Don't get me wrong - I pray he stays healthy and stubborn. Speaker Hastert clinging to his gavel until it is pried from his cold and politically dead fingers is a priceless and precious gift to the Democrats. I hope he hangs around like a fart in a phone booth until November 7.
Hastert has other problems, however, and in the current issue of the New Republic, Norman Ornstein and Scott Lilly dissect the land bonanza that increased the speakers personal wealth by a factor of twenty after he slid an earmark into the highway bill.
I am no Norman Ornstein, but lets try to follow the bouncing graft anyway.
In August 2002, the speaker entered into a real estate contract that involved land in rural Kendall County Illinois. He purchased 17 acres of improved land (house barn and swimming pool) for $1.2 million. At that time, the Speaker had a net worth of about $300,000. That would have been all the debt you or I would have been allowed to accrue, but we are not Denny Hastert. The speaker immediately entered into another, separate contract to purchase 179 acres of undeveloped farm land for $5,200 per acre.These land purchases did not start out problematic - even though they overextended him financially, on paper at least. But in early 2004, he entered into a land consortium with some local Chicago area Republican politicos. This land trust then purchased an additional 69 acres of land that abutted to the two fields that comprised the inaccessible section of Hastert's land.
And this is where the odor starts to rise. Hastert's partners paid $15,000 per acre for the additional 69 acres, deemed more valuable because this parcel of land had road access. Hastert and his partners then joined his land with the newly acquired plot, and valued his land at $15,000 per acre. He retained 62% ownership of the inflated land.
Now the stench triggers the gag reflex. The Highway Bill of 1998 was expiring, and a new one was working it's way through the congress. And Hastert slipped an earmark into the bill for the Prairie Parkway Corridor, because as anyone who has been to Chicago knows, the city is practically inaccessible from the western suburbs...
This land bonanza has been covered thoroughly in the Chicago press, but has received scant attention in the national media - until now. But Haster's opponent in the congressional race, and the man is a fighting Dem at that, has not been shy about calling out the Speaker. And the people of the district are more enraged about the use of his position to enhance his personal bottom line than they are about the constantly percolating sex scandal.
It is entirely possible that his stubborn and unyielding stand may actually cost the entrenched and powerful Speaker re-election.
And that is a head to mount on the wall.
