I'm back. Did I miss much?

It has been a week-and-a-half since I last wrote commentary, and it’s kind of reassuring to know I didn’t really miss much.

A whole lotta nothin' goin' on!?!

Our state government in Illinois managed to make it through its second full legislative session without being able to come to agreement with Gov. Bruce Rauner on a budget for the state’s operations.

NOT THAT THERE weren’t efforts made by assorted politicos. But all of them were geared toward people trying to position themselves in ways so they could claim it “wasn’t my fault” when we go into a second straight fiscal year come July 1 without a state budget in place.

For I don’t care that the Legislature’s leaders have said they will continue to meet every week on Wednesday to be in place in the event a budget proposal comes forth.

Those session days are going to be the ultimate in political posturing, possibly as pompous as those mini-tours of Illinois that Rauner has made across the rural parts of the state – all geared toward trying to present the image that “It’s Chicago’s fault” that our state is bogged down in partisan politics!

All those days that I spent packing up my belongings and hauling them off to a storage locker (I’m going to have to move them again in a couple of months once I figure out where I’m going to be for the long term)  don’t seem to have had one bit of impact.

I DIDN’T MISS a thing – except for the nonsense political rhetoric that always spews up.

I’m at the point where I wonder if it’s ever possible to resolve this dispute – at least until we manage to dump the current governor from office and get someone who’s interested in governing rather than engaging in partisan maneuvers meant to undermine organized labor.

As far as my personal situation is concerned, I’m hoping to be in a permanent residence by the time my birthday comes around at the end of August. Honestly, I’m starting to think it totally realistic to expect we won’t have a state budget in place by the time that comes around.

It’s truly a level of nonsense beyond comprehension!

SO WHAT DID I miss?

The Illinois House of Representatives, under the leadership of state House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, did manage to produce something that sort of was a budget. But one that Rauner most definitely would have applied the “veto” stamp to.

Of course, it didn’t even make it that far – since the state Senate refused to go along with it. That caused Rauner acolytes who don’t have a clue what they’re talking about to claim it was the Senate Dems who screwed the pooch, so to speak on the budget process.

Only Ali is the Greatest

Various news reports indicate that the Senate Dems didn’t go along with their House Dem colleagues because they weren’t included in the negotiation process.

CERTAINLY NOTHING NEW. I remember once when the state Senate, under the leadership of then-President James “Pate” Philip, rejected a proposal negotiated by then-Gov. Jim Edgar and then-Mayor Richard M. Daley because Philip didn’t like the idea of Edgar negotiating alone on behalf of Republicans.

Heck, I remember another time when Madigan made a floor speech telling his colleagues “it is not wise” to exclude HIM when proposals are being put together. All of which means there’s nothing unique or unexpected about the fact that the lack of cooperation amongst our political people prevents something essential from getting done.

There are times when the key to comprehending electoral politics is to realize that it is all about ego – this situation will not be resolved until everybody manages to get something that enables them to make a public statement proclaiming themselves “da winnah and still champeen.”

They all want to think of themselves as “the greatest,” even though anyone with sense realizes that “the greatest” passed away on Friday. Maybe someday, the spirit of Muhammad Ali will meet up with our politicos and knock some sense into their heads – posthumously, that is!

  -30-

Will we, the people of the United States of America, ever get reimbursed for the losses Jackson, Jr., allegedly cost us?

There may be only one thing more bizarre than the load of kitschy items former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., allegedly violated the law with when he used campaign funds to buy them.

JACKSON: Will we ever see money?

That would be the inability of the federal government thus far to get much restitution from Jackson for the financial losses – supposedly, $750,000 – our society suffered.

THAT IS THE reason this is considered a criminal act – the fact that money donated to a campaign fund ought to have been used strictly to support Jackson’s re-election bids, and not to pay for personal purchases.

Even though one could make a serious argument that the token opposition Jackson would get from the Rev. Anthony Williams (sometimes a Democrat, or a Republican, or a Libertarian or a Green – if not an independent) wouldn’t have required much of any money for “Jr.” to win.

Does that mean any campaign spending on Jackson’s part was wrong?

Jackson popped back into the news on Friday when officials let it be known that they wanted the congressman’s home in the Adams-Morgan section of Washington (think of something not quite as tony and upscale as Lincoln Park in Chicago) sold – with the federal government keeping the money as reimbursement for what he supposedly owes.

IT HAS BEEN reported that the home once had a $2 million-plus value on it. Even in today’s real estate market where it is unlikely Jackson would get full value, he ought to be capable of coming up with enough to pay off this particular expense.

Unless it turns out that officials would rather NOT have him be able to come up with the money. Would they really rather keep him indebted to the United States for many years to come – so as to inhibit his ability to ever fully recover in life?

I don’t know what to think.

But it does strike me as odd that the auction that was supposed to occur of all the actual items Jackson purchased was never able to take place.

I UNDERSTAND THAT there is reason to question the legitimacy of some of the items that qualify as memorabilia (a guitar once played by Eddie Van Halen back when he cooperated with Michael Jackson).

It may be enough of a taint to prevent any of the items from being able to get full value from the collector-types who will pay the big bucks to assuage their egos by saying they own the actual item that was used in some pseudo-significant moment.

But I notice that the feds say they have no intention of giving back any of the items that were confiscated – even though they’re not going to sell any of them.

So what happens with the alleged Muhammad Ali boxing gloves or the hat worn by Jackson – or even the pricey gold-plated Rolex watch or multiple fur coats, whose memorabilia value would have been that they once belonged to Jackson himself?

SOMEBODY COULD GET a laugh that they now own the watch that got Jackson put in prison – particularly if they wound up paying far less than the $43,350 that the former Congressman himself allegedly paid to get it.

