Junior’s Light Sentence Proves He’s Not Very Important

I’m sure Jesse Jackson Jr. was happy to get off with only two-and-a-half years in prison for looting his campaign fund of $750,000. It’s a pretty light sentence for stealing so much money.

But maybe Junior should have been insulted.

He didn’t get a lot of time because, frankly, he’s not very important. He’s a mere congressman, from the minority party, not part of the leadership. Not the kind of guy a U.S. Attorney can make his name prosecuting.

As the list below shows, the higher the office, the longer the sentence. Rod Blagojevich, a governor, got 14 years for stealing nothing. At the bottom of the list are jamoke aldermen, such as the 26th Ward’s Stanley Zydlo, who was convicted of bribery -- offering a bribe.

“No alderman had less clout,” Mike Royko wrote of Zydlo in 1983, in a column on which ethnic group could boast the most convicted aldermen. “To show how little, he is still the only alderman convicted of giving a bribe instead of taking it. He dropped $1,000 to make sure his nephew and son-in-law would pass their fire department physicals. The other aldermen were embarrassed for him.”

The judge embarrassed Zydlo, too, by giving him only six months.

Rod Blagojevich, governor, 14 years