EXTRA: A Cullerton, but not THE Cullerton, gets indicted by the feds

I have no doubt that some people are wetting their pants with glee at the word that a Cullerton, one of the most prominent of political families in Chicago history, got busted by the feds.

CULLERTON -- The federally-indicted one

Sure enough, officials announced that state Sen. Tom Cullerton, D-Villa Park, faces a criminal indictment on some 41 criminal counts. The kind of people who are eager to see a Chicago politico get busted because it fits into their own ideological hang-ups are the ones all excited.

THERE’S JUST ONE problem. The Cullerton who’s the big name these days is John, who serves as president of the Illinois Senate. He’s also the one who’s a direct descendant of the many Cullertons who have been prominent on the Chicago political scene – both within City Hall and Cook County government.

Tom is actually a distant cousin to John, and from a different branch of the Cullerton family tree.

Anybody who thinks they FINALLY nailed a Cullerton ought to relax This isn’t the major deal you might want to fantasize it is.

Just to give you a clue, Tom is actually a DuPage County resident, and once served as mayor of suburban Villa Park. Not exactly a City Hall denizen!

HE’S NOW A part of the DuPage legislative delegation – which is a fact I’m sure infuriates the long-time DuPage residents. The ones who remember back when DuPage County was the base of the Illinois Republican Party and when DuPage was one of the most Republican of counties that could be found anywhere in the United States.

Now, a Cullerton (which in Chicago political circles is a name almost as prominent as “Daley” itself) has a seat in DuPage. Which, I’m sure, is a prominent motivation for locals to want to tag Tom with some wrongdoing.

Mess him up, and maybe dump him do they can replace him with a good ol’ fashioned GOPer (the kind of Republican who reveres the memory of Abraham Lincoln and the days before the Party of Lincoln sold its soul out to the ego of Donald Trump).

I’m not saying that’s the only reason Tom Cullerton got himself indicted. But you can’t underestimate the significance of that element.

CULLERTON -- The prominent one

NOW WHAT ACTUALLY is Cullerton (Tom, not John, although I don’t doubt there are those who will openly encourage any confusion about who’s who within the Cullerton clan) to have done wrong.

It seems from March 2013 to February 2016, Cullerton received a salary as a Teamsters union official, along with bonuses, and allowances to cover the cost of his cellphones and automobiles. He also received health insurance and pension benefits for his “work” with the labor union.

Which prosecutors contend was minimal. He didn’t really do work for the union – although he took their money (more than $252,000). Which has prosecutors insisting it’s criminal, and worthy of embezzlement charges.

It seems the fact that Cullerton took a pass on health insurance benefits he was entitled to as a state legislator (accepting the union’s health plan instead) was not enough to keep him in the clear legally.

HE’S NOW GOING to have to face criminal charges, and likely will be added to the “hit” parade of politicos who got themselves busted. The political prominence of his moniker will add to the impact.

What would feds do for Daley descendant?

Although it should be noted that Cullerton’s indictment came just days after the guilty plea of Teamsters boss John Coli, who supposedly demanded payoffs from a film studio. In exchange for legal considerations, it seems Coli is now talking about union business – including his ties to Tom Cullerton, whom he allegedly set up with the no-work job to begin with.

Could Cullerton be the fish Coli tosses up to prosecutors who figure they get a bigger case if they can bust a “Cullerton,” even if it’s not one of the really big-name Cullertons whose own activities may be even worse?

It makes me wonder how much the federal prosecutorial types would give if they could build up a case against someone with the “Daley” name – no matter how small-fry the actual individual is?

  -30-

“Chicago” West?

Should we, the people of the world’s greatest city (in my opinion, and I don’t care if you disagree) feel complimented, or offended, that entertainer Kanye West and his celebrity wife, Kim Kardashian, chose to name their newest daughter after our municipality?

Announcement Kardashian posted of daughter's name

Or should we just count down the years and days until the newly-named Chicago West becomes old enough to go to court and have her moniker changed to something less likely to draw attention?

THE NEWS REPORTS spilled out Friday about the fact that Kanye West, who grew up in Chicago and is often regarded as one of our city’s celebrities, picked his home for his daughter’s name.

Although I wonder how the girl will feel about her name when she learns that our city was named for the wild leek (a type of onion) that grew along the shores of what is now the Chicago River.

Supposedly, the whole area stank from the onions, with the smell reminding those of that of skunks. At least according to those of the Miami tribe that were once native to the shores of Lake Michigan.

