-I've learned that Gov. Blagojevich is poised to name former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to replace President elect Barack Obama in the Senate on Tuesday afternoon. The embattled Blagojevich is fighting impeachment charges in the Illinois House for, among other reasons, trying to auction off the Senate seat held by President elect Barack Obama. Blagojevich called a press conference for 2 p.m. Chicago time at the Thompson State of Illinois Center.
Burris was the first African American to win statewide office in Illinois when he was elected comptroller, serving from 1983 to 1991. He served as Illinois Attorney General from 1991 to 1995. Burris previously ran and lost bids for the U.S. senate and governor. Senate Leader Harry Reid (D-Nv.) had said he would ask the Senate not to seat any Blagojevich appointee, in order to make sure the seat is free of taint.
I don't think it will be easy for Reid to refuse to seat Burris, unless Obama publicly supports the refusal. Refusing to seat a history-making African-American to the Senate, especially one who will be a caretaker and who appears to have kept himself squeaky clean in an often corrupt state
My home state's culture of political corruption is well documented. Roland Burris managed to build a career in politics in this state without falling into that muck. He is, to the best of everyone's knowledge, squeaky clean, and he's highly respected. He's 71 years old, so I wonder if he intends to serve as a caretaker. But he's an honorable guy, well liked by people across the state in both parties. It's a stroke of brilliance by Blagojevich in my opinion.
Reid might still refuse to seat Burris, but this is a fairly shrewd move by Blagojevich. Refusing to seat Burris will not come without at least some backlash, especially if the seat stays vacant instead.
When Penny Pritzker withdrew her name from consideration for Secretary of Commerce, a typical corporate news report in the New York Times was neutral, to say the least.
"Penny Pritzker, a Chicago hotel magnate whose business transactions could have provoked scrutiny, last week said she did not want to be Commerce Secretary."
One of Penny Pritzker's transactions that "could have provoked scrutiny" was paying herself and her co-conspirators $200 million in dividends on phony profits while they diddled away all the depositors' money deposited in Superior Bank.
This enormous scam never provoked much scrutiny while Penny Pritzker was bankrolling Barack Obama's Senate campaign, and it never provoked much scrutiny while she was the financial chair-person of Barack Obama's Presidential campaign, but nominations for Mr. Obama's Cabinet must be especially provocative, because apparently nothing else was ever going to provoke much scrutiny of Penny Pritzker except being nominated as Secretary of Commerce.
The only significant "accomplishments" in Penny Pritzker's hugely over-privileged life are bankrolling Obama and cheating hundreds of elderly retirees out of the part of their life-savings that wasn't covered by the FDIC, so...
Which one of these "accomplishments" qualified Penny Pritzker to be Secretary of Commerce?
Was it cheating depositors, or bankrolling Obama?
Otherwise there's not much in Penny Pritzker's résumé except appointments to run parts of the family empire that she controls along with five or six uncles and cousins.
So Obama's operatives leaked Pritzker's name as a potential Secretary of Commerce, and the New York Times distinguished itself from ordinary corporate news machines by actually including a paragraph about Superior Bank way down below the jump in a story about Penny Pritzker refusing the nomination for Secretary of Commerce, but even the Times only mentioned this ugly story after a few bloggers had taken the trouble to google "Penny Pritzker" and blogged about her gigantic scam.
Consequently Barack Obama couldn't actualize his plan to pay off Penny Pritzker for all her long years of fundraising and personal donations...
Or maybe you think it really was bankrupting Superior Bank that put Penny Pritzker's name on the short list of candidates for Secretary of Commerce.
Meanwhile Rod Blagojevich tried to get some consideration for appointing one candidate or another to the US Senate, and judging from the strategic leaks coming out of Patrick Fitzgerald's office, they don't really have Blagojevich soliciting bribes on the wiretaps, and he certainly never asked for anything approaching the $200 million that Penny Pritzker paid herself and her co-conspirators in dividends on phony profits at Superior Bank.
But for some strange reason, Rod Blagojevich is big news, and Penny Pritzker isn't.
At the center of the Rod Blagojevich scandal is an allegation that he was putting a U.S. Senate seat up for sale. Here are some of the key quotes:
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich told aides he had something "f-ing golden" - sole power to pick Barack Obama's Senate successor - to trade for a White House post or lucrative outside job for himself, and he sought to sell the seat to the highest bidder, federal prosecutors allege in a sweeping complaint against the Democratic governor.
The Senate seat "is a f--ing valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing," Blagojevich said, according to the complaint. He even threatened to name himself "unless I get something real good."
This is pretty bad, and Blagojevich needs to step down and face trial. Still, it needs to be remembered that the only reason Blagojevich seems to be in trouble is because he was selling the seat for money. If he was selling the seat for votes, personal power, or a committee chairmanship, he would probably have been fine. After all, over the past month, there are at least two high-profile instances of conservative Democrats selling their membership in the party for committee chairmanships. First, Lieberman managed to acquire a Senate chairmanship by threatening to vote with another party (emphasis mine, more in the extended entry):
One little noticed part of the corruption problems encompassing Democrats like Rod Blagojevich in Illinois and William Jefferson in Louisiana is that they come from the more conservative/DLC/New Democratic wing of the party. Blago, when he was in the House, was the only Illinois Democrat to vote for the war, and as Governor pursued culture war issues like cracking down on violent video games. Jefferson was one of the few CBC members to vote for the war in Iraq, and has a well-trod history of voting against corporate regulations.
New Democrats are kind of struggling to find their niche at this point, ideologically speaking. There's not a lot of oomph left in the free market Democrat mantra, and the corruption scandals here suggest that this is in some ways simply about low rent pay to play.
Illinois is strapped for cash to fund it's Medicaid program and other budget needs. Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich has yet to finalize a budget with state lawmakers, and the state is operating on month-to-month extensions.
Local hospitals are concerned with low Medicaid reimbursement rates and late payments for the essential medical care they provided to residents:
"As we see the state roll into a new fiscal year with a month-to-month budget approach, the true issues of the state - health care, education, transportation, pensions - are not going to get addressed," said Billings, president and chief executive officer of Blessing Corporate Services, the parent company of Blessing Hospital in Quincy [Quincey Herald-Whig, 7/13/2007].
With limited Medicaid funding, it's crucial that the state get the most value for it's health care dollars. Illinois can bolster funding for needed medical care for it's citizens by leaving purely elective treatments out of the state's coverage. For example, since 2003, Medicaid programs in Montana, Utah, Florida, Maine, Louisiana, Idaho, and Minnesota have joined a group of 16 states in de-funding elective circumcisions, each saving their share of an estimated $70 Million dollars spent annually by taxpayers on the optional surgery, with the typical state able to save about $1 Million each year.
Such low-hanging fruit, however, is not easy to come by, since Medicaid already, by and large, does not cover purely elective treatments.
Sullivan [state Sen. John Sullivan, D-Rushville] agreed that nobody is happy with a one-month stopgap spending plan. He believes Medicaid providers are hurt by the lack of a full budget plan. He said care for established Medicaid patients won't be affected, but if the state continued to do one-month budgets, revenue would not keep up as new people become eligible.
Increased efficiency in the use of Medicaid funds alone, however, are unlikely to make up the shortfall.
"The solution will not come without new revenue streams," Billings said. "You have to look at efficiencies in state operations, and some sort of taxing policy that involves all levels of citizenry in Illinois - the private citizen, the business citizen, the legislative citizen. Everybody's going to have to contribute in a parity way."
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