Now, dear readers, we venture into virgin territory, those charges brought against Rod Blagojevich by his accusers which have curiously melted away in favor of the seemingly more sensational ‘sale of the Senate seat’ and the apparent manipulations surrounding the Tribune and its editorial board.
They are interesting, I think, not only because their contents differ materially from the ones we’ve considered so far but because they originate from events much earlier in time.
Remember that part of Blagojevich’s wiretapped amusement, as well as his anger, when he pointed out that in going past the legislature to fund the Tribune deal and retain Wrigley Field he was doing exactly what the Tribune’s editorial writers had been attacking him for while calling for his impeachment.
The Tribune was not the only source of propulsion for removing Blagojevich from office. This goal was an open secret among legislative leaders –– of both parties –– for more than a year.
The question is, why? What was it about this particular governor which galvanized damned-near everybody? Why would the legislators of his own party scheme to remove him?
It’s simple. Blagojevich was running state government in ways which did not genuflect before the solons, the high priests. He did not honor the sanctity of the system.
Legislatures are comprised of a bunch of politicos and hustlers, those with further ambition, those promoting their financial futures, some who just enjoy the show or like seeing their names in the paper. They disagree about minor items such as budgetary priorities and whose goose is going to get thoroughly greased, but in one concern they are as one: they want to be re-elected.
In order to get re-elected, these pols have got to do what Blagojevich is accused of doing, namely they’ve got sell something to buyers with cash. And they can’t do it if they can’t control the politics of the state. If there is a governor who, as the Tribune kept screaming about, “goes around the legislature,” he is threatening their ability to command those big campaign contributions because he’s undermining their control of government programs.
That, my friends, is the Great Sin this governor committed.
Let’s look at one example. As you might suspect, insurance companies are powerful in Illinois; they are pretty much everywhere now, a syndicate which extorts protection money from everyone for nearly everything, by law in many cases. They and their hookers in the Congress of the United States are the reason we do not have a decent, universal health care system.
In Illinois, in early 2007, the Governor proposed “Illinois Covered”, which would expand health care coverage for children whose families could not afford private health insurance but who did not qualify for Medicare. He proposed to fund it by raising the business tax.
The legislators lauded the goal. They were all in favor of health care for kids who needed it. But the funding was impermissible. It would injure small businesses, they said, and the tax would just be passed on to others anyway, and besides, it would be a disincentive to businesses to come to Illinois. Interesting. Of course, if they could just pass the tax on to their hapless customers, then it would hardly be much of a disincentive to aspirant business relocators. No matter. In politics, all you need is a cover story.
The Illinois House voted on the bill on May 10, 2007, defeating it 107-0. Twenty months later, the vote to impeach would be 117-1.
On November 7, 2007, the Illinois Department of Health Care and Family Service (DHSF), an agency under the direction of the Governor, adopted an “Emergency Rule” and filed a simultaneous “Permanent Rule” which immediately implemented a portion of the failed Blagojevich legislation.
The “Emergency Rule” attempted to do these two things:
1. Preserve health care benefits for parents/caretakers with annual incomes between 133% and 185% of the Federal Poverty Level. These were people in danger of losing coverage when Bush refused to extend the SCHIP coverage federally. And
2. Expand eligibility for health care coverage to 400% of the FPL. This would mean an income less than $80,000.00 for a family of four. In other words, implementation of this policy would make care available to everyone in the state.
Understand, please: it is not that details could not be arranged with the insurance thugs on matters such as administration of the program. Those boys will insist on their fees. But by going around the legislature, Blagojevich was depriving politicians of the clout they needed to raise vast sums, and that is something you will do only at your peril.
Six days after the emergency rule was announced, a legislative committee bearing the acronym JCAR, which reviews administrative rules before they go into effect, voted 9-2 to suspend it, declaring that no emergency existed, which was certainly true if you were a member of a legislator’s family and got health care for free.
The state DHSF “continued to implement and enroll applicants... under its expanded FamilyCare program,” according to the impeachment brief. And Blagojevich was to blame because, get this: “The statute on which DHSF relied to implement this...rule... provides that medical assistance may be provided to individuals ‘to whom a plan for coverage has been submitted to the Governor by (DHSF) and approved by him.’ The Governor, therefore, was required by law to approve the actions of DHSF.”