When you think of the name in this context, it makes me wonder if we should consider the naming of this child some form of abuse? Are they pre-punishing her for any mischievous behavior she may commit later in life?

THEN AGAIN, CHICAGO West wouldn’t be the only pseudo-celeb to carry a burg’s name as their own.

Let’s not forget the international soccer star David Beckham and his Spice Girl bride Victoria (a.k.a., Posh Spice) who named their son Brooklyn. Supposedly, they were in the New York borough when he was conceived.

Should we take this to mean that Kanye brought his bride to visit his home town when they made their third child, and second daughter? Or is it just a quirk of Kanye that he’d think Chicago could be a proper name?

Perhaps it’s a way of showing spite toward the mentality that now shouts its way into the public discourse in this Age of Trump every time the president feels compelled to say something stupid about our beloved home city.

KANYE WEST IS showing that “Chicago” can be something beautiful, no matter how trashy Trump tries to depict it as being.

Or maybe it’s just a recognition that Atlanta, the city in which Kanye West was actually born, doesn’t have as nice a ring.

Really, “Atlanta West” just wouldn’t work. It would be too likely to rile up the natives into a revolt. Although there are times I suspect that southerners are looking for any excuse to revolt about anything possible.

Anyway, it appears that Chicago West was born Monday, and came in at 7 pounds, 6 ounces. Does this mean we can now start thinking of “Chicago” as having a new birthday? And speculate about how the girl will be 19 when her namesake city turns 200 (come the year 2037)?

The original namesake of 'Chicago'

OF COURSE, WE could all realize this is far too much speculation about the creation of a new girl who probably deserves a degree of privacy – but certainly won’t ever get it on account of who her parents are.

I can’t envision anyone with a Kardashian connection wanting to be low-profile about anything in life.

As for anybody who feels compelled to want to mock this family for their moniker choice, I can only speculate – as I have for just over 600 words.

That what really has their undershorts all bunched up is the fact that THEIR city name wasn’t picked. Because something like “St. Louis West” or “Indianapolis West” would just be too ridiculous to contemplate.

  -30-

Can big bucks buy J.B. human persona?

J.B. Pritzker is the millionaire would-be politico who’s showing a willingness to spend his own money to try to run for governor in next year’s election cycle.

Gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker's late mother, Sue, is featured in his latest campaign advertising spot now airing on television. Does this make him appear more human? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

Democratic opponent Daniel Biss (whose campaign appeal seems limited to anyone who lives in or near the suburb of Evanston, where he lives) is trying to use Pritzker’s wealth against him – he issued the statement that pointed out Pritzker’s campaign is spending some $120,000 per day – which he says is more than the annual income of he and his wife.

YET JUST WHAT could Pritzker be spending so much money on?

Perhaps it is those campaign ads that began appearing on television this week – the one where Pritzker doesn’t talk about the state of the state or how sleazy his gubernatorial challengers (or incumbent Bruce Rauner) are. Instead, we get to hear a first-hand story of how wonderful his mother, Sue, was.

He talks about how after his father, Donald, died when J.B. was merely a 7-year-old, his mother struggled to support he and his siblings. Her efforts were made all the more difficult by the fact that she was an alcoholic.

PRITZKER: Most empathetic?

She could easily have been overwhelmed by becoming a widow. Instead, she managed to raise all her children to adulthood where they succeeded in life, and J.B. says he gained “a kind of empathy and understanding” about people who struggle.

HE CLAIMS THAT empathy will be put to use if he becomes governor. He’ll sympathize with all of us.

Which usually I’d be inclined to dismiss as a whole lot of schmaltz.

But this particular statement is something off-beat and usual. I’ve never really seen a political campaign try to put forth such a statement. Usually, something personal would be more likely to have Pritzker allies (although not J.B. himself) telling us what a despicable excuse for a human being Rauner is.

BISS: J.B. nothing but money?

Turn this into a battle of the two candidates likely to try to self-fund their way to the Executive Mansion in Springfield following the Nov. 6, 2018 elections.

BUT IT IS because this statement is so much like something just about anyone would say about their mother. I could easily come up with a similar accounting of how strong my late mother became following her divorce from my father – all because she wanted me and my brother to not suffer due to the split some four decades ago.

In fact, my quarrel would be to say that my mother was just as special as his mother. Something I’m sure just about every voter would argue.

That touch of humanity, and not just another political geek looking to ram his ideological leanings down all of our throats, is what Pritzker seems to want us to think – and what he’s trying to buy with the dollars that the Biss campaign would like us to think are merely evidence of another rich guy trying to buy himself a government office so as to appease his ego.

