Jacksons have gone D.C. Or so it seems

It seems we can now count the Jacksons (not the musical family, but the political one) among the ranks of people who have given up their Chicago-area ties for someplace else.

JESSE, JR.: A pre-charges version

For Jesse, Jr. and Sandi seem to be thinking of themselves as residents of the District of Columbia when they contemplate their fates. Both are up for sentencing on Wednesday for their involvement in what federal prosecutors say was misuse of campaign funds.

THE FORMER MEMBER of Congress from the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs used campaign funds for personal purchases without reporting it as income, and the former 7^th Ward alderman signed the income tax returns that didn’t acknowledge the extra income.

Attorneys for Jesse, Jr., on Monday made their preferences known for where they’d like the former Congressman to serve his prison sentence. He’d like to be sent to either a federal prison camp in Montgomery, Ala., or to the minimum-security portion of the federal correctional complex at Butner, N.C.

Jackson indicates those facilities are his preference because of their proximity to the District of Columbia – which the Jacksons seem to think of as their home now, rather than the South Side.

The latter facility is about 700 miles from Washington, but that make it one of the closest to the nation’s capital city. Attorneys wrote that putting him there would make it easier for him to maintain contact with his wife and children while incarcerated.

AS FOR NORTH Carolina, Jackson is thinking back to his days in college – when he attended North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University. He thinks he still has ties to North Carolina, and thinks it would help rehabilitation if he were in a familiar region of the country.

It also would make him a fellow inmate along with Jon Burge, the former Chicago police commander who supposedly let the officers under his command abuse the rights of the people in their custody. Although he’s doing his prison time for a perjury conviction in a civil lawsuit where he denied the abuse occurred.

SANDI: Doing the D.C. service route?

In short, that facility in Butner could wind up becoming a new focal point for Chicago political observers – who’s to say who else will wind up there?

Although this case is most likely to wind up in an eastern (or southern) facility because it is of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. If it were in the federal courts of Chicago, we’d be looking at the likelihood of Jackson getting himself an Oxford Education (ie., serving his time in the minimum-security facility in Oxford, Wis.).

BUT JESSE, JR., is not the only person thinking of himself as a D.C. resident, rather than a Sout’ Sider. Sandi Jackson put in her own request. She’s looking at the possibility of a year in prison, although probation is an option.

Sandi’s attorneys filed a similar request, asking for probation and pointing out that the Martha’s Table charitable organization in Washington is willing to accept her as a volunteer IF she gets a sentence that includes community service as part of the punishment.

We won’t get the sight of Sandi Jackson serving slop to the homeless in the South Shore neighborhood, or anywhere else in the city. Perhaps it will be better for us if the actual penalty phase of this whole sordid ordeal takes place somewhere else. At the very least, the people who get worked up over this case for purely partisan political reasons won't be able to revel in the Jacksons' misery quite as much.

Not that the courts are obligated to follow along with any of these requests. If anything, I wonder if the real humiliation for them would be if they had to do their punishments on Chicago-area turf. Where it would be easier for them to be seen by the locals.

GOING AWAY TO D.C. might make it easier for them to blend into the masses and be overlooked? Who’s to say!

Maybe it means we’ve lost the Jacksons as a part of our local scene for a second time.

Just like how Jackie, Jermaine, Marlon and Tito (along with little brother Michael) long ago left their Gary, Ind., origins for something bigger and better musically.

 

It's too bad that the political version of a Jackson family won't get as much glory from this D.C. shift.

 

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EXTRA: No “Z” on CTA. That doesn’t mean our political system’s “fixed”

We’re going to be spared the sight of Frank Zuccarelli serving on the board that governs the Chicago Transit Authority. Somehow, I don’t feel that our government is any less corrupt as a result.

ZUCCARELLI: Won't help run CTA

Let’s be honest. The people who were most upset over the prospects of the supervisor of suburban Thornton Township getting an appointment to the Chicago Transit Board were the people who wanted their own political favors repaid.

