby pamby, silly, greedy waste site owners. Sure you got the lawyer thing, the gov. thing, the bribery and blackmail thing going, BUT we have that going ALL the TIME with BOTH Parties! Plus, we've have that since Al Capone had 80% of the Chicago police, aldercreatures and the entire city of Danville on his payroll. And let's not forget the State police.

We take pride in our city's history. Its indictments. Its level of convictions. That's your civic lesson for today.