Of course, that could also be evidence that the Biss campaign’s momentum is withering away on account of the smudge on his political image after having to pick a new lieutenant governor running mate.

RAUNER: Not just a GOP version of J.B.?

HE’S NOT RAISING money for his own campaigning at the same rate he was early on. Although in this particular campaign, the J.B. Pritzker campaign was always going to be the one that grossly outspent everybody else on the Democratic side.

With incumbent Rauner’s personal wealth and the roughly $50 million he claims he’ll come up with to support his own re-election and that of sympathetic legislators for the General Assembly likely to dwarf his own spending.

Which is why Illinois House Speaker and state Democratic Chairman Michael Madigan has long been a Pritzker backer – his money could compete with the Rauner money.

Which also is why the Illinois Democratic County Chairs Association (Democrats in the rural parts of Illinois) are likely to do their own endorsement of Pritzker – even though the Republicans claim the association is “taking orders from Madigan” and nothing more. Maybe the GOP can’t think of something nice to say about their own candidate?

  -30-

What is citizenship, really?

I have always thought we’re all residents of Planet Earth, and that the fact of individual citizenship is more an accident of birth than anything else.

Obama assimilation dream is Trump's erasure fantasy

In my own case, I am a U.S. citizen because I had two grandfathers both of whom had the tremendous ambition to want more out of life rather than just sit around on their nalgas and take what others would have handed to them.

WHICH IS WHY they both wound up living the bulk of their lives in the South Chicago neighborhood working in the steel mills that used to be nearby, why my parents were born and raised there and I was born there.

Anything about myself that makes me a more desirable human being than others in our society has little to nothing to do with the location of my birth – although don’t get me wrong, I consider myself fortunate to have been born and raised on the shores of Lake Michigan in and near the greatest city on the aforementioned Planet Earth.

Which is why I find much of the political debate over our nation’s immigration policies to be downright pathetic; it seems far too many of the nativist nitwits amongst us think their birthplace is what makes them superior.

When most of them have no right to think of themselves as superior to a gnat, let alone any other individual. If we could deport people based on what they contribute to our society, many of these folks would be the first to go – except I doubt any other country would be willing to take them off our hands.

SO I’M HEARING the rhetoric being spewed by the president in this Age of Trump about the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that some people were convinced would be wiped out of existence effective Friday.

Even Speaker Ryan thinks Trump ...

For those of you who don’t pay attention to details, DACA was the initiative created by now-former President Barack Obama to offer legal protections to those people born in other countries but who were brought here by their parents without the proper papers being lined up.

Obama’s initiative was intended to give these individuals who had been raised U.S. and were fully assimilated to be able to advance in life without the bureaucratic mess of immigration and the lack of a valid visa.

But to Trump, it is merely yet another policy that must be wiped away so as to erase any trace that this nation was ever deluded enough to elect one of “those people” as president.

... goes too far with DACA talk

PLUS, THREATENING TO erase the policy helps to keep those individuals off-balance and forevermore uncertain about their status in this country, which only serves to benefit those individuals amongst us who are so insecure they want to think their U.S. birthplace is what makes them superior to others.

Heck, even some Republicans, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., think that Trump should let Congress try to revamp DACA, rather than abolish it by presidential decree.

It’s actually as sad as the case of Genoveva Ramirez, a grandmother from suburban Berwyn whose visa expired years ago. She had immigration tell her she must produce a plane ticket that shows she’ll be leaving the United States by the end of October – or else the federal government will force her onto a plane at a moment’s notice.

There’s also the fact that Ramirez could now be detained by federal immigration officials at any time, if they suddenly decided to see her as a threat.

HER CASE IS that her family is here. They have become U.S.-based. Her grandchildren definitely are assimilated. Although I’m sure the xenophobic amongst us will try arguing that her status means nobody in the family ought to be permitted to stay.

DACA another Obama relic Trump wants to erase

The debate over immigration policy truly has become a pathetic argument by people who enjoy the bureaucratic nightmare that currently exists because it harasses people who aren’t exactly like themselves. Keeping people harassed is probably more important to the nativists than actually removing them -- an act that would be costly.

Too many people who want to talk about increased deportations, rather than engaging in a serious debate over who ought to be permitted in our society and how they wind up enhancing us all.

So for those young people who registered for DACA and now wonder if all that personal data they gave to the federal government will be used against them and for the grandmother who could wind up being sent away from her family, keep in mind that this is the particularly embarrassing part of this Age of Trump we all must endure.

