The Anti-Trump Wave Helped Democrats Almost Everywhere That Racism Isn't Enshrined As The State Religion

Paul Ryan was whining about how long it was taking for all the votes to be counted in California, primarily because absentee ballots were coming in overwhelmingly for Democrats and after election day, vote counting flipped 4 more Republican seats including one in Orange County and two in the Central Valley that left Ryan allies Mimi Walters, Jeff Denham and David Valadao unemployed. But what Ryan failed to mention is that there are still ballots being counted and recounted all over the country. The Alaska state legislative races are a good example. First Alaska's Republican Senate President Pete Kelly was ousted by Fairbanks state Rep. Scott Kawasaki (D) after a handful of votes were counted a week after the election. But the vote to replace Kawasaki is still in turmoil. On election night Republican Bart LeBon held a 5-vote lead over Democrat Kathryn Dodge but since then, the lead in that race has gone back and forth as ballots have been counted. Control of the House depends on the final outcome! And this week, it came down to whether or not one ballot would be counted! Last Friday, the Division of Elections gave LeBon the win with 2,263 votes to Dodge's 2,262. Yesterday Dodge announced that she's appealing the recount.

But, whether decided on election night or a few days or weeks later, the anti-Trump wave was significant in state legislative races almost everywhere in the country. It looks like 393 seats flipped nationally-- give or take a few. That includes 7 chambers that flipped from red to blue (Senates in Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and New York and, quite spectacularly, Minnesota's House.) On top of that GOP supermajorities were broken in state Senates in North Carolina, Michigan and Pennsylvania, while Democrats gained supermajorities in the Illinois, Vermont, Nevada and Oregon state Houses and in the California and Oregon Senates-- while holding onto supermajorities in Senate races in Illinois, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Hawaii and Maryland and in state Houses in New York, California, Maryland, Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii and Massachusetts.

There were a handful of reactionary, low-education, racist states, mostly in the Old Confederacy (like Alabama and Arkansas), were the GOP made gains, but most of the gains went to Democrats, even in states like Georgia and Texas. In Arizona the Democrats picked up 4 House seats, putting them 2 votes away from grabbing the majority. In California , Democrats picked up 4 Assembly seats and 3 Senate seats, as the state GOP continues to disintegrate. Out of the 80 California Assembly seats, just 19 are in Republican hands, although one seat is still too close to call.

These were some of the other highlights:

• Colorado House- Democrats expanded their 36 to 29 seat majority by picking up 5 more seats
• Connecticut House- Democrats expanded their 80-71 seat majority by picking up 12 more seats, while breaking the 18-19 Senate deadlock by winning 5 Republican seats
• Florida House- Dems picked up 6 seats
• Georgia House- Dems picked up 9 seats with 2 more too close to call
• Idaho House- Dems picked up 3 seats
• Iowa House- Dems picked up 5 seats with 2 more still uncalled
• Kentucky House- Dems picked up 3 seats
• Maryland House- Dems picked up 6 seats with one still uncalled
• Maine House- Dems said goodibye to Paul LePage by picking up 16 seats (while watching their pals in the Senate turn that chamber blue by picking up 4 seats
• Michigan House- Dems picked up 6 seats in the super-gerrymandered state
• Minnesota House- Dems crushed it-- picking up 20 seats
• Montana Senate- Dems picked up 2 seats
• North Carolina House- Dems broke the GOP supermajority by taking 9 of their seats, while Dems in the state Senate did the same by winning 6 red seats
• New Hampshire- Dems flipped control of both chambers. But the House went from 176 Democrats and 217 Republicans to 233 Democrats and just 167 Republicans
• New Mexico House- Dems flipped 9 seats with another seat still not final
• New York Senate- Dems flipped 8 seats and took control
• Nevada Assembly- Dems created a supermajority by flipping 2 seats that Trump had won
• Pennsylvania House- Dems picked up 11 seats
• Texas House- Dems flipped 12 seats
• Utah House- Dems picked up 4 seats
• Vermont House- Dems picked up 15 seats
• Washington House- Dems picked up 7 seats
• West Virginia House- Dems picked up 5 seats including John Doyle's win over GOP Majority Leader-designate, Riley Moore.

