He’s still convicted on 12 federal criminal counts (Photo courtesy of U.S. Marshals Service)
While 5 of the federal counts that disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich had previously been convicted of have been thrown out by a federal appeals court, 12 of the federal counts that Blago was convicted of were upheld by said federal appeals court.
The convictions on the five counts that were overturned all pertained to Blago’s plot to sell a vacant U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder (specifically, the U.S. Senate seat that Barack Obama held prior to being elected President). In 2011, Blago was convicted on 11 counts pertaining to his plot to sell the Senate seat and 6 counts pertaining to shaking down a children’s hospital for campaign cash. That means that Blago remains convicted on five counts pertaining to his plot to sell the Senate seat and all six of the counts pertaining to shaking down a children’s hospital for campaign cash.
To put all that another way, Rod Blagojevich is still a disgrace to my home state of Illinois.
This guy’s wife is pulling dirty tricks in a desperate attempt to get Rahm Emanuel crony Deb Mell elected to the Chicago City Council (Photo courtesy of U.S. Marshals Service)
Patti Blagojevich, the wife of disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, is pulling dirty political tricks in a Chicago aldermanic race between Rahm Emaunel-appointed incumbent Alderwoman Deb Mell, Patti’s sister and Rod’s sister-in-law, Tim Meeghan, and Annisa Wanat:
(33rd Ward of Chicago) Aldermanic challengers Tim Meegan and Annisa Wanat said someone has been putting anti-Mell fliers on car windshields in the Northwest Side ward printed on orange paper to make them look like parking tickets.
Meegan and Wanat said they had nothing to do with the fliers and suspect it’s a political set-up by the Mell campaign — akin to throwing a rock through the window of your own campaign headquarters.
Both challengers also claim to have gotten phone calls complaining about the fliers from a mystery woman who sounds an awful lot like Mell’s sister, former Illinois First Lady Patti Blagojevich.
In the call, the woman identifies herself as a Ravenswood Manor resident who was “leaning toward voting for Tim.” That is, until she saw the orange flier on her windshield dissing Deb Mell as a puppet of her father, retired-Ald. Richard Mell, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel — “with no attribution” about who was responsible for the insult.
“If that was you doing that, it was incredibly cowardly and it really turned me off,” the woman says in the recorded call.
If you’re not convinced that Patti Blagojevich is behind the political-set up of Tim Meegan and Annisa Wanat, this should convince you it is a political-set up of Meegan and Wanat that is being orchestrated by the wife of one of the most corrupt elected officials to have ever held elected office in this country:
Meegan, a social studies teacher at Roosevelt High School and a member of the Albany Park Neighborhood Council, said he has no doubt who placed the call.
“I’m confident it’s Patti Blagojevich. Annisa got the exact same message from the same person,” Meegan said.
“We are alleging that the anti-Mell flier that looked like a parking ticket was produced by the Mell people in order to try and smear her challengers. It’s laughable. It’s a dirty trick. I just can’t believe they would resort to those tactics in order to hang onto the seat.”
Meegan said he didn’t “put two-and-two together” until he heard the recording of another call in which Patti Blagojevich identifies herself by name and asks a neighbor with a Meegan sign on her lawn to consider voting for her sister, Deb.
I call shenanigans on this.
I find it downright ridiculous that Deb Mell’s sister, Patti Blagojevich, would feign consideration of someone other than her sister in an important aldermanic race in Chicago, even going as far print fliers designed to look like parking tickets and attacking her own sister and sending out phone calls to try to frame Tim Meegan over the flyers. This is a blatant political set-up by the wife of a former governor of our state who is currently serving a federal prison sentence for, among other things, trying to sell a vacant U.S. Senate seat to the highest bidder and extorting a children’s hospital.
Deb Mell and Rahm Emanuel should publicly denounce Patti Blagojevich’s dirty political tricks, and Patti Blagojevich owes the voters of Chicago’s 33rd Ward an apology.
The Progressive Midwesterner 