Democratic Power Elite Scumbag Convicted - Wait Till You See The Defense Argument!!

[Selene]

I wonder if their malpractice insurance is paid up to date...

A Manhattan federal court jury returned the verdict after a three-week trial in which prosecutors claimed that the 71-year-old Democrat repeatedly promised the favors to enrich himself. The defense countered that the government was trying to criminalize the longtime routines of politics in Albany.

Now it is time for the slug to give up a lot of folks to avoid at least 20 years in prison...

Assistant US attorney Andrew Goldstein told jurors they had to convict Silver if they found money played a role in his decisions.

“There are four million reasons why you know that money played a part,” he said, noting the amount of money the government says Silver earned from kickbacks from a cancer researcher and real estate developers. Prosecutors say he earned a million dollars more through investments.

Goldstein told jurors to reject the defense’s contention that Silver was just practicing politics as usual. “This was bribery. This was extortion. This was corruption,” Goldstein said.

Defense attorney Steven Molo countered that his client fought bribery and extortion charges because he knew he was not guilty.

“There was no quid quo pro,” Molo said. “He did not sell his office.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/30/sheldon-silver-convicted-corruption-new-york-political-powerbroker

[Brant Gaede]

I note it was a federal, not state, prosecution.

--Brant

the real crime is how the Dems have made it next to impossible for any of them to be voted out of office

[Selene]

I note it was a federal, not state, prosecution.

--Brant

the real crime is how the Dems have made it next to impossible for any of them to be voted out of office

I note it was a federal, not state, prosecution.

--Brant

the real crime is how the Dems have made it next to impossible for any of them to be voted out of office

Tammany Hall - is one of the most entrenched and corrupt organizations in American political history.

Gave us Robert Moses for cripes sake...

In 1798, Aaron Burr helped to mold the organization into a political force dedicated to anti-Federalist principles. This partisan group was used effectively to support Burr and Thomas Jefferson in the Election of 1800.

A watershed event occurred in 1817 when the Irish managed to force their way into membership in Tammany. The practice of exchanging votes for benefits quickly became the organization's backbone. In 1830, the group's headquarters were established in Tammany Hall and thereafter the name of the association and the location were synonymous.

Then the real fun began...

Tammany Hall elected its first mayor, Fernando Wood, in 1855. New York City would be governed by Tammany forces for the next 70 years with only a few short interruptions. In 1868, William Marcy Tweed headed Tammany and ushered in an era of extreme corruption. Tweed was successful with making the organization a statewide force, but was eventually brought down by a reform attorney, Samuel J. Tilden.

Tammany Hall regained its strength in the 1880s and was prominent in the life of the city. Such figures as Richard Croker, Alfred E. Smith and Jimmy Walker were deeply involved in the dealings of the machine. In the 1930s, reform mayor Fiorello la Guardia, backed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, sharply reduced the power and influence of Tammany Hall. It lingered for several decades as a county organization, but was finally ended by another reform mayor, John V. Lindsay, in the 1960s.

Lindsay botched the job and Tammany retained most of it's power. It had to share power with Brooklyn and a little with Queens. However, the tentacles and connections between Manhattan, banks and Wall Street with a heavy dose of a corrupt patronage system filled the ranks of civil service and extended the corruption to the entire state.

A...

more later

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h705.html

[Brant Gaede]

Who was the public face of Tammany during the Lindsay years? I vaguely remember a pretty good looking fellow, maybe well spoken.

--Brant

maybe a few years after (1973)

[Selene]

Who was the public face of Tammany during the Lindsay years? I vaguely remember a pretty good looking fellow, maybe well spoken.

--Brant

maybe a few years after (1973)

Jimmy McManus?

Even though Jimmy McManus the dutiful son of the old line Tammany leader whose father was the ally of the discredited Carmine DeSapio, would seem to be the antithesis of these modern trends, they would influence him and Hell’s Kitchen in ways that would arguably would permit him to survive as district leader for the next 45 years

On the West side of Manhattan, the reform clubs had elected William Fitts Ryan in the early 1960’s over Ludwig Teller4, the existing regular organization Congressman, and Ted Weiss, a City Council man a reform candidate also was seeking to move up to Congress. At the time most of the reform leaders were upper middle class followers of Adlai Stevenson, many of whom felt DeSapio and the regular party had not given Stevenson sufficient support. As the Vietnam war accelerated in the late 1960’s, a group of activist students whose leaders—Dick Morris, Jerry Nadler, Richard Gottfried, Richard Dressner--were from the Stuyvesant high school debating team became active in politics with the reform clubs on behalf of Weiss against Leonard Farbstein, the regular candidate, who supported Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. This group showed an ability to turn out student volunteers for campaigns and soon became experienced in grass roots ward politics. When Eugene McCarthy ran for President in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, they were in many ways, as the only experienced campaigners, the on the ground shock troops organizing fellow students from around New England for the primary, which proved the viability of an anti-war challenge to Lyndon Johnson (and would two and a half months later lead to Johnson’s withdrawal). Returning to New York and flush from the successful demonstration of student political power in the McCarthy campaign, they began to demand that members of their group be supported for public offices. The existing leaders of the reform clubs protested that they were merely kids (and in some cases barely voting age) and should wait their turn.5, which gave them the name the “West Side Kids” .

http://truenewsfromchangenyc.blogspot.com/2011/03/fifty-years-ago-area-consisted-of.html

[Brant Gaede]

DeSapio!

Pretty much pre-Lindsay. I must remember him from 1960 - 1962 when I lived in NJ going to high school.

--Brant

[Selene]

DeSapio!

Pretty much pre-Lindsay. I must remember him from 1960 - 1962 when I lived in NJ going to high school.

--Brant

Carmine...dapper man...the bridge from Fiorello to Wagner...