Have You Had Enough Of Republicans In Blue Districts With Ds Next To Their Names?

Let's start by listening to the worst Democrat left in the New York state Senate, Simcha Felder. In fact let's start by listening to the 23 second clip from Felder's May 2 presentation at the the Bay Democrats club. It's sort of a confession. "For those of you who are loyal Democrats," he told the roomful of loyal Democrats, "that believe that the only person that can represent you is somebody that's a loyal Democrat-- I'm not that guy ." He sure isn't. Blake Morris is... which is part of the reason he has been endorsed by Blue America. That and the fact that he's a Berniecrat-- in other words a Democrat from the Democratic wing The Democratic Party-- the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt wing of the party. "Sen. Felder ," he told me the other day, "seems to be under the impression that because he has not had an opponent since he was first elected in 2012, that he must be doing a good job for the people in this district. That misperception has come to an end with my candidacy. On Thursday, September 13, we are going to show everyone what this district’s voters are thinking. The Republican majority in the state Senate is made possible by one man to the detriment of the entire state. We in the 17th are responsible for him and we will vote him out."

Cuomo was able to persuade 8 other dissident Democrats who were aligned with Republicans-- members of the Independent Democratic Caucus-- to reunited with mainline Democrats-- everyone but Felder. So even though Democrats outnumber Republicans 32 to 31 in the state Senate, Felder caucuses with the Republicans and throws the power in the Senate to them.

Blake’s family has 19th century beginnings in Brooklyn, ranging from one grandfather’s coal delivery business to his maternal grandmother who would drag race teenagers on Eastern Parkway for extra income during the Depression era. Blake is proud to say that well over a century later, his family still calls Brooklyn home. Blake Morris has lived in Ditmas Park for nearly 20 years. He is married with a teen daughter who attends Brooklyn Tech. He has been a practicing attorney for almost 30 years. He told me that because "the borough has nurtured his family for so long," he feels "a connection with the past and a responsibility to ensure the vitality and prosperity of Brooklyn for future generations who will call this borough home." For Blake, this campaign is about respect for place and people. For far too long, most of District 17’s constituents have been completely disrespected by State Sen. Simcha Felder.

Blake is running for State Senate because district 17 needs an elected representative who actually represents all the people in the district, not just himself. "When we vote for a Democrat to represent us," said Blake, "we want a real Ddemocrat, not a Republican with a D next to his name. He said he's thrown his hat into the ring because he "knows that everything from much-needed funding for educating our children to the MTA, safe streets, affordable housing, and healthcare policies have very real affects on peoples’ lives. I believe that when our priorities are ignored in Albany, as they have been for the past six years, our public schools are shortchanged, rapid transit becomes unreliable, housing becomes unaffordable, healthcare costs becomes a substantial burden, and traffic-snarled streets become unsafe for everyone."

Blake is running because he wants to bring better leadership to the people of a district 17 that includes parts of Sheepshead Bay in the south, along with Madison, Midwood, Mapleton, Ditmas Park, Kensington and Borough Park. "It’s time to take this Senate seat back from a turncoat Democrat who makes his own rules and prides himself on being a self-described party of one. We’re not going to be Democratic road kill any longer. The days of ignoring the voices of this community are in the past. Too much is at stake. We need to clean up the corruption in Albany and it starts with the Senate."

I should add here that I went to PS 197 and James Madison High School int the heart of the district, as did Bernie Sanders, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Chuck Schumer. Feldman is a shanda (שאַנדע).

