Matter of ethics? Or ugly aldermen taking space from Hollywood glitter

The World Series returns to Wrigley Field on Friday, and there won’t be any aldermen in attendance. That is, unless the aldermen are willing to dip into their own pockets and pay the ridiculous fees that are being sought by ticket scalpers.

Not like World Series of days of old at Wrigley

Much indignation has been spewed in recent weeks about the fact that the Chicago Cubs included City Council members on the list of people who would get the chance to purchase tickets for the World Series games to be held at home this weekend.

THE PERK IS that even before the limited number of tickets that went on sale to the general public were put up for grabs, the aldermen were among a class of so-called important people who could have the chance to buy some seats.

Note I’m saying “buy.” Nobody was talking about giving aldermen the tickets for the ball games. Which is a concept I suspect offended at least some of the aldermen – who probably think they’re important enough to warrant freebies.

Also keep in mind that the official prices charged for World Series tickets are not the same as those charged for Cubs games during the regular season. They’re higher – a few hundred dollars per seat.

Which is cheap only when compared to the scalper prices – I have heard figures ranging from just under $1 million per seat if you want to sit in one of those prime seats up close to the action and where everyone watching the games on television will be capable of seeing you, to as low as about $5,500 per seat if all you want to do is stand in the upper deck in spare space and be able to say you were inside the building when the World Series returned to Wrigley Field for the first time in 71 years.

PERSONALLY, I DON’T think that kind of money is worth the experience. I think it borders on criminal that anybody thinks they can charge it. But then again, I have never thought Cubs fans had all that much sense, so perhaps they’re willing to give up a chance at retirement and can reminisce about the games they see this weekend when, in future years, they’re reduced to eating cans of cat food.

 

Won't be able to ignore Murray

But back to the aldermen, who had their perk taken away when the public got outraged – seemingly out of the belief that aldermen were getting free tickets from the ball club. Then, the council’s ethics board declared that accepting the ticket perk was something that bordered on unethical.

I can already hear the snide comments made about the absurdity of ethics from the Chicago City Council. But the bottom line is that someone decided to take the high road when it comes to political perks.

Although there are bound to be complaints. Take 31^st Ward Alderman Milly Santiago, who may well have created her moment of political infamy when she complained about losing the perk.

FIRST, SHE POINTED out that the seats she was being offered were those cheap ones in the upper-most rows of the top deck. Then, she said, “I’m a poor alderman. I cannot even afford to buy a $1,000 ticket.”

You just know she’s never going to live that line down.

Personally, I don’t think it’s a loss if there aren’t so many political people on hand. You know Fox television is going to be more interested in Hollywood celebrities who bother to show up at games.

Chances are, we’re going to be sick of seeing Bill Murray by the time Sunday rolls around. And if by chance Jim Belushi is among the Wrigley scene, you just know nausea will predominate among the television viewing public.

 

SANTIAGO: Poor alderman

THE KEY TO comprehending the crowds that show up at Clark and Addison this weekend is that they’re not going to be hard-core fans. Heck, even regular season Cubs games are more about the glitz, but this will be even moreso.

It may well be Chicago trying to put on a show of the kind of city that certain people wish it was, instead of what it really is.

If anything, the real reason to keep aldermen out of the ballpark is that it means there will be fewer ugly people taking up space that could better be used by whichever gorgeous starlet actor John Cusack decides to have as his date Friday Night for Game 3.

  -30-

EXTRA: Ginsburg speaks out for society segment “right” would silence

Honey is my step-mother’s mother, and at age 95 is a bit hard of hearing to the point one has to be prepared to shout at her to be heard. But she’s still capable of carrying on a lucid conversation and holding her own in a verbal quarrel.

 

Ginsburg not alone in belittling Trump

So what is it that can trigger this woman these days into outrage and a sense of disgust and contempt?

DONALD TRUMP. THAT’S who!

