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How Corrupt Are Our Politics?
Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklins Snuff Box to Citizens Unitedby Zephyr Teachout
Harvard University Press, 376 pp., $29.95
When New Yorks Governor Andrew Cuomo was elected in 2010, he promised to restore integrity to state government. Two and half years later, as several state legislators were indicted for bribes, and perhaps just as importantly, as Cuomos reelection loomed, he did what many politicians do when faced with a vexing problem: he appointed a commission. In July 2013, with much fanfare, Cuomo announced the creation of the Commission to Investigate Public Corruption, which came to be known as the Moreland Commission. He promised that it would be independent. As he put it at the time, Anything they want to look at, they can look atme, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general, the comptroller, any senator, any assemblyman. And he featured the commission in his reelection ads, proclaiming that trust is everything.
Less than one year later, Governor Cuomo prematurely shut down the commission, claiming that hed been able to persuade the legislature to adopt new ethics rules in exchange for doing so. But many questioned the decision. The new laws were actually quite tepid. And reports emerged that the governors office had consistently interfered with the commissions work, leaning on it not to pursue investigations of the governors allies and supporters. The New York Times published a damning account, based on a three-month investigation, finding that the governors office and its agents had deeply compromised the panels work, objecting whenever the commission focused on groups with ties to Mr. Cuomo or on issues that might reflect poorly on him.1
The US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, is now investigating whether the governor or others violated federal laws by obstructing corruption investigations. Cuomos response has been to strong-arm former commission members into issuing public statements supporting him that contradict their own earlier complaints, and simultaneously to assert that since the commission was a creation of the executive branch, any obstacles he may have put in its path cannot possibly constitute interference. So much for independence.
In light of these problems, it is perhaps not surprising that Cuomo appears more threatened than he should be by a challenge in the primary for governor from Zephyr Teachout, an obscure law professor from Fordham Law School. Teachout has less than $200,000 in her campaign coffers as compared to Cuomos $32 million. Cuomo sued to bar Teachout from running for governor on the ground that she had not resided for the requisite five years in New York State, even though she has been employed at Fordham Law School and had an apartment in New York since June 2009. A trial court found Teachout eligible to run in the primary scheduled for September 9, and a court of appeals affirmed. Cuomo cant really be concerned that she will pose a serious challenge at the polls. But Teachouts central focusas both a candidate and a professor of lawis on fighting corruption, and right now, that may well be Cuomos Achilles heel.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/sep/25/how-corrupt-are-our-politics/
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How Corrupt Are Our Politics? (Original Post)
bemildred
Sep 2014
OP
The devil is in the details. Most people don't have the head ( nor the attention span) for details..
Smarmie Doofus
Sep 2014
#1
"if we do not provide against corruption, our government will soon be at an end.”
adirondacker
Sep 2014
#2
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)1. The devil is in the details. Most people don't have the head ( nor the attention span) for details..
... anymore.
The pols know this better than anyone.
Hence the ( growing) obliviousness to this phenomenon.
K and R
adirondacker
(2,921 posts)2. "if we do not provide against corruption, our government will soon be at an end.”
"It was a preoccupation of the founding debates. In James Madisons notebook from the summer of 1787, corruption appears fifty-four times. As Teachout puts it, corruption, influence, and bribery were discussed more often in the convention than factions, violence, or instability."
I may use that as my sig line.
Thanks for posting and I plan on picking up her book when I can swing it.