Comments

What is it about Illinois? — 53 Comments

1. Another issue to consider regarding such “statistics” is the fact that North Dakota, for instance, undoubtedly has a smaller population than Illinois does.

   Smaller populations will normally have fewer politicians.

   The results can best be described by the following example.

   1 politician out of 10 is crooked, that’s a 10% corruption rate.

   1 politician out of 2 is crooked, that’s a 50% corruption rate.

   Ya gotta understand what kind of numbers are going into the calculations.

   Then of course you have the issue that in less populous states you are likely to have a smaller but more closely associated group of politicians in office, so any corruption is easily spotted and rooted out under such circumstances as you are dealing with a smaller number of people.

   On the other hand, if you have such rampant corruption over the majority of government that it’s seen as an impossible task to even tackle the problem, then I would suggest that’s a much more corrupt environment even if you end up with fewer politicians being sent to jail.

   And then there is the valid point you made wherein it may simply be a case of a state such as North Dakota being more aware of corruption and punishing it, whereas in a place like Illinois it may be a matter of the corruption being seen as *normal* by the natives and therefore doesn’t normally rate even a second look.

   Any assertions regarding how corrupt a particular state is should include a careful weighting of all of these factors.

2. It’s the Al Capone legacy; Chicago is the dirty engine of Illinois.

3. I don’t think Bam-Bam is clean. He took a sizeable pourboire from Rezko in that property deal, and sorta coincidentally failed to go after the slumlord on behalf of his own constituents. His wife Michele has clearly benefited from a huge salary raise that resulted (another coincidence!) in a major government plum for her employer.

   He’s probably slick enough not to engage in direct deals like the Blago. But he did campaign for the guy, and he and his hatchet man Emanuel were thick as thieves with him.

4. I think a bigger question is why did Obama go to Illinois in the first place. It’s a really strange choice when you have no ties there and it certainly wasn’t the lure of a great job, and he grew up in Hawaii and EVERYONE knows you can’t break into politics without the machine. Yes, very strange.

5. Norma: Yes. It’s as if he said to himself: where’s the funkiest compost heap of corruption I can find? I want to grow FAST.

6. Norma, I made exactly that point in an earlier thread. An obscure left-wing law firm in Chicago was a peculiar choice…unless Ayers met him at Columbia, saw him as a comer in left-wing politics, and talked him into coming to Chicago where Ayers had connections, and where an unholy alliance between hard left types and Machine politicians could guarantee a meteoric rise.

   All that one needs to postulate is that Ayers met Obama at Columbia – not a big stretch, considering they both worked in the anti-apartheid movement.

   That connection also may explain why Obama won’t even reveal his major, much less his transcript, at Columbia; that knowledge may make it inescapable that he met Ayers.

   I’m pretty skeptical in general, and certainly not given to conspiracy theories, but with one postulate a lot of peculiar observations make a lot more sense, so that’s my working hypothesis.

7. It has been that way in Illinois – especially Cook County- for a long time. My downstate Illinois grandfather had deep dislike of Chicago politicians.

8. Occam’s Beard — I’m on the same page with you. I think Obama met Ayers during Columbia and it was a pivotal event for Obama.

   That remains speculation of course, but much of Obama’s past is obscured for no clear reason. And it is indisputable that Obama has lied and misled about his relation to Ayers: “just an English professor…who happens to live in my neighborhood.”

   Meanwhile, why are there are so many hatemongers and scumbags in Obama’s past? Where are the gold-plated character references that one would expect to stand up for Obama? Maybe I’ve missed it but I haven’t seen interviews of from any of his peers from the past.

   I’m still wondering, who is this guy?

9. I find it weird that we have heard nothing, as far as I know, from all the students and teachers from Columbia, Harvard, and Univ. Chicago who knew Obama. It’s not like he was Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

   Obama seems to have walked between the raindrops during his entire academic career, leaving no written record, no trail of friendships–aside from his semi-fictional memoir.

   Who is this guy?

10. Huxley, if you ever figure out who he is, please tell me, because I have no idea. Maybe he was in witness protection.

