Maggie's Farm

Apologies for the length. I thought some might be interested in the local view.

I don't think that other Illinois pols threw Blago to the Feds--other than possibly some recent pressure from Rahm to avert a really ugly post-appointment scandal. Everyone in Chicago has suspected that Blago is a crook for at least a couple of years. You can see that going back to old posts in my blog.

As far as the impetus for the investigation, I believe that goes back to North Shore attorney Stuart Levine who was engineering all sorts of pay-to-play deals and shakedowns involving another fellow and Rezko. Levine, a meth addict, was completely out of control and took to shaking down respectable corporate heads in the most crass, brazen ways. Needless to say, some of the shakees were appalled and went to the feds. That’s when the feds launched a major investigation. An often psychotic Levine folded like a cheap tent and the feds moved up the food chain to G-Rod. The only thing that surprised me was that it took so long. Then again, the George Ryan pre-indictment investigation phase seemed interminable at the time.

The Daley's didn't have it in for Blago and I doubt they had any hand in his downfall. They'll work with anyone and they seem to stay out of each other's business, other than doing state-city related business on the up and up.

What is amazing to me is that Daley has had so many of his own top people and close friends fall, yet he remains untouchable. Now there is a guy who seems like a mob don who knows how to whisper in ways that can't be recorded. Imagine Daley going for a little boat ride down the Chicago River--just an outing with a friend who also happens to be a developer. The two of them stand at the railing and as they pass some old factory space and Daley just idly says, to no one in particular, something like "gee, that would be a great place for a park." Next thing you know, friend buys the condemned property for nothing, then the city takes an interest in the property and buys it from the friend.

The alderpersons have their own franchises and play the same game. The city council almost always does whatever Daley wants. In return, alderpersons have virtual dictatorial control of city resources in their wards and defacto control of zoning. And wouldn't you know it, many of them have spouses and friends in the real estate business. They buy a lot, a building or a factory, get it rezoned when others couldn't, and walk away with a fortune, sometimes without doing a damned thing to the property. Many of the alderpersons are both greedy and stupid and they get so greedy and explicit about their deals, demanding direct personal payoffs, they end up getting caught much in the same manner that Blago got caught. The smarter one's just get rich.

Why do Chicagoans go along with it? Everybody knows somebody or knows somebody that knows somebody and you can get stubborn problems resolved very fast with the right phone call. (The well known Chicago corollary is “We don’t want to see nobody that nobody sent.”)

A personal example of problem resolution Chicago style: years ago when I was first starting in practice, my business partner and I purchased a condo in a building undergoing conversion. We signed a contract with a clear schedule for the build-out, leaving ourselves plenty of room time-wise for launch day. But as the deadline approached, the developer was swamped and the offices were still unusable the day before we needed them. Our efforts to pressure the project manager met with nothing but abuse and indifference to our situation.

I was dating a woman at the time who was in charge of project managers with a different contractor that did city work. She knew everyone with the building department. When I told her what was happening she told me she would fix it and not to worry. I kid you not, 15 minutes after I got off the phone with her, the project manager for the condo conversion called me and sheepishly asked if she could send a construction super up to the unit. Within a half hour, we had maybe 8 men working until everything was completed to our satisfaction and, most important, before the day was out. Girlfriend had called the head of buildings for the city and he had taken care of it immediately.

Many of us here have had those experiences. So, it's a strange world where Chicagoans decry the criminality of it all, but enjoy personalized service when they need it most. That dictatorial control of resources is a helluva device. It’s why many candidates here repeatedly win office with 80-20 and even 90-10 margins.