The mere mention of Trump’s name or sight of him on television (and unfortunately, she’s the kind who makes a point to keep up with current events off the television newscasts) is enough to get her riled up.

She’s convinced his election come the Nov. 8 Election Day proceedings will be a major downfall for this country, and she can’t quite believe that a real majority of our nation could be dense enough to pick that man.

Like it or not, it is a viewpoint held by quite a few people – despite the idea that the ideologues of our society want to believe that everybody who doesn’t agree with them ought to shut up and learn to go along with what they tell them to think!

WHAT MAKES ME feel compelled to bring up Honey is the fact that  the ideologues are getting all worked up these days over the fact that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg felt compelled to express her own thoughts of contempt over the notion that Trump and his “know nothing” attitudes could prevail on Election Day.

Such as saying that Trump has an overblown ego and “says whatever comes into his head at the moment,” while also trashing him for refusing to make public the tax returns that most political people eagerly do to show just how ordinary they truly are. And that bit about moving to New Zealand? What a riot!

Ginsburg has since issued something resembling a retraction, saying on Thursday her comments were “ill-advised” and she “regret(ted) making them.”

 

Ginsburg has her backers most likely

Largely because the ideologues have been bashing her about with the very theoretical argument that as a Supreme Court justice, she’s not supposed to have blatant opinions on issues.

ACTUALLY, MANY JUSTICES make it clear where they stand on issues that wind up coming before the court. What really bothers the ideologues is that Ginsburg doesn’t parrot their ideals. They’d love her if she did – and the nation’s high court were truly as stacked in their favor as they wish it were! And as how people like the late Justice Antonin Scalia (whose seat still sits vacant because of the ideologues) would have made it, if they could have got their way.

Of course, if it were, then we’d have real contempt amongst the public toward the Supreme Court.

For I don’t doubt that Ginsburg merely expressed a sentiment that is felt by many people in our society – not just my elderly abuelita-type person. It seems the conservatives amongst us really don’t want to have to be reminded how despicable some of us find Trump to be.

And how we interpret the fact that he was able to get the Republican nomination more as evidence of how weak and ineffectual the GOP has become, rather than any real strength on Trump’s part.

I HAVEN’T TALKED to Honey in a couple of days, so I’m not sure exactly how she feels about Ginsburg. Although I suspect strongly she’d be in agreement.

She’d probably also think that the people determined to silence Ginsburg are the real problem our society faces – because they invariably would not favor anything that would silence those officials who happen to agree with them.

It’s a one-sided mess. They’re the ones determined to make us into a monolithic mass that invariably would wind up excluding many already in our society.

And that, inevitably, would make us so deadly dull as a people, as well as bordering on morally-bankrupt.

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Patti will still get, but won’t be rich off of, husband Rod’s federal pension

I must admit to not realizing it at first, but I am kind of surprised that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich did not get hit with all kinds of fines and other financial penalties as part of his punishment for his acts of government corruption.



BLAGOJEVICH: At least he was an honest Congressman



Perhaps it was a realization that the family Blagojevich is financially busted as a result of Milorod’s legal ordeal. Or perhaps U.S. District Judge James Zagel was more focused on imposing a lengthy prison term.

BUT IT USUALLY turns out in these kinds of criminal cases that the convicted person winds up getting hit with significant fines that everyone realizes will never be paid in full.

But their intent is to keep the defendant in debt even after a prison term is served. It keeps them in an untenable financial position so that they’re never able to rebuild and perhaps engage in their old habits once again.

In the case of Blagojevich, his fines and penalties come to just over $22,000 – a fact that got ignored in most of the news coverage of his sentencing last week.

Which strikes me as kind of odd, particularly with the activity that has occurred since then with regards to the Blagojevich pensions.

FOR THE ILLINOIS attorney general’s office (led by the same Lisa Madigan that Blagojevich once allegedly considered for the U.S. Senate seat that caused all this legal trouble to begin with) issued its legal opinion that ensured he’s not about to get a pension for his state government service.

