Pay To Play

The other big story of the week has been the revelation of the pay to play scheme the governor of Illinois was running in his effort to capitalize on the opportunity to pick a replacement for Barack Obama in the US Senate. I don't know that much about Illinois politics, don't care to, but had the sense that Chicago was a really dirty city in this regard. I guess now we know. By the way, Chicago isn't the capital of Illinois, but that is where the sitting governor operates from. That's odd to me.

I suspect there is more of this type of thing that goes on than we realize, but it's probably less reckless and covered up better. That doesn't make it anymore acceptable, but perhaps speaks to how pervasive it is in the Chicago machine - clearly the governor was very brazen in this and thought he was above the law in this regard.

While there's no tie to the president-elect at this point, I find it disconcerting that someone with so little experience or track record has risen through that system to take the highest office in the land. We'll see if Barack Obama is any different than the people who have surrounded him for the last several years.