Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Rahm Emanuel can’t run for mayor of Chicago, says court

Well, he didn’t keep his day job,
Court: Rahm Emanuel Can’t Run For Mayor, Not Chicago Resident

DEVELOPING:

The Chicago News Cooperative is reporting that an Illinois Appellate Court has overturned a decision regarding Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago residency. The court reportedly decided Emanuel is not eligible to run for mayor of Chicago because he has not been a resident of the city for one year.

“We conclude that the candidate neither meets the the municipal code’s requirement that he have ‘resided’ in Chicago for the year preceding the election in which he seeks to participate nor falls within any exception to the requirement,” the ruling stated. (Read the court decision here.)

Surely Sarah Palin is to blame?

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Blago to be retried?

Sure looks like it,
Blagojevich Guilty of Lying to Federal Agents; No Verdict on Other Counts

A federal jury found former Illinios Gov. Rod Blagojevich guilty of one count of making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, bringing to a close a months-long corruption trial that left them unable to reach a verdict on most counts.

The government vowed to seek a retrial on the remaining counts.

Mr. Blagojevich was arrested on Dec. 9, 2008, and charged with 24 counts, including an attempt to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.

Judge James B. Zagel set a hearing for Aug. 26 to decide the manner and timing of the retrial.

It’s like something out of a courtroom drama…

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How Milton Friedman saved Chile

Bret Stephens’s op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal,
How Milton Friedman Saved Chile
Milton Friedman gave Chileans the intellectual wherewithal first to survive the quake, and now to build their lives anew.

It’s not by chance that Chileans were living in houses of brick—and Haitians in houses of straw—when the wolf arrived to try to blow them down. In 1973, the year the proto-Chavista government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Chile was an economic shambles. Inflation topped out at an annual rate of 1000%, foreign-currency reserves were totally depleted, and per capita GDP was roughly that of Peru and well below Argentina’s.

What Chile did have was intellectual capital, thanks to an exchange program between its Catholic University and the economics department of the University of Chicago, then Friedman’s academic home. Even before the 1973 coup, several of Chile’s “Chicago Boys” had drafted a set of policy proposals which amounted to an off-the-shelf recipe for economic liberalization: sharp reductions to government spending and the money supply; privatization of state-owned companies; the elimination of obstacles to free enterprise and foreign investment, and so on.

In left-wing mythology—notably Naomi Klein’s tedious 2007 screed “The Shock Doctrine”—the Chicago Boys weren’t just strange bedfellows to Pinochet’s dictatorship. They were complicit in its crimes. “If the pure Chicago economic theory can be carried out in Chile only at the price of repression, should its authors feel some responsibility?” wrote New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis in October 1975. In fact, Pinochet had been mostly indifferent to the Chicago Boys’ advice until the continuing economic crisis forced him to look for some policy alternatives. In March 1975, he had a 45-minute meeting with Friedman and asked him to write a letter proposing some remedies. Friedman responded a month later with an eight-point proposal that largely mirrored the themes of the Chicago Boys.

For his trouble, Friedman would spend the rest of his life being defamed as an accomplice to evil: at his Nobel Prize ceremony the following year, he was met by protests and hecklers. Friedman himself couldn’t decide whether to be amused or annoyed by the obloquies; he later wryly noted that he had given communist dictatorships the same advice he gave Pinochet, without raising leftist hackles.

An aside:
Could anyone please explain to me why we constantly hear the Left praise Cuba’s “excellent free healthcare”, while the Cuban regime is at least as deadly as Pinochet’s?

But I digresss,

As for Chile, Pinochet appointed a succession of Chicago Boys to senior economic posts. By 1990, the year he ceded power, per capita GDP had risen by 40% (in 2005 dollars) even as Peru and Argentina stagnated. Pinochet’s democratic successors—all of them nominally left-of-center—only deepened the liberalization drive. Result: Chileans have become South America’s richest people. They have the continent’s lowest level of corruption, the lowest infant-mortality rate, and the lowest number of people living below the poverty line.

Go read the rest.

Via Instapundit.

Due to an unexpected family business matter I haven’t been able to post this week’s Carnival of Latin America, so I’ll add this week’s items to last week’s and post the Carnival next Monday. Thank you for your support.

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Pizza money

(language warning) Ace notices how Obama really loves his pizza:

Notice how it’s a UK newspaper reporting on it,
Obamas fly in chef 860 miles… just to make pizza

obamaspizza

When you’re the president of the United States, only the best pizza will do – even if that means flying a chef 860 miles.

Chris Sommers, 33, jetted into Washington from St Louis, Missouri, on Thursday with a suitcase of dough, cheese and pans to to prepare food for the Obamas and their staff.

This is lah-dee-dah pizza. They don’t serve pizza pie, they serve pizza π.

Ordering fresh-frozen won’t do, either.

Ace aces it,

So I don’t want to see you lecturing the CEO’s of bailout companies about using private jets to petition the government, when your guy is jetting dudes across the country to make him a few slices of ‘Za.

As Larwyn asked, who’s paying for this?

UPDATE
Welcome, Jawa readers! Please visit often.

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Ronald Burris should resign

At the Chicago Tribune,
Ronald Burris, Resign

Let’s see if we have it right: Burris had zero contact with any of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s cronies about his interest in the Senate seat being vacated by President Barack Obama— unless you count that conversation with former chief of staff Lon Monk, and, on further reflection, the ones with insiders John Harris, Doug Scofield and John Wyma and, oh yeah, the governor’s brother and fund-raising chief, Robert Blagojevich. But Burris didn’t raise a single dollar for the now ex-governor as a result of those contacts because that could be construed as a quid pro quo and besides, everyone he asked refused to donate.