11. Oh, please, not more of this silly Ayers stuff… but setting that aside for the moment…

    >we have heard nothing, as far as I know, from all the
    >students and teachers from Columbia, Harvard, and
    >Univ. Chicago who knew Obama

    This is one of the most bizarre statements I’ve read in a long time. Not only is it patently false, the implication is truly strange: are you implying that Obama didn’t actually attend these schools? What are you implying by this?

    Of course “we” have heard from professors and fellow students of Obama’s. It’s a rather solipsitic statement to go from the fact that you haven’t to the idea that “we” haven’t.

    Google is your friend:

    Christopher Edley, one of his professors at Harvard: http://berkeley.edu/news/in_news/archives/20081106.shtml

    Lawrence Tribe, Charles Ogletree, professors of his, and Christina Bryan and Kenneth Mack, fellow students at Harvard: http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/barack.obama.harvard.2.334825.html

    Zbingnew Brezinski, Obama’s professor at Columbia: http://blueherald.com/2008/10/dr-zbigniew-brzezinski-on-obamas-judgement/

    etc., etc.

12. “Of course, this statistic might only mean that these states have corruption but are better at punishing [Insert] it than Illinois is”

    hiding
    ignoring
    enabling
    worshipping

    [Repeat, printer, until the page is full.]

13. Mitsu — Calling the Ayers stuff “silly” does not make it go away. Bill Ayers really is a nasty piece of work. Obama really did launch his political career from Ayers’ and Dohrn’s home. Obama’s biggest early break as an unknown was chairing the Chicago Annenberg Challenge to disburse (and waste) $100+ million with Bill Ayers as co-chair. The CAC was Ayers’ brainchild.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212856075765367.html

    Google is your friend too.

    Obama, your candidate, has lied and misled the public about his relationship with Ayers throughout the campaign.

    But thanks for the links. I’ll look at them. I did qualify my claims with “as far as I know.”

14. First of all, that article is written by Stanley Kurtz, one of the most conservative commentators out there … he’s not exactly an unbiased observer.

    What I believe occurred is Ayers and Obama served on the board of an educational foundation, Obama thought that Ayers’ radical past was behind him, and he was interested in endeavors that helped education. Ayers was and is a mainstream member of Chicago society — he even won a Citizen of the Year award! There’s little or no reason to believe Obama had any interest in Ayers’ radical politics.

    As I’ve often said, I have very left-wing friends (none who were members of the Weather Underground, but still), and these are people I am very fond of, have had lots of conversations with, and thoroughly disagree with on many issues. I spend time posting on this blog, for some reason, yet that doesn’t make me a conservative. Guilt by association is certainly all this is, and it’s pretty shallow at that.

    I realize you conservatives tend towards paranoia … it’s even been demonstrated scientifically that conservatives are more fearful than the rest of us! But, come on, give me a break. This Ayers thing is weak.

15. The Columbia meet up is much more likely.

    They lived less than 1/4 mile apart.

    They went to school only 4 blocks apart and the two schools were associated.

    Their politics and ideals matched so it is more likely they met than not.

    They both hung out around the Cooper Union.

    To many links.

16. “At the moment, I come down on the side of thinking he made his associations and accommodations with various sleazebags too numerous to mention, but kept his own record clean of outright corruption.”

    This is the O’s genius. He never actually commits, he votes present, he plays both sides against the middle and he’ll never be indicted for anything that has gone before.

    But he’s in a new game. Now he has to make decisions and everybody will be watching. I think he’ll fold. I think he’s weak and won’t be able to take the pressure.

17. So…why won’t Obama disclose his major?

    Why? What conceivable non-incriminating reason is there to keep your major a secret? Anyone?

18. Mitsu, the Brzezinski clip is vacuous, and besides that doesn’t say a word about Obama at Columbia. How do we know he was Obama’s professor? Which course was that?

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1

    This article contains nothing about Brzezinski as Obama’s professor, but it does contain statements from a former professor, Michael L. Baron, on Obama’s strong performance. Mr. Baron is reported to be president of an electronics company in Florida and no longer an academic. A quick Google of Mr. Baron’s name returns…basically nothing. No publications. No company websites. Very strange.

    Don’t jump to accusations, Mitsu. huxley’s point was not that Obama lied about attending Columbia and Harvard, but that he passed through leaving very few marks. I believe Obama did go to Columbia, and he did read Franz Fanon.

