New York Politics Gone Wild...For Democrats
Once a source of national leaders of both political parties, New York state has descended into a bizarre, riveting spectacle of corruption and political debasement, with its governor facing calls to resign as well as new charges of accepting illicit perks and lying under oath, the dean of its congressional delegation giving up his gavel over corruption charges and another House member announcing he won’t run again amid allegations of sexual harassment.
And that was just yesterday.
The latest, dizzying episodes of political disgrace in New York follow a half-decade of disaster during which three top state politicians were forced out amid allegations of everything from large-scale theft to small-scale sexual indiscretions.
And while Republican leaders have drawn their share of blame (and indictments), New York is now effectively a one-party state. Its current scandals attach themselves to the dominant Democrats, and the riveting soap opera is feeding a narrative of corruption that threatens to deepen the party’s national woes and distract from the White House’s attempt to refocus the country on health care. And it also hastens a decades-long diminution of the state’s 20th-century pre-eminence, a rise powered by the reform-driven Roosevelt presidencies.
“I have never seen a situation in New York, in my entire life, where there are so many legislators who have turned out to be bums — and a couple of executives, too,” said former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, whose third term as mayor dissolved in a humbling scandal at the Parking Violations Bureau.
Albany’s political scandals are a diverse mix, but the current wave began when Alan Hevesi, the respected, professorial state comptroller, was accused first of using his staff for errands and then of selling access to New York’s giant pension fund. Eliot Spitzer followed, driven from office for paying for sex, but already dogged by charges he’d used the state police to spy on his top Republican foe.
That rival, New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, a Republican, was next, indicted for allegedly taking bribes. Then on to Rangel, the dean of the congressional delegation and a worthy heir to the man he defeated for the seat, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who was censured by Congress for corruption that included Caribbean trips. On Wednesday, Rangel stepped down from his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee after the House ethics committee found that he had broken House gift rules by accepting corporate-sponsored travel to the Caribbean.
Paterson, for his part, reportedly intervened in an aide’s domestic violence case and allegedly received free tickets to Yankees games, then lied about it to investigators.
Democrats have dominated the recent scandals, but the party owes its edge over the state’s frayed Republican Party largely to the fact that it has more members in office.
Two Republican congressmen left office in recent years amid ugly scandals: Rep. John Sweeney was defeated after his wife’s reports of domestic abuse became public; he’s now reportedly under investigation in a lobbying case. And Rep. Vito Fossella was forced out when a drunken-driving charge led to the discovery of his second, secret family.
In New York City, meanwhile, prosecutors just finished tending to one of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s top aides, Bernard Kerik, the former police commissioner, who was convicted on corruption charges. And the city has heard a steady drumbeat of lower-level indictments, with members of the state Assembly, state Senate and City Council marching to the courthouse on charges ranging from extortion to domestic violence.
At this point, only two of the six statewide elected officials, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, were actually elected to the positions they hold.
The hail of dropping shoes has shocked even the state’s blithest political operatives.
“It used to be, you could at least look across the river at New Jersey and feel good about yourself. Those days are gone,” mourned Kevin Sheekey, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s longtime political adviser, adding, “It’s going to get worse before it gets worse.”
New York loves to reflect on itself, and the city’s scholars say the core of its political problems is one that haunts old Democratic bastions everywhere: The old, vibrant, flawed Democratic machines have collapsed, but they haven’t really been replaced by anything.
“We’ve cut off our new sources of talent and basically kept young people out,” said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban planning at New York University. “[Rep. Edolphus] Towns and [Former Rep. Major] Owens and Rangel were very tough on young African-American politicians. You had to be a blood relation to get anywhere.
“And the only way we had a woman [in statewide office] was Hillary Clinton coming in or [Sen.] Kirsten Gillibrand getting appointed,” he said.
Rangel is a fixture of the Democratic establishment, one of a “gang of four” that dominated Harlem politics for decades. Paterson is the son of another of that group.
Their simultaneous fall “is the end of the Democratic machine,” said Vincent Cannato, a New York historian and biographer of the late Mayor John Lindsay.
One mark of the empty talent pool: The state’s elite have pinned their hopes on the appointed lieutenant governor, Richard Ravitch, to save the legislative sessions. Ravitch is 76, emerged from retirement to take the job and plans to return to private life in the fall.
Other scandals have been less predictable — or explicable. Spitzer’s fall was triggered by private vice. And Democrats in the White House and in Congress are deeply concerned about the fallout from allegations of sexual harassment directed at upstate Rep. Eric Massa by a male aide.
POLITICO broke the news of the charges Wednesday afternoon, which partially drowned out the White House’s attempt to focus on health care. The report, and the subsequent news that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer knew of the allegations, raised a troubling echo of the 2006 revelations about former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), who dragged his party down with him in a scandal over inappropriate contact with House pages.
While Washington Democrats cast pained glances at New York, New York Republicans are seeking to capitalize on the situation. Massa’s vacant seat is a likely Republican pickup, and the gathering storm has endangered congressional Democrats in a delegation that is down to a sole Republican.