  -30-

Getting ‘em involved at a young age

It always kind of throws me for a loop whenever I encounter a protest action of sorts and see kids dragged along, in tow. My guess is that somebody couldn’t find a baby-sitter that day.

Spending the day informing Chicagoans about someth8ing they likely didn't care about. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

Or perhaps somebody thinks they can pass along their own outspoken activist spirit to their young’uns even before the kids are capable of comprehending exactly what it is they’re hearing.

I MEAN THAT literally. I once knew a young woman who described her father as a racist, borderline-white supremacist who took her rallies as a child – using her as the image of blonde white purity that these knuckleheads were supposedly looking to protect.

As she remembered those days, she recalled wondering why all those surrounding them were so hostile. It was only later she realized they were reacting to the negativity that was coming from her own group – which as far as I could tell she so thoroughly renounced as an adult.

As recently as Saturday, I encountered a protest rally – one held in front of the Wrigley Building by people of Nigerian ethnic (and Islamic religious) origins who were protesting the abduction of a sheikh and the slaying of all his male off-spring.

According to the activists, the government officials who ordered this action left the daughter alive so she could tell the story to the world about how tough and vicious the Nigerian Army was capable of being – so as to scare others into submission.

THIS PARTICULAR GROUP wasn’t threatening. They merely wanted their story to be heard – particularly because it’s one of those international issues that is never going to get a mention on the local television newscasts.

What does baby in carriage REALLY think?

At best, it would have got a couple of paragraphs mention in the newspaper – and would have been ignored by those kind of people who think “nobody reads the newspaper any longer.”

How could I tell they were merely loud (I heard them clearly from a half-mile away) and not dangerous? How many mothers are wielding a picket sign in one hand, and a baby carriage in the other?

With the baby inside the carriage bearing his own sign.

THEN AGAIN, HOW many times will you see children lined up along Michigan Avenue doing their own chants and waving their own placards around?

Then again, perhaps we should wonder just how well those kids comprehended anything they were saying? Or how many of them felt a similar attitude like my soon-to-be 13-year-old niece (she’d be offended if I wrote she was just 12)?

My step-sister recently took her and my nephew along with her on a downtown trip when they encountered “Black Lives Matter” protesters along Michigan Avenue, and my step-sister with the kids joined in.

My niece’s primary observation was that an anticipated shopping trip got disrupted by protests and politics. Although my interest in her tale was more in the police reaction – it seems those who “serve and protect” were on their best behavior that one day.

SHOWING THEY ARE capable of controlling themselves when they want to.

I wonder how much this youthful participation is a trend of the future. Or perhaps it has always been there, and I just wasn’t paying that much attention.

How many protesters brought families with them?

Although none of it was as potentially confusing as one time I went to a ballgame at U.S. Cellular Field and wound up sitting right behind a couple who brought their newborn son to his first ballgame ever. Wearing a White Sox baby-sized shirt and a Boston Red Sox cap (the father was from Massachusetts who fell for a Sout’ Side girl).

I remember asking that new dad who the kid was rooting for, only to be told “he’s a Sox” fan. I still wonder if that kid, who’d be about 13 now, rebelled against his parents by rooting for the Yankees!

  -30-

No smokes in the car with kiddies?

The Illinois Senate gave its consideration to a measure that I’m sure was bound to infuriate a certain segment of our society – making it a ticketable offense for someone to light up a cigarette in their own automobile if, by chance, they happen to have kids in the car with them.

Personally, I find it to be a noble goal. I can remember as a kid finding it rather disgusting to be around people who smoked tobacco products. It is a large part of the reason why I never took up the habit myself.

BUT I’M NOT sure how such a ban could ever be realistically enforced unless we’re willing to give police unlimited powers to start searching our cars. And it wouldn’t shock me to learn that many of those cops are smokers themselves.

So it shouldn’t be a shock that when the bill in question, sponsored by state Sen. Ira Silverstein, D-Chicago, came up for a vote, it went down to an ignoble defeat.

A mere 8 state senators were in favor of the idea.

In my mind, I can hear the piercing whistle that some legislators used to make whenever a bill was on its way to defeat. That whistle intending to be a parody of the sound of bombs being dropped on the idea, thereby blowing it to smithereens.

SERIOUSLY, THE WAY a cop would have to enforce this would be to get up so close as to see if not only is someone smoking, but are there little children in the vehicle as well.