His four years as a state legislator from the Northwest Side and his six years as Illinois governor would have been worth just under $65,000 per year upon his 55^th birthday – which, by coincidence, was on Saturday.

He will be refunded the nearly $130,000 that was withheld from his government salaries throughout the years as contribution toward his pension, although my guess is that the government will find a way of seizing at least part of that figure to ensure that his fines get paid.

But had the fines been larger, it could have been possible for the government to seize the rest of his pension.

FOR HE WAS a member of Congress for six years, which means that he is also entitled to a pension from the federal government upon his 62^nd birthday. Because to the best of anyone’s knowledge, he never did anything that could be considered criminal while serving in the House of Representatives.

Although I can already hear the wiseacres in my mind arguing he didn’t do much of anything, period, during his time serving in Congress.

Admittedly, that one is only going to be about $15,000 per year. But it won’t surprise me if government officials start trying to figure out ways to justify refusing to pay it out to Blagojevich or spouse Patti. Or they may try to find a way to confiscate it before ever giving it to her.

Because, otherwise, Patti Blagojevich will be entitled to that money beginning in another seven years.

SHE CERTAINLY ISN’T going to get rich off of it. But when one is trying to figure out personal finances (and is likely to have to fall back on her father for financial support for the next few years), every potential penny counts.

If anything, this might be the real punishment – the fact that Blagojevich and family goes onto a fixed income not much more than many senior citizens try to struggle on.

Having to wait by the mailbox so that one can snatch up the check and cash it as quickly as possible (while also enduring the fact that likely future Postal Service cuts will cause that check to take longer and longer to arrive).

For we all remember the reports that came out during the trial about the Blagojevich free-spending ways – particularly when it came to clothes and how even on his gubernatorial salary in the low-six figures, the family was in debt from 2002 to 2008.

NO MORE OXXFORD suits or shopping sprees at Saks Fifth Avenue, even when their income really couldn’t justify it to begin with.

It makes me wonder if we ought to compare the Blagojevich saga in one aspect to the cinematic one portrayed by actor Ray Liotta as Henry Hill in Goodfellas.

That 1990 film ended with Liotta’s character in a federal Witness Protection Program, uttering a line that could easily apply to the real-life former governor in the disappointment he and Patti will feel even after his prison sentence is complete.

“I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”

  -30-

Getting spun by newsmakers something we watch out for, but it happens anyway

I must confess to squirming just a bit too much Friday night when I saw the latest episode of “Boss,” the new drama created by the Starz cable television network that stars actor Kelsey Grammer as a character who just happens to be the mayor of Chicago.

Television too real for comfort?



Now like any other television program (or cinematic effort, for that matter), liberties are taken with facts. Things happen in the Chicago political world of Grammer’s “Tom Kane” character that don’t happen in the world of Rahm Emanuel or the Daleys – no matter how craven you believe politics to be.

YET THERE WAS one moment in the most recent episode that made me downright uncomfortable – because the Chicago newsman in me (it will be 25 years in the business come May of 2012) knows it is too true.

The underlying storyline of the episode was that a “scandal” had come out involving the Kane character approving the dumping of chemicals more than two decades ago at a site without regard to what pollution resulted.

The end result is that the water supply of suburban Bensenville is now poisoned.

We get to see how Kane’s staffers plot a strategy to get them through the next three days of news coverage while shifting the focus of the story away from the mayor.

IN SHORT, THE story should be how Bensenville is coping with tainted water, rather than on who caused the water to be tainted in the first place.

At one point, a mayoral aide calls up a television reporter and throws out hints that Bensenville residents are panicking by looking to sell their homes. That night, one station does a story about the panicking.

Another station is given a “tip” by the mayoral aides that bottled water is in short supply at area stores. THAT becomes the focus of another station’s report.

We get the sight during the episode of a mayoral aide literally erasing the call letters of individual Chicago television stations (fictional versions, of course) on a giant board as stations, one-by-one, shift the focus of the story from “Chicago” to “Bensenville.”

