•August 12, 2020•
By Jim Nowlan

The recent admission by behemoth electric utility Commonwealth Edison that it repeatedly bribed minions of Illinois House speaker Mike Madigan for years (of course, Madigan knew nothing about all this; sure, right) was breath-taking for its brazenness.
The bribery is a classic example of otherwise upright citizens fueling the culture of corruption that has tainted our state since at least the late 19th Century.
This is known as “the Illinois Way” of doing political business, that is, paying off the political gatekeepers to get your way with legislation and other needed favors. In this case, ComEd agreed to pay $200 million of company money to the federal government, presumably to keep the prosecutors from going after the individual company executives who perpetrated the bribery. Ironically, this is yet another payoff, to my mind.
A quick look at my archives (jimnowlan.com) shows that I have written about our culture of corruption a dozen times since 2010. What do I mean by that? Not that all of us are corrupt, but that too many of us would take advantage of government if given the opportunity, say, to get a DUI fixed or grease the skids to win a state contract. And we might expect our big campaign contribution would take us to the front of the line when we need something from government.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.