What it really means is that police would wind up having to pull over people based on their suspicions, and hope that they wind up catching enough people in the act of smoking-while-in-the-presence-of-children that they can get enough people to file charges against.

Considering that this likely would be a traffic offense of sorts, I doubt the fines would be sufficient enough to make all the time on the part of police officers worthwhile.

Then again, the fact that we’d have to put a certain amount of trust in police officers not to start pulling people over for whatever suspicions they have (then claim they suspected there was smoking taking place).

SHOULD IT REALLY then be a surprise that the state Senate’s black caucus was amongst the opponents?

State Sen. Kimberly Lightford, D-Maywood, made it clear the caucus didn’t trust police enough to limit their searches for smokers with children to reasonable searches. They might wind up pulling over many black motorists, claiming there was a suspicion that tobacco products were somehow being inhaled.

Now I know some people don’t want to believe that anyone could legitimately not trust law enforcement. They’re going to be the ones who will now scream how ridiculous this all is.

But it may well be a sign of how big the gap is amongst certain people in our society in terms of trusting the police.

I REMEMBER ONE now-retired suburban police chief once telling me he seriously believed that the kind of people who went into law enforcement for a living are the elite of our society.

Others are quick to see a batch of thugs using their law enforcement authority to reinforce their own personal hang-ups.

The fact that this issue could even crop up is all the more reason we ought to be thankful that this particular piece of legislation (which likely will become an annual issue for the General Assembly to contemplate) didn’t go very far.

Because what’s the next step – we make it illegal for smokers to raise children?

  -30-

What’s more important to the political people; gay marriage or re-election?

Something I have learned over and over about the Illinois General Assembly is that it is a legislative body that likes to do things on its own time-clock and resents it whenever it perceives that someone is trying to rush them.

A house of inactivity??!?

Heck, one of the reasons that the last-minute bill back in 1988 that approved the funding for construction of a new stadium for the Chicago White Sox was controversial was that it got rammed through the legislative process when many political people would have just as soon put the issue on hold for a few years.

KEEPING THAT ATTITUDE in mind, I’m not going to be surprised if Illinois House of Representatives officials wind up doing nothing in coming weeks with the issue of gay marriage.

The bill that would allow same-gender couples to have legally legitimate marriages already has Illinois Senate approval, but has yet to come up for a vote in the Illinois House.

Back in May, state Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, implied when he didn’t push for a vote on the issue that it would be something that would come up in the fall Veto Session.

Well, the Veto Session is scheduled to begin this week (although the substantive work by the General Assembly won’t take place for another couple of weeks).

DOES THIS MEAN we’re on the verge of a measure being sent to Gov. Pat Quinn for his approval? He has said he’d sign it into law the moment he gets ahold of it.

I was amused by reading the advance stories on this issue published by the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times – both of which seem to be as skeptical as I am that anything will happen.

Will we get an Illinois House version of this roll call?

 

The Tribune emphasized the Veto Session’s time proximity to the upcoming election cycle. Candidates for the March primary would have to submit their nominating petitions to get on the ballot by early December.

Meaning anybody who’s determined to keep the homophobic viewpoint as a part of Illinois would have an incumbent legislator’s “yes” vote fresh on the electorate’s mind. There’d be time to get themselves on the ballot and stir up resentment toward an incumbent legislator.

ALTHOUGH I WAS intrigued by a mention in the Sun-Times report, which says that some of the financial types whose cash props up political campaigns are eager to have a vote on the issue even if it winds up failing.

This rhetoric will rise!

Because they want it on the record who would vote “no” on the gay marriage issue – so they can start providing the funds to political challengers who could possibly defeat them!

The point of all of this is that no matter how someone votes, there will be someone else who will become offended. There likely will be somebody who loses their legislative post because of their vote on this issue – regardless of how they actually vote!

All of which makes me think the legislative leadership will take the politically cowardly (they’ll say they’re just being safe) stance of doing nothing. The bill likely will not get called up before the Illinois House.

AFTER ALL, THE point of the Veto Session is for the General Assembly to consider the bills that the governor spent the summer months vetoing. Other issues are supposed to wait until the spring. It is their chance to either override his intent, or decide that it’s not worth fighting for and they go along with it.

Will the next step take place this week?

For now.

This same attitude may well apply to the pension funding problems our state government faces. Nothing will happen because nobody can agree on what should be done.

Considering that Quinn has said he wants action on that issue before he’s willing to do much of anything else (particularly those tax breaks soon-to-be-formerly-of Archer Daniels Midland wants to stay in Illinois instead of moving to a place like Dallas), this veto session could be a whole lot of nothing.

