I suggested in a comment or two this week that Fitz had a lot more on Blaojevich than the attempted procurement of monies, credit and/or office for the Illinois open Senate Seat.  ABC news got ahold of a cuy named Cooley who used to work for the FBI. He did undercover work in Chicago and his primary job was investigating Chicago bookie operations.


"He told ABC7 that Mr. Blagojevich regularly paid a so-called street tax to Robert "Bobby the Boxer" Abbinanti, a convicted outfit gambling collector. In the early 1980's, Abbinanti was working for convicted West Side mob boss Marco D'amico. Bookies pay street taxes to the crime syndicate in exchange for being allowed to operate such a racket."

I love this. He was working with Bobby the Boxer. Is this how he worked his way through college?  It reminds me of Sean Connery asking Kevin Costner if he really wanted to find the illegal booze during the age of Prohibition..  When he is convinced that Costner is ready, willing and able to proceed, all Connery has to do is walk him across the street.

And Cooley had his stuff on tape. And twenty years later, he is taking a reporter across the street, so to speak, and demonstrated how  Blago should have gone down in the eighties.

"'The biggest problem you have now and reason for what is happening is that the people in power have money and ability to silence the media so it will never be reported and as long as you have that going on, you will never stop it,' "

But the funniest line in the whole article is:

"I predicted five years ago when he ran the first time that he was a hands on person who would be selling every position in the state of Illinois and that it exactly what happened."

Jack Nicholson could be standing right there shrugging his shoulders: Its Chinatown.
 
Now contrast this story with a story that hit the Daily Beast per Time yesterday.  The Italian government went after the Italian Mafioso.

"The operation, which involved more than 1,200 Carabinieri officers, was yet another blow to the upper echelon of Sicily's legendary crime syndicate, following the capture of the top two godfathers over the past two years. Though not household names in Italy like those captured in 2006 and 2007, many of the men arrested Tuesday are veteran mafiosi, including Salvatore Lombardo, the 87-year-old alleged boss of the town of Montelepre. The suspects face charges of extortion, weapons- and drug-trafficking and belonging to an organized-crime outfit."

By the way, this did not even make the top ten crime stories in Time for 2008.
   
The Feds have arrested a guy  who stands accused of stealing ('Misappropriation' is such a sissy term-always the term used for an aristocratic theft) 50 billion dollars and he ADMITTED to it. He is OUT ON BAIL. OJ could not even get out on bail this time.

OJ had been accused of attempting to steel football paraphernalia.  This guy stole more than the gross national product of Italy.


Our own TPM Wire provides a story about our Justice Department and its pursuit of white collar crime. The TPMW takes you directly to Paper Trail for this story.

It appears that..." the FBI's work in pursuing white-collar cases, which include mortgage fraud and various other crimes, has dropped dramatically since 2001. There has been a nearly 82 percent drop in white-collar criminal prosecutions between 2001 and 2007, the Syracuse University-based Transactional Records and Access Clearinghouse found, using Justice Department data. .. Since 2001, there has been a 36 percent drop in the number of agents assigned to white-collar crime, causing the FBI to struggle in investigating mortgage fraud and other white-collar crimes, according to The New York Times. Over approximately the same time period, the issuance of subprime loans grew dramatically."

You cannot convince me that a whole slew of people did not know what Madoff was doing over the last ten years.  There is some lowly FBI agent or SEC official that knows damn well what Madoff and a bunch of people have been doing when 50 billion dollars is at issue.Hell, there are probably hundreds of them.

Look at this again.  1200 police officers went out and arrested 94 mafioso. IN ITALY.

I would like to see 1200 police officers go into Chicago and arrest at least 94 political crooks.

I would like to see 1200 FBI officers go onto Wall Street and arrest 94 Wall Street big wigs.

I would like to see 1200 FBI officers go into Washington DC and arrest 94 bigwigs working for the w's White House.

To sum up.  A lowly FBI agent in Chicago had been DOCUMENTING Blago's felonious conduct twenty years ago.  Blago never stopped acting as a felon between then and now.
Hopefully Fitz has got Sean Connery in the wings and many other lowly officers who will testify as to what is really going on in Chicago and Blago the last 20 years..

To say that the U.S. is short of funds to go after white collar crime when we are talking about hundreds of billions of 'misappropriated funds' is preposterous. The fines alone could fund the health insurance crisis.

The more white collar felons brought in, the more money the DOJ gets.

We need more Sean Connerys and Kevin Costners