CHICAGO (AP) – Rod Blagojevich, the ousted Illinois governor whose three-year battle against criminal charges became a national spectacle, was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday, one of the stiffest penalties imposed for corruption in a state with a history of crooked politics.

Blagojevich’s 18 convictions included allegations of trying to leverage his power to appoint someone to President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat to raise campaign cash or land a high-paying job.

“When it is the governor who goes bad the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily repaired,” Judge James Zagel said.

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It took more than two years and two trials, but disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was finally brought to justice on Monday, June 27. He becomes the state’s fourth governor, and one of at least 79 Illinois public officials, to be found guilty of a crime since 1972, proving that Illinois has certainly lived up to its reputation as a cesspool of corruption.

According to CNN:

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was convicted…on 17 of the 20 public corruption charges against him related to his attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat held by Barack Obama before he resigned to become president.

The 11 women and one man reached the verdicts on their 10th day of deliberation in the trial, which began April 20. As the verdicts were read, Blagojevich turned to look back at his wife, Patti, who dropped into her seat. None of the jurors would look at the defendant as the verdicts were being read.

Technically, Blagojevich could spend the rest of his years in prison due to the compounding charges. However, legal experts believe he’ll serve six-to-ten.

Blagojevich is a colorful character — and a TV star, owing to his appearance on Donald Trump’s program “Celebrity Apprentice.” And he certainly captured an enormous amount of public attention. But lost in all of the pomp and circumstance of his two very public trials is the potentially criminal role that high ranking officials inside the Obama administration — perhaps even the president himself — played in this corrupt scheme.

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Federal prosecutors are taking their second shot at former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who is facing 20 criminal charges, including one count of attempting to “sell” former President Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder.

The first time around, prosecutors short-changed their own case by refusing to call key witnesses to the stand, including former Obama chief of staff (and current Chicago mayor) Rahm “Rahmbo” Emanuel and Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. Blago, for his part, never took the stand. As a result, the jury deadlocked on all but one count—lying to the FBI. This time around, however, all three have been on the stand and under oath.

The prosecution has rested its case and Blago has testified in his defense. He was described as “combative and argumentative” during cross-examination by prosecutors. Now a jury will decide the fate of former Governor Blagojevich.

Judicial Watch’s blogger Irene Garcia has been on the ground in Chicago covering the Blago re-trial. Irene’s experience includes 13 years as a reporter at the Los Angeles Times. So Judicial Watch has a great onsite resource, reporting details that the other media will gloss over during this important Chicago/Illinois/Obama corruption trial. Here are some especially exciting excerpts from her detailed reports. (Click here to read them in their entirety):

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There is an old saying in politics: “What’s old is new.” And with a presidential election around the corner, some of Obama’s sordid connections are now back in the news and being investigated with renewed fervor.

Of course, if you’ve been following the news, you know billionaire businessman and star of the show Celebrity Apprentice, Donald Trump, has been banging the drums the loudest on some of these issues. The press has focused heavily on his criticism of Obama on the subject of his birth certificate, an issue first raised by supporters of Hillary Clinton that continues to dog the president. But there were other comments by Trump last week that caught my attention, specifically Obama’s ties to Antoin “Tony” Rezko and William Ayers.

As Newsmax reported, Trump suggested the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s book “Dreams of My Father.” (Though the terrorist may have been joking, Ayers actually said the same thing in a speech at Montclair State University last month.) Judicial Watch has highlighted Obama’s ties to radicals such as Ayers, race-baiter “Reverend” Jeremiah Wright and convicted felon Rezko. But the Big Media (and too many Republicans) seems uninterested that Obama was a close ally and funder of an unrepentant terrorist or entered into a shady real estate deal with Rezko, who everyone knew at the time to be under criminal investigation. So it is good that Trump highlighted the corruption issue that is so important to Judicial Watch and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who support our cause: “So you got Reverend Wright, you got Bill Ayers, you got Tony Rezko. He drops these guys, and the press leaves him alone,” Trump told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity.

While Trump may be just now coming to some new revelations regarding Obama’s suspect ties, Judicial Watch has been investigating them for years. In fact, we put boots on the ground in Chicago to get to the truth in the matter. Now that these characters are back in the news, I think it’s a good idea to review some of what we’ve already uncovered:

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Here’s what Fox local news in Chicago reports:

Jurors who have been interviewed so far will not identify the juror, other than to say the juror was a female.

FOX Chicago News reported that speculation is centering on juror Jo Ann Chiakulas of Willowbrook, after a second-hand acquaintance said that she has been saying for weeks that she would find Blagojevich not guilty.

