Governor Blagojevich is caught. What happens next?

News of the arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is focusing on his own crimes, which appear to be brazen and deplorable.  I don't think anybody is defending him against what appears to be smoking gun evidence.  

But this isn't an isolated example.  As Dave Schuler says at Outside the Beltway, "within my lifetime three Illinois governors have been convicted of corruption and served time in prison after serving their terms as governor. It’s not just a few bad apples here, not just “political crooks”. The system itself is corrupt."  What Blagojevich did and what will happen to him is already pretty clear, and there's probably not a lot of questions left on that front. 

However, there are two important questions that need to be answered as we proceed:

(1) Who else will be caught in this scandal?  While there are relatively few allegations that his pay-to-play was reciprocated, there are two reasonable possibilities to consider:

  • Brazen solicitation of bribes does not arise ex nihilo.   Initial or reciprocal inquiries and signals must have been sent to give Blagojevich the impression that he could be so bold, so presumptuous, with his bribery.
    • As the Mother Jones blog notes: "Sounds like some other folks are in trouble as well. Starting with "Senate Candidate 5."  Marc Ambinder says Senate Candidate 5 appears to be Jesse Jackson, Jr.
    • Firedoglake says "the whole Valerie Jarrett incident, where Obama endorsed her for his Senate seat one day and then appointed her as a senior White House aide  almost immediately, was awfully suspicious."   The Politico's Ben Smith says this "suggests Obama's circle aware of the investigation."  However, Marc Ambinder has read the documents and says "there's no evidence whatsoever that anyone associated with the Obama presidential transition did anything improper."
  • Any other potential players in this scandal are almost certain to have been much more discreet than Gov. Blagojevich.  Those signals would have occurred through backchannels and surrogates.  Do the recordings and other evidence indicate that any of the people - candidates, Unions, or influencers - were sending signals to the Governor that they were willing to play ball?

(2) Where was the media?  I assure you, the corruption of Illinois politicians is not a shocking new development.   So, why did it take a US Attorney to investigate and report upon the corruption that everybody has known about for a long time?  Why has the media not exposed this?

The media's inability to expose and bring down such pervasive, long-term corruption suggests they are either unwilling to susbtantively challenge the government, or incapable of doing so effectively.   Either is a damning indictment of the fourth estate.

UPDATE: To clarify, I'm not asking why the media didn't wiretap this guy or cover this story.   I'm asking why the media hasn't done more to expose the generations of corruption in Illinois (or Louisiana).  They have been spectators, watching the story instead of uncovering it.

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News Channels say Rahm and Obama helped

bring Blag down.

What happens now?

Expedited impeachment for Blag. They've had the papers ready since last year (so speaks someone on kos who works for the IL legislature). Apparently a special session is already being called.

Everyone in Illinois hated Blag. I'm not in a position to speculate on how clean everyone is (though I trust the Chicago Tribune when they say Obama was clean), but Daley and Madigan will be uncorking champagne at this development.

Re: (2) Where was the media?...not a...new development

Didn't do your homework, John.  It's clear from the indictment that Blag's been under investigation for over a year, and these allegations are only recent, because the election itself was recent.  But the rest of this was already under way and the media was covering it.  The wiretaps were in place for other items under investigation and happened to catch this lovely new twist.

No kidding

The media has always "covered" these things.  The question isn't why they aren't covering it, but why they aren't driving it?  They should have been responsible for exposing this stuff for many, many years - generations - but instead they have been spectators. 

umm... maybe because they don't have wire taps?

the media works best when there are whistleblowers, or incompetent bureaucrats (like the ones that let people just walk in to see the holding tanks in Denver).

Also, there's the whole media consolidation angle. News people have gotten lazy without competition, and with direction from above to be lazy. Why else wasn't there at least one report on the housing bubble in 2006 or so?

But...

Illinois politicians - especially in Chicago - have been exceptionally corrupt for a very, very long time.  This is not a new phenomenon.  This is not something we could only learn about through a lucky break.   As in Louisiana, everybody knows the place is rotten.   So, why has that state of affairs continued for, literally, generations?

everybody knows the same thing about Alaska and WV

yet you guys decided to nominate someone from there for vice president.

But see, there's a real honest difference between some of these states and others. In some of these states, you can't be a politician without being corrupt. Luckily for Obama, that wasn't the case in Chi-town.

Corruption continues because people are too lazy to do something about it. Transparency is a good cure for corruption, as are good whistleblower protections. But you also need an alternative, and in many of these states, there's no other power base other than industry.

Your point is still fatally flawed, Jon

Here's what you said:

"Why has the media not exposed this?...The media's inability to expose and bring down such pervasive, long-term corruption suggests they are either unwilling to susbtantively challenge the government, or incapable of doing so effectively.   Either is a damning indictment of the fourth estate."

The real question is, why did it take so long for federal prosecutors to do anything about it, because it's been known for a LONG time because the media's been reporting it?  In fact, they've exaustively reported it for decades, as made notes in a TAP article today:

"In addition, legions of Chicago aldermen, state reps, judges, sanitation workers, and cops -- hey, everyone's doing it -- have gone to jail for various shakedown schemes. In the late 1970s, Chicago's other major daily, the Chicago Sun-Times, set up a bar called the Mirage just to see how many city workers would try to shake them down. It resulted in a 25-part investigative series. They ran a picture of a fire department inspector taking cash to look the other way at fire code violations. 60 Minutes ran a feature on the operation. You would figure all the publicity might scare folks straight. But, no, the corruption beat goes on."

I recommend you read Ben's entire piece:  http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=what_was_blagojevich_thinking  as he's been a reporter actively covering corruption in Chicago politics.