19. @Mitsu 8.22 pm

    Whether Stanley Kurtz is conservative or not has nothing to do with the credibility of his argument, which has to stand on its own logic and evidence. Didn’t Harvard teach you that argumentum ad hominem is a logical fallacy?

20. Mitsu:

    The problem with Ayers is that he’s just as radical as he was 40 years ago. He’s taken his radicalism and infested the educational system with it. That is arguably worse than planting a couple of bombs in his youth.

    The Marxist infiltration of our educational system, at all levels, is now complete. It has reached critical mass and is now churning out millions of amoral, historically illiterate useful idiots. That is how Obama won the election.

21. “I realize you conservatives tend towards paranoia”. . . this is funny after the 8 years we’ve had of the Bush paranoia. Pot to kettle.

22. 35% of Democrats believe Bush knew about 9/11 attacks in advance

    I believe we were discussing paranoia…

23. Are my comments being deleted here?

24. The statement was we’ve never heard anything from any of Obama’s professors, fellow students, etc., but that statement is obviously wrong. Aside from easily Google-able articles I’ve seen on TV interviews with a former professor talking about Obama, an article with one of his professors at Columbia talking about his political views, articles interviewing some of his classmates at Harvard, etc. It’s not as though he went through those schools and left no trace whatsoever, and that’s all I was attempting to establish with those links.

    Regarding Ayers, I’ve stated what I think is by far the most plausible theory of his “association” with Ayers, and I see no reason whatsoever to think there’s anything more to it than that.

25. >major a secret

    At Columbia? It was political science/liberal arts. Why do you think this is a secret?

26. Mitsu, having established that the first part of huxley’s statement was hyperbole, do you think that there is any merit in the statement that Obama’s early formation and associations are poorly documented and somewhat mysterious to many people who wonder what he really thought about the major issues and controversies in his metier? That is the substance of the claim.

    This link says “International Relations” was the major.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/magazine/04obama-t.html?pagewanted=1

    Other links say Poli Sci with a Concentration in International Relations. I haven’t seen any that say “Liberal Arts.”

    With so much unnecessary uncertainty about the facts and so much sensitivity about questions, is it any wonder that people would be suspicious? I haven’t seen any source that lays out the facts and sources for inspection; and some of the sources seem to be largely puff pieces that present Obama’s story according to his desires, with very little follow up. It won’t do.

27. Look, Occam, I understand the desire to investigate people, but this last thing about his major is simply bizarre. All of those descriptions of his major are referring to the same thing — Political Science, International Relations, Political Science with a Concentration in International Relations. “Liberal Arts” just refers to the fact that he went to a liberal arts college, and so in addition to his courses in his major, he took his other courses from the general liberal arts curriculum at Columbia.

28. Mitsu, I was under the impression that Obama had refused to divulge it. If that’s not true, I withdraw the point.

29. Kerry and Bush released their grades- which is how we found out that Dumb Dubya had a higher average than Intellectual Kerryman. Why did not Obama do so? We know the SATs of Dubya and Al Gore, but not for Obama and Kerry.

    I for one find it difficult to find a good explanation why Obama ended up in Chicago, of all places. I also find it interesting that Obama’s wife and Ayer’s wife worked at the same law firm in Chicago in the late 1980s. Strange coincidence? I find it plausible that the dots are connected with Obama and Ayers knowing each other in NYC. Also note that Obama has fudged his connections w Ayers. Why would he not be forthcoming?

    Perhaps those who did not experience the 60s have a sanguine view of the Weathermen. My experience with the extreme left, SDS et al, but probably not Weatherpeople, was that they were arrogant self-righteous sectarian so and sos. Excuse me, arrogant self-righteous sectarian SOBs.

    Zombie time scanned a Weatherman screed which features “Billy Ayers” as one of the four co authors. They are for “dictatorship of the proletariat,” among other things. I grew up w too many refugees from Communism to tolerate such nonsense.

    I find an unrepentant Ayers to be repellant. If he was unrepentant in 2001, he was certainly so when Obama knew him in Chicago .

    http://www.zombietime.com/prairie_fire/

30. At the end of Zombie’s article is the following quote:

    Undercover agent Larry Grathwohl, who had infiltrated and joined the Weather Underground, described their post-revolution governing plans for the United States in this video taken from the 1982 documentary “No Place to Hide.” The Weather Underground openly discussed exterminating 25 million Americans who refused to be “re-educated” into communism.

