The Chicagoization of America

By Douglas Kohn
Kohn@Fordham.edu

Corruption and greed are every bit as real in the Obama Administration as it has been in every other administration. Obama- Mr. Squeaky Clean- has appointed no less than 17 lobbyists to his government. So much for Obama being allergic to lobbyists.

All this stems from where he learned politics. America’s great cosmopolitan cities are exciting and productive places to live and work in, but one should not want to be a politician in them. Chicago and New York both have the most dysfunctional political systems in the country, dominated by Democratic Party machines with no significant opposition.

Machine politics is nothing new to America but it has bred relatively few presidents. New York and Chicago are constantly riddled by unrelenting political scandal as evidenced by Eliot Spitzer, Rod Blagojevich, the Richard Daley machine, the David Dinkins fiasco with a list of others ranging back to the days of Tammany Hall.

The politics of neither of these cities or the states they are in are something we should like to see on a national scale. But it would seem that the Democratic Party, led by the Chicago machine of Barack Obama and his hatchet man Rahm Emmanuel are intent on turning American politics into Chicago politics.

Rahm Emmanuel has been granted permission by President Obama to take on direct oversight of the Census Bureau. This is a travesty and has not been given nearly the attention by the American media it should have been. A backgrounder follows.

The Census Bureau is a division of the United States Department of Commerce. After Governor Bill Richardson was taken down in a corruption scandal of his own, he withdrew from the offer of being Secretary of Commerce. President Obama then offered the job to a Republican senator from New Hampshire, Judd Gregg. Gregg accepted on the condition that the Democratic governor of New Hampshire appoint a Republican to replace him on his seat. Rahm Emmanuel was then given control of the Census Bureau.

The Bush Administration had been criticized for its ill fated attempt to create permanent conservative leaning government. Now it seems Rahm Emmanuel, architect of the Democratic victory in 2006, is bent on doing the same for his party. The Census Bureau is responsible for assigning electoral weight to each district and each state. Every ten years, a census is taken and based on shifts in populations, states and districts gain or lose electoral votes. Having a rabid partisan such as Emmanuel in control bodes ill for American Democracy. Combined with the possibility of giving illegal aliens permanent resident status, it seems that if the Democrats do not usher in a period of permanent control they will be ushering in a period of prolonged control.

The last real bastion of Conservative resistance is on the radio. Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage are continuing their fiery rhetoric trying to save American nationalism. Nancy Pelosi is going to try to impose her fairness doctrine on the American media. Sound like freedom? That’s because it is not. The Democrats are going to roll back freedom in this country to an extent we have not seen since the Civil War. Do not write it off thinking they cannot do it, it has been done before.

Remember 2004? The Bush Administration was feeling righteous over the ‘wardrobe malfunction’ of Janet Jackson in the Superbowl. Who did they take it out on? Talk radio. Howard Stern was brought under new pressure by the FCC’s Michael Powell. They began to put the clamp on his show because of ‘decency’ issues. Meanwhile, Howard Stern’s most important staffer, Robin Quivers, is a black woman who voted for George Bush in 2000. Howard does not usually take up politics on his show but has consistently been libertarian and right leaning. He was a proponent of the Iraq War. He regularly talks of his respect and admiration for Ronald Reagan. He supported Giuliani and then John McCain.

What is happening now is scarier, as the Obama Administration begins to talk in earnest about the “fairness” doctrine. What is the need for fairness? There is mostly liberal media with Conservatives on talk radio. What happened to freedom? Why fairness? This is more terrifying because this is a liberal assault on talk radio for their political views and ideas, not some notion of decency. The Bush Administration began it by hurting one of their supporters, but the Democrats are going to destroy freedom of speech in this country.