In the circus known as Illinois politics, the center ring corruption trial of former Governor Rod Blagojevich is coming to an end. Closing arguments are set for Monday, and a verdict is expected in August.

The trial is ending surprisingly early, as Blago told a judge this week he would not be taking the witness stand. “His attorneys rested their case quietly, without calling a single witness or putting on any kind of defense, and jurors looked at each other with raised eyebrows,” writes John Kass of the Chicago Tribune. “There was no cross-examination to worry about, no embarrassing tapes to explain, no jury comparing his credibility against FBI recordings in which he expressed his desire to ‘(bleep)’ the people of Illinois.”

Blago’s quiet defense lets a lot of other people off the hook, including Jesse Jackson Jr.

After Barack Obama was elected President in November 2008, Blago was left to fill the vacancy of the Illinois Senate seat. Blago’s top priority was taking care of himself and his family. He wanted to cash in with his choice.

His choices ranged from Valerie Jarrett to Oprah Winfrey, secret FBI recordings show.

But no one pushed harder for the seat than Jesse Jackson Jr. He commissioned a Zogby poll that showed him being the choice of most Illinoisans.

“Jackson was the most publicly aggressive candidate for the Senate appointment, launching a campaign-like bombardment of e-mails, petitions, and phone calls from supporters to try to pressure Blagojevich into appointing him,” write John Chase and Rick Pearson of the Trib.

The governor laughed off the idea at first, ridiculing the Congressman as a political lightweight.

Blago was right about that—Jackson hasn’t been the progressive politician many were hoping for. He hasn’t done all that much in Congress.

The governor and the Congressman knew each other back in the 1990s when both were ambitious, young pols serving in the Illinois Congressional delegation. They both had delusions of grandeur. “Jesse was leaking to the press his hopes to become the nation’s first black president in 2004; Blago was envisioning the governor’s office as a steppingstone to the Oval Office,” writes Carol Felsenthal in Chicago magazine.

But in Illinois, the governor’s office is more likely a stepping stone to a minimum security prison.

When Blago ran for governor, Jackson did not endorse him, and Rod’s ego has been bruised ever since. Perhaps this explains Blago telling his advisers (caught on those FBI recordings) calling Jackson a “a bad guy . . . he’s really not the guy I hoped or thought he was.”

But by December 2008, the governor was warming to the idea of appointing Jackson to Obama’s old seat. Why the change of heart? Money.

No one else in Washington or Illinois was interested in cutting a deal with Rod. “And I can cut a better political deal with these Jacksons and, and most of it you probably can’t believe, but some of it can be tangible upfront,” Rod tells his brother in a taped phone conversation.

Both Blagojevich and Jackson have a funder in common—Raghuveer Nayak, a prominent businessman. In an FBI recording, the governor’s brother told Blago that Nayak offered to do “some accelerated fundraising” on the governor’s behalf if Jackson got the seat.

Blagojevich met with Jackson to discuss the Senate seat the day before the feds closed in and arrested Blago on December 9, 2008.

Jackson has long denied knowledge or involvement of the alleged scheme to buy the Senate seat. But a few weeks ago, the federal prosecutors for the first time publicly suggested that Jackson was aware of efforts by his allies to swap campaign cash for his appointment.

At this point, Jackson hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing. He has kept quiet throughout the trial, promising to “clear up the misstatements made by some” when the trial ends. Then he faces the resumption of a House ethics probe into his actions.

It’s disappointing to many that it’s come to this. So many Illinois politicians knew to stay away from the corrupt governor. House Speaker Michael Madigan and his daughter, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, wouldn’t play this game. On those FBI tapes, Blago is heard calling the Madigans “the Madigoons.”

It begs the question: If the Madigan dynasty was smart enough to avoid getting ensnarled in a classic “Chicago Way” corruption probe, why wasn’t the Jackson dynasty?

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald may have saved the Dems from themselves. What more could he had found out if the wiretapping had continued?

Blago’s silence during his corruption trial doesn’t mean that his voice wasn’t heard in court. In one memorable recording, the governor talked with an advisor about the Senate seat pick and said, “I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for fuckin’ nothing.”

