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So much for the moral high ground...
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| Shakka |
And keeping promises and ethics and closing loopholes all that warm and fuzzy bull. I hate Eliot Spitzer. He is as bad as they come.
| quote: | Spitzer Helps Donors Skirt $10,000 Limit He Set
By DANNY HAKIM
ALBANY — On Dec. 3, Richard P. Richman, a real estate developer from Connecticut, wrote a check to Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s campaign account.
The check was for $10,000, less than one-fifth of the maximum donation allowed under New York State law. But it was all he could give to the governor, who had imposed strict limits on what he would accept from donors as part of his highly publicized pledge to end the excesses of special-interest money in Albany.
So Mr. Richman took out his checkbook again. This time he gave $15,000, but sent it to the state Democratic Party, which Mr. Spitzer is now tapping in his drive to rid Albany of the Republican Senate majority.
Dual donations like Mr. Richman’s are not uncommon. Despite his high-profile pledge, Mr. Spitzer’s political organization has raised more than $1 million above the cap he imposed on himself, by directing his donors to the state party account, which he controls.
The strategy has helped bring the governor and his party within one seat of gaining control of the Senate. But it has raised questions about whether Mr. Spitzer is living up to the high ethical expectations he set, especially among those who looked to him to change the way business is done in Albany.
“It’s not meaningful if you raise the ethical bar but you have a very effective work-around,” said Russ Haven, the legislative counsel for the New York Public Interest Research Group. “That doesn’t net you any reform to the system.”
Mr. Spitzer’s aides acknowledge encouraging contributors to give to both accounts, but say they are abiding by the law and the governor’s pledge, while trying to match the bare-knuckle politics of state Republicans.
“Reform needs action; it’s not a rhetorical device,” said Ryan Toohey, the governor’s top political strategist and the architect of the Democrats’ efforts to win the Senate. “So long as the Republican Senate is there, reform is going to be too often frustrated by their obstructionist tactics.”
The governor could not have been more emphatic when he initially announced his policy. On Nov. 30, 2006, before even taking office, Mr. Spitzer held a news conference to unveil a number of reforms he intended to undertake, with the $10,000 limit the most eye-opening proposal — well below the $55,900 that statewide candidates can accept.
“I think this is unprecedented,” the governor said at the news conference. “I do not know of another instance where others have acted unilaterally.
“I’ve even said it myself in the past: You cannot expect me to unilaterally disarm. We are doing that today,” he added. “We are doing that because we believe it is important to set a tone, send a message and to lead by example.”
A review by The New York Times found that the governor raised more than $1 million from at least 50 individuals or business entities that donated $10,000 to Spitzer 2010, the governor’s campaign fund, and then far more than $10,000 through the state party. The two entities are housed in the same Manhattan office, one floor apart and connected by a spiral staircase.
In a number of cases, donors wrote consecutive checks to the two organizations. For instance, on July 7, Eric D. Hadar, a real estate developer, wrote a $10,000 check to Spitzer 2010 — check No. 4032 from his account — and then gave $94,200 on check 4033 to the state party, formally known as the New York State Democratic Committee.
Last May, the Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu donated $10,000 to Spitzer 2010 on check No. 1332, and then wrote check No. 1333, for $25,000, to the state party. The money was donated to charity after news reports surfaced that Mr. Hsu was a fugitive in a fraud case.
The organizations are so conjoined that the Medical Liability Mutual Insurance Company’s political action committee recently conflated the names of the two entities in a campaign finance filing, reporting a donation of $25,000 to “NYS Democratic Com for Gov Spitzer 2010.”
Mr. Spitzer’s aides note that other governors have similarly used state party accounts. And they say that Mr. Spitzer tried to pass legislation further restricting limits on donations, but that Senate Republicans have rejected that measure and other attempts to overhaul the way business is done in the capital.
“The reason we do this, and the reason it’s a priority, is so that we can achieve a majority in the Senate to accomplish the necessary reforms,” Mr. Toohey said. “We’re never going to get the kinds of reforms that people want on a range of issues if we don’t have a Democratic Senate.”