“If Gillibrand has a close race, Republicans could make three to five House seats very competitive in New York,” said Bill Cunningham, a former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio Wednesday released a Web video featuring a “Democrats’ Hall of Shame” and calling for “fundamental change.”
The havoc is likely to have an immediate and unpredictable effect on the state’s fiscal future, already imperiled by an $8 billion deficit. Rangel's forced exit saps New York of a major defender on the Hill and leaves the state without control of a marquee committee in the House — at a time when California Democrats including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller are already hogging the top slots.
The most powerful New Yorkers post-Rangel occupy far less lofty perches: Upstater Louise Slaughter runs the Rules Committee, a powerful post but one that leaves her outside the inner circle of leadership; eastern New York’s Towns runs the House oversight panel but is often a step behind the ranking Republican, Darrell Issa; and Brooklynite Nydia Velazquez is chairwoman of the Small Business Committee, which controls a relatively small budget.
The scandals have also badly damaged the state’s clout in Washington, according to Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat from Brooklyn.
He said he saw an immediate demonstration of New York's reduced clout on Wednesday, when a delegation of 12 Democrats from the state called a meeting with Pelosi to address their concerns that the Senate version of the health reform bill would seriously shortchange the New York.
"You probably could have accomplished as much as we did with a call to Nancy [Pelosi] by Charlie Rangel," Weiner told POLITICO.
"Look, Charlie was a powerful voice for New York in a place where we badly need it,” Weiner added. “We're not powerless, but we're definitely less powerful than we were ... . It's bad."
It’s a Democrat, though, who seems best positioned to capitalize, at least for now, on his party’s collapse: Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who has kept his nose clean and is currently investigating Paterson.
Veteran Village Voice investigative reporter Wayne Barrett, who has exposed a score of scandals in Albany and City Hall, said, “I’ve never seen anything like this." But he sees the possibility of stability looming on the political horizon, in the form of Cuomo, the state’s Prince Hal.
“Every power player in New York has been swept aside in what seems like an instant,” said Barrett. “Where does this all end?... I guess the only great hope is Cuomo.”
A Generation of New York City's Corrupt Pols Laid Low
Steven Rattner, former New York Times reporter, failed media investment firm founder, friend of Bloomberg and Sulzberger, and Car Czar, is one more former political star caught up in the New York pension fund scandal.
As the NY Times and WSJournal report today, the SEC is investigating Quandrangle Group founder and crazy social climber Rattner for paying $1 million to play with the state's massive pension fund.
The state pension fund was just a hilarious morass of corruption, mostly revolving around former comptroller Alan Hevesi, who was the sole trustee of the whole system. Charges have been filed against former deputy comptroller David Loglisci and Hevesi pal (in Post parlance) Hank Morris.
Morris, a Democratic political consultant who ran Chuck Schumer's '98 and '04 campaigns, was the man to send your massively inflated "finders' fees" to in exchange for pension business. Morris and Lovlisci made tens of millions in kickbacks, because they directed the "alternative investments" wing of the $122 billion fund.
And just this week former Liberal Party chair Ray Harding was charged with accepting $800,000 in reward money (from the Morris kickback pool) for some favors he did for Hevesi. Is anyone else growing to like this Andrew Cuomo kid?
So! Quadrangle—meaning Rattner—paid $90k to acquire a shitty movie Loglisci produced, and three weeks later they were doing $100 million worth of business with the pension fund. Shortly after that, Quadrangle paid $1.1 million in fees to Hank Morris.
Here is the film, Chooch, that actual legitimate investment firms invested in, in order to get that sweet pension business. Let's just quote the entire plot summary:
The life of Queens resident Dino Condito is about to take a surprising turn. After letting down his softball team by striking out in the bottom of the ninth against Hoboken, his crew brands him the chooch. Trying to cheer up his cousin Dino, Jubilene Condito cashes in his savings from his first holy communion and springs for a vacation to Cancun.
You mean leave Queens? asks Dino, as if the thought had never occurred to him. But there's a mix-up on the way to the airport involving a mysterious bag of money. As soon as Dino and Jube land in Mexico, they're abducted by a pair of thugs and left in the desert at the mercy of a trio of soldiers.
It takes reuniting Dino's old Queens crew, including Dino's beloved pet dachsund, to save the two cousins. Only after a jail bust, donkey ride, chicken coop explosion, and a life-changing love affair at the local bordello does the crew finally arrive to save the day. Returning home in triumphant glory with his reunited crew and newfound love Ladonna, Dino discovers the meaning of family, friendship and neighborhood.
Oh man. Rattner paid almost six figures for the rights to distribute the DVD of this heartwarming action-comedy. The only user comment is a 2-star pan from someone who knows an actress with a bit part in the movie from back home in Denver. Hah. Chooch: the shitty low-budget mob mix-up comedy that brought down a large segment of the early-2000s New York political establishment.
And now Rattner will save the auto industry for Barack Obama, who hired him because Rattner millions in donations to get himself out of the investment business and into Democratic politics.
View Larger Map
Sources: Politico, Gawker, NY Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Google Maps
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment