There's nothing earthshaking about a new corruption scandal in New Jersey, but this . . .

Feds escort Secaucus Mayor Dennis Elwell into their Newark clubhouse.

by Ken

So Senator Reid has announced that there won't be a vote on a health care reform bill before the August recess. I know this is a bad thing, and I'm not supposed to say it, but really, when it comes to codifying the details of actual health care reform, are we anywhere close to having a bill that's ready to be voted on?

Meanwhile I'm thinking back to the slug in Noah's health care reform jeremiad:

AT THIS LEVEL OF CORRUPTION, WE'RE
LIVING IN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY

I don't know what else to make of this story breaking out of New Jersey.

I understand that folks in New Jersey often take a more relaxed approach than in some other states to "the law," which is widely thought of as a set of "guidelines," or maybe "advisories," if not just plain fussbudgetry. But really now. Mayors arrested? Body parts being trafficked?? Syrian Jewish rabbis in Brooklyn and elsewhere involved???

Somebody's gotta be making this stuff up, right? Here's the current NYT account:

July 24, 2009

2 N.J. Mayors Arrested in Broad Inquiry on Corruption

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

The mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, two state assemblymen, five rabbis and dozens of others were rounded up early Thursday as the F.B.I. swept across New Jersey and Brooklyn as part of a two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation, the authorities said.

The case ranges from the Jersey Shore to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and even reaches into the State House in Trenton. It apparently began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in the seaside town of Deal, N.J. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, the case mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes in New Jersey’s recent past.

“For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” Ralph J. Marra Jr., the acting United States attorney in New Jersey, said at a 12:30 p.m. news conference. “They existed in an ethics-free zone.”

Mr. Marra said that average citizens “don’t have a chance” against the culture of influence peddling the investigation had unearthed.

Weysan Dun, the special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Newark office, said the rabbis arrested — including the grand rabbi of the Syrian Jewish community in the United States, Saul Kassin of Brooklyn — were part of a vast money-laundering conspiracy with tentacles in Israel and Switzerland. Another person, Levy-Izhak Rosenbaum of Brooklyn, was accused of enticing vulnerable people to give up a kidney for $10,000 and then selling the organ for $160,000.

Mr. Dun emphasized that the case was motivated by neither religion nor politics — an important point given that the New Jersey governor’s race pits a former United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, under whom the investigation began, against the Democratic incumbent, Jon S. Corzine, whose administration was not spared in the arrests Thursday.

Agents also raided the homes of Joseph V. Doria Jr., commissioner of the state’s Department of Community Affairs and a former mayor of Bayonne, and the president of St. Peter’s College, the F.B.I. said.

Among the roughly 30 people arrested by midmorning were Mayor Peter J. Cammarano III of Hoboken and Mayor Dennis Elwell of Secaucus, both Democrats, and Assemblyman Daniel M. Van Pelt, a Republican from Forked River, Ocean County. Mr. Cammarano, who turned 32 on Wednesday, was elected mayor June 9 and sworn in July 1, after serving as councilman at large since 2005.

Mr. Corzine called a 1:30 p.m. news conference in Newark with Attorney General Anne Milgram. “Any corruption is unacceptable — anywhere, anytime, by anybody,” the governor said in a statement. “The scale of corruption we’re seeing as this unfolds is simply outrageous and cannot be tolerated.”

Also taken to the Newark office of the F.B.I. were the president of the City Council in Jersey City, Mariano Vega, and the city’s deputy mayor, Leona Beldini. A criminal complaint said Mr. Vega took $10,000 just before the municipal elections in May.

The mayor of Ridgefield, Bergen County, Anthony R. Suarez, was charged with accepting $10,000 in bribes.

Mr. Van Pelt, who as an assemblyman oversees the Department of Environmental Protection, was accused of accepting money to help the informant obtain environmental permits. In a meeting in Atlantic City in February, prosecutors charged, Mr. Van Pelt assured the informant that the environmental agency “worked for” him, then took $10,000 in cash and told the informant to call him “any time.”

The rabbis arrested were from enclaves of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn and in Deal and Elberon, communities along the Jersey Shore in Monmouth County.

The timing of the investigation dovetails with the timing of bank fraud charges against Solomon Dwek, son of the founders of the Deal Yeshiva, a religious school that teaches children in the Sephardic Jewish tradition. Mr. Dwek passed a $25 million bad check at a PNC Bank branch in 2006, according to The Asbury Park Press.

In the investigation that yielded the arrests Thursday, the cooperating witness posed as a real estate developer looking to build in one city after another, repeatedly engaging politicians in illegal conduct through a variety of middlemen, prosecutors said.

In Hoboken, for example, prosecutors charge in their complaint, Mr. Cammarano eagerly agreed in a meeting at a diner earlier this year to help the fake developer with his projects in exchange for cash. Prosecutors said that when the man asked for assurances that his requests would be expedited by the Hoboken City Council, Mr. Cammarano replied, “I promise you,” adding, “You’re going to be, you’re going to be treated like a friend.”

The fake developer responded that he would give a middleman $5,000 in cash for Mr. Cammarano and another $5,000 after his election as mayor.

“O.K.,” Mr. Cammarano replied, according to the complaint. “Beautiful.”

And Mr. Cammarano expressed confidence that he would be elected no matter what, according to the complaint. “Right now, the Italians, the Hispanics, the seniors are locked down,” he is quoted as saying. “Nothing can change that now.”

“I could be, uh, indicted,” he continued, “and I’m still going to win 85 to 95 percent of those populations.”

Reporting was contributed by Kitty Bennett, David W. Chen, Kareem Fahim, William K. Rashbaum, Nate Schweber and Karen Zraick.

#