Silence is golden, too. But the time for Jesse Jackson Jr. to remain silent is over. His constituents and progressives who believed in him deserve to hear him speak.

The Tea Partiers held a Tax Day demo at the Wisconsin state capital today. The local organizers said the crowd totaled 12,000. Seemed like a stretch. Much closer to 3000.

Tommy Thompson took the stage late in the rally. His face was as red as his tie. He was so fired up, I was worried he’d have a heart attack and we would see “ObamaCare” in action.

Rumors have been flying about the possibility of Tommy running against Russ Feingold this year. Much to the dismay of the people who chanted “Run, Tommy, Run,” he has decided not to. Like just about everyone else who spoke, he had a very pro-God ending.

I did speak to Terrence Wall, a local Madison developer, who is running against Feingold. He criticized Feingold, saying he’s been in office since 1982 and is now a career politician. “He hasn’t accomplished anything,” said Wall.

Wall said that his top priority is to get jobs started and rebuild confidence in the state, and “get government out of the way.”

I asked him, given what he said about the government being in the way, where he came down on civil liberties. Would he have voted for the Patriot Act? (Feingold was the only Senator to vote against it.)

Wall said he would have voted for the Patriot Act. It’s about “striking a balance” between security and rights. “I’m for civil liberties,” he said. “And they’re going after terrorists; they aren’t going after you and me.”

Well what about the No Fly Lists? “I had a friend who was on one of the those by mistake.”

Wall should be an easy target for Dems. Wall says he’s against taxes, and oh, is he ever. According to the Capital Times, “Wall has not paid personal state income taxes in nine of the past 10 years, according to the state Department of Revenue. That’s quite remarkable, as Wall is a son of privilege who has always enjoyed great wealth and whose real estate empire has, according to his own campaign spokesman, incurred tens of millions of dollars in tax obligations over the past five years.”

The Capital Times continues: “Let’s consider Feingold’s record. According to Department of Revenue figures, the senator paid net taxes between $6,000 and $9,400 each year from 1999 to 2008. So how come Russ Feingold pays more net taxes than Terrence Wall? That’s easy. Feingold’s one of the great mass of Americans who work hard, pay their taxes and try to abide by the rules. Wall’s one of the elite few who think that their money and position give them the privilege to write a special set of rules for themselves. Feingold thinks everyone should pay their fair share. Wall thinks that working Americans should pay their fair share — and his.”

Top Ten Signs at the Mad Tea Party:

“One Nation Under God, not Obama”
“Your dog has birth papers Do You Mr. President”
“First they ignore you . . . Then they laugh at you . . .then they try to fight you . . . then you win. –Gandhi”
“Cap your income and Trade your freedom”
“Chris Matthews needs a diaper change”
“Teach a man to fish and you lose a Democrat voter”
“On the eighth day, God created capitalism”
“Free markets not Free loaders”
“I will not grab my ankles”
“Social Justice sucks if you work hard”

There were some non-Tea Party people around too. A group of young women with glasses and short hair had signs that read “Giving tea a bad name.”

But the most ironic moment was hearing the organizers blaring Rage Against the Machine. Huh?

The scenes are breathtaking: trucks of FMLN supporters, wearing red T-shirts, waving flags, enjoying their victory on the streets of San Salvador.

Although reports of voting irregularities have surfaced, no widespread denunciations of fraud have marred the election. In what appears to be free and fair elections, the FMLN, a leftist party created by formers guerrillas, has won the presidential election in El Salvador.

I wasn’t sure this day would ever happen. There was a time when people wouldn’t be in the street voicing support for the FMLN, much less wearing its T-shirts.

My first trip to El Salvador was in 1991, by chance coinciding with the signing of the Peace Accords that ended the 12-year civil war. I was there for the huge celebration in a Plaza Cívica in the old downtown of the capital. People clung to statues in the park and listened to the comandantes. Nicaraguan folk singer Carlos Mejia Godoy led the crowd in a sing along to a Sandinista tune; he kept saying FSLN, instead of FMLN.

Even though the war was over, when I returned to El Salvador in 1992, people still seemed fearful of political repression. No one was wearing a red beret in public.