Blake believes there are larger issues of corruption in Albany and Sen. Felder is a symptom, but real questions about the use of public resources that he intends to tackle as a senator and which he’s already begun to investigate as a private citizen, He’s been raising questions about the Senate’s constituent mail budget allocations that range from $500 to $95,000. Senator Felder weighs in with the second highest amount.

This is why Blake requested information regarding the use of public funds for constituent mailers. You know, Felder Focus, Birthday Cards and parking calendars, all the important things you want your state senator to provide to you on the public’s dime.In April, Blake was successful in getting a court to issue an order to deliver the previously secret constituent mail budget allocations; at the end of May, the state filed an appeal of this decision.


Blake is excited to work to improve the lives of New York families so we can all have affordable housing, healthcare and hope. The kind of hope that provides for individual dignity and respect. "We have a diverse and multicultural state Senate district," he reminded me. "and I will represent all of us in Albany." If you'd like to help bolster Blake's grassroots campaign, please consider contributing to him at the Blue America 2018 legislative page by clicking on ActBlue thermometer on the right.

Blake Morris, real Democrat, Brooklyn

Crucial Special Elections In New York Tomorrow For Control Of The State Senate... And Then There's Colorado Springs

The real bad guy in New York politics-- Simcha Felder (fake Democrat)

Conservatives know the gig is up once the big blue wave sweeps dozens of Republicans out of Congress in November. Or is it? As we mentioned yesterday, there are forces on the right, trying-- trying hard-- to put together an effective governing coalition of mainstream conservatives-- from both parties-- to run the show in November with a corrupt conservative Speaker (former New Dem chieftain Joe Crowley) and a motley crew of DCCC candidates from the New Dem and Blue Dog coalitions from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party and whichever non-fascist Republicans are left. Perhaps you've noticed, for example, that Alabama Senator Doug Jones and Pennsylvania Blue Dog "Collin" Lamb (as Pelosi fondly calls him) have been voting with the GOP. No? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Lets look at New York state for a recent example. Although New York is a blue state, with a statewide PVI of D+12 (tied with California, Maryland and Massachusetts) and although Hillary beat Trumpanzee 4,556,124 (59%) to 2,819,534 (36.5%) and although there are 103 Democrats in the state Assembly, enough conservative Democrats caucus with the Republicans in the state Senate to give the GOP control of that body. As the New York Times explained over the weekend the intense scrutiny for a seemingly obscure seat is the result of a fragile deal that was recently brokered in which a group of breakaway Democrats who had long shared power with Senate Republicans agreed to return to the Democratic fold. That collaboration had helped give Republicans control of the Senate, despite Democrats holding a numerical majority, until early April, when the so-called Independent Democratic Conference agreed to return to the mainstream fold. The deal gave the Democrats a chance to sweep the Legislature and governor’s office. There was just one hitch: two Senate seats that had previously been occupied by Democrats will be decided on Tuesday in special elections." That's tomorrow.

The Democratic shitheads from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party have kept governing power out of the hands of the Democrats-- with Cuomo's connivance-- for 7 years. A week ago the Democrats "welcomed" back 8 of the shitheads. Senate District 37 in eastern Westchester is the pivotal seat. It was Democrat George Lattimer's old seat when he beat a Trumpist for County Executive and it pits Assemblywoman Shelley Mayer (D) against Julie Killian (R), a former member of the Rye City Council. The 2 to 1 Democratic registration advantage favors Mayer. City&State New York took a solid shot at explaining tomorrow's 2 Seante special elections. "While New York state political observers are captivated by the drama over a deal between state Senate Minority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Independent Democratic Conference Leader Jeff Klein to reunify Democrats in the state Senate, control of the chamber may actually be determined by the outcome of a special election in Westchester.

The suburban Senate seat has been a swing district. Republican Bob Cohen lost narrowly to Democratic incumbent Suzi Oppenheimer in 2010 and to Latimer in 2012. Westchester County was previously led by Republican Rob Astorino, who launched an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 2014 and was defeated by Latimer in an upset victory in 2017.