    Here’s a transcript of his interview:

    I bought up the subject of what’s going to happen after we take over the government. We, we become responsible, then, for administrating, you know, 250 million people.

    And there was no answers. No one had given any thought to economics; how are you going to clothe and feed these people.

    The only thing that I could get, was that they expected that the Cubans and the North Vietnamese and Chinese and the Russians would all want to occupy different portions of the United States.

    They also believed that their immediate responsibility would be to protect against what they called the counter-revolution. And they felt that this counter-revolution could best be guarded against by creating and establishing re-education centers in the southwest, where we would take all the people who needed to be re-educated into the new way of thinking and teach them… how things were going to be.

    I asked, well, what’s going to happen to those people that we can’t re-educate; that are die-hard capitalists. And the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated that they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these re-education centers. And when I say eliminate, I mean kill. 25 million people.

    I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees from Columbia and other well known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.

    And they were dead serious.”

    — Larry Grathwohl, former member of the Weather Underground

31. I have to admit that I’m a little surprised at the eagerness of some people to demonstrate the extent to which their political assessments are driven by a preference for fruitless suspicion over established fact.

    Still, the over-ripeness and unwitting nod to clairvoyance are less of a shock than the apparent belief that the intellectual, media and political representatives of the American right are so ludicrously inept and/or incompetent they cannot establish what the president of the United States studied at university and/or whether he’s a standard liberal or a crypto-Stalinist Muslim.

    It is to be expected that bloggers lack the time and access to actually conduct their own investigations of these matters. But what about, say, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal? Where are their facts establishing that Obama has meaningful or operative links to Ayers? Nothing? The Heritage Foundation? Zip? The Hoover Institute, multimillionaire “truth-teller’’ Rush Limbaugh, the entire commentariat of Fox News Channel? The Republican Party? Even the unlimited journalistic resources of Rupert Murdoch have been able to establish any functional link between Obama and Ayers. Or between Blag’s pay-to-play scheme and Obama?

    All that time, intellect and money for digging up facts, yet some devoted conservative fans in blogland would rather spin quarter-baked suspicions about what remains unknown than move on to assessing Obama’s actual performance as president of the United States. Not a good sign.

32. I meant to write:
    “Even the unlimited journalistic resources of Rupert Murdoch have failed to establish any functional link between Obama and Ayers.”

33. Bogey Man, your argument is stronger if you describe the STRONGEST link found between Ayers and Obama and cite the sources. Show that this is not a strong link. Then if anyone knows anything stronger and can show sources, you start the process all over again, but at least we will be dealing with facts. As it is, we are wasting our time with straw men.

    I am convinced that the link to Ayers was NOT everything in terms of understanding Obama’s career and worldview. I am also convinced that it does NOT have zero meaning. Somewhere between 0 and 100, but where? To answer that would require more facts about his values, friendships, political connections, and thoughts than he has provided so far. Context is all.

    I am still left with the impression that Obama and his camp have been unnecessarily opaque and less forthcoming on the same topics than Bush, Gore, and Kerry, for example. That is a choice. It also seems to me that they react to questions by attacking or changing the topic. That might have some meaning. People seem awfully sensitive about a non-story.

    Now if the media were fabricating documents to support a partisan hatchet job, we would be rightfully annoyed.

34. @ Bogeyman:
    But what about, say, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal? Where are their facts establishing that Obama has meaningful or operative links to Ayers? Nothing?
    Given that the WSJ published Kurtz on the Obama-Ayers relationship with the Annenberg Challenge, (cited by commenter Huxley, Dec 11@ 8:01 p,m.), this is an outright misrepresentation. But what else should we expect from Bogey Man: this is not the first time he has misrepresented the facts. Do we see a pattern?

    All that time, intellect and money for digging up facts, yet some devoted conservative fans in blogland would rather spin quarter-baked suspicions about what remains unknown than move on to assessing Obama’s actual performance as president of the United States. Not a good sign.
    Granted, BogeyMan was not talking specifically about Obama’s experience as chair of the Annenberg Challenge , but since this was dug up by right-wing bloggers , and it gives evidence on Obama’s performance as an executive, I will comment. As far as I can tell, chairing the Annenberg Challenge was Obama’s only executive experience before he assumes the office of President.
    From an evaluation of the Annenberg Challenge, we find out the following.

