Take a bow, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara -- scourge of kook corruption

A madcap novel of the sloppiest turf war ever launched by the Brooklyn mob. Kid Sally Palumbo has been a loyal servant to the Brooklyn Mafia for years. His specialty is murder, and he is so skilled at it that he has gotten the attention of Mafia boss Papa Baccala. But unfortunately for Kid Sally, murder pays poorly. He wants to make real dough, to get respect, and to be able to tell his colleagues where to sit when they eat dinner. In short, he wants to be boss. The job would be his for the taking -- if only Kid Sally weren't a Grade A moron. . .

-- from the Reader Store overview of the 1969 Jimmy Breslin novel based on the life of Mafioso "Crazy Joey" Gallo

by Ken

Or as the publisher's description of The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (which you'll find on book sites all over the Internet) puts it, Kid Sally is "a would-be capo who 'couldn't run a gas station at a profit even if he stole the customers' cars.' " (The role was played in the much-enjoyed film version by a newcomer named Robert De Niro, who was cast when another young actor, Al Pacino, pulled out to play Michael Corleone in a big-money picture to be made based on Mario Puzo's The Godfather.)

So what does The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight have to do with the price of eggs? Well, the publisher's description notes that "the title has entered into the language as a catch phrase," and as the New York media overflow with tales of local political corruption, it's the image that keeps coming to mind.

The other day Howie walked us through the great breaking story about the roundup of a few NYS pols and assorted other characters in a grand conspiracy of electoral corruption ("Queens State Senator Malcolm Smith And A Gaggle Of Corrpt Republicans Arrested By The FBI"). It's a story that would have been even funnier if Jimmy Breslin were around to write it -- a story about a network of payoffs involving a phony Indian money guy named "Raj" and an Orthodox Jewish wheeler-dealer named "Mo" who was real but, alas for the conspirators, an already-cooperating witness.

All of this in the service of a scheme so preposterous -- and also, we should stress, so inconsequential -- as to represent a slander on any self-respecting corrupt pol. It all revolved around getting "Wilson Pikula"s, a peculiarly NYS institution, to enable washed-up African-American Democratic Queens State Senator Malcolm into the Republican mayoral primaries in NYC's five counties, where he would have had absolutely zero chance of doing anything except embarrassing. That is, even if a bunch of the bribe-takers hadn't taken the money and then reneged on their promises. (This possibility, we know from the government tapes, actually had occurred to Senator Smith. He just never figured out any way of dealing with it.)

I can't say I've read deeply in the paperwork that's been made available, but still -- really, now! As far as I can tell, there wasn't even any public money changing hands. Sure, if there were public officials taking bribes, they should be dealt with, though as soon as one learns that the crooked wheels of this conspiracy were oiled by a cooperating witness, one can be forgiven for wondering whether this whole nutty scheme would have been hatched, let alone gone anywhere, without government support.

Yet there it is: "political corruption," stopped dead in its tracks by the FBI at the behest of the fearless corruption-fighting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara. The other "corruption" scandals we've been hearing about from unflinching prosecutors -- both financial and political -- aren't as colorful, or entertaining, but they seem to me every bit as inconsequential.

Does anyone imagine for a second that any aspect of this nonsense has anything to do with the mountain of financial and political corruption, real corruption, that New York, both city and state, are choking under? The kind where the big-money players using influence and cash either to siphon money out of the public till or, more frequently, to manipulate the craven political actors to do their bidding and ensure a supercharged return on their investment?

Yet just the other day, DNAinfo.com, from which I've come to expect better, was touting: "Preet Bharara, New Sheriff of Albany, Eyed for Higher Office":

He's the star prosecutor who, in one week, has taken down one state senator, two assemblymen, a councilman and two GOP bosses in two alleged bribery plots that have rocked the political world.

And he hints more heads will roll.

It's just the latest in a series of high-profile catches for Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who has spent the last four years lassoing one corrupt city politician after the next — fueling renewed speculation that the self-appointed Sheriff of Albany might harbor political ambitions of his own. . . .

Bharara has spent the past four years in the headlines and splashed across magazine covers for his work taking down corrupt politicians, prosecuting terror suspects and insider trading, and recovering stolen cash, including the largest-known recovery in municipal contract fraud in U.S. history following the CityTime debacle.

This week, his takedowns included Queens State Sen. Malcolm Smith, City Councilman Daniel Halloran and Bronx Assemblyman Eric Stevenson in connection with two elaborate alleged bribery schemes, including one that tried to get Smith on the ballot for New York City mayor.

Since August 2009, he has nabbed a whopping 15 elected officials and associates in public corruption cases, including State Sen. Carl Kruger, who was sentenced to seven years in prison, and Councilman Larry Seabrook, who was sentenced to five years behind bars. To highlight his cases, the office created a colorful chart featuring all the names, positions, charges and outcomes of each of the arrests.

Non-New Yorkers may be forgiven for assuming that this roster of "elected officials and associates" must matter. Trust me, these are nobodies -- if possible, less-than-nobodies. Oddballs and odd men out, what we might call "kook corruption." Can we expect some poor schlepp of a state assemblyman to be tagged for collusion with a bunch of circus clowns getting out of a Volkswagen?

Whereas does anyone believe for a second that New York City (and State) isn't chock full of somebodies and supersomebodies in urgent need of indicting? The kinds of people who are tied into the kind of people who are real movers and shakers, and in their corruption make our political and financial cuture stink to high heaven?

Do we really have to ask, for example, how many prosecutions the U.S. attorney for the Southern District has launched involving actual actors in the financial meltdown that followed the blowing of the housing bubble? Is anyone else getting the feeling that, hand in hand with the financial concept of "too big to fail," we now have a legal category of candidate felons who are "too big to touch"?

In the nauseating DNAinfo.com puff piece, amid speculation that jobs Preet Bharara might be angling for are U.S. attorney general and director of the FBI, there is this curious note:

But one source in the Justice Department noted that, given the current political climate, there are not many open jobs for Bharara, who formerly served as chief counsel to Sen. Chuck Schumer, leading the 2006 Congressional investigation into the firings of United States attorneys under the Bush administration.

Now this is tantalizing, though I can't say for sure I know what it means. Is the idea that Preet is tainted for being too tough, too willing to investigate? We can't tell, because nothing more is made of it.

And all I can recall of what should have been one of the great scandals of the "Chimpy" Bush administration -- the politicization of the entire Executive Branch, including most unforgivably the Justice Department -- never became a scandal of any consequence. Faced with the stark perversion of the administration of law enforcement by the federal government, there should have been a rash of headlines, firings, indictments, and people in high places spending millions of dollars on PR "handlers."

Somehow it didn't happen, though. I'm sure Senator Schumer and his stalwart chief counsel tried their darnedest, but somehow it just wasn't good enough.

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