The more you put Chicago politics in the national spotlight the worse it looks. Pretty soon nobody is going to want Chicago-style pizza; they'll assume it's poorly constructed from inferior materials by shady chefs who got the contract from Rod Blagojevich. Who wants to eat tainted pizza?
The controversies surfacing around Roland Burris should have been predictable, and predicted by Democrats. But Senate Democrats were far too keen on getting that extra vote, and far too wary of being accused of racism, to do anything about it. Now Burris is wrapped up with investigations and cover-ups galore, and more bad news pops up daily.
The O'Hare Modernization Program, or OMP, is a behemoth of a project that Mayor Daley of Chicago and ex-Governor Rod "Let's make a ****in' deal" Blagojevich have been pushing on the city and state for years. In the past week, the project has become a target of the wide-ranging investigation into Blago's many and sordid business affairs. The OMP is one of the projects that Mayor Daley was shopping to Senators for inclusion in the stimulus (and indeed there is at least discretionary funding in the billions for airport expansions).
A few years back, Roland Burris ran for governor against Blago, then a state congressman. Part of Burris' campaign platform was opposition to Daley's O'Hare project. Burris claimed that he "could not support a plan that displaces O'Hare neighbors." At the time it was considered a strength of his platform. I spoke with Bensenville, Illinois city manager Jim Johnson today regarding Burris. Bensenville is one of the ghost towns created by the project. Back in 2001, Burris came to Bensenville, toured the neighborhoods and assured everyone, including the Suburban O'Hare Commission in a private meeting, that he was firmly opposed to the program. He wanted to protect their homes.
Here we are over eight years later, and now over 600 families have been displaced. But Burris isn't running for governor anymore. This year, Burris supports the OMP, going so far as to tell the Chicago Tribune that, as senator, he would fight for federal funding.
The probe into the OMP is focusing on kickbacks and back-door deals with regard to, big surprise, the construction companies involved. They would of course stand to make millions, in some cases hundreds of millions, if federal funding were delivered for the project. Staring to smell bad? Read on ...
Daley and Blagojevich wanted a federal windfall for their pet project, possibly so that the construction companies they are in bed with can kick them back some big bucks. Blago is going to be appointing the replacement for Barack Obama, "a ****ing valuable thing," and gets busted trying to sell it. Obama and Reid try to stop Blago from appointing a replacement on the grounds that he was trying sell the seat; in other words, because who is to know if the appointment was a buyer? They fail to stop it because, essentially, they were afraid of being called racists (at the first press conference with Reid, Durbin, and Burris, they spent the first ten minutes embarrassingly groveling about how Reid and Durbin really have so very many friends who are black, and how they knew Burris respected their black-friend-having-ness). So Burris is in, and "suddenly" finds religion on the OMP. Right when he's headed into a position to vote for it and push for it. Gee, that's not a huge coincidence or anything, right?
Jim Johnson says he isn't surprised by any of it. This kind of thing happens all too routinely in Illinois. He calls it "candy store corruption" and that sounds about right to me.
Assuming the investigation into the OMP uncovers, as expected, kick-backs and corruption, it will be an exceedingly logical step to suspect that part of the deal Burris made to get his seat was to agree to push for funding for Daley's runways to nowhere. Sure, it's a connect-the-dots game, but it seems like these days, if you connect the dots in Chicago politics, you always end up with a picture of Blagojevich. Or just plain corruption.