Republicans, who have long suggested that Mr. Spitzer keeps one set of rules for himself and another for everyone else, say he is blatantly circumventing the voluntary limits he imposed on himself.
“From our standpoint, it’s not surprising,” said John McArdle, the spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno. “If it were a Republican, you’d have The New York Times and the League of Women Voters attacking him.”
The money from the state party is crucial to Mr. Spitzer’s goal of taking over the State Senate, which would give Democrats control of all three branches of state government for the first time since the Great Depression. Last week, Democrats scored an important upset in a special election in the 48th Senate District in Watertown, taking a seat in an overwhelmingly Republican district, thanks in part to $1.4 million from the state party account. The race was orchestrated and financed by the governor’s political operation.
While his aides cast Mr. Spitzer’s desire for control of the Senate in policy terms, removing the Republican majority would have a significant impact on the governor’s personal political situation, too. Mr. Spitzer’s administration faces three investigations related to efforts last summer to disseminate records of Mr. Bruno’s use of State Police escorts. The most aggressive investigation is being undertaken by the Senate, but it would almost certainly be shelved if the Democrats took power.
Some who pushed for an ethical overhaul in Albany say that the fund-raising strategy is just one of the ways in which Mr. Spitzer has let them down. The governor, for instance, once pledged to reduce the influence of lobbyists in state government. But on Friday, a top Albany lobbyist, Patricia Lynch, is holding a fund-raiser for him at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan.
Good-government groups are increasingly concerned that Albany may never lift itself out of its ethical morass.
“It’s looked a lot like what we’ve seen before,” Mr. Haven said. “It wasn’t the kind of bright-line departure from the past in Albany that we would have hoped for.”
Mr. Richman, the Spitzer donor, who owns a large real estate development, management and financing company based in Connecticut, said that although he supported the governor, he did not support donor limits.
“I think it’s unconstitutional,” he said. “If the First Amendment wasn’t talking about political speech, what were they talking about? There’s almost a knee-jerk reaction in some parts of the political world that they have to support this stuff. Everybody knows this hasn’t been effective.” |
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| Magnetonium |
I thought you dont believe in conspiracies :tongue2
Thats what politics have been about for as long as the history said they did. Best and most successful politicians are some of the best dam liars as well. The more powerful a politician is, the better he is at hiding his lies. Thats my two cents on this story. |
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| Shakka |
My goodness! THIS IS HILARIOUS!!!
| quote: | March 10, 2008
Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring
By DANNY HAKIM
ALBANY - Gov. Eliot Spitzer has informed his most senior administration officials that he had been involved in a prostitution ring, an administration official said this morning.
Mr. Spitzer, who was huddled with his top aides early this afternoon, had hours earlier abruptly canceled his scheduled public events for the day. He is set to make an announcement about 2:15 this afternoon at his Manhattan office.
Mr. Spitzer, a first-term Democrat who pledged to bring ethics reform and end the often seamy ways of Albany, is married with three children.
Just last week, federal prosecutors arrested four people in connection with an expensive prostitution operation. Administration officials would not say that this was the ring with which the governor had become involved.
He had a difficult first year in office, rocked by a mix of scandal and legislative setbacks. In recent weeks, however, Mr. Spitzer seemed to have rebounded, with his Democratic party poised to perhaps gain control of the state Senate for the first time in four decades.
Mr. Spitzer gained national attention when he served as attorney general with his relentless pursuit of Wall Street wrongdoing. As attorney general, he also had prosecuted at least two prostitution rings as head of the state’s organized crime task force.
In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.
“”This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multitiered management structure,” Mr. Spitzer said at the time. ”It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring.”
Albany for months been roiled by bitter fighting and accusations of dirty tricks. The Albany County district attorney is set to issue in the coming days the results of his investigation into Mr. Spitzer’s first scandal, his aides’ involvement in an effort to tarnish Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno, the state’s top Republican.
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Confirmed: He is a piece of . The epitome of ethical hypocrisy. |
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| Q5echo |
jeez man. this is getting crazy.
whats next? is he's gonna tell us he's hired a his gay lover to run security for him?
