Saturday, January 31, 2009

Illinois Governors - the Facebook Profile Pics

In case you missed it, for the last week plus, my profile picture was of former governors of Illinois who ran afoul of the law either before or after their tenure. There are four, count them FOUR, within the last half century or so. Four of the last eight. Beautiful. That's a 50% chance. Not good odds.

Rod Blagojevich: 2003-2009
Pay to Play Scandal
(Did we mention that he looks like a Lego-Man? More info on him in ChicagoDads page. And yet some more to come.)


George Homer Ryan: 1999-2003
Licenses for Bribes Scandal (twenty-three charges, including racketeering, extortion, obstructing justice, accepting bribes)
(Fun fact: Wikipedia lists next Republican trying to replace him [and losing to Blagojevich] as "Jim Ryan [his son]". This is wrong. And bad, even by Wikipedia standards. The two are not related; that much was reported by the media numerous times during the election.)


Daniel Walker: 1973-1977
Savings & Loan Fraud in the 1980's
Quote from his autobiography, "I knew this was against regulations. But like most businessmen, I saw a huge difference between regulations and law."


Otto Kerner, Jr.: 1961-1968
Accepting Bribes
(Interesting note from Wikipedia - and this may or may not be apocryphal, Kerner was turned in because the Arlington Park race track manager deducted his bribes from her tax forms because she was under impression that bribes were an ordinary business expense in Illinois. To which I reply, "Well, to an extent.")

2 comments:

  1. What a great state for politics you live in!

    ReplyDelete
  2. seriously.

    i was listening to the local public radio station this morning and they were talking about how it's nearly impossible to run for office in illinois (city, county, state wide, etc.) without having to accept dirty money in your coffers. the guy they were interviewing said that now is the time to strike and reform those laws while illinoisians are embarrassed by goof-balls like blago.

    it's also a reason why my wife is involved in community organizing, b/c the local alderman cares more for the deep-pocketed developers than he does the actual community members he nominally represents. the sad part is, there's nothing new in that at all.

    ReplyDelete

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