Last year, he steered more than nine million dollars to campaign donors. He has long-standing ties to a political king-maker in Illinois, who was recently named in the ‘pay-to-play’ investigation of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. He has a history of pork barrel spending, much of it linked to his friends.
His biggest campaign contributor, Caterpillar Corporation, has invested close to $200,000.00 in him over the past ten years. In return, Caterpillar has picked up in the last year alone, around eight million federal smackeroos to develop technologies for potential future military contract, and snagged a cool $330,000 of federal funds to construct the Lakeview Museum in Peoria, part of a project that includes a Caterpillar-financed museum focused on the corporation’s history.
I am not talking about Rod Blagojevich, everybody’s favorite whipping-boy. I am talking about Ray LaHood, long-time Republican congressman and President Obama’s choice for Secretary of Transportation.
Just goes to show how generous are the parameters in America’s new favorite game show, nail-that-pol. You can get yourself indicted and or/impeached, or you can get yourself named to the Cabinet. Wow. If I was looking at fairways that wide, I’d break 72 at San Geronimo. Well, maybe not, but you get the idea.
Yes, I keep harping on it. That’s probably because Blagojevich, whatever the fuck he’s done, is nowhere near as disgusting as the crew of Bernanke, Poulson, and Friends, the bullet-head crooks engineering the theft of every last buck in the nation, and he’s got nobody even talking about due process or the presumption of innocence.
There’s pretty much no doubt, near-term, about what’s going to happen here. Blagojevich will be convicted by the Illinois Senate and removed from office; the criminal charges will lose some of their luster and some will be tossed out; if it reaches trial, he’ll likely be convicted of something, just because when you get down to it every governor can be had if you want to dig deep enough. For example, if there was a U.S. Attorney with the motivation in my home state, a Grand Jury might be asking what Arnold Schwartzenegger was doing meeting Enron executives in airport hotel rooms.
What’s happening in Illinois is just the circus come to town. Meanwhile, a trillion bucks or so gone up in smoke, no way to even track it, with corporate execs saying they ain’t saying what they’ve done with it, and the newspapers editorialize about how that’s not right, and the beat goes on.
If this country wasn’t halfway crazy stupid by now, perhaps it would be Bernanke and Paulson and their friends answering Grand Jury questions instead of a moderately problematic governor who sure pissed somebody off. It would be Rumsfeld, and John Yoo, and Cheney grilled under oath, not Eliot Spitzer. Every time you turn on the news, folks, somebody’s playing hide-the-salami.
The LaHood appointment is of course a minor embarrassment for Obama, but he’s got some room. After all, if he names people he really wants to these cabinet positions, they’ll poison his milkshake. He’s stuck right now for a number of reasons and that’s why we’re seeing various Clinton re-treads and other creepoids near the top. I assume he’s got a plan.
I hope to God he’s got a plan.
Raz -
You make a valid point. Obama's picks, thus far, have appeased certain elements in the monied and vested-interest class.
However, overall, he does have a plan. Machiavelli's plan - keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.
He's completely co-opting the Republican Party, the corporate clique and the right-wing echo chamber. He's going to smother them, not destroy them. Or another way to look at it - he'll completely emasculate them leaving them with only the vestiges of their former self.
At least that's my take on his plan.
I hope I'm right. Only time will tell.
Pete