The push to impeach Blago is silly

The Rascal hasn't exactly been shy about expressing his dislike of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, as evidenced here and here and here. But let's not be ridiculous.

The nascent movement to impeach Blagojevich, which even has its own Web site, is jumping the gun, to put it mildly. The grounds for impeachment specified on the site amount to nothing more than relatively petty political grievances. There isn't an alleged crime or misdemeanor in the bunch.

The impeachment petition accuses Blago of showing "disrespect for the people of Illinois in misusing tax dollars." That's hardly an unprecedented offense. As I see it, we've never had a governor who didn't misuse tax dollars. Besides, the term "misuse" is subjective. If it amounts to illegality, we've got ways of dealing with that. But the petition makes no such charge.

The petition says Blago "has shown blatant disregard for members of the Legislative branch and their staffs." Well, I'm sorry, but I can't get too worked up about that. A lot of the jugheads in the Legislature deserved to be disregarded. Their staffs, too.

The lamest of the petition's allegations is that the governor hasn't kept "his vow to perform his Executive officer duties with all diligence and seriousness." Come on. That's pretty vague stuff. So, he doesn't work too hard. Is that an impeachable offense? And what is meant by "seriousness"?

Look, the people pushing for impeachment of Blagojevich without evidence of serious wrongdoing -- you know, something at least bordering on the criminal -- are only showing themselves to be politically naive.

Yes, I recognize that federal investigators have been looking into the hiring practices of the Blagojevich administration and perhaps also into a few other matters that might involve the governor or his people. But nothing has yet surfaced that justifies impeachment proceedings.

I can understand people's frustrations with Blago. I've expressed some of my own. But we can't run around impeaching every politician who somehow displeases us. That's no way to run a state government.

Thank God we don't have available to us the recall process they have in California.

This is ridiculous!

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose shortcomings were lamented yesterday in the post just below this one, has now distinguished himself as grossly undemocratic.

Yes, his veto of legislation that would have speeded up collection of a higher sales tax to pay for Rockford road repairs only delays the process by six months. But his stated rationale presumes to substitute his judgement for that of the local electorate.

In an April referendum, Rockford voters approved the sales-tax increase in question by a landslide margin. But Blago, in defiance of the overwhelming will of the voters, said this today:

"Sales taxes are regressive and disproportionately impact consumers regardless of ability to pay. There are other methods of revenue enhancement that provide for the same worthwhile objective of infrastructure investment that are not regressive."

But, Governor, the voters said they wanted the sales-tax hike for that infrastructure investment. They're the ones (along with visitors to the city who make certain purchases here and avail themselves of said infrastructure) who will be paying those higher sales taxes. Who the hell are you to say they made the wrong choice? Nobody elected you to make such decisions on local taxation.

What an arrogant man!

POSTSCRIPT: Let's not have it said that Blago's veto was justifiable on grounds that the referendum allowed only for the tax hike to take effect in January. The governor's statement in favor of the veto had nothing to do with the timing. Rather, he said he's just flatly against a sales-tax for infrastructure improvements, no matter that voters took the opposite view.

Moreover, the local electorate's representatives in the General Assembly pushed the legislation that would have moved up the effective date of the tax increase, and they persuaded a majority of their colleagues to vote for it.

Blago was way out of line on this one.

George Ryan, come back! All is forgiven!

We're stuck with this other guy for another three-and-a-half years, right?

Where's Judy Barr Topinka? Is it too late for a recount?

Hey, maybe Obama will appoint this guy ambassador to some island nation nobody's ever heard of. But, Jeez, it'll be another 19 months before Obama's in the White House. That's a long time to endure Blago, who's only getting worse by the day.

Is there an Elvis angle available? The guy's an Elvis nut. How about offering him a permanent gig at some lounge in Vegas?

Come on, people. Help me here.

Blago is a boob

It's stuff like this that sours me on Rod Blagojevich.

No, wait. There are countless reasons of far greater import that sour me on this guy. He's lucky that the Illinois Republican Party is such a joke.

I read once that Blagojevich has presidential ambitions. Can you imagine? He's got about as much chance of realizing that kind of dream as The Rascal does (and I'm just glad that my citizenship hasn't been revoked by unanimous vote of the national populace).