Does this literally wind up being packed away in a federal warehouse reminiscent of that final scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark? It would be a waste if that happened – although it would be even more appalling if some federal bureaucrat somehow wound up with the items.

That would be more criminal in nature than anything Jackson might have done to warrant the 2 ½-year prison term that he will have to start serving (in North Carolina, it seems) in coming weeks.

  -30-

How do we rectify past racial slights?

I’m sure there are going to be people who will try to make an issue of the fact that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is willing to see a black man receive a pardon for a criminal conviction that clearly was racially motivated, only to have the first non-Anglo president turn it down.

That is the position that President Barack Obama finds himself in with regards to Jack Johnson, one of the great boxers of the early 20th Century whose presence ticked off much of white America because Johnson was a black man who felt no need to have to kow-tow to Anglo society.

SPECIFICALLY, JOHNSON DID a 10-month prison term for a violation of the Mann Act, which was a law meant to prevent women from being abducted and taken elsewhere for sexual purposes.

In Johnson’s case, he found a consenting adult female who happened to be white (and who later married him). Which was his real “crime” in this case. He did that 10 months in prison for not sticking with “his own kind.” This prison term came at a time when he was a defending boxing champion, and it threw his athletic career offstride as he had to spend much of what should have been the prime of his athletic career boxing in the Caribbean instead.

Now some people will try to argue that we shouldn’t be trying to judge the past by our contemporary standards. Miles Davis did the complex, not easy listening soundtrack album to the 1970 documentary film about the life of boxer Jack Johnson, which is a complex story not easy to listen to in and of itself.

But McCain, Obama’s opponent in the 2008 presidential election who fancies himself a boxing fan, has touted this idea before.

IN FACT, HE has gone so far as to get his Senate colleagues to overwhelmingly back a resolution that urges the president to approve a pardon for Johnson, who died in 1946.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with a pardon. Nobody with any common sense would argue that Johnson committed any act that deserved to be a crime, for that very law was often used by local officials to justify getting at people whose presence was an annoyance.

Keep in mind that several decades later, rock ‘n’ roller Chuck Berry had his musical career sidetracked by a conviction of the very same Mann Act – and for the very same act as Johnson.

But it is for that very reason that I am a little hesitant to just automatically say that Obama should sign the pardon and allow McCain to have a moment of glory by claiming he influenced officials to undo a racial wrong of the past.

BECAUSE IT WASN’T just Johnson who was wronged in the past. As I just noted, Berry also got hit with the same legal action and did his jail time back in the early 1960s for having relations with white women who weren’t the least bit objecting.

While some can argue that changing musical tastes throughout the years would have sent Berry’s career downhill after the 1950s, it can’t be argued that the jail term threw him off-track rather quickly.

What I fear is that some people are going to be inclined to think that by giving Johnson a posthumous pardon, all of the racially inspired injustices of the past have suddenly all been rectified.

Would it be right for Johnson to have to represent all of black America in taking a pardon for every black man who suffered in the criminal justice system just because some white person was offended by their existence at a particular moment?

AND WOULD IT really mean all that much for Johnson to receive that pardon some six-plus decades after his death?

Yet I can also appreciate how difficult it would be to go through the rolls of criminal cases throughout the United States (not just the South, even though some of us would like to think bigotry was restricted there – it wasn’t) and try to undo every single case where a black person was wronged.

It’s not like Johnson is in the situation of boxer Muhammad Ali, who at least was alive and capable of resurrecting his athletic career when his own racially-motivated criminal conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Obama’s aides have been reluctant to say what they will do with the Johnson pardon request, which on the surface would be a hard one for him to deny.

I CAN ALREADY hear in my mind Rush Limbaugh, fresh off of being denied the chance to sit in the stands at St. Louis Rams football games and claim himself to be an owner, trying to use the issue to say on his radio program that McCain is the champion of racial justice and Obama is somehow a bigot.

Those of us with sense would dismiss such trash talk as cheap political rhetoric. But there will be those in today’s politicized environment who won’t want to let it go.

I would hope that if Obama does go ahead and grant the Johnson pardon, he somehow manages to use those rhetorical skills he possesses to let us know that the Scales of Justice aren’t suddenly balanced out because of this one action.

He’d have to make it pretty clear that the degree to which this nation’s racial situation was out of whack in the past was so severe that it can never truly be pardoned.

OF COURSE, THAT kind of statement (no matter how true) will offend some people in our society because they’re the ones who want to believe that a single stroke of a president’s pen can somehow erase the negative portions of our nation’s history.

Which is the real reason some people are anxious to have this particular pardon approved. They’d rather give up a token gesture to a deceased black man than do anything of substance to those who are still living.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Jack Johnson picked up his boxing skills in part by spending his early days (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/19/boxer.pardon/) in Chicago and later owned a nightclub in the Second City.

Is Johnson going to become the centerpiece of the 2009 confrontation (http://www.bet.com/News/National_Jack_Johnson_Overdue_Pardon_Rests_With_President_Obama.htm?wbc_purpose=Basic&WBCMODE=PresentationUnpublished&Referrer=%7B0471DDF0-D0D8-48A8-9E30-ADD40CBE0269%7D) between Barack Obama (http://www.current-movie-reviews.com/people/2009/10/17/political-posturing-mccain-presses-obama-to-pardon-jack-johnson-boxer/) and John McCain?

Some people want to view Johnson’s actions as potentially worthy of a (http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/the_sporting_blog/entry/view/39316/jack_johnsons_proposed_pardon_an_uncomfortable,_unnecessary_intersection_of_sports_and_society) criminal conviction.