PARTICULARLY SINCE THE one controversial amendatory veto by Quinn has already been dealt with – the General Assembly couldn’t wait until October to dump all over the governor when it came to the issue of “concealed carry” of firearms. They reconvened in special session during the summer.

That was more about the Legislature asserting its own self-interest. Which, sad to say, is the usual motivation for any time the General Assembly gets off its collective keister to do anything!

  -30-

Will it become series of family affairs?

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, gained national attention on Friday when he became the only Republican in the Senate willing to say that he’d support the concept of gay couples being able to legally marry.

PORTMAN: Taking a stance

Why? It seems that Portman has a son who has “come out.” He has a son who is gay. Which led the senator to write in a commentary published by the Columbus Dispatch newspaper, “I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to get married.”

REGARDLESS OF WHAT one thinks of the issue, perhaps it is merely fact that we shouldn’t presume every single political geek with a “D” following his (or her) name will support the issue.

Or that every “R” is rigidly opposed.

Take the Capitol Fax newsletter out of Springfield, which earlier this week reported about a Democrat in the Illinois House of Representatives who wants his name in the “aye” column when/if the issue eventually comes up for a final vote in that legislative chamber.

But the legislator in question is married to a woman who is a devout Catholic who, as the newsletter describes it, “is absolutely, completely dead set against” gay marriage being legitimate.

PORTMAN’S VIEW ON the issue is influenced by the fact that he wouldn’t be able to face his son if he kept up his opposition on the issue – which he admitted he once legitimately felt.

As for the Democratic legislator? He probably wouldn’t be able to face his wife – who I would hope carries more weight with him than any of his constituents.

Those kind of family ties can have an influence on a public official. It is the reason why reporter-type people get pushy on occasion when trying to find out about a politician’s relatives.

There will be the instances where it matters – even if the other 99 percent of the time it is irrelevant.

WHAT INTRIGUES ME about this particular issue is the fact that it has become such a “yes” or “no” type of matter. There really isn’t a middle ground, particularly for those gay couples who feel like anything less than being able to marry deprives them of some sort of “right” that everybody else has.

Which is why I was amused by the unnamed Democratic legislator, who says he’s trying to figure out some sort of middle ground that would appease more conservative elements.

The Capitol Fax newsletter reported that the legislator would want to make for a stronger exemption in the law for religious organizations.

Although the measure that made it through the state Senate and is now pending in the Illinois House already contains legal language specifying that churches are not required to perform marriage services for those couples who don’t fit their vision of legitimacy.

IN SHORT, ONE can’t walk into a Catholic church and demand a marriage service. But the church can’t take actions to stop that person from going somewhere else in order to obtain the rites that make two people into one couple.

Attempts at compromise may well be futile!

Portman has the better position, in that the matter at the federal government level is before the Supreme Court of the United States. He won’t have to put himself on the record with a vote anytime soon. The anonymous legislator will!

It literally will come down to one of those issues where one will have to try to figure out which side they’d rather be on, and accept the fact that nobody can please everybody at any time – no matter how they vote.

  -30-

How much is too much?

There used to be those occasional political fantasies about what our local scene would be like if Richard M. Daley were mayor, William Daley were governor and John Daley were in charge of the Cook County Board.

DALEY: Path finally clear for campaign?

Only the most politically parochial of Bridgeport neighborhood natives didn’t gag at the very thought of so much power being put in one family.

IN FACT, THE people who take seriously the thought that William Daley will run for governor of Illinois come the 2014 election cycle use as their primary talking point the fact that Rich is no longer mayor.

As though now it would be appropriate for the one-time Commerce secretary and White House chief of staff to assuage his own ambitions for an elective office (all of his political posts have been by appointment from Bill Clinton and Barack Obama).

So if even the Daley types realize there is only so much power that can be put into one person’s hands, then perhaps that ought to be a lesson that we all ought to learn from.

Such as the thought that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan may be considering her own gubernatorial bid next year out of a belief that having a governor whom Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, would not see as a threat would mean we’d have a combination that would be capable of accomplishing things for the good of the people of Illinois.

NONSENSE!!!!!!!!!!

This particular commentary was motivated by the Capitol Fax newsletter out of Springfield, where publisher Rich Miller used his website this week to askpeople if they thought a Madigan/Madigan combination was good for the state.

MADIGAN: Could '14 be a political family feud?

