Something stinks in the Blagojevich case
Posted: 12/16/2008 9:48:07 AM
By: Comfortably Anonymous
Times Read: 1,780
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Topic: News: Politics

Here is what stinks about this. Blagojevich appears to be the victim of payback, on the behalf of Bank of America. Blagojevich was apparently instrumental in forcing BofA to honor its commitment to the workers who occupied that window factory that closed down in Chicago.

The media is missing this aspect totally. Similar to how they similarly missed the fact that Spitzer was about to go after Wall Street when he got caught with what's her name.

My guess is that there are few politicians immune to various corruptions. Indeed, the amount of money required to get into a position of power demands some sort of corruption! But the FBI etc. have been keeping track of this on behalf of big corporations - and then release the wolves as soon as it becomes "necessary".

Meanwhile, the purveyors of Wall Street, Waterboarding, Guantanamo, the War on Terror, etc. will all go scott free - or at least recieve the gift of Presidential Pardons on January 19th. They all deserve to have shoes thrown at them - or long prison sentences!

The Big Media was mute regarding the Blagojevich-BoA connection, and Blago's advocacy of universal health care for all Illinoisans, which infuriated the business community and state Republicans. The BM also didn't see any problem with the Chicago Tribune's flagrant disregard of basic journalistic ethics by agreeing to not publish a story/stories on the Blago investigation simply because Patrick Fitzgerald requested it -- essentially, since the Trib editorial board was pushing for Blago's impeachment more than a year ago, the Trib was acting as an arm of the Federal prosecutor's office rather than serving the public interest.

Blagovich's corruption or abuse of office, whatever it turns out to be, did not involve national security, so I fail to see any reason for the Trib to cooperate with Fitzgerald except that they wanted to get rid of him since he wouldn't play ball with The Tribune Company.

A prosecutor as experienced as Fitzgerald doesn't editorialize in a press conference on the defendant with such words as "crime spree" and the comments about Lincoln. That is completely unprofessional. He also doesn't allow an FBI agent to render his ill-informed opinion on the advanced state of corruption in Illinois. (In fact, according to USA Today, 18 states rank ahead of Illinois in political corruption convictions -- including Florida, Alabama and Palin's Alaska. **)

** http://mediamatters.org/items/200812120015

By doing this, Fitzgerald has soured any possibility of empaneling a jury without a prejudice against the defendant, and blatantly violated DoJ policy, thereby providing solid grounds for a judge to dismiss the charges on a defense motion. Why would Fitzgerald do something this stupid?

The only reason I can think of is a partisan one -- before he's even taken office, try to taint the popular Obama with the 'relentless corruption' of Chicago and Illinois, even though Obama's from liberal Hyde Park, an area which is a bulwark against the corruption of the various local and state Dem political machines, and he never got along with Blagojevich. (Yes, I know Fitzgerald made a point of saying Obama was not involved, but that didn't stop the Big Media from predictably connecting those invisible dots, with the help of the RNC's daily Talking Points, and repeating the magic words "Obama," "corruption," "Chicago," "Illinois"... this is precisely the way Junior sold the war in Iraq: he kept repeating "Saddam," "Al Qaeda," "terrorism" and "Iraq" in the same sentence until many just conflated the words together and assumed Saddam must have been behind the 9/11 attacks in some way.)

Also, this seems to be an attempt to cast the Dems as being just as corrupt as the Republicans. Some Dems are corrupt, of course, but nowhere near as corrupt as the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Abramoff GOP of the past decade. Blago talked about selling a Senate seat -- BushCo sold off an entire nation and got Americans and Iraqis killed in the process.

And let's remember, the GOP is in trouble with working people right now, thanks to the party's opposition to the auto bailout and preserving union jobs -- this makes a nice distraction for the media from reporting that story.

Remember, Blago was arrested one day after he came out in support of the union workers at Republic Window and Door and cancelled all state business with Bank of America until the strike was settled. That amounted to, potentially, a billion dollars in losses to BoA.

Recall as well that Fitzgerald is currently employed by one of the most politicized DoJ's in history, lead by Michael Mukasey, a man who can find no Republican wrongdoing and, if he is shown any, refuses to prosecute it.

If Fitzgerald had been following the usual routine for a federal corruption case, he would have brought in a Grand Jury, gotten indictments, and then announced to the public the charges, as he did with Scooter Libby.

Instead, he grandstanded for the media in a press conference, inserted his personal opinion into the case, and virtually destroyed any chance at a conviction.

Something really stinks here, and it isn't the alewives in Lake Michigan.

Blagojevich's corruption is miniscule compared to what has happened in the past eight years. The media were silent about stolen elections, Bush's connections to Enron, the manufactured intelligence that led us into disatrous wars, the destruction of our Constitution, crimes against humanity and the people of United States and the theft of the US treasury.

Now the media are circling around Blago like wolves while they faun all over President Gump as he takes a victory lap for destroying a perfectly good country.

This is a pretty good indication of what President Obama can expect from the degenerate corporate press. The GOP's handlers have made certain that the nation is broke and in crisis as they hand off power. Obama will be blamed for their crimes and failures just like they tried to blame Clinton for theirs.

If President Obama does anything to upset the robber barons and plutocrats, they'll cut him off at the knees by any means, fair or foul.

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