What's on Katie's Mind? Katie: The artist, teacher, and social commentator.

"Birds of a Feather Flock Together"

I can’t wait to see “Celebrity Apprentice” with Rod Blagojevich.  The media has portrayed Blagojevich as just some crazy crooked governor.  I really think there is a lot more to it.  I was watching C-span last night and I really find Blagojevich extremely interesting.  He has a point with Tony Rezko.  Barack Obama has gotten a free pass on his relationship with Rezko where as Rod Blagojevich’s relationship with Rezko is considered so much more suspicious.  Rod wants the complete tapes released.  He claims that the snippets people are hearing are not the whole story.  I think he has a point.  He mentions Obama and the property Rezko helped him obtain.  The media hasn’t come down on Obama for his Rezko connection.  You never even hear about Rezko and Obama together unless Blagojevich is talking.

Rod says, “Do you have what it takes to fight back?”  I think Rod does.  He’s out there fighting.  I want to know what’s on the tapes with Rahm Emmanuel.  Don’t you?  Rod’s advice, “Surround yourself with good lawyers.”  When Rod met Sarah Palin he told her he spent a couple of years working on the Alaskan pipeline.  His college roommate was appointed Attorney General by Sarah Palin.  As far as his stint on Celebrity Apprentice he says, “We are a society that values celebrity.”  He has to make money for his family.  He felt he was railroaded out of office because he wouldn’t raise taxes on the people of Illinois.  He tried to close loop holes and tax some corporations.  He feels some of these things are the reason he was railroaded out of office.  He says Pat Quinn loans his campaign fund money at 10%.  Rod thinks that’s corrupt when the rest of us can only get 1-2% from a bank.  Rod says he never lost an election because the people placed their trust in him.  He says he’s keeping his face out there because he is innocent.  He reminded the panel that he is innocent until proven guilty.  He suggested that the media should be trying harder to get those tapes out to the public.

I don’t know the truth about this issue.  We all know about “Chicago style politics”.  I do know that my son is in Cook County and his property taxes just went up.  It’s hard to believe his property taxes would go up when he just bought a condo back in July that was foreclosed on.  I know where I am here in Michigan the property taxes are going down because the appraisals are down.  Leave it to the politicians in Illinois to dip into an already depleted source of taxation.  I do think Blago is closer to being one of us than a lot of the politicians that you see on the scene.  My brothers worked on the pipeline.  The elite don’t get their hands dirty with their jobs.  Those jobs are left to the rest of us.  My brothers were anything but the elite.  They grew up in a family of fourteen children.  I have several brothers that went up to Alaska to try to earn money back in the seventies.  Michigan, like now, was a mess economically.  My brothers had dreams of making big bucks and for the most part Alaska has been good to them financially.  Hillary Clinton worked in the fishing industry in Alaska.  That qualifies her to almost be like one of us.  She obviously was willing to get her hands dirty in her Alaskan adventure.  I suspect Blago went to try and make money whereas Hillary probably went for the adventure.   I don’t believe she needed the money.  That’s the difference between the real elite and everyone else.  The elite may do a dirty job just to experience it much like that new show where the CEO of a company plays a common worker for a week.  He knows he’s going back to his real job.  I, of course, am suspicious of that show because the common people are fed up with the rich, CEO pay, and the elite politicians.  We want common sense in politics and we definitely want to not have our civil liberties infringed upon.

How this all relates to Rod Blagojevich I’m not sure but I feel that he came from us, the people.  He wasn’t from the elite.  He started out as one of us so I think let’s just let him have his day in court and release the tapes.  Don’t just give us snippets of information that is used solely to color our minds and don’t protect people like Rahm Emmanuel, President Obama, David Axelrod, and anyone else that might be on those tapes.  We should all be questioning everything about this case as he was so close to President Obama.  If Rod is truly “bad to the bone” what does that make President Obama?  My mother always told me, “Birds of a feather flock together.”  I suspect the president doesn’t want the full tapes released because they might not show him and his people in a positive light!