Convicted felon and Obama fundraiser Tony Rezko knows that the prosecutors have got the goods on him, so he is now apparently giving them information in exchange for a lighter sentence.

From the AP:

CHICAGO – Convicted political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko has been quietly visiting Chicago’s federal courthouse, setting off speculation that he may be spilling secrets to prosecutors in return for a lenient sentence.
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Prosecutors investigating Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration would plainly like to hear what Rezko knows, and there is plenty of incentive to talk.

“Jail is horrible and Tony Rezko has just two options,” says Jay Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association. “One option is to do nothing and get a full sentence. The other is to cooperate with prosecutors.”

Attorneys with knowledge of the government’s investigation of corruption in state government say they are convinced the one-time key fundraiser for Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Sen. Barack Obama is either talking or about to do so.

(My favorite part is when Jay Stewart says that jail is horrible.)

Alright, so Tony Rezko is going to end up going to jail whether it’s for a long time or a short time. There’s one way he could get out of it, though. If he tells the prosecutors everything that went into his business deals with Obama, perhaps McCain will pardon him.

I’m sure my problem with the bailout is similar to a lot of Americans: I lack the deep financial understanding to really be sure 700 billion dollars will take care of things. Sure I can be educated on the general strategy and idea, but it requires me to trust the word of the same politicians who are getting an extremely large amount of money. Nothing says “you can trust me” like a man wanting money from you.

Emotions get the best of us and its hard to justify a bailout to what literally is “The Man” while small businesses and families are suffering. 3 million college students could have their tuition paid for with this bailout. As a man struggling to pay for academics myself, its pretty tempting to look at this crisis and say, “let them eat it”. A lot of my opposition to the bailout is that our country is infamous for racking up debt, and this seems like another few billion to tack onto the bill. We’ve been able to get away with not paying because of our status as a world power. What if that changes? What if our government becomes just like the banks they are bailing out, racking up charges they really can’t pay? I know this might seem crazy, but maybe we as a people need to be punished for once. Perhaps the hits people will take without government intervention will wake some people up that things aren’t ok, and that they need to change.

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This column was posted to the Indiana Daily Student website Tuesday, September 30th

The Quandtum Theory

My first memorable experience with politics involved Winnie the Pooh and drugs.

Endorsed by the elder Bush and his wife Barbara (who I until recently believed was his grandmother), Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue featured the greats of Saturday morning cartoons such as Garfield, Muppet Babies, Alf and Bugs Bunny as they battled Smoke, the evil avatar of marijuana.

To young Chad, this was politics. The government existed to create cartoons and approve the toys that came in Happy Meals. In my kindergarten class’s mock election, Bush had secured my vote. I still point to this video as the reason I have abstained from the devil weed.

I hope you had a more sensible foray into the wonderful world of bureaucracy. Perhaps Sept. 11 brought foreign policy into your view. Maybe 2004 taught you about the Electoral College. Or it could have been that Ross Perot was your first crush.

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If you’ve ever seen anything creepier in your life, I’d be happy to hear about it.

The Obama Web site claims that Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC was involved in this little project. Not sure that’s something they want to be advertising…

Doesn’t California have laws to protect minors from this sort of abuse? They’ve got a law for everything else. Sheesh.

Peter Schiff was Ron Paul’s top financial adviser during his ill-guided campaign for president. He had been saying for some time that the American economy was in terrible condition due to excess borrowing.

Here he is in 2006 on FOX News arguing his point while the other correspondents mock him:

This column was posted to the Indiana Daily Student website Wednesday, September 24.

The Spin Zone

Thomas Wachtel is a junior majoring in political science and journalism.

As the nation’s economy stands on the brink of collapse – literally, since last week on Good Morning America, Senator Chris Dodd said that leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system” – there is conflict over how best to prevent that collapse.

There seems to be consensus among almost all involved (except, of course, for one presidential candidate) that something must be done. The $700 billion bailout package for the failing financial firms that is currently being deliberated in Congress is generally seen as an acceptable first step. Personally, I hate the idea of the government swooping in to save companies who are in trouble mainly because of bad management and greed, but it appears that if that doesn’t happen, money will cease to exist and we’ll all have to revert to hunting and gathering, so leaving AIG and corporations of its ilk out to dry doesn’t seem like a viable option.
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That’s right, the House of Representatives unexpectedly voted down the $700 billion dollar Wall Street rescue.