IT MADE ME squirm because it struck me as being too real. Because all too often, reporter-type people wind up “playing along” with the way news gets “staged” for public consumption.

There are times when we wind up feeling that calling the political people on such staging would somehow be the equivalent of letting our own personal opinions intervene in coverage – which is THE Cardinal Sin of the news reporting business.

Yet it makes us all too capable at times of being little more than stenographers for the political people whose actions we’re supposed to be holding up to public scrutiny.

A part of me couldn’t help but note the Cook County Board, which on Friday did something for-real far less sordid than the fictional Kane staff did. But spin-worthy in its own effort, nonetheless.

THAT WAS THE day the county board  approved its budget for the upcoming fiscal year. They managed to reduce the number of people who will have to be laid off in order to cut expenses enough to stay within the $2.9 billion the county expects to have for Fiscal ’12.

At the end of the day (they spent seven hours going through every agency to find areas where cuts, transfers and other financial dickering could be accomplished), some 280 people were saved from unemployment. Their layoff notices will be rescinded.

County officials spent the end of the day patting themselves on the back (likely before heading for a tavern for a belt or two) for their actions. Even though several hundred people are still going to lose their jobs. Which means the cantankerous county Commissioner William Beavers, D-Chicago, may well have been the most honest person in the room when he repeatedly complained about the budget in saying that many people would still get laid off.

It wasn’t even just that one moment.

THERE HAVE BEEN many instances where people gave me information whose public disclosure served them well. The spin they tried to put on those factual tidbits made them look good (or, more often, made someone else look absolutely ridiculous).

It is the “golden” rule I keep in mind to take into consideration whether or not the information getting out actually has some significant purpose for the general public. Or is it truly nothing more than self-serving?

Because I will be the first to admit that having people get information to me serves a professional benefit to myself. There are times when I feel like I use these people as much as they are using me.

It all becomes a balancing act, and I only hope that I haven’t completely screwed up on occasion in letting the scale go out of whack.

WHICH IS WHY I find it ridiculous to hear conservative ideologues rant and rage about “liberal” bias. We get used way too often by the government establishment to truly be thought of as “the opposition.”

“Unwitting accomplice” may be more accurate a phrase – which was something “Boss” hit upon too close for my comfort.

  -30-

Does Rob intend to avenge his brother’s likely incarceration against Jackson?

It’s almost a funny story – the account by the Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday that Robert Blagojevich is offering up himself as a possible witness to the House Ethics committee that is trying to determine how improper the behavior of Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill., has been.

JACKSON: A 'bulls-eye' on his back?



The way some people want to believe it, Jackson wanted then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich to name him as the successor to Barack Obama when the latter in 2008 gave up his U.S. Senate seat from Illinois to become president.

THERE ARE THOSE who want to believe that Jackson’s conduct during this time period was just as criminal as that of Blagojevich – who since has been impeached, removed from office, twice tried in U.S. District Court and now awaits a likely lengthy prison term.

Now I state that those are the opinions of certain people – most of whom have their own ideological (if not racial) hang-ups about Jackson and/or his father.

For the fact is that Jackson has not been charged with anything. And federal prosecutors who handled the whole Blagojevich affair recently informed the House Ethics committee that it would no longer conflict with their own work if Congress were to act against Jackson.

Which is interpreted to mean that Jackson won’t ever face criminal charges for this matter.

NOW, IT’S JUST a matter of Congress deciding to have elaborate hearings that will give the impression of the lawmakers punishing one of their own for behaving in such a knuckleheaded manner.

Because it relates indirectly to the president and an impeached governor who gained national attention, those hearings will get national attention. It also will get coverage because it will be a chance to put a “Jesse Jackson” on display in a negative manner.

BLAGOJEVICH: His brother's help?



All those people who have griped for decades about the father will enjoy the misery the son suffers in coming months. Who knows, perhaps Jr. will stop telling the story about how thankful he is that his mother named him Jesse, Jr., instead of going along with his father’s suggestion.

