Obama's "Nemesis"

Oct 3rd, 2011

Jason Zengerle profiles House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) for New York Magazine. It's an ugly portrait of a very unprincipled man.

"Cantor’s role as Obama’s nemesis, as the National Review recently dubbed him, is remarkable for several reasons—none more so than the fact that, although he’s now the darling of the tea party, he initially rose to power in Washington by standing for almost everything the tea party is against..."

"Cantor’s primary job as a member of the whip operation was to cajole his fellow Republican congressmen into voting for many of the bills the tea-partiers now decry as the height of fiscal irresponsibility —including, most infamously, the 2003 Medicare prescription-drug legislation, for which he worked hand in hand with pharmaceutical-industry lobbyists and Karl Rove."

The article traces Cantor's self-transformation from establishment stooge to, well, stealth establishment stooge. It is amazing that someone so committed to preserving corporatist exploitation and defending outright waste in non-social spending has managed to dupe the GOP rank and file into believing that he is fighting for fiscal sensibility.

An interesting aside in the article actually shines a very bright light on just how Cantor has accomplished this. What's more, it also illustrates how he has marginalized Speaker Boehner while, at the same time, securing his general control over the radical, Tea Party driven newcomers who stormed into Congress last year.

"I can text Cantor and get a response back in minutes," says one freshman, explaining his allegiance. "I don’t know if Speaker Boehner even has a cell phone."

These freshman are his to control. They go home and tell their constituents his version of events. Their own narratives have been subsumed.

This is Eric Cantor's grand strategy... for Eric Cantor.

He has created and now wields a barely visible intra-party political machine. His continuing consolidation of power is impressive. His ability to call upon it to obstruct and sabotage both sides of the aisle raises the very real possibility that, as the title of Zengerle's implies, we are actually living in "Cantor's America."

On Political Machines

April 5th, 2011

The Boss

We received some amazing feedback from a former Chicagoan regarding our missive which compared Gov. Scott Walker's corruption to some of the old time Chicago political hooligans.

This reader shared a perspective on the late 1960's Richard J. Daley Machine you don't hear too often these days. Heads up, life within it sounds pretty damn good.

"Ah good old Chicago. I remember when my husband and I moved into our first apartment in the city, and the local ward heeler turned up -- a dear little man named Harry Jacobsen as I recall -- just to let us know that if we needed a job or any help with city services or anything at all, he was there for us.

There was no bribery -- no quid pro quo -- no overt or implicit corruption: just the kind of "constituent service" designed to keep the voters loyal. What Walker and the Kochs are doing is shamelessly, openly corrupt, and their habit of deflecting it with their usual "we didn't do it, what about those wicked liberals" crap doesn't change the facts.

It's a simple little illustration of the Chicago of the late 1960s. All that's gone, now, of course, but for a few generations it's how most of our cities thrived. The book and movie The Last Hurrah touch on this a little bit, the Boston version -- Boss Curley ran the same kind of operation as Mayor Daley.

The corruption was never in the neighborhoods (though the same cannot be said for things like bank deals and construction projects) -- instead, the GOTV model was to make sure nobody went hungry or jobless, that streets were clean and safe, and that widows and orphans were tended to." EMPHASES OURS

Yeah, I Said Bagman

April 4th, 2011

An observation on the unfolding Wisconsin side show

by F. Grey Parker

Update 7:15pm CST 4/5/2011 The situation has changed, but it ain't over.

"Hinky Dink" & "Bathhouse"

The history of Chicago's political underbelly is something of a hobby of mine. Having grown up in it's shadows and in a house of a decidedly political timber, it just fascinated me. I can tell you amazing stories about the bad old days. It was once truly a city without peer in a nation without a whole lot of "sunlight." For a time, it even made "Boss" Tweed's Tammany Hall in New York look good. I hadn't thought about it much recently until a short time ago.

Yesterday, I posted about Gov. Scott Walker's (R-WI) doling out state money and an important position to the seemingly unqualified, legally challenged and not college degreed son of a major political backer. It's a stunning caper. I jived to a few pals that Walker's shenanigans would've made the average 1950s, cigar-chompin', Chicago-Machine hack blush. After some further thought, I have concluded that this was correct. No one in the first Daley Administration would ever have done anything this blatantly not on the level. 

In the midst of a dust-up Walker has intentionally crafted to steamroll over his own state's nearly century long history of open government while giving the high hat to organized labor, he has put an apparent connected bum on the taxpayer's nickel to the tune of just over 80 thousand samolians. To find a guy this craven in Chicago's past, I can only come up with the infamous prohibition era bosses of the 1st Ward, Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna and "Bathhouse" John Coughlin. 

At the height of the "Hinky Dink" and "Bathhouse" stranglehold on power in Chicago, a frustrated Mayor Carter Harrison questioned "Hinky Dink" about his quite eccentric and bent partner. The Mayor wanted to know if "Bathhouse" was using narcotics or might actually be certifiable. Kenna looked at Harrison. He suggested that it was not really explicable. "To tell you the God’s truth, Mayor, they ain’t found a name for it yet," he said.

When a 21st Century Midwestern Governor is reminiscent of either of these goofs, he can take his good government malarkey and scram. I begin to wonder if Walker might not be ossified. Maybe he's just a piker. This is only beginning to heat up, kids. I am pretty sure that it ain't goin' away.

Wisconsin Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) is awfully temperate in his response, if you ask me:

“Gov. Walker has repeatedly stated that all public employees must sacrifice, but it appears his political appointees are exempt from any sacrifice. Media accounts in the past few weeks have focused on two appointees with close Republican connections getting questionable appointments with excessive raises.


Gov. Walker’s budget adjustment bill that is tied up in court gave him 37 additional political appointees and recent revelations make that highly inadvisable. 

A governor cannot ask his employees to sacrifice while rewarding his political cronies and relatives of big donors. I call on the Legislature to halt any expansion of political appointments, no-bid contracts or gubernatorial power over rule-making in the future. This includes special session bill AB 8, which could come back to the Assembly as early as tomorrow.

If there is any shred of independence among legislative Republicans they will not allow the hiring of additional political cronies after the revelations of the past weeks. This is simply not how we do business in Wisconsin.”

Personally, I would've at least called Walker a spifflicated palooka. The guy keeps spoonin' the applesauce. He's tryin' to take the whole state and maybe even the country for a ride. He thinks we're all pushovers. 

He is wrong.