Chiakulas is a retired director from the Illinois Department of Public Health.

Contacted Tuesday night, she told FOX Chicago News she would call on Wednesday if she wished to talk about the case.

On one count at least, Chiakulas voted with her fellow jurors, agreeing to convict Blagojevich of lying to federal agents.

This was since confirmed by CBS local news Chicago.

They actually could have reported more — because pre-trial, they had this to say about a female “retired public health director” on the jury panel:

Juror # 106, a black female believed to be in her 60s, is a retired state public health director who has ties to the Chicago Urban League. She has handed out campaign literature for a relative who ran for public office. She listens to National Public Radio and liberal talk radio shows.

Media accounts mention the campaign literature, but they don’t mention NPR and liberal talk radio. Why?

We know they read this description — why do they end their repetition of it at that point?

The media is quick to stereotype conservative-tilting Americans and attribute to them bad motives.

Think they’ll do the same here?

What were her motives for so egregiously ignoring the law to set a guilty man free that her fellow jurors had to confront her with her own oath to render a true verdict? (more…)

For months, we have been told that ShoreBank deserves a bailout because it serves poor communities. We have been assured by ShoreBank’s patrons, such as Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), that allowing the federal government to take over the bank will put borrowers in those communities at risk.

Now, as the truth has begun to emerge, it is becoming clear that ShoreBank’s troubles did not begin in poor communities at all.

Robin Sidel of the Wall Street Journal reports that ShoreBank’s financial problems may partly stem from loans made to condominium developers and builders in parts of town beyond its traditional focus on the city’s South Side.

If ShoreBank deserves help because it is the “iconic community development bank,” as Schakowsky recently claimed, what was it doing lending money to condo kings, and why should taxpayers bail it out?

If the ShoreBank is taken over, Schakowsky claims, “the losers will be these low-income communities and the businesses and the homeowners that they serve.”

That was never true.
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As a 2010 Census watchdog, I am extremely disturbed to learn that a man so deeply involved in the Blagojevich/Obama-Senate-seat-for-sale scandal is now employed in an upper level management position by the Census Bureau in Chicago.

Even if the man, Joseph Aramanda, has not been convicted (yet) of  a crime, his reputation for being involved in illegal activities seriously undermines the credibility of Census Bureau operations in Chicago. In a city with corruptionlinked to 2010 Census advertising, the public should not have to worry that upper management positions are being filled by individuals who are directly tied to government corruption and fraud.

Furthermore, Joseph Aramanda’s experiences as a pizza franchise owner (his job prior to the Census Bureau gig) don’t qualify him to be in charge of 1,000+ employees.

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The infamous Tammany Hall boss George Washington Plunkitt distinguished between “honest graft” and “dishonest graft.” Dishonest graft, he said, meant actual theft from the treasury, or shaking down criminals for bribes. Honest graft, on the other hand, simply meant taking advantage of private deals that arose in the course of public office. “I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em,” he said.

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich starts his federal trial today. And the Illinois Democrats who clung to his coattails for years are desperate to pretend they don’t know him. Back in 2003, Rep. Jan Schakowsky proclaimed of Blago: “He really is very smart. I don’t laugh at the idea [of his running for President] at all.” She added that when he walked into a room, “there was this crackle of electricity. Everyone wanted to touch him.”

That electricity prompted Rep. Schakowsky to donate $28,000 to Blago’s campaigns for governor. Her husband, convicted felon and political strategist Robert Creamer, made $541,000 helping Blago get elected in 2002. She lobbied him heavily in November 2008 in the hope that he would appoint her to fill the Senate seat being vacated by Barack Obama, and is thought to be “Senate Candidate 3” in the original criminal complaint.

Now she is trying to laugh it off, nervously telling the Politico that the trial will be a “soap opera.”  She and other Illinois Democrats are trying to pretend that even though Blago’s alleged crimes involved prominent figures in federal, state, and local government, he was a lone wolf. But they are nervous, because the connections are there. (Is it just a coincidence that President Obama chose last weekend, of all others, to visit Chicago?)

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ShoreBank’s connections to the White House and Capitol Hill, as well as to the green jobs movement, have been documented here at BigGovernment.com. Yesterday, Angela Caputo of Chicago Now revealed that the “community development” bank became a predatory lender in African-American and Hispanic communities when it ran short of cash.

New video evidence (after the jump) reveals that Rep. Jan Schakowsky promoted ShoreBank to consumers in January 2010, even as she was trying to get taxpayers to bail it out.

