Bye bye Blago

It's unanimous. Rod Blagojevvich is out of a job and barred from ever again holding public office. I would cheer, but the man was a symptom, rather than the problem. Now, to clean up the rest of the state's politics.

It's about freaking time!

For the record, I know everybody and his brother will be posting on the topic of G-Rod, today.

I'm unoriginal.

So sue me.

Anyway.

I love my home state of Illinois, but for years I've been embarrassed and frustrated by its politics. We who live downstate have little or no power to counter the massive forces of corruption from Chicago.

That's why it's nice to hear that the feds have taken Blagojevich into custody. He's the most frustrating and embarrassing element of IL politics, currently -- frustrating because his actions are quite obviously corrupt, and embarrassing because they're so obviously corrupt. It's bad enough to have a crook in office, as long as, for the most part, he's done little real harm to the people (hearken back to the days of Da Mare, Richard J. Daley). But this guy and his cronies have been both criminal and harmful... and the Blowdried One has been stupid and clumsy, to boot.

Of course, I should be grateful that Blago is such an idiot. He has probably made it very easy to remove him from office, and possibly opened the door to a thorough house-cleaning. But we have to live with the aftermath. Part of the aftermath is that there is no Republican party to pick up the pieces. The last batch of candidates for gov. from the right side of the aisle were mostly a bunch of wooden lumps, none of whom seemed able to demonstrate a lick of leadership in simple times... so we're supposed to expect them to handle a mess like this? We haven't had a real leader in the Illinois Republican party since Big Jim Thompson left office. Edgar was okay, but he just held the office, no great shakes. And then, of course, there was Ryan. [cue theme from "Jaws"]

So, we'll just get more Dems. Same old same old. Except we'll be getting more of the less-experienced Dems, and it's likely that, in the long run, they'll grow up to be more like Blowdriedovich than like Big Jim.

But wouldn't it be nice to think we really were heading for a happy future?

Blago getting nervous?

He seems to be trying to shut down our state's societal defense system:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration wants to close the state prison in Pontiac, says Sen. Dan Rutherford, R-Chenoa.

Rutherford got the unexpected news today. He said a letter from the Department of Corrections, which runs Pontiac and other state correctional centers, says that the agency no longer plans to close part of the Stateville prison near Joliet. Instead, DOC now is looking at shuttering the Pontiac facility.

I'm not surprised. One of his first real acts as gov was to renege on his promise to open the one in Tomson, and after much fuss and ado, finally had to cave and open the new building just a couple of years ago -- nearly five years after the building was completed and ready to begin housing inmates. And it's still nowhere near capacity. So, his proposal to shut down the newer and somewhat-more-distant-from-Chicago facility is not at all a novel approach, here.

Maybe, though, with all the Rezko stuff, he's just looking out for his own future. After all, he seems to have a problem with being away from Chicago for any length of time. Joliet is at least an hour closer to the city than is Pontiac:


View Larger Map