Blagojevich: 'I Want to Make Money'

Maybe you should have made up some mushy memoirs of your father. Oh, and a better haircut would have worked wonders.

Now you're just a punchline on the road to oblivion.

Rod Blagojevich is the third-highest-paid governor in the country, but you wouldn't know it from conversations recorded by federal authorities.

He is heard on six weeks of recordings saying he is "struggling" financially, even though he makes $177,412 a year and his household income has averaged $344,000 annually for the past five years. He allegedly says he feels he is "stuck" as governor and imagines making as much as $300,000 as the head of a group pushing organized labor's agenda or a not-for-profit organization.

If he could land his wife a seat on one or more corporate boards and she "picks up another $150 grand or whatever," according to the recordings, it would help him "get through" his remaining two years as governor.

Federal authorities arrested Blagojevich on Tuesday on charges that include allegedly scheming to sell an appointment to the U.S. Senate for anything from an ambassadorship to a corporate-board post for his wife.

"I want to make money," Blagojevich is quoted by authorities as saying on a federal wiretap recording, discussing whether President-elect Barack Obama would name him to a Cabinet post in exchange for who he thought was Obama's choice to take his Senate seat.

He also allegedly considered taking the Senate job himself because he would "be able to obtain greater resources if he is indicted as a sitting senator as opposed to a sitting governor," according to the government's complaint.

The comments depart from the happy-go-lucky image Blagojevich cultivated, of the fun-loving Elvis maniac who quotes obscure literary and historical figures and could often be seen jogging during the workday in his Chicago neighborhood or downtown Springfield.

Except for the fact by most accounts he was rarely seen in Springfield.

After Tuesday's court proceedings, Blagojevich returned to his modest brown house on Chicago's North Side. For much of his tenure as governor, he has spent more time in Chicago than in Springfield, the state capital. Blagojevich has thus far refused to resign, and he still holds the power to fill Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat. But it's doubtful any credible candidate would accept a nomination that came from his hand. To try to circumvent the scandal, there is some talk of the lieutenant governor, Pat Quinn, appointing Obama's successor.

Despite the calls for his resignation — from Obama, among others — and a move in the state legislature to start impeachment proceedings, observers don't expect a quick resolution to the scandal. "These calls for Blagojevich to resign, they're very sensible, but you can't force someone to do so," says Dick Simpson, a former Chicago alderman who now heads the political-science department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Impeachment hearings would take a long time — months — and the call for a special election needs his signature, which the legislature would then have to override his veto. It's not a quick process." And given his pugnacious history, the governor could fight until the bitter end.

Obama, meanwhile, still pretends he had no knowledge what his good friend was up to.

President-elect Barack Obama sought on Thursday to separate himself from the political scandal swirling around Governor Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, saying he never talked to the governor about who would replace Mr. Obama in the United States Senate.

Sure.

Barack Obama insists that he and his staff were not involved in the alleged schemes Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich cooked up to sell off the president-elect's vacant Senate seat.

But the timeline of activity outlined in the FBI's 76-page complaint against Blagojevich suggests Obama's team was aware that his home-state governor was playing political hardball in the weeks before his arrest.

That's because shortly after Blagojevich allegedly told his advisers, in an expletive-laced conference call, that he would not appoint Obama's pick to the Senate absent huge favors in return, Obama's apparent pick promptly dropped out of the running for the Senate and joined the new White House staff.

"Reading between the lines ... clearly somebody from (Obama's) operation did have a conversation with Blagojevich," Democratic strategist Bob Beckel told FOX News. He added that Obama's representative evidently wasn't trying to cut a deal since Blagojevich indicated he was "getting nothing out of the Obama people."

FOX News has confirmed that Valerie Jarrett, a senior Obama adviser, is the individual identified in the Blagojevich affidavit as Senate Candidate 1.

Maybe everyone ought to start lawyering up here. The people deserve to know the truth. Nobody has yet to explain why we have four separate accounts of Obama meeting with Blagojevich in the past month. Countless numbers of reporters covering politics in Washington and Chicago and nobody is curious why reported accounts of these meetings just disappear.

Meanwhile, chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel uses his children as a shield to avoid answering questions. Classy.

A Sun-Times reporter pressed him to comment about whether he was the emissary named in the criminal complaint.

“You’re wasting your time,” Emanuel said. “I’m not going to say a word to you. I’m going to do this with my children. Dont do that. I’m a father. I have two kids. I’m not going to do it.”

Asked, “Can’t you do both?” Emanuel replied, “I’m not as capable as you. I’m going to be a father. I’m allowed to be a father,” and he pushed the reporter’s digital recorder away.

What a coward.