By the end of 1993, things started to improve. The Chicago chapter of the Committee in Solidarity with El Salvador (CISPES) raised enough money to send down a machine that produced silk-screen T-shirts, along with an operator for the machine, who happened to be a friend of mine. It was clear then that propaganda would be critical to success in the 1994 elections.

Slowly, the FMLN made gains. Former guerrilla leaders, such as Maria Serrano, became legislators. But the ARENA party, founded by death squad leader Roberto D’Aubuission, governed the country for twenty years.

Until now.

I would love to be in El Salvador right now, but reporting has taken a back seat to editing. We’re finishing up our commemorative issue celebrating The Progressive’s 100th anniversary. We’ve gone through all of our old issues and culled quotes and articles from each year.

I spent a lot of February combing through the 1980s. I watched the tragic history of U.S. intervention in El Salvador unfold through our pages.

In our February 1981 issue, Carolyn Forché wrote:

El Salvador: The Next Vietnam?
“By the close of 1980, the United States had indeed done what it could to improve the proficiency of Salvadoran forces: The U.S. Army School of the Americas in Panama, in its largest single training effort ever, had graduated some 250 Salvadoran officers and noncoms.

“The streets of El Salvador’s towns are choked with burnt out vehicles, the debris of incendiary bombs, spent ammunition, and corpses. Whole villages have been destroyed. Every labor union meeting place has been blown up, as have opposition newspaper offices, the church radio station YSAX, and the Metropolitan Cathedral, where the bodies of six murdered Democratic Revolutionary Front leaders were dynamited as they lay in state.

“How did the United States come to back such a murderous regime? Despite his official human rights advocacy, Jimmy Carter always sent mixed signals to the Salvadoran right wing.
If Carter’s signals were mixed, Reagan’s are clear.”

In 1984, The Progressive published Allan Nairn’s chilling expose of the U.S. role in death squad activity, alongside Michael Kienitz’s powerful photography.

Behind the Death Squads
By Allan Nairn
May 1984
“Early in the 1960s, during the Kennedy Administration, agents of the U.S. Government in El Salvador set up two official security organizations that killed thousands of peasants and suspected leftists over the next fifteen years. These organizations, guided by American operatives, developed into the paramilitary apparatus that came to be known as the Salvadoran Death Squads.

“Today, even as the Reagan Administration publicly condemns the Death Squads, the CIA—in violation of U.S. law—continues to provide training, support, and intelligence to security forces directly involved in Death Squad activity.

“U.S. complicity in the dark and brutal work of El Salvador’s Death Squads is not an aberration. Rather, it represents a basic, bipartisan, institutional commitment on the part of six American Administrations—a commitment to guard the Salvadoran regime against the prospect that its people might organize in ways unfriendly to that regime or the United States.”

In 2004 The Progressive sent me to El Salvador to cover its election. The FMLN ran Shafik Hándal as its candidate against ARENA’s young and charismatic sportscaster Tony Saca. “With his gray beard and black hair, Hándal looked like the seventy-three-year-old that he is,” I wrote. “A hard-liner, he has a long history as head of the Communist Party, one of the five groups that made up the FMLN.” Tony Saca won the election. While I was there, many people had told me about Mauricio Funés, an investigative reporter. Americans said he was El Salvador’s Bill Moyers.

I didn’t have a chance to look up Funés back then. Which is too bad, since he ran as the FMLN’s Presidential candidate this year.

Twenty-five years after Nairn’s piece, the U.S. continues to intervene in Salvadoran politics.

On March 13, Democracy Now reported: “Two Republican lawmakers have issued threats over the outcome of national elections in El Salvador. Republican Congress members Trent Franks of Arizona and Dan Burton of Indiana said Salvadorans living in the US could lose their immigration status and the right to send remittances home if the leftist FMLN party wins the vote. Polls indicate the FMLN will beat the right-wing ARENA party, which has long had close ties to Washington. Five years ago, the Bush administration was accused of threatening to cut off aid to El Salvador if voters supported the FMLN.”

At the same time, a “Dear Colleague” letter, drafted by Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva (Democrat, Arizona) and Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (Democrat, Ohio), called for a stance of neutrality in the election and respect for the Salvadoran democratic process. Thirty-three members of Congress signed the letter, addressed to President Obama.

