>>He was sentenced today to 30 months in prison, and his wife to a year, for pocketing campaign funds. The initial reaction here is that he got off easy. I don't agree. For one thing his political career and his political career are destroyed (deservedly so). And I don't think 2 1/2 years in prison is anything to sneeze at. I wouldn't want to spend 2 1/2 days in prison. Some people think anything less than the death sentence or life in prison is a slap on the wrist. I disagree. I think the sentence is pretty appropriate.
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>Jimmy Dimora, the Dem party boss and city councilman in Cleveland and his side-kick - Frank Russo county auditor - got about 20 years each for a pattern of corruption on Federal RICO charges. Not saying that is appropriate for non-violent crime, but definitely a lot more than 30 months and I believe less money was involved overall.
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>The one big difference I see is that Jimmy even looked like the old Nast cartoons of Boss Tweed and nobody was even mildly shocked he was a crook.
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>Jesse Jackson Jr. (and his father) have disappointed a lot of good people who deserved better of someone they thought they could believe in.

JJ Jr was honoring a longstanding Chicago tradition.

In my corporate days during the late 70's, the company bought a company that had an operation in Chicago.
We tried to run it for about 6 months and closed it because of the high cost of graft.
Graft in NYC is blatant and expensive, but Chicago makes NYC look like the Cub Scouts.