Daley did corruption the right way

Published 6:18 pm Monday, March 16, 2009

To the editor:

I often read the comments about Illinois/Chicago politics in the forum and the various columnists on the editorial page and have come to the conclusion that most of these folks don’t know what they’re spouting off about.

Illinois/Chicago politics is no worse than the Southern “good ole boy” political system where the politicians tend to:

n Forget where they came from once they get a taste of the money and the power and

n Want to hog everything for themselves once the “good ole boy” degree has been conferred upon them.

In my opinion, former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi is a classic example of that type of politics. This man comes from the poorest state in the Union and thinks everybody in the working class has a “Beemer” parked in the driveway. He once commented that he would never vote to raise the national minimum wage because nobody works for that kind of money in the first place. He even retired from the Senate early to become a lobbyist the same year — thus avoiding the new regulation that stipulates a waiting period for retired Congresspersons wanting to do that now.

Many years ago there was a man in Illinois more powerful than the governor and the vice president of the United States. His name was Richard J. Daley Sr., mayor of Chicago.

The reason Daley was so popular and so powerful is because he never forgot that he came from “blue collar,” and when he made a buck, everybody made a buck. The Daley political machine was good for Chicago and its people. I know, I lived it.

Don’t kid yourself. The wheels get greased in politics all the time whether it’s in Illiois, Atlanta or Washington, D.C. The grease is the same; it’s only the methods of application that differ ever so slightly.



Richard A. Shanken

Dalton