“We need to put the era of intervention and economic coercion behind us,” said Grijalva. “We must fundamentally base our relations on respect for the right of our neighbors to choose their own leaders and their own forms of governments.”

It’ll take a few years before we’ll know the extent of U.S. intervention this time around. The National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, the International Republican Institute and other government agencies have been used to fund rightwing groups in the past.

Last year The Progressive ran a piece about John McCain’s role as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI).

Here’s an excerpt: In November 2007, the IRI gave its “Freedom Award” to Tony Saca, the president of El Salvador. In taped remarks, McCain said, “El Salvador’s politics and economy have been transformed. Today, former guerrillas are free to stand peacefully for public office, and economic growth is gradually eroding poverty.” But fifteen years after the civil war ended, economic and political problems linger. Corruption is rampant. San Salvador’s archbishop recently said the social conditions that gave way to the civil war remain. Activists who are organizing against Saca’s neoliberal economic policies face riot cops and charges of terrorism under new laws that criminalize public protest.
IRI board member Richard S. Williamson presented the award to Saca and recalled President Ronald Reagan’s policies in Latin America.

“Back then, the front line in the march to freedom was Central America,” said Williamson. “I remember those close vote counts, in the early ’80s, when Ronald Reagan was going against the majority in Congress who didn’t want to support the freedom fighters in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. Fortunately, he prevailed, and twenty-five years later El Salvador is a beacon of freedom.”

Twenty-five years ago, I bet Reagan never imagined that the FMLN would win the Presidency.

My friend and colleague Roberto Lovato spent election night with Funés. In an election night interview, Funés told Lovato: “We’re going to change the way we make policy. And one of the most significant changes is that we will no longer have a government at the service of a privileged few. And we will no longer have a government that creates an economy of privileges for the privileged. Now, we need a government like the one envisioned by [Archbishop of El Salvador] Óscar Arnulfo Romero, who, in his prophetic message, said that the church should have a preferential option for the poor.”
Talking about the poor was just the sort of thing that could get you killed in El Salvador.

In February 1980, Romero had written a letter to President Carter asking him to halt military aid to the Salvadoran government. But the dollars continued to flow. Romero was assassinated five weeks later while celebrating mass. (March 24 marks the 29th anniversary of Archbishop Romero’s assassination.) A 1993 UN report named Roberto D’Aubuisson, ARENA’s founder, as the person who ordered Romero’s death.

What will President Obama’s policies be vis-à-vis El Salvador? Will he be like Carter and send mixed signals? I certainly hope not.

The SF Chronicle reports that “on inaugural morning a mysterious group descended on Bush St. and covered up every mention of Bush with Obama tape. . . . Per a tipster the signs were covered with “double-sided picture mount foam tape was used so as not to vandalize the signs or permanently mar them.”

by Zach Lawson

Click here to see more.

Thanks to my dear friends on the West Coast sent me this.

My favorite part of the Inauguration ceremony was the Rev. Joseph Lowery. His benediction specifically mentioned the need for a spirit of solidarity and the hope that we will “to turn to each other and not on each other.”

And I loved all of his allusions, from the Bible to anti-war songs to MLK. Lowery asked the Almighty for help “to work for that day when nations shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid . . .”

He ended with humor, something sorely needed on such a day.

Another thing needed on Inauguration Day is an accounting for what the whole shebang costs. Public Citizen released a report on January 14 about just this. Here’s an excerpt:

President-elect Barack Obama has banned corporate and lobbyist funding for his historic inauguration, but that has not kept special interests from picking up the tab, according to a Public Citizen analysis. Nearly 80 percent of the $35.3 million raised to date by the Presidential Inaugural Committee has come from just 211 individual “bundlers.”

And guess where many of the major donors hail from? Wall Street!