YES, I’LL ADMIT that the choice of Zuccarelli – who also is committeeman of the portion of the Chicago suburbs that turns out the heaviest Democratic Party vote on Elections Day – is a political payback by Gov. Pat Quinn.

I’m sure it helps that Zuccarelli is one of the few political people who doesn’t privately badmouth the governor – and in fact comes up with nice things to say publicly about Quinn; who usually goes out of his way to include Zuccarelli in as many public appearances as possible to bolster his credibility.

But do I think it was the most corrupt thing we ever would have seen in our local politics? Of course not.

A part of me would have liked to have seen Zuccarelli stand up to the people who are all worked up about his latest appointment. Zuccarelli, however, sent Quinn a letter on Tuesday saying he will not accept the post.

SO QUINN NOW needs to pick somebody else, and Zuccarelli goes back to being a suburban powerbroker.

I’ll admit to thinking one thing being odd about the appointment – the fact that the CTA would have a suburban-oriented official. That board is usually Chicago-oriented, with the suburban people serving on the Metra, Pace or Regional Transportation Authority boards.

DALEY: Has his own "friends"

But to hear RTA officials and gubernatorial candidate William Daley rant and rage about political patronage and political hacks being put into positions for which they’re not qualified is just too over-the-top to take seriously.

Particularly from Daley, whose family has benefitted from connections and used their own authority to make similar appointments.

DOES ANYONE REALLY believe that Daley would ever have been considered for Commerce secretary or White House chief of staff if not for whom his father, and brother, were?



QUINN: Patronage? Or qualified

Speaking out against Zuccarelli comes across as Daley wanting the post kept open so that HE can be the one who fills it with a friendly face.

By no means is Zuccarelli (whose elective office is as head of the board that runs South Suburban College in South Holland) a good-government reformer type. But his appointment was no more self-serving than 99 percent of other political appointments made by so many officials.

Although the idea that Zuccarelli wouldn’t mind having an income from some place other than his political post isn’t new.

HE USED TO serve on the Employee Appeals Board overseen by the Cook County Board. Until, that is, the post had its salary taken away by the county board when a majority of its members “got religion,” so to speak and voted to eliminate the compensation effective June 1. Although the ones who benefitted from Zuccarelli in the past were among his supporters back then.

 

Zuccarelli wasn’t getting rich (it only paid $12,000 annually) from the county post. But a batch of small salaries can add up to a large income if handled properly. A CTA board post would have helped replace that portion of the income.

I only hope that the people who were complaining about Zuccarelli don’t think that denying him this appointment has somehow fixed our “system.” There are many more people who are benefitting from similar situations.

But they aren’t Friends of Quinn, so they’re not the targets of partisan political criticism.

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Jackson takes hit for Blagojevich Senate seat fiasco without charges

Perception is truly more important than fact when it comes to reality – people will believe what they want to believe even if the fact doesn’t quite back it up.

JACKSON: Misunderstood??!?

That definitely is the case with regards to one-time Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., who on Wednesday will appear before a federal judge in the District of Columbia for sentencing on charges that he used money from his campaign fund in improper ways.

HE’S GOING TO wind up doing some time in a federal prison, as will spouse Sandi (the former 7^th Ward alderman) – whose crime is signing the income tax returns that did not acknowledge the campaign fund money as income.

But what amuses me the most about this whole situation is the degree to which people don’t really understand what is going on with regard to Jackson.

For when I hear people talk about Jackson’s predicament, it seems that everybody is convinced that Jackson is going to prison for trying to bribe former Gov. Rod Blagojevich to try to get himself a seat in the U.S. Senate!

I realize many people don’t pay close attention to the details when they watch newscasts. And I also comprehend that details can be forgotten (I usually have to look things up to ensure that I get them correct when I continually write about an issue).

BUT I HAVE lost track of the number of times that I have had to explain to people that the criminal case against the former Congressman from the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs has nothing to do with the Senate seat from Illinois once held by Barack Obama.

