Organized Crime

In 2009 the Washington establishment and the national media feigned outrage over the fact that Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois had been selling political favors. The governor had apparently been taking “bids” for Barack Obama’s vacated U.S. Senate seat since he, as governor, was entitled to appoint Obama’s replacement. Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald provided perhaps the biggest laugh line when he claimed that Abraham Lincoln would roll over in his grave if he learned that a Chicago politician had been engaged in such shady behavior.

In reality, Lincoln would be rolling his eyes over the stupidity of such a statement. As Pulitzer prize-winning Lincoln biographer David Donald once noted, Lincoln had become the master political string puller in Illinois by the time he ran for president. As a young man Lincoln said that his main aspiration was to become “the DeWitt Clinton of Illinois,” referring to the former New York governor who is credited with inventing and perfecting the “spoils system” of institutionalized political corruption.

As president one of Lincoln’s very first acts was to put Congress into a special session in June of 1861 to begin work on the Pacific Railway bill, which would eventually result in the greatest spectacle of political graft and corruption in American history up to that point (the Credit Mobilier scandal). Lincoln benefited personally from this legislation which gave him, as president, the right to choose the eastern starting point of the government-subsidized transcontinental railroad. He chose Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he had purchased a large parcel of land in 1857. Many of Lincoln’s fellow Republican luminaries, from Thaddeus Stevens to Justin Morrill and Oakes Ames, and even General Sherman, accumulated fortunes as a result of the Pacific Railroad legislation.

The selling of political favors—including appointments to government offices—is what defines Washington politics (and all other politics in America). With the lone exception of Congressman Ron Paul in recent decades, virtually every Washington politician spends most of his time selling political favors of one kind or another. Legislation and regulation is “sold” for campaign “contributions, kickbacks, high-paying jobs for relatives and friends, promises of private-sector jobs and monetary favors, etc. It’s what politicians do and what politics is about. Governor Blagojevich was just doing a politician’s typical dishonest day’s work.

Government has become so adept at selling political favors that scholarly treatises have been written about a veritable science of political extortion. A case in point would be the book, Money for Nothing: Politicians, Rent Extraction, and Political Extortion, by Fred S. McChesney. Much has been written about governmental grants of favors to businesses and other groups in return for “campaign contributions,” but McChesney focuses on an even more insidious phenomenon: politicians threatening to impose menacing costs on businesses or entire industries with regulation and taxation unless the businesses and industries pay up and “contribute” to their campaigns. He calls it “a form of political extortion or blackmail.”

Political extortion or blackmail may take the form of threats to impose price controls, for example, or threats to withdraw occupational licenses, corporate charters, or building permits. Or, it can come in the form of threats to raise the cost of doing business through a special excise tax or an especially onerous and costly regulation. The purpose of the threats is to solicit campaign “contributions” from the threatened businesses. Politicians even have their own language of political extortion and blackmail. They call such legislation “milker bills,” since they “milk” campaign contributions from businesses that the politicians call “cash cows.”

There are also “juicer bills” that are designed to “squeeze” cash out of threatened businesses. And there are “fetcher bills” that are designed for the same purpose—to “fetch” cash from corporate lobbyists with threatening legislation. Among the examples cited by Professor McChesney are:

•Product liability legislation that is proposed periodically to fetch campaign cash from both sides of the debate.

•Proposed legislation to restrict futures trading that fetches loads of cash from futures traders.

•Proposed price controls on pharmaceuticals, which squeezed millions from the pharmaceutical industry.

•Proposed price controls on cable television which had the same effect.

•Proposals to ban smoking altogether, or to impose even more extreme taxes on tobacco products, always fetches millions from the tobacco companies.

•Proposals to increase excise taxes on alcoholic beverages are tried and true juicer bills.

•Proposals to “tax the wealthy” more heavily and “make them pay their fair share” are classic examples of fetcher legislation.

In each instance, once a “sufficient” amount of cash has been extracted from the threatened individuals, corporations, or groups, the menacing legislation is dropped. It is no different, in other words, from the practice of underworld thugs who demand bribes in return for allowing a business to exist in “their” neighborhood. Governor Blagojevich, who was eventually sentenced to fourteen years in prison, was a sacrificial political lamb who was used by the Chicago political machine that, in 2009, had migrated into the White House. Their apparent purpose in going after Blagojevich for doing what they themselves had done all of their political careers was to try to dupe the public into believing that Chicago politicians are not really the gang of thieves and crooks that so many people think they are.