Whether that was a smart move or not will be much debated over the next few days (including, hopefully, on this blog – I’m sure I for one will have lots to say if I can keep up with my $#%@ schoolwork), but one thing is for certain: this is truly an amazing development. Over the weekend they managed to clean up a lot of the items in the bill that were problematic for conservatives, and I really thought it would pass today. But the vote still fell largely (although not entirely) along party lines, with the majority of Dems voting for it and the majority of GOPers voting against.
I haven’t been able to find a voter list yet, but as soon as I do I’ll post it so that you know who to blame, or thank, as the case may be.

UPDATES:

As promised, here are the results of the vote.
Other items of interest include Minority Leader Boehner’s aye vote, going against the majority of his fellow Republicans (it will be interesting to see whether he’ll be able to keep his leadership position after this). Our own Baron Hill voted no, as did a few other prominent Democrats, including John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich.  Conservatives voting “yes” included Peter King and Tom Tancredo. One thing is for certain no matter how this all shakes out: people on both sides will have a lot of explaining to do to their constituents.

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In my column about bailing out the poor, I mentioned (rather casually) that the financial crisis was inextricably linked with our perceptions about race. Some commenters thought I was full of it and that I was trying, yet again, to make EVERYTHING about race. Well, I wouldn’t have such an easy time doing this if it weren’t actually true. Particularly, I want to emphasize that a subset of Republicans are attempting to blame African-Americans and Latinos for acting “greedy” and assuming the risk of a sub-prime loan. Case in point- Rep. Michele Bachman recently stated that minorities were the key downfall for the housing market. How so? Well, in 1977, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was signed into law by Pres. Jimmy Carter. The act required financial institutions to provide loans for low-income individuals, so that they too could have a share of the American dream. Now, very conveniently, Republicans are blaming liberals, and those low income folks, for the current economic crisis we’re in. Of course. This has absolutely nothing to do with predatory lending, decreased regulation or a totally incompetent and disastrous administration. Remind me again why Republicans are called the party of personal responsibility.

Michelle Malkin reliably goes one step further- blame those illegal immigrants. Really, is there nothing that this hateful woman cannot connect to brown people? In her characteristic rant, Malkin documents what she terms the “illegal alien home loan racket.” Specifically, she claims that nearly half of the loans to Hispanics were sub-prime loans and that a quarter of these loans are currently in default. Not surpisingly, she’s wrong on both counts. Hispanics actually received 20% of sub-prime loans and in fact, 39% of these loans were taken out by affluent borrowers, those with an annual income at least 120% of their given area’s median income. But, we all know that reality has a well-known liberal bias.

It is really amusing to note the frantic attempts by Republicans to rewrite these last 8 years. And there is a discernible pattern here. Republicans will go so far as to admit that mistakes were made, like in Iraq or the housing crisis. However, they will absolutely NOT take credit for these mistakes. Indeed, these people would rather pin the blame on those ungrateful Iraqis, the liberal media, defeatist Democrats and greedy minorities than own up the fact that conservatism just doesn’t work.

Note: A great response to these ridiculous Republican claims can be found here. Incidentally, one of my former bosses, Robert Litan, is quoted in the article as agreeing with the Republican assessment of the CRA. Sigh.

After John McCain mentioned that he had the bracelet commemorating a fallen soldier in Iraq, Barack Obama said, “I have a bracelet, too. From the mother of Sgt. Ryan David Jopek. Given to me by her mother in Green Bay. And she told me can you make sure that another mother isn’t going through what I’m going through.”

And what else did she tell him?

“She had told me in an email that she had asked, actually asked Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet any more at any of his public appearances.”

(Family Told Obama Not to Wear Soldier Son’s Bracelet)

This mock-trailer was created for a Disney film about the current Vice-Presidential *situation.*  It was created by some very creative people after Matt Damon likened Palin’s candidacy to “a bad Disney movie.”

Well, we now have our bad Disney movie and the scariest part of the trailer was that, at its end, I was thoroughly excited to see the entire film!  The idea of her holding office is that ridiculous!!!