That was the political vacancy that Blagojevich got to fill when Obama was elected president in 2008. It also was the one that resulted in Blagojevich’s indictment when the federal investigators who were already scrutinizing him felt his negotiations with political people to fill the post amounted to him soliciting bribes in exchange for the appointment.

A part of me wants to believe that if Jackson’s behavior amounted to offering a bribe, the prosecutors would have filed the requisite criminal charges. They’d have no reason to hold back.

Although in the Chicago Sun-Times on Monday, Blagojevich’s brother, Robert, insisted that Jackson’s people offered him what amounted to bribes that he personally turned down on behalf of his gubernatorial brother.

IN SHORT, JACKSON is the criminal and not Rod.

Take that perspective for what it’s worth. All I know is that there are many people who are going to eagerly snap it up. They will believe it. Some will desperately want to believe it.

It has me wondering if Jackson is destined to go down in the political annals as the guy who tried to bribe his way into a higher political office – even though the record of facts we now have doesn’t really back up that assertion.

What is humorous about this particular instance (Blagojevich wound up giving the Senate appointment to former Illinois comptroller and attorney general Roland Burris, and there’s no record that he made any kind of payoff) is that I specifically recall thinking that Blagojevich should have seriously considered Jackson for the appointment.

BUT HE DIDN’T, in large part because Blagojevich giving the post to Jackson would have resulted in him creating yet another political person who would have surpassed Milorod in significance.

And the big thing about comprehending Blagojevich is the fact that he had a bloated ego – even by the standards of a political person.

Which means it is possible – likely, in fact – that Blagojevich would have rejected a bribe from Jackson just for kicks. Which might mean that Blagojevich wasn’t guilty.

But the reality is that Blagojevich is doing a lengthy prison sentence, while Jackson looks at up to four years in a federal facility because he couldn’t resist using other peoples’ money to buy himself kitschy items that once belonged to people like Michael Jackson and Muhammad Ali to decorate his office.

WE SHOULD ALL keep in mind that many of the people who are most eager to see Jackson put away are the ones who have resented his ever being elected to Congress in the first place.

He’s not exactly “Public Enemy Number One.”

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No Dems rally at state fair – Is that really much of a surprise these days?

A lot of people are going to try to make an issue out of the fact that this year’s Illinois State Fair will not include a political rally by the Democrats to try to tout their candidates seeking nomination in the primary elections to be held come March.

They'll claim it is evidence that the Democratic Party in this state is chaotic and unorganized. They can't get their act together to hold a simple rally.

I doubt anybody'd cry about no politicos

 

HOW CAN THEY possibly be trusted to govern the state of Illinois any longer? So vote Republican!

They’ll probably cite the Republican Day rally scheduled for Thursday and all the excitement that will be on display and try to claim that it is evidence that The People!!!! are ready for a change.

Excuse me for being skeptical. But I don’t buy it. I don’t think it is any big surprise that Democrats aren’t going to do much with their traditional rally on the fairgrounds. I’m actually surprised they didn’t do this years ago.

Now for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the tradition for the state fair (held at the State Fairgrounds on the far northeast corner of Springfield) is that one day is designated as “Governor’s Day.”

IT IS A day meant for the governor himself to show up on the fairgrounds, take part in many events and appear as though he’s one of the people. By tradition, the governor’s political party uses the fairgrounds to hold a rally to let us all know how wonderful they are.

Then, in a sense of fairness and equality, the opposition party gets its own “day” at the fairgrounds, in which their officials try to make it seem as though they’re more in tune with the public.

It’s all a lot of trivial nonsense. Although in a year before the elections, it can be an unofficial start to campaign activity for the prospective campaigns.

This year, Governor’s Day is Wednesday, and Pat Quinn will show up and do his thing (although he’s already spent a lot of time at the fairgrounds since the event began Friday). Republican Day is Thursday.

I doubt many would come even if there was a Wed. rally

BUT QUINN SAID last week that the Democrats who in theory are his allies won’t be doing anything at the fair on Wednesday. They will have a breakfast meeting in Springfield, but that’s it.

