The Little Shaver Gets His Cut
While the sitcom that is Chicago politics continues to generate belly laughs, the spin-off set in Washington is a real downer:
The son of embattled Sen. Roland Burris is a federal tax deadbeat who landed a $75,000-a-year state job under former Gov. Rod Blagojevich five months ago, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
Blagojevich’s administration hired Roland W. Burris II as a senior counsel for the state’s housing authority Sept. 10 — about six weeks after the Internal Revenue Service slapped a $34,163 tax lien on Burris II and three weeks after a mortgage company filed a foreclosure suit on his South Side house.
A spokeswoman for the Illinois Housing Development Authority indicated Wednesday there was nothing improper about Burris II’s employment by the agency, whose mission includes overseeing mortgage programs for low-income home buyers and anti-foreclosure initiatives.
Burris II’s hiring, however, raises more questions about Sen. Burris’ interactions with Blagojevich and his inner circle at a time when the governor was soliciting Sen. Burris for campaign contributions and Burris was angling to have Blagojevich appoint him to the Senate seat once held by President Obama.
Burris II: The Son Also Slices.
I laughed as loudly as anyone at the pilot episode, but my mirth is passing. Hopes that the stench of sleaze would follow Obama to Washington have not come to pass. We may eventually learn what we already suspect (know, really): namely that Obama, Emanuel, Axelrod, and many more talked plenty to Blago about the senate seat and lied about it. It’s a much simpler explanation than anything they’ve come up with.
But it will be too late. About two or three trillion dollars too late. About socialized medicine too late. About the re-institution of welfare too late. About appeasing Islamic madmen and selling out Israel too late. About silencing dissent too late.
Credit Obama (or his Karl Rove, David Axelrod) for knowing that:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
They took it at the flood, and the rest of us are drowning.