Thursday, January 29, 2015

Preet! Preet! Preet!


“We simply want people in high office to stop violating the law...People elected to make laws should not be breaking them.”






Phew, Lots of goings on in state politics New York in the last week. Last Friday, the citizens of my fair state woke to photos splashed all over the papers of Sheldon Silver, venerable and all-powerful Speaker of the Assembly, being led away in handcuffs. Thanks to the investigation headed by the US Attorney of the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara who took up the gauntlet when it was abuptly dropped by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mr. Silver has been charged with five counts of crimes against of the citizens of New York including allegedly "us[ing] the power and influence of his official position to obtain for himself millions of dollars masked as legitimate income earned...as a private lawyer" and "knowingly did combine, conspire, confederate...to willfully and knowingly obstruct, delay, and affect in any way and degree commerce...by extortion..."

In his press conference after the Silver arrest, Bharara ended with this:
"These charges in our view go to the very core of what ails Albany: lack of transparency, lack of accountability, and lack of principle — joined with overabundance of greed, cronyism, and self-dealing. But we will keep at it. As our unfinished fight against public corruption continues, you should stay tuned."
Silver was elected to the state assembly to represent lower Manhattan in 1977 and proceeded to gain more and more power and influence culminating in his appointment as Speaker of the Assembly in 1994 and a position he has held for 20 years until this week. Mr. Silver has spent his time in the Assembly gaining more and more power until he is now the most influencial Democrat in the state of New York. He has also spent his time making himself a very wealthy man. While serving as our esteemed Speaker, he has also been on the payroll of one the most influential and powerful plaintiff products liablility law firms in the state. Though he diligently reported some of the millions he was paid by this firm on his mandated yearly disclosure forms, he refused to answer questions as to what he did to earn his millions claiming that it would compromise his "client/attorney" privilege to divulge that information. This is important in that a simple docket search yielded only one case in which Mr. Silver was listed as the attorney of record. Oh, and this is kind of important too - he has spent much time blocking any kind of tort reform legislation in the state.


As I have written about before, we have a problem with "ethics" in our state legislature. So much of a problem that 22 elected officials have been indicted, tried, and jailed in the last 10 years and a Governor who was forced to resigned because of his taste for transporting prostitutes across state line for the purpose of...well, I don't really have to spell it out, do I? This is where Governor Cuomo's problems enter in. When Cuomo was elected as our governor, he promised to clean up Albany. It took him a while, but in early 2014, Cuomo invoked his governorly duties by appointing a commission of hand-picked members to investigate the ethics and corruption in our state government. The Moreland Commission, as it was called began diligently investigating any allegations of unethical behavior and asking questions, lots of questions. However, when their investigation began to close in on Speaker Silver with multiple subpoenaes, and little too close to the Governors office, Governor Cuomo abruptly quashed the Commission. His public excuse was that he had stuck some vague deal with Mr. Silver and the Legislature that they would pass new ethics laws real soon. Interestingly, Cuomo quashed his own commission right before the 2014 general elections.

Well, this came to the attention of our intrepid US Attorney Preet Bharara who smelled a rat. He asked the Commission to turn over all their files to his office which they did and his office started their own investigation. During their investigation, they discovered that not only was Mr. Silver on the payroll of one highly influencial law firm, he also had not disclose that he was kicking back a "finders fee" to a prominent Oncologist to direct his patients to the law firm. And this prominent Oncologist was awarded $500,000 in research grants from the taxpayers awarded by the very generous...Mr. Silver. What a coikidink! Then it was discovered during the investigation that Mr. Silver had failed to disclose more millions that he was paid by another law firm. This firm was an influencial real estate that brokered real estate transaction that came with huge tax rebates from the state. Transactions that were directed to the law firm by...Mr. Silver. Oops, but it was just a clerical error...no, he just forgot about those millions.

Silver isn't going down without a fight. While in closed meetings with his fellow Assembly Democrats this week he tried his hardest to make a deal that he wouldn't have to actually resign, but maybe just appoint a 5-person "committee" of hand-picked cronies who could just take over temporarily until he could be fully exonerated of all of the scurrilous charges and resume his powerful post. That did not fly so well and he has been forced to resign his post effective Monday.

Preet Bharara did not file these charges lightly and he knows what he is doing. And if he is successful which I have every confidence he will be, Silver will most likely go to prison and hopefully lose his state funded pension and Governor Cuomo will have to answer questions as to what he knew about all of this, when he knew about it and why he disbanded his own Commission when it was obvious what Mr. Silver had been up to all these years. Bharara has indicated to a very nervous Albany that he has "a number of public corruption investigations going on", so stay tuned.

18 comments:

Bob said...

Methinks Mr. Bharara has an appointment with a dark alley somewhere where he will just happen to be "assaulted" and left "near death" unable to continue his work prosecuting those sweet, innocent politicians in Albany. Too bad. So sad.