    There were no statistically significant differences between Annenberg and non-Annenberg schools in terms of student achievement gain.

    Chairing a project that spends $100 million with nothing to show for it is NOT a good indication of said chairperson being a good executive.

35. You have to know what you’re getting into with Chicago politics.
    Or you end up with “fuc*in pencil through your heart”.

36. “Mitsu, I was under the impression that Obama had refused to divulge it. If that’s not true, I withdraw the point.”

    Obama has divulged many things but refuses to allow the documents to prove it released. IMO none of it really makes much sense either – why not release his transcripts, why not give a birth certificate, why hide all of it? So, in a sense, you are both correct – it just depends on how much you believe him on just his own word.

    Dunno, I suspect he just simply figures the less everyone truly knows of him the more people can fill the blanks in the way they want. Mitsu is a great example – he thinks his point of view is absolutely obvious – but then it is diametrically opposed to other leftists who would normally be right on his side.

    It leaves us pretty much unable to really do anything more than speculate and allows people like Mitsu to (somewhat correctly) blast us for going out there with no evidence.

    I mostly note that when Bush tries to be secretive they rant and rave and want proof, Obama does it WAY more than Bush ever thought of doing it everything is all right. Sadly this type of secrecy will be one of Bushes bigger legacies in that he was really the first president to realize that the media is *not* his friend so ignore them and keep everything as closed as you can. Obama is taking it to the next logical step, can’t say I exactly blame him either.

37. I just want to make this clear: I’m not interested in “blasting” you or anyone else. I’m just engaging in discussion; arguing my point of view. I’m always open to evidence. Right now, I see little reason to think there’s anything any more nefarious about the fact that Obama and Ayers served together on a board than there is that I have leftist friends (or, for that matter, conservative friends). I know and am friendly with people I disagree with, some even very strongly.

    So far, it doesn’t appear to me there’s any substantial evidence whatsoever that, corrupt as Illinois is, Obama himself got involved in that activity directly. If such evidence surfaced, of course I’d take it very seriously, just as I take seriously the fact that Blagojevich is a horrible, venal person who deserves to be thrown from office and almost certainly deserves to be put in prison for a long time — even though he’s a Democrat. So what if he’s a Democrat?

    So far, it appears to me Obama is doing a decent job as President-elect, and I’m guessing that will continue on into his presidency, all of the “mystery” surrounding his past notwithstanding.

38. You can’t have it both ways, Gringo.

    If the WSJ and “Kurtz” have exposed Obama’s past, why all the fruitless suspicion and multi-layered assumptions about what hasn’t been divulged?

    Are you suggesting that WSJ has revealed the facts, but they’re just not good enough for you, or, are you suggesting that the key facts remain unknown and/or that unknowns are the basis of your views?

    It seems to me, as a free-markets liberal with libertarian leanings, that Obama and the Democrats have some vulnerabilities to attack from the right.

    This is why I’m so amused to see so many conservatives are forgoing those opportunities in favor of keeping their straw men on life support long after the election has demonstrated their ineffectiveness.

    Is it that conservatives lack the courage of their convictions? If not, why are so many unwilling to attack Obama as a pragmatic liberal, which the established facts show he is, rather than persisting in labeling him a crypto-Stalinist secret Muslim terrorist sympathizer?

    I hear many here saying liberal ideas are junk and so on. Then why not simply attack Obama on that basis?

39. Mitsu gives the Scottish verdict–Not Proven–and fair enough. There is not enough evidence in the public record to prove ANYTHING one way or the other. Maybe it will all come out in time, but I doubt it.

    Conservatives would be well served to avoid falling into Obama Derangement Syndrome and spreading wild conspiracy theories. They won’t get a pass, just as they won’t get a pass if they have ever had unsavory associations.

    We will soon get to see what Obama does when he exercises the supreme executive power. I hope that all the concerns will prove to be completely unfounded.

