Rage Against The Machine

So there was some pretty huge news out of Illinois yesterday. Our sweet-Lego-haircut governor got caught in a good old fashioned bribery and pay-to-play scandal. It's kind of refreshing, in a way, to have a political scandal that doesn't involve prostitutes, airport restrooms, young male paiges, and the unbelievable supportive spouses crying crocodile tears standing by their man.

I just read a good article that sums up some of what Illinois Politics are all about. You can read it here. Interesting quotes from the article:

• “Government in Illinois isn’t about political ideology or helping people,” said Christopher Mooney, who teaches political science at the University of Illinois-Springfield. “It’s about which idiot brother-in-law are you going to get a job on a road crew because he helped you get into office.”
  
  
• “We have a culture of machine politics and it lends itself to corruption,” said Simpson. “We are the capital of corruption in the U.S.”

And, now, we have a President Elect who is a direct product of the "captial of corruption in the U.S.". Hopefully he was above all of these things, but I find that kind of hard to believe. In order to get anything done in Illinois you have to play ball and become tainted. Although, throughout the election, we never really did hear about anything accomplished by him in his time in Illinois legislature, so maybe thats proof that he isn't corrupt!

Here's to hoping.