As of the last I checked, two-thirds thought it was not good, while one-third thought it was. And rather than post a comment on his site, I’m using my own weblog to issue my wordy, overwrought response.

The very thought of those latter people scare me even moreso than the guy whom the Springfield State Journal-Register newspaper captured on video at a recent Statehouse gun rally saying, “I am a gun-toting, God-fearing, Bible-reading Christian, let’s make that clear.”

THAT’S A LOT of contradiction crammed into one expression – which may mean he doesn’t have a clue as to what he really is.

But back to political power. Quite frankly, if the only way our government can work is if the deck is stacked, if the game is rigged, so that all opposition is weeded out, then it is a failure.

If anything, that is the very reason why I have always mocked that period from 1995-96 when all of the state constitutional officers and the General Assembly’s leadership were Republicans.

Because it became obvious back then on so many issues the only way they could operate on anything was if anyone with a difference of opinion were forced to just shut up about it!

THAT’S NOT DEMOCRACY.

And the idea that the only way the speaker of the House of Representatives will behave responsibly is if he has a vested interest in making his eldest daughter not look weak and foolish, then perhaps we ought to be looking twice at the long-time speaker’s conduct.

Even though he often acted like a buffoon, perhaps Rod Blagojevich wasn’t completely in the wrong with the way he tried to stand up to Madigan during their political brawls of the mid-Aughts that often bordered on deranged.

And perhaps instead of going around denouncing Gov. Pat Quinn as the least popular governor in the nation, we ought to consider that interference from his own political party ally is just as responsible for much of the nothingness our state government accomplishes these days!

THE IDEA OF a pair of Madigans is just a bit much – which may well be the reason why Lisa has not tried running for anything more than the attorney general post that she has held for three terms already.

Perhaps even she sees that the appearance of too much power in one family is gaudy.

Then again, there are some issues (including many of the social ones) in which the two Madigans disagree. It would be tragic if some of those causes were to suffer because “Mr. Speaker” felt compelled to let his governor-daughter know who the real boss is.

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Rod is ‘innocent,’ does anybody care?

It seems that Rosie O’Donnell is finally using her Chicago-based cable television talk show to delve into an issue of concern to those of us who live here.

But I really don’t see what she expects to gain from the show scheduled to air Wednesday – an interview with one-time Illinois first lady Patti Blagojevich who, according to the news reports published in advance of the broadcast, says her husband is “innocent” of all crimes he is alleged to have committed.

SO WHEN FORMER Gov. Rod Blagojevich reports to prison in Colorado in a couple of weeks to begin that decade-long period of time he owes to the federal government, there will be yet another innocent man being held in prison.

I’m sure my sarcasm is dripping ever so heavily from this commentary.

Although it’s not because I’m convinced of the former governor’s guilt on all those charges for which a second jury convicted him of (remember the first that couldn’t make up its mind?). It’s just that I really don’t care anymore to hear a thing about the Blagojevich “saga.”

My question isn’t to Patti as to “How deluded can you be?” It is to Rosie to ask, “Do you really think this will bolster your programs ratings one bit?”

I REALIZE THAT the Rosie O’Donnell show that airs on the cable television channel created by Oprah Winfrey to give her the opportunity to be a television producer and entertainment mogul  -- rather than just host of her own popular program – is not doing as well in the ratings as the people who created it had hoped it would.

When you feel desperate, you do longer-shot things. Even going so far as to put on television yet again the woman who, when she dies many decades from now, will have in the lede of her obituary that she was the first lady who ate bugs on national television.

So anybody who still cares about what Patti Blagojevich (nee, Mell) thinks will get their chance to hear from her (the Associated Press says it will air Wednesday at 6 p.m. on the Oprah Winfrey Network – check your local lineup to figure out for yourself what channel number that translates to in your area).

Somehow, I don’t think there are many people who care much that this is her “first interview” since her husband received that 14-year prison sentence (which translates to just over 10 years of real time).

I THINK MANY people will find something else to do during that hour.

Besides, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday that Patti said she knows what is in her husband’s “heart.”

It isn’t even really much of a relevation that Patti Blagojevich initially thought it was a gag when the FBI showed up at the family home and said they had a warrant for the governor’s arrest.

Since we have known for years that the now-former governor’s reaction to that moment was the un-immortal line, “Is this a joke?”

THIS IS ONE “story” that I desperately want to wither away, particularly since I was never all that enthused about having it occur to begin with.

Because I’m always going to feel that this story was motivated way too heavily by the political partisanship that caused many people to detest Blagojevich, the persona.

