There Have Been Times, Historically Speaking, When Crooked Politicians Went To Prison

So far Emanuel has not been arrested

The other day I was doing some research for a post about Mark Sanford and wandered onto an old (2014) City Paper piece, America's Worst Politicians. this was back in our innocence, before Putin decided who would sit in the Oval Office. Some I knew and some I didn't but there were some definite standouts besides Sanford. Illinois is a very sleazy state so it must have been hard to choose only two. One, obviously was Blowhard Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a write up by Mick Dumke of the Chicago Reader. How do you do this in paragraphs rather than in volumes?

Even toward the end of his 22-year mayoral reign, when he started selling off pieces of the city to hide its escalating financial woes, Richard M. Daley had broad support in Chicago. Sure, he was a tyrannical, thin-skinned jerk who doled out jobs and contracts to his friends, but he was the people's tyrannical, thin-skinned jerk who doled out jobs and contracts to his friends. His successor, Rahm Emanuel, is simply a jerk.

At least that's how he's seen by lots of Chicagoans after his first three years in office. In a recent poll commissioned by the Chicago Sun-Times, Emanuel had the support of a meager 29 percent of city voters.

The mayor and his allies stress he's made "tough choices" to get the city back on track, starting with restoring fiscal discipline. It's certainly true he's shuttered mental health clinics, raised water fees, privatized city jobs, laid off teachers, and closed schools-- four dozen of them at once. At the same time, he's poured millions of additional dollars into non-unionized, privately run charter schools.

But it's not only what he's done; it's also how he's done it. Emanuel is widely seen as an outsider who uses Chicago as a backdrop for his broader political ambitions. Though he appears regularly in city neighborhoods for news conferences, his daily meeting schedule is filled with millionaire corporate leaders and investors, earning him the nickname "Mayor 1%" (and inspiring a book of that name by journalist Kari Lydersen). He jets regularly to Washington to maintain his national image-- yet he also has a knack for avoiding the spotlight at home when it's especially hot, such as the time he was on a ski vacation when the school-closings list was released.

Still, Emanuel remains a formidable politician. He already has more than $7 million in his campaign coffers and is prepared to raise millions more before he's up for election next February. Rahm may not be loved, but he's unlikely to go down unless some high-profile candidate runs against him, and so far, that special someone hasn't jumped into the race.

And number two wasn't hard to find-- just another from the "blowhard category," this one written up very succinctly by Keegan Hamilton, Donald J. Trumpanzee:

Though the Donald isn't technically a politician (he has never held office), he routinely threatens to run for president and perpetually inserts himself into the national political debate. From stoking conspiracy theories by offering a $5 million bounty for President Obama's birth certificate to calling the 2012 election "a sham and a travesty," Trump is the ultimate political troll.

The reality TV star and real estate magnate recently toyed with the idea of running as the GOP candidate for governor of New York before removing himself from the race. And he has donated millions to candidates from both parties over the years. While his political ambitions may be as absurd as his comb-over, Trump is a master at exploiting the media to generate semi-serious discussion of fringy ideas that would normally be dismissed out of hand.

At various times, Trump has suggested repealing campaign contribution limits, imposing a 25 percent tariff on all Chinese goods, and building a "triple-layered fence" and flying Predator drones along the Mexican border.

Trump's sideshow routine has become tiresome for some reporters (BuzzFeed's McKay Coppins compared the experience of covering the Donald's short-lived 2014 gubernatorial campaign to "donning a network-branded parka during a snowstorm and shouting into the camera about a predictable phenomenon"), but many major news outlets still find the act irresistible for the ratings and page views. And that begs the question: Who's dumber, Donald Trump or the journalists who keep feeding the troll?

Ahhh... the good old days, when he was just a target of derision. Hard to top Trump, but I really wanted to find a public official who subsequently went to prison. It wasn't that hard to find: T for Texas. The gentleman, a former U.S. congressman was sentenced to serve ten years in prison on November 7, 2018 and ordered to pay $1,014,718.51 in restitution, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Right now he is incarcerated at a medical facility of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Fort Worth. Not enough hints? Joe Tone wrote up Steve Stockman for the Dallas Observer.

There will soon come a day when Steve Stockman, the U.S. representative for the 36th District of Texas, will depart his Washington, D.C. office for the last time and fly home to southeast Texas, never to return to the city he so loathes. He probably won't fire a celebratory bullet through the Capitol dome, but he'll probably give it some consideration. Because Stockman, if nothing else, is the congressman of the gun.

It began in 1995, during the first year of his initial, short-lived stint in Congress, when he wrote in Guns and Ammo that the Clinton administration had orchestrated the siege on David Koresh's Waco compound "to prove the need for a ban on so-called 'assault weapons.'" Oddly, Stockman's political career quickly fizzled: He lost his next election. But he resurfaced in 2012 a totally unchanged man.

Less than a month after the 2012 Sandy Hook shootings, he introduced the Safe Schools Act, which would have repealed federal laws keeping guns away from schools. He then vowed to pursue the impeachment of Barack Obama after the president issued minor executive orders seeking more gun control, which Stockman called "an existential threat to this nation."

Occasionally, and memorably, he has exerted himself, to fight climate change, sex education, and, in February 2013, the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protection to gay and transgender people. "This is helping the liberals, this is horrible. Unbelievable," Stockman said. "What really bothers-- it's called a women's act, but then they have men dressed up as women, they count that. Change-gender, or whatever. How is that-- how is that a woman?"

It's this rhetorical flair that journalists will miss come next January, when Stockman, after recent failed bids for the Senate and his House seat, departs Washington again, likely for good this time. The gun lobby might miss him too, but only until it gets its strings attached to the new guy.

And that reminds me... Dan Alexander wrote up the net worth of all the candidates, many of them notorious crooks, who are running for president this cycle. Here they are-- in order of "net worth"... starting with the most corrupt man in the history of U.S. politics:

• Señor Trumpanzee- $3.1 billion-- inheritance + decades of criminal activities
• Tom Steyer- $1.6 billion-- hedge fund operator
• John Delaney- $200 million-- Wall Street crook who took advantage of desperately sick people
• Michael Bennet- $15 million-- factotum for crooked Republican Philip Anschutz who built an empire in oil, railroads, telecom, real estate and entertainment
• Elizabeth Warren- $12 million-- writing books, investing
• Status Quo Joe- $9 million-- criminal and unethical activities
• Kamala Harris- $6 million-- criminal husband
• Joe Sestak- $6 million-- investing
• Beto- $4 million-- married rich
• de Blasio- $2.5 million-- investing in NY real estate
• Bernie- $2.5 million-- writing books
• Jay Inslee- $2 million-- ?
• Amy Klobuchar- $2 million-- ?
• Cory Booker- $1.5 million-- investing
• Steve Bullock- $1.5 million-- landlord
• Marianne Williamson- $1.5 million-- writing books, investing
• Kirsten Gillibrand- $1 million-- ?
• Seth Moulton- $1 million-- investing
• Andrew Yang- $1 million-- tech start-ups
• Julian Castro- $700,000-- investments
• Tulsi- $500,000-- cryptocurrency investments
• Tim Ryan- $500,000-- never had a job in his life
• Mayo Pete- $100,000-- McKinsey

This graphic shows how many billionaires are supporting each of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. Do you think support from a bunch of billionaires signifies something about a candidate? 

Bernie- zero