Tennessee Jed said...

yet another advertisement as to why no matter how bad big business is, big government is usually worse.

Kit said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kit said...

A good article from the New York Times about the (sort-of) behind-the-scenes events that lead to Silver's resignation. A bit fascinating.

There is also a nice graphic explaining what he is accused of doing.

LINK

BevfromNYC said...

From your NYT's article "Judy Rapfogel, his longtime chief of staff, fought back emotion. Her face ashen, speaking through tears, people in the room recalled, Ms. Rapfogel alluded to how her own husband — William E. Rapfogel, a longtime associate of Mr. Silver who pleaded guilty last year to stealing more than $1 million from the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty — was in prison."

Oh, yeah, I forgot about Judy.. Bad run of luck hooking herself up with two criminals. Poor, poor Judy. The questions to her is, of course, where's her cut, what did she know and when did she know it...or make deal and let her sing like a nightingale! I have no doubt that 70 yr old Silver is going to sing like one too and will suddenly become just too frail to deal with all of this...

Koshcat said...

Another example where term limits may have helped. I am suspicious of anyone who wants to make a career at being a politician especially at the state level.

Rustbelt said...

Okay, I'm just going to say it...

Preet Bharara for President!

And in Keystone State news, a minor 'scandal' was fermenting in Harrisburg last week...
Newly sworn-in Democratic Governor Tom Wolf faced criticism for banning Yuengling Lager from the available list of drinks at his gubernatorial ball.
For those not in the know, Yuengling is a long-time, (since 1829), well-known, locally brewed beer. In fact, many consider it PA's staple drink. Yet, it was banned from the celebration.
A spokeswoman stated that the drink was unnecessary since many other locally-brewed drinks were already available.
Critics, however, have pointed out that the Yuengling Brewery is non-union. (Employees there already have high wages and benefits.) And Wolf, a big-time Obama cheerleader, has campaigned for mandatory unionization of multiple industries.
The Wolf Administration, (to the best of my knowledge), has refused to comment on the last criticism.
The Teamsters, however, are applauding the snub.

BevfromNYC said...

Koshcat - the only problem with term limits is that the "protege" always replaces the person term limited out. Or you get the socialist city council like NYC is presently blessed with.

As I am learning through this, our state Leglislature is run by 3 people, not legislative bodies, but 3 people - the Governor, The Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader. They confer and decide what laws the want, where the money gets allocated, and who gets appointed to what. Oh, here's something fun - Sheldon Silver also got to decide who was apointed to the courts. He decides who gets what office and how much each legislative member gets to run their offices. He also got to appoint all the committees and members and how much THEY would get. He basically had his own kingdom where he was king.

I am almost certain that our state court judges would all have to recuse themselves if Silver had been arrested by the attorney general (his crony) This may explain why Cuomo ended the investigation so abruptly. To force the Feds to step in. I like to think that Cuomo has more integrity, but then I may be naive. NY is a mess and hopefully this will put us on the road to democracy again.

BevfromNYC said...

Sadly, Preet Bharara was born in India and can't run for President. But he most certainly will be Mayor of NYC, Senator or Governor of the state one day.

Anthony said...

I confess I don't follow local politics much, but a few years ago the then county exec's (Jack Johnson) wife tried to hide 80 thousand dollars in her bra during an FBI raid. He is still in prison :).

Not a fan of term limits. I don't see how they would solve anything.

Koshcat said...

We can agree to disagree but 36 states term limit their governor and 15 states term limit their legislature. New York does not. It wouldn't eliminate all cronyism and corruption but it helps slow it down. Silver has been in the legislature for almost 40 years. Does anyone truly believe that he still represents the people in his district? The money isn't that good unless you are using your influence to make exponentially more. As for the protégé problem, I see your point but it is still a different person. Remember Taft was suppose to be Teddy's protégé.

Kit said...

"Power. That is the great aphrodisiac. Granted, our legislators get pretty fair pay these days. But back before the Reform Acts in Great Britain, there was no pay to speak of for members of the House of Commons. But there were long lines of men who wished to “serve” the public." —William F. Buckley

AndrewPrice said...

P.S. Had to comment on this headline:

"Tiger Woods shoots 82 in Phoenix, worst round as a professional"

Yeah, I would think that shooting 82 people would make for a bad day.

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I don't think it's possible to clean up NY politics. But it's still fun watching them try... or not try. And I wish Preet luck! Thanks for the update!

Kit said...

"Yeah, I would think that shooting 82 people would make for a bad day."

Ba-dum-tis!

BevfromNYC said...

Hey Andrew, did you read that Romney has stated the he definitely will NOT be throwing his hat into the 2016 Pres. ring?

AndrewPrice said...

Kit, :)

AndrewPrice said...

Bev, I saw that. Well timed on his part!

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