“Selma Jackson” might not sound so bad to him any longer.

AND THAT IS where Robert Blagojevich comes in. The Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday used its website to report that the former governor’s brother wants to testify before Congress.

He wrote letters to all 10 members of the committee, letting them know he’ll come to Washington from his Nashville, Tenn., home to tell them all he knows about the situation.

Now as it turns out, Robert Blagojevich was never the political animal that brother Rod was. The fact that he took a spot on the Blagojevich for governor campaign was done more out of a sense of helping his brother achieve something he wanted.

He could sense that their mother would have been pleased to know her two sons were sticking together.

THAT FAMILY LOYALTY (which I can understand, because I’d like to think I would be equally supportive of my own brother, as he has been of me at times in the past) is what ultimately dragged Robert into the affair.

He wound up facing his own criminal charges, for which the same jury that couldn’t make up its mind about Rod also got stalemated on Rob.

Ultimately, Robert Blagojevich was cleared when federal prosecutors decided he wasn’t worth the time and hassle of a second trial – particularly because his involvement complicated the case they were making against his brother.

Who was the real target of all this legal initiative!

FOR THE RECORD, Rob claims it was the Jackson people who approached them to ask about Blagojevich naming Jesse, Jr., to replace Obama in the U.S. Senate, and it was they (he says) who offered up to $6 million in various fundraising efforts – in exchange for the appointment.

Robert Blagojevich claims he repeatedly turned the Jackson people down. Which would make it appear as though he’d be willing to claim before Congress that it was Jackson who initiated this effort for which his brother now faces the possibility of prison time.

BRANDO: As Corleone

Jackson in the past has said he expressed interest in gaining the post (he has been a U.S. rep from the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs for 17 years now), but claims he never did anything illegal.

Will Rob claim otherwise? Will he just make statements that throw off enough suspicion against Jackson to make him look bad?

BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH the brothers are not as close personally as they used to be (a criminal trial in front of a U.S. District judge will do that to a relationship), there is still a strong sense of Rob desiring to channel the “Don Corleone” character from The Godfather.

Mario Puzo’s novel and its many cinematic interpretations may not have originated the phrase “revenge is a dish best served cold,” but it seems to be the one advising Robert Blagojevich these days.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: I don’t want to hear from anyone about how “Revenge is a dish best served cold” is an old Klingon proverb.

Do the Sarah Palin sex tidbits really titillate us? Or are they just droll?

Now we know exactly why the Chicago Tribune canned the Doonesbury comic strip for the week.

Garry Trudeau focused this week’s worth of strips on the fact that a new book is coming out next week about "is she/isn’t she" presidential candidate Sarah Palin – one that offers up so-called salacious tidbits about her personal life.

THE DISCLOSURE THAT would have appeared in the newspaper on Thursday was the fact that Palin supposedly once had a fling/quickie/hook-up/whatever you call it with now-former professional basketball player Glen Rice.

Not that Tribune readers were able to avoid the disclosure. For as it turns out, a look at the Tribune’s website Thursday afternoon shows them prominently playing up a review of the book that is the source of this tawdry disclosure – and a whole lot of others that we’re going to chew through in coming days.

Of course, what the Tribune did was take the review written by someone at the Los Angeles Times, which I’m sure they’re going to say means that they never really touched it themselves.

It’s a whole lot of semantics that rivals the rhetoric we’re going to hear from the Palin people themselves in dealing with this book; which her husband, Todd, has already denounced as, “full of disgusting lies.”

WHICH MEANS THE experience we’re all going to endure related to this book is going to be petty and cheap, particularly since the National Enquirer has managed to get itself entangled in this whole story (they’re going to claim they broke this revelation, even though all they did was reported the existence of the book).

Author Joe McGinniss (the guy who actually moved to Wasilla, Alaska and bought the house right next door to the Palin residence) did all the real work (although some have denounced his book as being nothing more than hearsay).