From Public Citizen: Many prominent Wall Street executives have bundled large amounts for the inauguration, including:

• Louis Susman, vice chairman of Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking and managing director, vice chairman of investment banking, Citigroup ($300,000);

• Mark Gilbert, senior executive, Lehman Brothers ($185,000);

• Robert Wolf, chairman and CEO, UBS Americas ($100,000);

• Jennifer Scully, vice president, private wealth management, Goldman Sachs ($100,000);

• Bruce Heyman, managing director of the Private Wealth Management Group, Midwest region, Goldman Sachs ($50,000);

• Kobi Brinson, senior vice president and assistant general counsel, Wachovia ($35,000)

“It’s no wonder that Wall Street is pouring so much money into this inauguration,” said David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “The executive branch has given bailouts worth trillions of dollars to Wall Street firms and is considering trillions more. Wall Street has a lot at stake.”

Obama has a lot at stake. We all do.

Hendrik Hertzberg wrote last week. “I realize it’s a bit late for yet another touching yet narcissistic account of How Election Day Was For Me. But I’m just emerging from four days of mental fog characterized by alternating episodes of dazed happiness and numb stupefaction.”

I agree it’s a bit late to talk about the election results. (Personally, I’m just emerging from the fog of illness.) So here’s a touching yet narcissistic account of Why We Need to Criticize Obama.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I do want the world to be a more fair and just place. But a Chicago Democrat talking about change always seemed odd to me. (For non-Chicagoans out there, here’s a good article from the Trib about Dem politics in the Windy City.)

And while I woke up to this cute text message on November 5, the fuzzy feeling wore off when I saw Obama picked Rahm Emanuel to be his Chief of Staff.

Recycling Clinton appointees is not exactly visionary. Nor is appointing the hawkish HRC as Sec of State.

My latest O criticism: Eric Holder as AG. I’ll write more on this, but essentially Holder is defending Chiquita Brands International in a civil suit brought by the families of murdered banana workers. Chiquita has already admitted to paying Colombia’s rightwing death squads $1.7 million over a seven-year period. And guns. Chiquita admits it gave guns to death squads!

Chiquita says it was extortion. But using violence to control workers is something companies doing business in Colombia do all too frequently. And it’s something Eric Holder gets paid to defend.

From the Wisconsin State Journal:

In the 2004 presidential election, 93 percent of voters in this Near East Side community chose John Kerry, making it the most Democratic ward in Dane County, according to state voting records. Less than 5 percent backed winner George W. Bush.

Willy Street is lovely but it’s important to get out of town regularly. The reporter notes that “living among so many like-minded people can make it harder sometimes to understand the rest of the country.”

He spoke to one resident who said, “I cannot figure out the 51 percent of the population who voted for Bush. Who are these people? Where do they live?”

This was my favorite book as a kid. As I remember it, Flat Stanley gets squashed by a bookcase (hence the name). He ends up sending himself around the world in an envelope. How cool is that?

A teacher in Connecticut asked her students to send a letter with Flat Stanley in the envelope to famous people. A few boys sent Flat Stanley to Barack Obama. Obama was the only one to reply.

Here’s an excerpt from the Hartford Courant:

Obama’s three-page letter . . . described Flat Stanley’s visit with him and his staff in Washington, D.C. It chronicled their busy day together, which included coffee with constituents, a Senate committee meeting and a trip to the gym. It also had historical facts about the U.S. Capitol, details of Obama’s job and a confession from Obama.

“Sometimes I get a little nervous before talking in front of a crowd, but Flat Stanley helped me practice the speech,” Obama wrote. “He made me recite it in front of him and then even gave me some advice so the speech would go smoothly. Flat Stanley is really a great coach.”

I love Flat Stanley, even though the story gave me a fear of bookcases that exists to this day.

Politico reports that Sarah Palin has been on a spending spree since becoming the GOP’s V.P. candidate. She spent, compliments of the RNC, $150,000 on clothes, hair, and make up and other “campaign accessories.” (How much does a red blazer cost anyway?)

What would Joe Six-Pack think of that? Do pro-America shoppers drop $75,000 at Neiman Marcus?

Seems to me that if she were a “real American” she’d shop at Wal-Mart.

Oh, wait, all that stuff comes from China now!

Too bad Project Runway’s Heidi Klum isn’t hosting election night coverage. It would be great to hear Klum say, “auf Wiedersehen, Sarah, you are out.”