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| Shakka |
Oops...my bad.
And down goes Fraser! Man, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. Elliot Spitzer made more enemies using thuggish bully tactics than just about any other politician I've ever seen. Truly a huge fall, and one for the history books.
It's amazing--he put men in jail for doing some of the same things he himself got nailed (no pun) doing. The only difference is, he'll probably never see the inside of a jail-cell or know the pain that is having his hershey highway violated like those he sent to the slammer. Will history remember him as the sheriff of wall street who cleaned house? Even if so, there will always be a huge "*" next to his name. Worthless...
What is more funny to me is that they're talking about how he violated the "Mann Act" which is supposedly some antiquated law that was created to prevent the transport of slaves across state lines for sex or something like that (Spitzer paid to have his hooker travel from NY to Washington D.C. so he could bang her at the Mayflower)...The irony here is that Spitzer has made his career by prosecuting people using the Martin Act, another antiquated law that basically gave him broad authority to bully people into submission without ever formally charging them with anything. I repeat. Worthless...
Edit: I hadn't even read this op-ed piece today! Spot on.
| quote: | Of Martin and Mann
March 12, 2008; Page A20
When New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was implicated Monday as a customer of a multistate prostitution ring, journalists rushed to brush up their knowledge of a 1910 federal law known as the Mann Act. The law, once known as the "white slavery" law, forbids the transportation of women across state lines for "immoral purposes," including prostitution.
Mr. Spitzer has not been charged with violating the Mann Act or committing any other crime. It's possible that no charges will be brought at all, especially if he resigns his office. Or it's possible that if charges are brought, they will focus on the possibility that he engaged in "structuring" -- arranging his alleged payments to the prostitution ring to avoid federal scrutiny of his finances.
[Eliot Spitzer]
But suppose for a moment that he is charged under the Mann Act. Some might decry that a statute intended to deter human trafficking would be used against a "John" of the sort who is rarely prosecuted for being a customer of a prostitute. These observers would have a point.
Then again, Mr. Spitzer himself is intimately familiar with the prosecutorial tactic of dusting off old laws and repurposing them. When he became New York's Attorney General in 1999, he seized on the 1921 Martin Act and wielded it as a club against some of the biggest firms on Wall Street. The Martin Act was originally passed to facilitate the prosecution of "bucket shops" that took advantage of small-time investors, but its use became relatively rare decades ago. It should have been repealed.
However, the Martin Act was convenient for Mr. Spitzer's purposes because of the low bar it sets for bringing cases and the ability it afforded him to bring preliminary injunctions without even having to file a complaint first. Violations bring stiff civil and criminal penalties and, most important, do not require prosecutors to prove criminal intent. The law had been used primarily to pursue pyramid schemers, pump-and-dump operations and other unambiguous frauds, but Mr. Spitzer saw in it a way to exert enormous leverage over the Wall Street firms whose research practices he wanted changed. By using the Martin Act, Mr. Spitzer could more easily coerce settlements from his targets, who feared the law's low bar in court.
Meanwhile, the Mann Act has been used repeatedly throughout the years in prostitution cases, although normally it was the purveyors of prostitutes, and not their procurers, who were charged under it. Perhaps the most famous use of the Mann Act was the 1959 case against Chuck Berry, who served three years for transporting a 14-year-old Indian girl across state lines.
In New York state, patronizing a prostitute is a misdemeanor, so any federal prosecution for money laundering, structuring or violating the Mann Act would greatly raise the legal stakes for the Governor. But he may have other things to worry about, too. Just as Mr. Spitzer once suspected Republican Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno of using state helicopters for non-official travel, legal experts also have questions about whether Mr. Spitzer may have directly or indirectly used public funds to support his alleged assignations.
As Mr. Spitzer knows all too well, the government has many weapons for pursuing its targets. The Governor now has to hope that federal prosecutors show more restraint than he ever did as Attorney General. |
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| Q5echo |
"He that accuses all mankind of corruption ought to remember that he is sure to convict only one."
Edmund Burke
Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777 |
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