Hell, one of the allegations in the indictment is that Blago was upset enough at the press that he was strongarming Zell to fire editorialists!  Is this because they weren't covering the corruption being exposed in his administration?

If your point is why wasn't the press reporting solely on the Senate seat for sale issue (which you've disavowed, but in order to prevent your from running back to it for cover), as I said in my initial reply, it's a relatively new development.  And as another reply pointed out, they didn't have wire taps, and Fitzgerald did.

Jon, your point and your use of it as a cudgel against the press is entirely inaccurate and misleading.  It's a smear, and another bogus indicator of the ridiculous theory of a "liberal" media.  Give it up.

Response

I'm not asking whether the press covers individuals cases.  I'm quite sure the Chicago/Illinois media has even done some good investigative work.  And yet, Illinois remains among the most corrupt States in the country.

Here's an analogy you might appreciate: the Illinois media appears to be a lot like the Republicans who fervently promise to "cut spending" and even manage to cut a bit of spending here and there, now and then.  And yet, while they nibble around the margins and praise their own work, spending grows by leaps and bounds.

Sure, they've cut some spending here and there.  But they didn't cut spending.  Likewise, the media is hacking at the branches, but they obviously haven't done very much to strike the root.

Also...

It's a smear, and another bogus indicator of the ridiculous theory of a "liberal" media.  Give it up.

I think there is plenty of bias in the media.  Some of it liberal.  I don't believe in the notion of a monolithic, uniform or intentional "liberal media".   I never even remotely alluded to that in this post.  I am a libertarian, and my beef with the media is a lack of general skepticism about politicians and government.

Let's just make the media obsolete.

Make everything fully transparent (okay, so you'll have to password protect the national security stuff. open that to the people with the clearances), and let the dataminers have fun!

PA media has been pretty good about killing the root of the

problem in Harrisburg. I think the whole state got together and voted out all the incumbents.

The capitalist answer

... is that you could always start up your own newspaper in Illinois, right? :D

Oh, and...

... the "update" you tacked onto the post is similarly discredited.  I think you need to add another update that says:

I was wrong.  The media was covering/uncovering corruption in Illinois all along.  My apologies, Jon Henke.

Media

From some reports, the Tribune was asked by the FBI to withhold publication of their investigations. They had been looking into it.

really......

The Trib's management is up to their eyeballs on this one, and not in a good way. I'll post my own blog on this soon.

Basically, the bottom line is Sam Zell was doing the usual "Field of Schemes" http://fieldofschemes.com/   approach to making the IL. taxpayer an unwilling partner in selling Wrigley Field and Blago was shaking him down for more than buying some tables at the  next big DNC gala in Chicago.

Methinks the Trib staff did not want to look too closely into how the boss was trying to pay the light bill and payroll fo the paper.  You think the Tribune Company's Chapter 11 filing yesterday  was completely unrelated to Blago ( and public concessions) getting taken down?

I don't.  

Curiouser and curiouser

It should be interesting to read more of that situation.

NEXT - GET PETER FITZGERALD TO BE SENATOR AGAIN!

Gov Blago have proven that the process is completely spoiled. There is one man fit to fill this role, former Senator Peter Fitzgerald.

We should start a campaign to get him appointed. And if not, at least draft him to be the nominee in the next election in 2010. He's the RIGHT man to revive the concept of principled conservative leadership, as opposed to the bipartisan boonddoggle and corrupt pay-to-play behavior of other politicians in Illinois.

Every Republican in IL who was against him has been discredited - in the end, Peter Fitzgerald was right and they were wrong.

Proof? Read this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111159,00.html

the problem is the IL GOP

They are corrupt RINOS at their worst.  Many of them make Ted Stevens look squeaky clean in comparison.  That is because they are part of the same state political machines based in Chicago with its branch office in Springfield, as the IL DEMs.  They hated Peter Firzgerald and that is why he didn't seek a second term in 2004.  Their attitude has not changed and by the now IL GOP has become a bigger joke than the IL DEMs (who at least can win elections depsite their corruption and incompetence).

Toplinka!

Let me put this in a way that Henke et al will surely understand: the MSM doesn't cover things like this because they have a monopoly. They are, more or less, the only news provider around. There are very, very few bloggers who do actual real reporting and very few independent reporters. The MSM has no real competition.

In fact, a little real reporting done by independents or bloggers could have prevented McCain from being nominated or greatly reduced Obama's popularity and caused him to lose. Instead of getting behind that plan, it was ignored or - in some cases - mocked. But, if enough people had done it one side-effect would have been to give some competition to the MSM. Instead, people thought whining in echo chambers was enough.

So, rather than bemoaning the MSM not doing their job, urge people to give them some competition. You know, actually do something.

As for the Blago case, he's been supporting illegal activity for years, going as far as - like Obama - supporting possible proxies of a foreign government agitating their citizens to take to our streets. That page was started over two years ago; I'm sure the GOP leadership would have used that against him and Obama, if not for the fact that they're as corrupt as they are.

Aren;t there any local AM radio hosts out there?

I mean Hartford is a one newspaper liberal town and conservative issues still can get aired via that forum....are the local radio guys worthless and weak?

mccain was the last man standing

in a circular firing squad. how do you prevent that??

The Blagojevich indictment

The Blagojevich indictment – we all knew it was coming.  Federal prosecutors are expected to file the Blagojevich indictment for multiple counts of political corruption.  The former Illinois governor was ousted late last year, amidst an arrest for several felonies and a long history of shady fundraising.  He won't even be able to get payday loans for a lawyer, because he is technically unemployed.  Hopefully he doesn't need payday loans to maintain that ridiculous hair, but the head it sits atop is dealing with the Blagojevich indictment