Illinois politics: Bullshit walks, money talks.

To my non-Illinois brethren I apologize for I am about to bore you with inane prattle on Illinois politics. For my Illinois neighbors I also must apologize for I am about to bore you with inane prattle on Illinois politics. But I have a question for the flat-landers out there: Did you vote for Scott Cohen for Lt. Governor?

Quick current events lesson for the un-informed. Cohen, a pawn-broker and admitted illegal steroids user who once held a knife to his prostitute girlfriends neck and also attempted to force his ex-wife to have sex with him, the same ex-wife mind you that he withheld more than $50,000 in child support from while dumping $2,000,000 on his own campaign, was the democratic nominee for Lt. Governor. Not a very virtuous guy it would seem. And although I blame the voters for not seeing through the thin veil he pulled over our eyes, it is the system that elected him.

Sure, go ahead and also blame Chicago Aldermen Dick Mell, Bernie Stone and Robert Maldanado. They actually endorsed this guy, proving that your average Chicago politician is just as clueless as the average voter. But not me, I blame the process itself. He won because he bought the election with a slick campaign ad that hit the voters where it counts the most. In their hearts and wallets. He easily outspent his opponents, all of which were unable to match his glitzy ads on the airwaves that promoted him as a job creator. In the ad, person after person tell us that they were voting for Scott Lee Cohen because he found them a job. True or not, people heard it loud and clear and voted for him on election day.

Rewind to about 3 weeks before the election (I think). He spilled his history to Sun Times columnist Mark Brown to no avail. He was a nobody and people didn't care. Then he opened up his wallet and the rest is history. If there were strict campaign financing laws, this couldn't have happened. Make everyone play by the same rules and you will get a more balanced outcome. Allow millionaires and special interest groups to finance a campaign and you get what you deserve.

Now had this occurred a few years ago, it's possible that the furor would have never been so loud. The "Pre-Blagojevich" office of Lt. Governor was a non-entity. Now that we see that the office is a heartbeat away from leading our scandal plagued state, it has become a priority to get the right guy into the job. But the bottom line is that the election process is flawed. The incumbents don't want to fix it because, well, they are incumbents. The neophyte politicians can't fix it because they are invisible to the voters being broke and all. And the voters can't fix it because they are lemmings looking for a cliff, allowing their vote to be bought.