The Blagojevich family is pulling dirty political tricks in Chicago once again

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.

Bruce Rauner wasting taxpayer money on a chief of staff for his wife, who has no official duties

Bruce Rauner, the Republican governor of my home state of Illinois, is complaining about public employees being overpaid, which, as a recent study by the University of Illinois pointed out, is a myth.

However, in an article in the Davenport, Iowa-based Quad City Times that was primarily about the U of I study on public employee salaries, it was reported that Rauner hired a $100,000/year chief of staff for his wife, Illinois First Lady Diana Rauner:

The governor’s comments (about public employee salaries) also came as he is in the midst of building his own administration. On Tuesday for example, he hired a $100,000 chief of staff for his wife, Diana Rauner, even though the first lady has no official duties.

Bruce Rauner hiring a chief of staff for our state’s first lady, who has no official duties whatsoever, and paying the first lady’s chief of staff a whopping $100,000 per year salary is a hypocritical waste of taxpayer money. Let me emphasize that I am not attacking the first lady; I’m attacking the governor for wasting our taxpayer dollars. Our state’s fiscal problems are too severe for the governor to be hiring a chief of staff for someone who doesn’t have any official duties.