The story gets worse with every telling.

Enough. Roland Burris must resign.

His protests that he had nothing to hide just don’t square with his obvious attempts to hide something, as evidenced by the evolving truths in three sworn statements to the House impeachment panel. His Jan. 8 testimony before that panel contradicted the affidavit he’d filed three days earlier. On Feb. 5 he submitted a “clarification” detailing the contacts he’d failed to mention on the stand.

Now he has admitted that the governor’s brother hit him up to raise campaign cash, and in at least one conversation, Burris raised his prospects for being appointed to the Senate.

And then there’s the cover-up:

Illinois House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), who chaired the impeachment panel, sat on Burris’ amended testimony for more than a week.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vowed that no Senate appointment by the disgraced Rod Blagojevich would stand—until Blagojevich appointed Burris.

They told Burris to go to the impeachment committee and testify fully and truthfully. And he did not.

And now what? “He went before the state Legislature and he obviously convinced them, but we’ll have to see… I hope he didn’t try to avoid or mislead anyone…” Reid said Tuesday. Durbin is on an overseas trip and hasn’t bothered to comment on the tomfoolery back home.

Shameful.

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Blago continues to work towards an insanity defense

And he didn’t leave out Mother Theresa, either:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Blagojevich in NBC interview compares himself to Gandhi, King and Mandela

As Dec. 9 unfolded, Blagojevich told NBC, “I thought about Mandela, Dr. King and Gandhi and tried to put some perspective to all this and that is what I am doing now.”

Blagojevich is not going to participate in his defense because he says the rules are rigged against him. He will not be in Springfield for his trial; instead he will be doing nationally televised interviews.

The governor told NBC that the state Senate trial will be so unfair, he could bring in “15 angels and 20 saints led by Mother Theresa” to testify on his behalf and “it wouldn’t matter.”

Dan Collins notices the apocalyptic overtones. Me, I think he’s just practicing for his guest appearance at The View, while working on an insanity defense.*

(h/t Memeorandum)

* When I was a student at the University of Puerto Rico one of my classmates claimed to have saved himself from a mugging by simulating an violent epileptic seizure, which scared off the mugger. Blago’s probably thinking in those terms.

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Former Blago campaign manager holds press conference

Obama held a press conference this morning, and not only named Tom Daschle Health and Human Services secretary and in charge of the White House Office of Health Reform; O also

expressed confidence that no member of his staff was involved in discussing deals for his Senate seat with disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The president-elect once again said he had no discussions about the seat with Mr. Blagojevich, who was arrested by federal agents this week in connection with an alleged corruption scheme.

“I was as appalled and disappointed as anyone,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference.

“I have never spoken to the governor on this subject,” he added. “I am confident that no representative of mine” would have taken part in any such discussions.

“I do not think the governor at this point can effectively serve,” Mr. Obama said.

Did he go on and ask again for Blago’s resignation? No. At least he asked for it yesterday.

As John Fund notes in today’s Wall Street Journal, Obama Was Mute on Illinois Corruption

What remains to be seen is whether this episode will put an end to what Chicago Tribune political columnist John Kass calls the national media’s “almost willful” fantasy that Mr. Obama and Chicago’s political culture have little to do with each other. Mr. Kass notes that the media devoted a lot more time and energy to investigating the inner workings of Sarah Palin’s Wasilla, Alaska, than it has looking at Mr. Obama’s Chicago connections.

To date, Mr. Obama’s approach to Illinois corruption has been to congratulate himself for dodging association with it. “I think I have done a good job in rising politically in this environment without being entangled in some of the traditional problems of Chicago politics,” he told the Chicago Tribune last spring. At the time, Mr. Obama was being grilled over news that he bought his house through a land deal involving Tony Rezko, a political fixer who was later convicted on 16 corruption counts. Rezko is mentioned dozens of times in the 76-page criminal complaint against Mr. Blagojevich.

Obama has been closely associated with Blago:

In 2002, Mr. Obama turned up to help Mr. Blagojevich, a staunch ally of Mr. Jones, win the governor’s mansion. Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s incoming White House chief of staff, told The New Yorker earlier this year that six years ago he and Mr. Obama “participated in a small group that met weekly when Rod was running for governor. We basically laid out the general election, Barack and I and these two [other participants].”

Mr. Blagojevich won, but before long, problems surfaced. In 2004, Zalwaynaka Scott, the governor’s inspector general, said his administration’s efforts to evade merit-selection laws exposed “not merely an ignorance of the law, but complete and utter contempt for the law.” Nonetheless, Mr. Obama endorsed Mr. Blagojevich’s re-election in 2006.

For the time being, I have no reason to believe that Obama has been involved in Blago’s nasty shennanigans leading to the indictement.

It would be nice, however, if anyone would get a chance to ask these 7 questions:

1 – “Did you communicate directly or indirectly with Blagojevich about picking your replacement in the U.S. Senate?”

2 – “Why didn’t you or someone on your team correct your close adviser David Axelrod when he said you had spoken to Blagojevich about picking your replacement?”

3. “When did you learn the investigation involved Blagojevich’s alleged efforts to ‘sell’ your Senate seat, or of the governor’s impending arrest?”

4 – “Did you or anyone close to you contact the FBI or U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald about Blagojevich’s alleged efforts to sell your Senate seat to the highest bidder?”

5 – “Did federal investigators interview you or anyone close to you in the investigation?”

6 – “When did you and Blagojevich last speak and about what?”

7 – “Do you regret supporting Blagojevich?”

And so we wait, while the Obama transiton site goes on censoring unwanted questions.

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