Some people are pointing out the fact that at last year’s Democratic Party rally at the state fair, organized labor officials showed up and heckled the governor. Perhaps the reason for no partisan rally is that Quinn is some sort of coward who can’t take a little bit of criticism.

Actually, I think it is just a realization that the state fair has become a less-important political event for the Democratic Party that represents the interests of the urban portion of Illinois.

There are Democrats in the rest of Illinois, but their numbers are dwarfed in most cases by the Republican Party organizations. Which is evidence of just how much the Chicago area can dwarf the rest of the state that it has become the dominant political party in Illinois as a whole.

MY POINT BEING that the Illinois State Fair largely draws its crowds from people who live in Sangamon County and the rural counties that are directly adjacent to it.

Much of Southern Illinois takes the DuQuoin State Fair (this year, it’s Aug. 23-Sept. 2) more seriously. While in the Chicago area, even the scaled-back Taste of Chicago and all the summer festivals are more significant than what happens at the state fair.

With the Chicago dominance of the Democratic Party, I wouldn’t be shocked to learn that most of the power-brokers are pleased they don’t have to make the four-hour drive to Springfield to pretend they care about what is happening at the fairgrounds.

QUINN: Gets the fair all to himself

In fact, what I recall of the state fair during the seven years (1993-99) I was a Statehouse reporter was that the political rallies were held in a portion of the fairgrounds that was isolated from the rest of the event.

MOST PEOPLE ATTENDING the state fair weren’t even aware of the blather being spewed by political people of all partisanships. I really doubt anybody at the fairgrounds on Wednesday will miss the presence of politicians in the least.

Perhaps people at the fair on Thursday will wish that Republicans would follow the same lead and spare us their blather. You really want to get the people who attend the Illinois State Fair all angry? Take away the Husband Calling Contest.

Somehow, I suspect the loss of the sight of middle-aged women trying to come up with loud, obnoxious screeches meant to attract their husbands’ attention (which took place Sunday) would upset fairgoers more than the loss of politicians.

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Madigan vs. Madigan?

Political observers are getting all worked up these days over the apparent verbal sparring between the Madigans.


LISA: Waiting her turn?

Did Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan knowingly talk up her chances of running for governor (and all the accompanying fundraising efforts) knowing she’d be unable to pull the trigger, so to speak, on a campaign?

OR DID ILLINOIS House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, knowingly sabotage his daughter’s chances of political advancement?

Back when she said it official last month that she was NOT going to run for governor in next year’s election cycle, Lisa Madigan made it known that her father being in such a high profile political position was just too much of a conflict.

Her desires to move up in government by being the state’s chief executive would have to wait for the retirement of her father – who has been in the Illinois House of Representatives since the early 1970s and has been the Democratic leader since the early 1980s and shows no signs of wanting to retire.

I wonder at times if Madigan (as in Mr. Speaker) is the Illinois political equivalent of Queen Elizabeth, who seems determined to die in her throne.

FOR MADIGAN (THE speaker) this week told reporter-type people that he had spoken with his daughter about his political intentions on several occasions. “She knew very well that I did not plan to retire,” he said about his daughter.

Personally, I believe Mike Madigan’s statement, insofar as his desire not to retire. I never fully expected that he would step aside to allow Lisa Madigan a chance to advance.

I do believe he will hang on to his post until the day he passes from this realm of existence. For all I know, the attempt to replace Madigan as Illinois House speaker will be more of a free-for-all than the political brawls that occurred after the passings of mayors Daley and Washington!

But let’s not get obsessed right now with that ugly mess of the future.

INSOFAR AS THE Madigan situation, I was always convinced that a Madigan gubernatorial campaign would have to deal with the potential for a conflict of interest. And I’m sure there are some people who wouldn’t have voted for her because of her father’s presence as the leader of Democrats in Springfield.

MICHAEL: Not ready to retire

My own observations make me believe there are some differences between the two; enough to know that she isn’t the political carbon copy that the conservative ideologues want us to believe she is.