I know, I know, it makes no sense no matter how many times you read it. And then, to top it off, Blagojevich was actually present at meetings at which people from DHSF were also in attendance and where expansion of FamilyCare was discussed! Yup, both thumbs in the cookie jar.
But consider two more items. One: Blagojevich was acting on legal counsel which informed him that JCAR “does not have the authority to suspend the Emergency Rule... (and its role was) merely advisory –– it does not have the constitutional authority to suspend the regulation.”
And two: Blagojevich made it plain where he stood, saying “I’m going to continue to do what I think is right, and that’s one of the good things about being governor... (I) can do things like this.” And, “Where is it written that a handful of legislators –– 12 of them –– can tell the executive branch what it’s going to do when it comes to administering the executive branch?”
The answer to the latter question now appears to be that it’s written in the power of a legislature to impeach, convict, and remove a governor for any reason, or even no reason at all.
Blagojevich, according to the items tucked back inside behind the splashier charges, was a guy who would find a way to get some things done, even when that meant pissing-off a bunch of hacks who believed that such things were their own prerogative. It’s there again and again, when he tried to ensure that the state would have enough flu vaccine, when he tried to enable residents to get their prescriptions filled more cheaply through foreign pharmacies, when he tried to cut some graft out of the state budget.
These were his real crimes, the ones the legislature had been boiling over for a couple of years, long before Fitzgerald rode into town. He didn’t merely disagree with the legislature; he fought it. He found ways to outmaneuver it.
Know what else the committee considered grounds for impeachment?
You are not ready for this.
They accused him of forcing the state of Illinois to waste 21 million dollars because he got himself arrested.
Talk about a fair trial. Reminds me quite a bit, actually, of the “show trials” the Soviets once held, where people were destroyed for the educational value of it.
Reminds me of somebody else, too. There’s a great movie, “All The King’s Men,” Broderick Crawford playing Huey Long. The remake with Sean Penn’s cool, too, but I liked the first one. Even though the film depicts a crooked Long building an empire on payoffs and blackmail, which is the point of view of the guy who wrote the book, Robert Penn Warren, it developed that Warren was a part of the Louisiana high society which hated Long, and therefore I read a few other books and the picture changed.
What Warren didn’t look at too much was the fact that Long took on the biggest thieves and thugs in the state, the Standard Oil Company. He’d put himself through law school, and he’d gone after them. In the governor’s chair, Long finally imposed a tax on them, using the proceeds to build a system of roads and schools which lifted Louisiana into the 20th century as a progressive force. All school children were guaranteed free books, something never seen there before.
The oil guys didn’t go down easily. They fought Long through their own bought judges and legislators, through their own long-standing corrupt system. But Long kept beating them. An impeachment trial failed to remove him, because the people of the state loved him and stood for him. Still, it was a narrow miss. Elected to the Senate, he had begun to explore the possibility of running for President in 1936, against both FDR and the Republican nominee, because he considered them too conservative and too bound to big money. He was assassinated.
No, Blagojevich isn’t Long. He’s not in Long’s league. But maybe he aspired to it. Let’s not forget that Illinois –– despite Obama –– has a history of corruption. These guys who went after Blagojevich are about as pure as the driven snow, after the snow has been driven off Lake Michigan and under their tires.
On the day before his arrest was hurriedly announced by the saintly Fitzgerald, Blagojevich stood with the fired workers at Republican Window & Door and said that the state of Illinois, by his executive order, would cease doing business with Bank of America until the bank, which had already scarfed-up billions of ‘bailout’ dollars, made the deal which would keep the business open.
Yeah, Blagojevich played hardball, just like the guys he took on, and in some respects he wasn’t very good at it, but show me another governor who’s stood up to those bastards. Go ahead, take your time.
So that’s it for now, enough about a gone governor. Other things are happening. But the record needed to be made somewhere in cyberspace, however small the voice. It’s not popular, but that’s what makes it useful. They hanged this guy, and they did it for reasons, and they lied about it.