Sometimes, even political people get their own trading cards.



Now I have to admit that my first reaction to hearing a story about former sports broadcaster Palin and a ballplayer was to wonder if this so-called fling took place before she was married.

Perhaps it might be something resembling a story if the word “adultery” could be claimed (and also assuming that the hook-up actually took place) as fact. But in this case, the so-called fling occurred before marriage.

AND I PERSONALLY could care less about Sarah Palin’s social life – particularly incidents that took place more than two decades ago.

Which is why I’m not about to recall the details of where their one-time dalliance took place. It’s really such a common tale – except for the fact that one of the people in the coupling was a reporter-type person (Sarah used to do the sports segments for a local television station in Alaska) and the other was an athlete.

That is a journalistic ethics breach, along with just tacky behavior – if it really happened.

But then again, Palin has always said she got out of broadcasting and into politics because she didn’t want to conduct her life in the ways that reporters are forced to for professional reasons.

IF THIS INCIDENT really happened, it is just more evidence that Palin did the right thing getting out of journalism. And if it didn’t, she probably got easily bored by the tedious, often-nitpicking attention to detail that is necessary to get a story correct.

It means she still did the right thing by getting out of journalism.

What strikes me about this tale is that if it is true, then Palin would probably be best off using the reasoning that was offered up by the Clintons when Bill was first running for president – they admitted to marital difficulties during their lives, but tried to avoid getting into specific incidents.

Considering that the people who are most likely to back Palin’s presidential dreams are the same ones who most detested Clinton’s presence in the White House, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they will not accept it as a legitimate excuse.

IN FACT, I think much of the rhetoric that we will hear about McGinniss’ book in coming days is going to be from people who are determined to ignore what is being written and said about the candidate. They already live in their own world, and don’t really care what the rest of us have to say or think.

Although I am inclined to ignore the disclosures made in “The Rogue” because I just think they’re boring. Titillation is cheap when it becomes repetitive.

And in the end, the Chicago Tribune may wind up regretting that they didn’t just run the Doonesbury strips this week – particularly the one from Thursday that told us about the alleged Palin/Rice coupling.

For in that strip, a character refers to the tawdry tale as something that nobody will believe. “NBA trash talk,” in the words of Trudeau, which means Garry may have given us the best assessment of what to think of this incident.

  -30-

Lipinski really among 20 most corrupt?

I’m starting to wonder if Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill., is going to become some sort of poster child for political nepotism. No matter what he does with his career as an elective officeholder, he’s going to be singled out as a hack for who his daddy is.

I’m inclined to think that the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is engaging in political hyperbole when it releases a list this week declaring 20 members of Congress to be the “Most Corrupt” – and includes Lipinski on the list.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, Lipinski is the only Chicago-area politico who made the good government group’s list – which includes some political heavy-hitters such as William Jefferson, D-La.; Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; and Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

By comparison, Lipinski is a fairly anonymous part of the Washington set, although I knew a political science professor who always claimed that the quietest political people were usually the most corrupt – their meekness was an attempt to draw as little attention as possible to themselves.

Yet for Lipinski, he’s going to be the political person who can never truly be anonymous because there are the people who will always be offended at the way in which he gained elective office.

His father, former Chicago alderman and later Rep. William Lipinski, garnered a local reputation in Congress as a mass transportation expert who used his influence to get much federal aid for the Chicago Transit Authority and other mass transit programs.

YET WHEN HE decided to retire from electoral office, he waited until after he had already won a primary election. That allowed him to orchestrate the proceedings so that his son (then a political science professor at a Tennessee college) could move back to the Chicago suburbs (Western Springs, to be exact) and take the seat in Congress.

He got elected, and has managed to win re-election in the past couple of election cycles on his own, which means he likely has built up the kind of seniority (and the perks that go with incumbency) that he can no longer seriously be challenged at the voting booth – unless he does something incredibly stupid.