And a good chunk of that was motivated by the fact that some people never got over the fact that he defeated Jim Ryan in the 2002 election cycle, and had the nerve to beat up on Judy Baar Topinka come 2006.

BLAGOJEVICH: Soon to be a number

This is a partisan fight that I am glad is over. I don’t want to think about it too much. Not even on March 15 – the date when Blagojevich must be in Colorado to report to prison, or else risk being classified as a “fugitive” whom “the feds”’ will hunt down.

THAT IMAGE MAY amuse certain people. But it does nothing for me, except bother me that I even bothered to write it just now.

And as for the people who are looking forward to March 15 because they want to see Milorod whisked away into a prison (albeit minimum-security), I’d say “Stop it.” Your enjoyment on this matter borders on perverse.

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Is it really new that same ‘white Irish Catholic’ family types dominate politics

I must admit to amusement at the fact that many people are getting offended at first lady Michelle Obama these days because of a new book about the first couple that tells us, among its tidbits, that she was offended at the fact that so much of our political power is tied up in generation after generation of the same few families.

As written by New York Times reporter-type Jodi Kantor in her new book, “The Obamas,” former mayoral staffer Michelle Obama, “particularly resented the way power in Illinois was locked up generation after generation by a small group of families, all white, Irish Catholic…”

WHICH JUST DOESN’T strike me as much of a revelation about the nature of politics in our fair city.

The now deceased newspaper columnist Mike Royko mocked this very trait some four decades ago in his book “Boss” about the head of the ultimate political family (Richard J. Daley). Or have we forgotten all those “begats” by now?

But I’m not about to defend this trait – which continues to this day and likely will go on for many more generations (let’s not forget the Daley relation who’s running for a seat on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District board of commissioners).

What amuses me is the fact that some people out there are trying to lambast Obama the first lady for thinking such a thought.

BECAUSE I HAVE heard many a Chicagoan get into a drunken political quarrel that centered around the fact that the same damned families kept getting elected over and over and over.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan being nothing more than the daughter of Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago? The bigger outrage might well be that she’s the adopted granddaughter of one-time 13^th Ward Committeeman (and Richard J. Daley personal friend) Michael Madigan, Sr.

Because that places this particular train back yet another generation, and straight to the ultimate Hizzoner himself!

At one point or another, we all have expressed the exact same frustration that Kantor says Michelle Obama expressed on occasion during the two years that she worked for city government (in the early days of the Richard M. Daley mayoral administration).

WHICH MAY WELL mean that Michelle Obama is the REAL Chicagoan in that family – unlike hubby Barack who grew up in Honolulu and adopted our city for his adult life.

So those people who are claiming that Michelle is saying, or doing, something wrong, or showing us how out-of-touch she is with the common folk? I’d say they’re the ones who don’t have a clue.

Particularly someone like Matt Drudge, the guy who used his overblown website recently to trash her for this remark because he took offense to the characterization of the political establishment as “white.”

As though the South Shore girl who went on to Princeton University before returning to Chicago to work at a high-powered law firm before going to work for the city for a couple of years were really nothing more than some radical.

PERHAPS HE THINKS she’s some sort of spawn of Bill Ayers (the one-time Weathermen activist from the late 1960s). The reality is that she’s really just one of us.

It is her critics who need to get a clue about reality. Particularly someone who would want to view this as a racial issue against her. That’s just too stupid a concept to take seriously.

And yet these are the people that the bulk of the Republican presidential hopefuls are turning to for support in trying to get elected. It’s going to be no wonder if Michelle Obama gets four more years in the White House (which after reading a few chapters of “The Obamas” I couldn’t help but wonder if she deep-down would prefer to come home to Chicago after this year).

Of course, then again she’d be returning to the place where the same ol’ families wind up running things, generation after generation. Although the reality is that some new families do wind up working their way into the works.

SUCH S THE Jacksons or the Strogers, although I noticed one political pundit (Rich Miller of the Capitol Fax newsletter) also managed to include the Berrios family (Cook County Assessor Joe and state Rep. Toni, D-Chicago) in the political family mix.

Because that would stretch it beyond just a “white” thing. But would certainly fall in line with the concept of the same old families passing down political power.

But just as new families occasionally work their way into the mix, I can’t help but wonder what will become of family Obama on our political scene? How about Sasha or Malia running for office someday?

That might actually unite the forces. Michelle theoretically would be “upset’ over a political person’s kid running for office, while the ideologues who are bashing Michelle these days can rant about the return of the name “Obama” to the political scene!

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