By Staff
It's midnight in America. In the delusional but audacious Blagosphere, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, 52, said he doesn't believe a cloud hangs over him.
"I think there's nothing but sunshine hanging over me."
The very next day a federal investigation indicted the so-called Governor Gone Wild for corruption. He's looking at 30 years in prison on charges that include soliciting bribes.
As recently as last month he imagined himself as a 2016 presidential contender, though in the meantime he'd settle for a corporate post, the Cabinet or an ambassadorship. Fueling his fantasies is his authority to name President-elect Barack Obama's Senate successor.
"I've got this thing, and it's (bleeping) golden," Blagojevich said. "I'm just not giving it up for (bleeping) nothing." He also was recorded complaining that Obama's people were "not willing to give me anything…"
The governor, who is out on bond and denies any wrongdoing while he continues to collect his $176,000 salary, allegedly threatened to revoke millions in funding for a Chicago children's hospital if its CEO did not drop his campaign $50,000.
It took 76 pages to recount the graft allegations in the federal complaint.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who prosecuted Vice President Dick Cheney aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby for perjury, as well as predecessor governor George Ryan, began wiretapping the governor in mid-October.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said the charges "are appalling and represent as serious a breach of the public trust as I have ever heard."
Blagojevich was accused of trying to force Tribune Co. to fire editorial writers in exchange for a $100 million tax break. Tribune, which owns the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times and the Cubs, files for bankruptcy Dec. 8, less than a year after billionaire Sam Zell took the media conglomerate private.
Zell's purchase left the company $13.4 billion in debt in the newspaper industry, which "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart described as "black and white and completely over."
George W. Bush: Had the President who "was unprepared for war" entered the witness protection program? He seemed gone from the White House as the last act of his policies left the country tumbling into an abyss.
White House spokesman Carlton Carroll stated in a memo to his Cabinet with positive talking points about his tenure, "We feel the President's many accomplishments haven't been given the attention they deserve." The only one I can think of is that we haven't been attacked again by terrorists since 9/11, but as a Nevada man so eloquently put it, at a cost of a "legal and spiritual 9/11 every day since."
Turns out Bush has been plenty busy trying to get the past in order while letting the future take care of itself. Every president relies on "midnight regulations" – de facto laws issued by the executive branch – to lock in their legacies.
Dec. 11 the Bush administration issues revised endangered species regulations to reduce the input of federal scientists and to block the law from being used to fight global warming.
The changes, which go into effect in about 30 days, took four months to finish.
The Associated Press reported that they will eliminate some mandatory, independent reviews that government scientists have performed for 35 years on dams, power plants and timber sales.
Rolling Stone adds others: allowing loaded firearms in national parks, permitting uranium mining near the Grand Canyon; blocking injured consumers from suing negligent manufacturers in state courts; opening millions of acres of wild lands for mining; and putting local cops to work spying for the federal government.
How deliciously ironic, eh?
Using regulations to cement their deregulatory mindset of putting corporate interests before public interests.
Meanwhile, U.S. greenhouse gases hit 24 percent above Kyoto targets last year. Venice is really flooded. KBR is accused of serving U.S. troops ice shipped in mortuary trucks and tainted with "body fluids and putrified remains." And a study finds that Katrina children forced to live in FEMA trailers are the sickest kids in the country.
Laid-off labor fights back: Chicago's Republic Windows and Doors took 240 pink-slips sitting down – with an eye-opening six-day sit-in which ended with their demands met. "We haven't seen this since the '30s," said the president of Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. They just wanted severance and accrued vacation pay after getting three days notice before the plant closed – shades of National Copper Products! Bank of America, after reaping $25 billion in the Wall Street bailout, came under fire for cutting off funds after the plant's credit line was exhausted. With each worker getting about $7,000 in accrued vacation pay, eight weeks salary and two months paid health care in the $1.75 million deal to end their inspiring protest, they chanted "Yes we can!"
Mind-blowing government bailouts of the housing and credit crises total $8.5 trillion – more than the cost of all U.S. wars, the Louisiana Purchase, the New Deal, the Marshall Plan and the NASA space program combined, according to Casey Research. Previous U.S. programs expressed in 2008 dollars include: Vietnam, $686 billion; the New Deal, $500 billion; the Marshall Plan, $125 billion; World War II, $4.1 billion; and the Louisiana Purchase, $284 million.
Not-so-swift justice: Thirteen years after being acquitted of brutally murdering his wife and Ron Goldman, former football star O.J. Simpson, 61, received up to 33 years in prison for a 2007 armed robbery in a Las Vegas hotel. He will not be eligible for parole until he's 70.
Deal killer: Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky represent states where foreign automakers have significant operations. Such senators well remember the $10 million the UAW spent in the past decade to elect Democrats, so they're calling for deeper union concessions as a condition of any kind of support in saving the Detroit auto industry.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: "The payroll tax, or FICA, collects about 15 percent of your wages or salary – half from you and half from your employer. It is expected to bring in close to a trillion dollars in 2009 … For most Americans holding jobs, FICA now takes a bigger chunk of their income than the income tax itself. And yet it rarely enjoys the tender concern of tax-cutting Republicans, who prefer to concentrate on tax breaks for capital gains. Cutting the FICA tax in half, for workers and for employers, would make it more affordable for employers to hire – or avoid layoffs – while giving everyone who makes less than $100,000 a 7.5-percent raise."
– Michael Kinsley in Time