Now and then I read something I really like in the Wed. Journal of OP&RF, like John Hubbuch’s recent tips for candidates — “Tell [people] what they want to hear, and you will get their endorsement. . . . Try hard for the newspapers’ endorsements. Even if you’re not strong, they’ll usually feel compelled to endorse at least a couple of lame candidacies, to demonstrate their independence. . . .” Etc. Rich stuff.

Another I liked was “They whom the feds would control, they first give money,” which I read (over and over) in my last column. Like the big insurance company — a “blood_sucking monstrosity,” the NY Times lady called it (yeah!) — given billions to save the system, paying millions in bonuses. Big O. got mad at that, as if he hadn’t known about it for weeks or months. The up side was that it offered him a capitalistic whipping boy for a few days, his very own malefactors of great wealth.

Young Cuomo fulminated also, waving a New York subpoena, demanding names. Ditto the eminent banking expert Barney Frank of the great state of Massachusetts. Chilling stuff actually — creeping fascism, socialism, and/or politicians doing what comes naturally, moving into the market place, which most of them know little or nothing about, having worked little or not at all for anything that lived or died on its profits.

Take Danny Davis, our congressman, whose resume lists government and other not-for-profit work, period. As our man in D.C., that jumbo ATM for the nation, he has money to burn — millions this year alone, for which he has laid out $3,935,000 on his own and $37,884,000 more in collusion with other Illinois Congress members. He requested and got the government to spend that much in FY 2008. Small parts of the $410 billion spending bill, yes, but as Sen. Everett Dirksen probably never said, “A million here and a million there, and pretty soon you’re talkin’ real money.”

Where else can a guy like Davis, who never worked at a for_profit job, get that kind of money to spread around? He’s lived off public or other non-profit money his whole professional life. Pulling down federal bucks for constituents when no one’s looking? So what? Earmarks, shmearmarks. It’s what you do.

Three major 7th-district institutions are grateful for the largesse — U. of Illinois ($1.2 million), Roosevelt U. ($689,000), and Loyola U. Health Systems ($383,000). Davis brought home the bacon for them. A few years ago, he did it for Oak Park and later stood in village hall at a town meeting, basking in the glory of the $400,000 he had procured to study capping the Eisenhower. Citizens were grateful.

John Hubbuch said, “Tell [people] what they want to hear, and you will get their endorsement.” And get them bucks from Washington.