A jury has convicted Rod Blagojevich of 17 of the 20 counts against him, and he could be sentenced to 300 years. Of course, numbers like that are nonsense, and he is a big name politician, not one of the little people, so he’ll wind up serving a Lindsay Lohan like percentage of
Guilty
his sentence. My guess: less than 3 years.
Nonetheless, it’s nice to see him go to jail. Mostly because it’s nice to see SOME politician go to jail for SOMETHING. I was beginning to think it was impossible.
With Blago’s conviction the bar has been set, the standard for conviction established. Anybody who’s actually caught, on tape, saying “A fucking Senate seat is a fucking valuable thing, it’s fucking golden. I’m not going to just fucking give it away” will be convicted and do time.
Those who are smart enough to heed Huey Long’s advice and never write what you can phone, never phone what you can speak, never speak what you can wink, and never wink what you can smile, can continue to line their pockets and remain untarnished and in power forever and ever.
Those who choose their words, and avenues of communication, more circumspectly can continue to do business as usual.
So, this trial will not end corruption. But it might warn corrupt politicians that they have to up their game a little bit. I’m not sure if that’s a positive or negative, it’s just an observation.
One last comment on Rod Blagojevich. This really kind of ends the Blagojevich jokes. For me, anyway. Sure, he’s a corrupt politician, but it’s just the corruption of greed, and not evil war-mongering. And he’s an entertaining sort of guy. And prison is really depressing.
Scumbag that he is, I feel a bit sorry for him.
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