Illinois’ moniker is “The Land of Lincoln,” but the president who reunited our country after he was victorious during the Civil War would be appalled and disgusted by the Democrats who have run his home state for decades.
A cesspool of corruption and a den of systemic political abuse is the only way to describe a state who’s largest city, Chicago, has been a hub of Democrat scandal and criminal enterprise for a century.
And in 2020, not much has changed, as Breitbart News reported last week:
U.S. Attorney John Lausch, Jr. announced Friday that the federal government had discovered that electric utility ComEd had been paying bribes and providing favors to Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, the state’s Democratic kingpin.
Though Madigan was only identified as “Public Official A” in the announcement, his identity was unmistakable in what federal officials called an “old fashioned patronage system”…
ABC-7 separately noted — and this is the biggest problem with our politics today — that Madigan has been a state rep since 1971.
Anyone in office that long is no longer doing it ‘to serve the public,’ but rather to continue reaping the ‘rewards’ of granting ‘political access’ to the highest bidders. (Related: Several states set to collapse under crushing weight of bankrupt pensions: Will Illinois become the first?)
Interestingly, the station reported that Madigan has not yet been charged, but that the U.S. attorney is filing notes that he “is clearly implicated in the scheme” so hopefully charges are coming.
Meanwhile, ComEd has agreed to pay $200 million to settle what was a seven-year (!!) federal probe of suspected corruption — bribery, political graft, lobbying, and “sweetheart contract deals for the near-monopoly power utility,” the station reported.
The deal that ComEd made with the Feds is called “deferred prosecution.” That means the company’s legal liability vanishes when terms of the agreement are fulfilled. In this case, conditions will be met after ComEd pays its $200 million ‘fine’ and remains under federal supervision and monitoring for three years.
The agreement also notes that ComEd has admitted that it tried to influence and reward “Public Official A,” or the Illinois House speaker, and that such influence peddling “began in or around 2011 and continued through 2019.”
Federal prosecutors claim that the person identified as Madigan sought favored contracts from ComEd as well as money for himself and associates “such as precinct captains” who served as Democratic political operatives in his district. (See how Dems rail against our capitalist system but have no problem exploiting it to enrich themselves and their cronies?)
Naturally, Madigan is trying to slink back under a rock now that he’s been exposed as just another Dem political grifter in crime-plagued Illinois.
“The Speaker has never helped someone find a job with the expectation that the person would not be asked to perform work by their employer, nor did he ever expect to provide anything to a prospective employer if it should choose to hire a person he recommended,” his office said in a statement to ABC-7.
“He has never made a legislative decision with improper motives and has engaged in no wrongdoing here. Any claim to the contrary is unfounded. This morning the Speaker accepted subpoenas related to his various offices for documents, asking for, among other things, documents related to possible job recommendations,” the statement continued.
“He will cooperate and respond to those requests for documents, which he believes will clearly demonstrate that he has done nothing criminal or improper.”
Right. And Al Capone was just a ‘public servant’ responding to ‘the needs of the people’ when he terrorized the city last century.
Not much has changed, has it? Only now, the corruption artists don’t use Tommy guns.
For the record, ComEd has essentially outed Madigan.
According to federal court filings, the company “corruptly gave, offered, and agreed to give things of value, namely, jobs, vendor subcontracts, and monetary payments associated with those jobs and subcontracts" for Madigan’s benefit and with "intent to influence" him and his cronies.
That sound you hear is Honest Abe rolling over in his grave.
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