That is what is behind the activist group’s inclusion of Lipinski on their “most corrupt” list – they’re trying to create the perception of “something stupid” that could be used as an issue in future elections. Not this one – I don’t know of anyone who seriously thinks Republican challenger Art Jones (a one-time would-be Nazi sympathizer who now calls himself a “white racialist”) can win come Nov. 4.

For the record, the good government types are offended by Lipinski’s hiring of Jerry Hurckes to be his chief of staff.

IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, Hurckes got the job because he had also worked for the elder Lipinski as the retired member of Congress’ district director. Which means he knew the home district on the Southwest Side and surrounding suburbs, and Dan was likely comfortable with him.

Yet Hurckes is also a member of the village board in southwest suburban Oak Lawn, and he has made statements about how his hometown does not need a lobbyist because he can act as a “de facto lobbyist.”

Kind of a stupid boast for Hurckes to make, and it drags Lipinski into the muck of good government types who would like to believe in an idealized civics textbook approach to government – possibly similar to what Dan Lipinski once taught his students at the University of Tennessee.

In a prepared statement, the activist group implies that Dan Lipinski is deliberately paying Hurckes a salary at a specific level to avoid having to comply with government disclosure rules.

“GIVEN THAT MR. Hurckes is the most highly paid staff member in Rep. Lipinski’s office, that his position is a full-time job and is generally considered a ‘senior staff’ position, the fact that Mr. Hurckes’ salary is just under the figure that would make him ‘senior staff’ suggests that Rep. Lipinski is paying Mr. Hurckes a slary under this limit precisely so that he can earn a substantial outside income,” the group wrote.

They would love it if a House Ethics committee were to investigate the congressman.

What is more likely is that this issue will continue to come up in future campaigns, out of some hope that it will eventually stick.

I don’t know that it will. The Lipinski name seems to carry some clout in those South Side neighborhoods where jet noise from Midway International Airport is a reality of daily life. In fact, anyone who has ever read the Mike Royko book about Richard J. Daley entitled "Boss" remembers the portion of all the "begats" by which dozens of families were multi-generational Chicago politics. So this trend is not limited to the one congressional district.

IT EVEN SEEMS to overcome the fact that Lipinski himself has little influence yet in D.C. circles. One study by the Roll Call newspaper that covers Congress ranks Lipinski as the 227th most significant Democrat in the House of Representatives, and the 359th most significant member overall).

That’s pretty low.

But this also comes at a time when people seem to be thinking more and more about what had become an accepted political practice in Chicago and Illinois – passing along political influence to one’s children, creating many multi-generational families that have been involved in electoral politics.

Illinois House Minority Leader Tom Cross, R-Oswego, and his Republican allies are pushing for a measure in Springfield that would require special primary elections if someone retires or drops off the ballot for other reasons. Currently, party committeemen in the district back home get to pick the replacement, and they have often picked the political child.

COULD DAN LIPINSKI become the guy who takes the ultimate hit from people who are determined to keep the kids of politicos from having any kind of career in public life? It would be ironic if his case gets cited by proponents of this measure (which is a long-shot to go anywhere, since Republicans currently are irrelevant to the Statehouse Scene).

As a federal officeholder, he technically would not be impacted by a law designed for state and municipal officeholders.

But it would be sad if Lipinski, when the day comes that he is finished with electoral politics, never gets any more significant legacy than who his father was.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: I don’t know that I consider “corrupt” to be the most appropriate word to describe Rep. Dan Lipinski, D-Ill. (http://www.crewsmostcorrupt.org/node/428), but this deal does raise questions.

How significant a figure (http://congress.org/congressorg/bio/id/151645) under the Capitol dome does Lipinski cut? And where (http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00027239) does he get his campaign finances from?

Although the Illinois General Assembly may consider measures to make it harder for retiring political people (http://www.wbez.org/Content.aspx?audioID=28784) to pass along their offices to relatives, that would not have impacted Lipinski since he is a federal office holder.