40. Beverly,
    It’s obvious you’re not a reporter. Well-put, factual, and concise.

41. I, for one, am actually HOPING that the experience The One had with the Annenburg project IS an example of how he will administer the Executive branch.

    If he’s anywhere near as ineffective as president as he was at the Annenburg project – the political center and right have nothing to worry about….

42. Given that Obama has, in large part, reappointed the Clinton administration, shouldn’t we be expecting similar results:

    Record-breaking economic growth, consistent increases in average personal income, declining public deficits and debt, and relative geopolitical peace and stability?

    But scottie’s dead right about one thing: for him, ideology trumps outcome. He’d rather see Americans lose out if it means his ideology might win than see Americans benefit if it means his ideology might lose. Why am I not surprised?

43. Bogeyman: more verbiage, not addressing my point. Why should I be surprised?

44. Gringo:

    Kurtz in the WSJ establishes neither meaningful nor operative links between Obama and Ayers. He merely points out that the two were likely to have worked on the same education project at the same time.

    The proof that Kurtz found no active, meaningful links, I’ve explained at length above, is that Obama’s most fevered critics must still focus on what they don’t know about Obama’s alleged links, rather than what they do.

    If Kurtz had established meaningful, operative links, we’d be discussing how those links will affect his administration, rather than spinning ’round and ’round with speculation about what contacts the two may have had.

    That’s the only point you tried to make. If you’ve got anything else, bring it on.

45. Bogey Man:

    Obama has been steeped in Communism his whole life. His father in Kenya was a Communist. His stepfather in Indonesia was a Communist. His mentor in Hawaii was a Communist. I don’t know much about his mother, but I can safely assume that she was at least attracted to men who were Communists. Ayers was and is a communist. (Small “c” by his own admission.)

    If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it ain’t no armadillo.

46. Rickey: Yet again, you underscore my point.

    If we had evidence that Obama IS a communist, we wouldn’t be sitting around speculating about what effect his neighbors, mothers partners, etc. did or did not have on him.

    Obama has been an elected official for almost a decade. He’s cast many votes on a wide range of issues.

    If you want to paint Obama as a communist, doesn’t make a lot more sense to point to his voting record? Unless of course, his voting record doesn’t bear that out. And if that case, do you really want to keep emphasizing that by pointing instead to guilt by association?

    Secondly, conservatism has a lot more to offer, in my opinion, than simply opposition to communism. It offers a worthy, principled critique of moderate liberalism. If only Americans who call themselves conservatives would stick to those principles.

    I get a sense on this blog that the only ideology some conservatives feel up to battling is Stalinism. Thus the desperate resort to comically thin innuendo and guilt by association to label even demonstrated moderate liberals as “communists.”

    Wouldn’t it be so much easier, let alone more effective, to attack Obama for what he actually is?

47. Bogeyman: while we do not agree on the issue, this time you stated your position much more clearly.

48. In his 12:25 post, Bogey Man Said:

    “Given that Obama has, in large part, reappointed the Clinton administration, shouldn’t we be expecting similar results:

    “Record-breaking economic growth, consistent increases in average personal income, declining public deficits and debt, and relative geopolitical peace and stability?”

    Bogey Man:

    Pay attention to the calender, and you won’t be fooled quite so often. If we want a return to the prosperity of the 1983-2000 boom, we need a return to the policies which started it, not the policies which ended it. The Clinton administration inherited the greatest boom in US history, and managed to crash it. (To his credit, President Clinton didn’t crash the boom right away. We’ve had worse. But, to the extent that the end of the boom, in the Spring of 2000, had a single cause, it was the Clinton Administration’s cutting off small business access to the capital market.)

    An Obama Administration will inherit an economy that is already staggering under the weight of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown (which Senator Obama personally helped cause). Senator Obama may have already caused a depression. Some business have cut back, in fear of the tax increases Senator Obama has promised, and the declining business they expect to see, with an anti-prosperity administration. I’ve only seen one story about a business shutting down specifically because the owner thinks the cost of riding out an Obama administration won’t be worth it. I don’t know how widespread the “Obama cutbacks” are. If enough business cut staff because they’re battening down the hatches against an expected Obama typhoon, that’s a depression–but I doubt I’ll ever know how much American business has declined specifically in anticipation of this threat. One thing that makes it difficult to see the causes of economic activity is that the business world, of necessity, looks to the future. That does mean that a credible threat can cause a crash.