Although the reality is that many of the conflicts we now see in state government are because we have both a Democratic governor (who theoretically is leader of his own political party) and a Democratic speaker (who has been his party’s leader for so long – and isn’t the least bit willing to share his authority). Which may well be why Democrats won’t bother to do anything special with their “day” next week at the Illinois State Fair!

I seriously wonder if a Madigan/Madigan pairing at the highest level of government would have resulted in such a spat that the two would have had some serious fractures – perhaps even worse than the split we saw when now-former Alderman Dick Mell turned on his son-in-law – former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

SOME MIGHT WANT to believe that family ties and blood are thicker than partisan politics. But there are times when I wonder if just the opposite is true.

Which is why I wonder if the truth about this whole situation is that Lisa Madigan had some sort of naïve hope that her father would change his mind about his position in political life. Or maybe she was in some sort of denial about Mike Madigan and only gradually realized that the duo couldn’t work.

CHARLES: The English Lisa Madigan?

Either way, it makes it a positive that she backed away from a gubernatorial primary – even if that means for now we’re stuck with a choice of incumbent Pat Quinn or mayoral brother William Daley for the Democratic nomination.

Madigan (as in Lisa) may be better off if she waits a little longer. Let’s just hope she doesn’t become the political equivalent of Prince Charles – who’s almost as old as Mike Madigan and may never get the King of England post he so desires.

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Is the shopping mall concept dead? Or do I just have a knack for "killing off" all of my former employers?

The current court fight taking place over whether or not to shutter a shopping mall in suburban Matteson had a personal hit in my memory – I actually once had a job in one of the stores in that mall.

Actually, not just a store as in one of those generic shops that sell tacky trinkets that can be found in any mall.

MY STINT IN suburban Matteson was at the Carson, Pirie, Scott store that was one of the Lincoln Mall shopping center’s anchors – and will potentially be the only survivor of the 40-year-old mall on Lincoln Highway at Cicero Avenue (just a mile or so from the Cook/Will county line).

In my case, the very first job I got out of college was a part-time gig for a few months at the then Chicago Heights-based Star Newspapers. The pay wasn’t great, and the hours weren’t excessive, so I needed more money.

So for a few months, I worked as a sales clerk in the men’s clothing department at Carsons a few days a week, combined with the night shift work I did for the newspaper.

Eventually, I moved on to a full-time news reporting gig (the now-defunct City News Bureau) that paid barely better, but enough that I could do it fulltime.

MY MEMORIES OF working at Lincoln Mall are about 26 years old, and are similar enough to those of anyone who has ever done a part-time job in retail to come up with extra money.

Personally, I always felt sorry for anyone who had to do retail full-time to earn a living. It’s not easy work, and it contains its frustrations from dealing with customers who prove on a daily basis that people like Harry Selfridge and Marshall Field didn’t have a clue what they were talking about when they said, “The customer is always right.”

The customer usually doesn’t have a clue what they want, yet they don’t like having anyone try to guide them because it exposes their ignorance – so to speak!

I actually have more intense memories of my co-workers from those days, even though I barely remember their actual names and haven’t seen most of them since the day I quit in disgust during the first week of a new year.

I REMEMBER QUITTING because of all the negative sales commissions I was getting in the days following the Christmas holiday of 1987. All those “presents” I sold to people for the holiday were being returned. Any commission bonus I received prior to the holiday was being taken back.

There’s no way Carsons was going to lose out from the fact that somebody didn’t like the tacky yellow sweater I sold some woman as a gift for her brother.

But I also remember the crowds that would stream through the mall proper, which I would usually wander about during my breaks. I was never the type who wanted to spend time in a break room or employee lounge. Why stay cooped up when I can check out the surroundings.

Only it seems now that there just aren’t any surroundings to check out.

FOR AS I understand, Carsons is the only anchor retailer remaining in Lincoln Mall. The Sears, Montgomery Wards and J.C. Penney’s that I remember are gone.

In fact, more than half of the little storefronts inside the mall are now empty.