And the recent mob protests of the SEIU, also exposed at BigGovernment.com, illuminate another aspect of the scandal: the use of intimidation and even illegal tactics to force Americans to comply with the corrupt self-dealing of the Obama administration–before it even took office.

SEIU rallies workers at illegal Republic Windows strike, Dec. 2008

ShoreBank is about to receive $75 million in federal taxpayers’ money for a bailout that has become the prime example of “crony socialism” under the Obama administration. It is not the first federal money ShoreBank has received. In May 2009, it was awarded $35 million in stimulus credits for “green projects” in Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland. The grant was part of Van Jones’s “green jobs” push, with a focus on home weatherization.

President Barack Obama was so enthusiastic about weatherization that he made it the centerpiece of his jobs program, prompting a nonplussed Jon Stewart to comment on the Daily Show: “These ideas sound like the people we got tired of.” President Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden praised one company in particular, Serious Materials, which was the only “green” window company to receive tax credits in the stimulus bill.

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If you ask people on the street (outside of Chicago) if they have ever heard of ShoreBank, the answer would likely be “no.” While ShoreBank isn’t a Goldman Sachs, a Bank of America, or a JP Morgan, to the Progressives, this “little” bank is in many ways every bit as big and important as the aforementioned “large banks.”

Why?

One of the core components of President Obama’s fundamental change for America is to create clean energy jobs, also known as “green jobs”.  During his campaign and as recently as his State of the Union Address, President Obama continues to talk about the need “green” jobs. In fact, during his State of the Union 2010 speech, the President stated, “We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities –  and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient, which supports clean energy jobs. “

In a speech given by the President in Virginia on Dec. 15, 2009, he said, “The simple act of retrofitting these buildings to make them more energy-efficient — installing new windows and doors, insulation, roofing, sealing leaks, modernizing heating and cooling equipment — is one of the fastest, easiest and cheapest things we can do to put Americans back to work while saving families money and reducing harmful emissions.”

In the  stimulus package last year, President Obama devoted nearly $60 billion of his plan for building a new green-based economy.

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The current state of the economy has placed a large burden on private business, especially on small businesses and the self-employed. Subscribing to a Keynesian tenet of financing debt and increasing government spending to boost output, lawmakers are repeatedly giving themselves cover for splurging.  After the first bailouts came the massive $787 billion stimulus bill, an urgent remedy that Congress and the White House insisted was all about “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.”

And as spending has increased, so has the size of the public employment sector. Meanwhile, the private sector will soon be close to earning a coveted placement on the endangered species list.

As the union leaders’ plundering of the private sector has continued, this doesn’t mean that they have abandoned unionizing private sector workers altogether.  In fact, while the number of private sector jobs overall is down, the number of unionized private sector jobs is trending upward, right alongside the public sector growth.

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On August 31, I headed to the health care town hall meeting of my congressional representative, Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). I suspected that she planned to stack the meeting with paid organizers, after she vowed on Real Time with Bill Maher to bring “millions” of people into the streets to support the so-called “public option.” So I brought a video camera.

A friend and I took turns filming protesters on both sides of the issue. We caught an organizer from the group Health Care for America Now (HCAN) instructing followers to block dissenting views: “So if they stand up and start asking questions, and you’re in that area, simply stand up, and start chanting… ‘Health care now! Health care now!’”

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Lawmakers in New York and Illinois were quick to recognize that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s trial offered a new opportunity to secure billions of additional taxpayer funds.

Both states are reeling from the combined effect of economic slowdown and years of profligate spending on government, grown far beyond what the tax base will support.   Thanks to President Obama’s decision to transfer terrorists from GITMO to U.S. soil, both states, and the city of New York, are going to be paid almost $3 billion dollars to secure, transport, administer, house, and contend with the requirements associated with having these terrorists in the United States.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the four other terrorists and all Americans associated with the trial, will require rigorous, differentiated security measures: twenty-four hour a day surveillance, transportation, housing and judicial security.  Certainly, New York will be required to raise its threat level to better prepare and respond to the new threat of  sympathetic  jihadists using the trial, as a showpiece of their own, to make a violent, retaliatory public statement.

Federal security and law enforcement agencies, such as DHS, FBI and US Marshals  will be working round the clock to provide the appropriate security, but will be unable to do all of the work required. New York, state and city, law enforcement officers will be required to share the burden, and will expect compensation from the federal government to provide this level of support.  Heavily-unionized, public employees in both states, are about to receive the most coveted of all Labor Union prizes, unlimited overtime that extends for years.

Bringing KSM to trial will be hugely expensive and will essentially represent a federalization of much of the New York state and city law enforcement and public services for the 5+ years that the trial process is likely to run.

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