    I doubt that the Obama Administration will do as much damage as the Clinton Administration did, simply because the economy doesn’t have as far to fall. But brining in the people who managed to end the last boom, when the economy is already weak, is not particularly promising.

49. Historical Maps of Illinois’s Political Corruption

50. Neo,

    What is it with the media?

    http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/media_continuing_to_defend_blagojevichs_attempt_to_sell_a_seat_in_the_us_se/

    http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/jim_lehrer_on_blagojevich_whats_the_big_deal/

51. This article makes Blagojevich seem not only corrupt, but perhaps also mentally ill:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/us/politics/15blagojevich.html?hp

    “Even with approval ratings that had sunk to 13 percent as details of the federal investigation into his administration had seeped out over the past three years, Mr. Blagojevich, incredulous prosecutors say, still spoke in his recorded conversations in the past six weeks of the possibility of remaking his political future and running for president, perhaps in 2016.”

    “Mr. Blagojevich seemed confident, said two former employees, who refused to be named out of concern that their comments could jeopardize their current work, that he would soon be selected as Mr. Kerry’s running mate. (An aide to Mr. Kerry’s campaign says he was never under consideration.) At the time, there seemed only one problem: Mr. Blagojevich was uncertain he wanted to be a No. 2.”

52. Hagar,

    Do the math.

    Economic growth slowed to a standstill under Bush I and, under Reagan, averaged 20 percent less than under Clinton. Reagan also brought on the worst recession since the Great Depression. In fact, the Reagan recession of 1982 is still the worst since the Great Depression, with the current Bush II mess poised to overtake it, though it hasn’t yet.

    No matter how you slice it, the economy fared better under Clinton than under any president since JFK.

    Now, if you want to start giving Bush I credit for what happened under Clinton’s 8 years, or blaming Clinton for what happened under Bush II’s eight years, you’ll logically have to credit Carter for what happened during the Reagan years.

    To be sure, presidents can’t be reasonably held responsible for every economic trend that takes place on their watch. Still, when a president leads for 8 years, it’s ludicrous not to give him a share of credit or blame for the economy.

53. Bogey Man:

    Try to grasp the concept of “time”. The reason the Reagan Boom lasted for more of Clinton’s term in office than of Reagan’s own, was because Reagan first had to cause it. Reagan inherited the economic doldrums Carter left behind, including the 12% inflation rate. For the first two years of Reagan’s term in office, he squeezed the money supply, breaking the inflation that had built up under Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Fixing the inflation problem has been an inportant contribution to the economy ever since, but, by any measure except what was happening to inflation, those were two very hard years. It wasn’t until 1983 that the Reagan Administration could ease off on the money supply, and allow the boom to get started. (It also took time to get the tax cuts and deregulation in place; easy money alone would not have caused the boom.) Once started, the boom ran through early 2000, faltering only during 1991, around the beginning of the Gulf War. By 1992, the economy was back on a roll. When Clinton took office, the boom was already running, and had been running uninterupted for more than a year. If Clinton had done nothing, the economy would have boomed through his entire term. The way to have a booming economy through a president’s entire term in office, is to have it already going on when he takes office.

    “Nothing”, was far better than President Clinton could do. His health care scheme might have ended the boom–but it didn’t pass. His tax increases took some of the wind out of the economy’s sails, but didn’t do much harm. He didnt’ really damage the economy until he had already been in office for seven years. The boom ended in the second quarter of 2000, the economy actually shrank in the third quarter, and the next four quarters showed two quarters of weak growth, and two quarters of slight decline. When Clinton left office, he left the economy dead in the water. It didn’t really recover, until the Bush tax cuts kicked in.

    In general, any economic peak is the time when growth changes to decline. The policies that end growth aren’t the ones you want. The policies that help the economy are those which led up to the peak, not those which are in place at the peak.

    I did, indeed, give President Clinton some credit for letting the boom run as long as he did. Some presidents would have crashed it right away; he didn’t do much harm for seven years. As I said, we’ve had worse. But to give him credid for starting the boom, requires the assumption of time travel. And again, if you want another boom, you want the policies that start a boom, not the policies that end one.

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