Yet the mall is closing down because its current structural condition has become so decrepit that Matteson village officials contend it is unsafe. It is in need of significant repairs. And they don’t think the mall’s current owner (a New York-based developer) is acting quickly enough to make such repairs.

Which is why this fight is now in the courts. A hearing is scheduled for next week, and it is possible that a judge could issue some sort of order that could force the mall to close until repairs are made.

THAT BIG A structure sitting empty would be such a money-loser that it would force repairs to be made. Unless the owner (who isn’t the easiest of people to reach these days) somehow decides to just write off his financial losses.

Which I would hope does not happen.

I already have a string of news organizations (the Star Newspapers, City News Bureau, United Press International) in my work history whose offices no longer exist. A part of me wonders if I personally have become a “kiss of death” to a news outfit.

I’d hate to see it come to the point where the only place I could go to, point to it, and say “I once worked here,” is a Subway Sandwich franchise in suburban Calumet City.

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Three years off, and the campaigning for Clinton is already getting intense

HILLARY: Will she run?

Hillary for president in 2016?

I don’t really want to think about that election cycle yet (we still have to get through statewide elections in 2014 and the mayoral battle in ’15), but the brawl as to whether or not we get the return of the Clintons to the White House is too intense already.

JUST ENVISION HOW absurd and obnoxious it will be by the time that election cycle is actually due to occur?

The latest “controversy” involves the Republican National Committee, which appears scared enough by the concept of Clinton redux that they’re issuing threats with NBC and CNN – both of which are producing projects about Clinton’s life.

The GOP think that such programs will amount to little more than favorable publicity for Hillary; which is why they’re threatening to cut the two networks out of any chance of broadcasting future presidential debates IF the networks dare to go ahead with such programs.

To their credit, the two networks are ignoring such threats. For the time being, they’re still moving forward.

AND RNC CHAIRMAN Reince Priebus admits to the Washington Post that he expects his threats will not deter the programs from airing. They’re fully expecting to have to carry through on that threat.

If they don’t get to air any of the Republican presidential debates, it would be something of a blow to those networks’ professional reputations. But I also suspect that this is the GOP paranoia being exposed.

In short, I believe it wouldn’t matter if the two networks were willing to scrap the projects. I suspect the political party would come up with some other snub that it would use to justify not including either NBC or CNN from being involved in the debate fracas.

BILL: Will he be back?

All this fuss over the broadcast of a debate that won’t actually air for another two-and-a-half years, and with the possibility that Clinton might not even be a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president who would succeed Barack Obama.

BUT IT IS Hillary, spouse of Bill, the former president whom Republicans of a certain ideological bent are determined to demonize. Which is why the return of the Clintons to the White House would be harmful to their interests.

How dangerous and harmful could Bill (the impeached president, as they prefer to think of him) have been if we’re willing to return him to the White House. Even though we’re bound to get tons of tacky jokes along the line of, “Hide the girls, Bill’s back!” Although I have to confess that having the conservative ideologues so offended at the thought of Hillary might well be a reason to actually vote for her.

The thing about a Hillary presidential campaign is that we already have established our opinions – all of us. Both those of us inclined to view her favorably AND unfavorably.

In fact, there’s only one thing that has changed about her since her unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid – her age! If elected in November 2016, she’d be pushing close to 70 by the time she took the oath of office.

IT’S USUALLY THE Republican Party that nominates the old political geezers who cling to the past. Now, it would be the GOP that would claim to have the youthful, forward-looking candidates.

Although considering that the Republican idea of “youth” are a batch of ideologues whose rhetoric is firmly wedded in the past, the usual ideas about age go out the window.

BIDEN: The alternative?

What it comes down to is that I wouldn’t mind if there were a choice of candidates in the Democratic primary – and perhaps someone other than Vice President Joe Biden. A national mood of insomnia is about all his candidacy could bring about.

Which might be what we need after the political brawls we’re going to experience for Illinois governor, then in watching Rahm Emanuel fight off anyone who (in his opinion) has the “unmitigated gall” to think of challenging him.

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