Jeanne Zaino, a professor of political science at Iona College, said that the race between Mayer and Killian is closer than many observers had expected given the advantage Democrats have in enthusiasm. Zaino noted that one of Killian’s strategies has been to tie Mayer to the aura of corruption that permeates Albany. Mayer was chief counsel to state Senate Democrats from 2007 to 2011, during which time the Senate Democratic leaders were Malcolm Smith and John Sampson, who were later convicted of corruption in separate cases.

“Killian is trying to pitch Mayer as the incumbent, if you will, and the insider, and painting herself more as the underdog and the outsider,” Zaino said, noting that dissatisfaction with the political establishment was an important theme in the 2016 presidential election.

Michael Lawler, Killian’s campaign manager, said that corruption in Albany is an important electioni issue, and that voters want to ensure that one party doesn't have full control of the state.

“You have a Democratic governor and a Democratic state Assembly, and so having a Republican majority in the state Senate to provide balance in state government is important,” Lawler said. “I think a lot of people want to ensure that one-party rule in New York state doesn't happen.”

However, the desire to see a balanced government may be outmatched by the strong Democratic headwinds going into the 2018 midterms, both in New York and nationally. President Donald Trump is deeply unpopular in New York state, and recent races-- including in Westchester-- have seen a surge in Democratic enthusiasm.

Zaino said that when she did polling in the 2017 race between Latimer and Astorino, she found that 4 in 10 voters said that Trump would be a factor when making their decision about who to vote for in the county executive race. That dynamic was continuing to play out in the race between Mayer and Killian, she said, as Westchester residents often want to talk about national politics in conjunction with this race.

The interest in national politics has led to an unusual level of voter and activist engagement for a local special election. Doug Forand, a spokesman for Mayer’s campaign, said that the campaign was sending out 100 volunteers each weekend to canvass.

“I've never seen the kind of volunteer effort that is coming through for this race,” he said. Forand conceded that the campaign would have to work to ensure strong turnout, as voter participation is generally low in special elections. However, he remained optimistic that Democrats and independents would vote for Mayer because “they're so upset about what's happening nationally.”

But Lawler argued that voters would be more concerned with district-specific issues than with national politics when voting.

“I think voters are very concerned about what's going on locally and in New York state, and those are the issues that we're focused on, and that Julie's been addressing every day since getting in the race,” he said. “The political climate is certainly against Republicans at the moment, but Julie is defying that.”

Even as Democrats generally emphasize national politics, Mayer has campaigned on the district’s specific issues-- including the opioid epidemic, taxes and gun control-- to woo local voters. Meanwhile, independent expenditure groups have poured money into the race, including charter school and education reform supporters backing Killian. Both candidates have peppered local media with ads.

While Trump has indirectly influenced the race, other major political players have gotten directly involved. Cuomo has endorsed and held a rally and a fundraiser on behalf of Mayer, and former Gov. George Pataki is supporting Killian. Since the race may determine party control in the state, big dollars and big names are flooding the district.

The IDC reunification deal might harm Mayer, as it would take away her argument to turn out Democratic voters that she must win for the IDC to return to the fold. But Democrats still need to hold her seat to gain the majority. Her campaign argues that, thanks to the IDC agreement, she can now point to a greater likelihood of actually being in the majority and having the power to get legislation passed.

“People vote much more on the individual than they do based on the insider, macro political battles that are going on,” Forand said. “I think it's good for what Shelley would be able to achieve as a senator, and I think that's going to be great for her in November.”

Lawler agreed that the reunification announcement will not have an effect on the race’s outcome. “Ultimately, voters in this district are not going to be swayed by the machinations of the Albany power brokers,” Lawler said. “They're going to be swayed by who is best suited to address the issues and concerns of the community here.”

Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, said that how suburban Westchester residents vote could even be an indicator of state or even national headwinds.

“What happens in this district not only may determine control of state government, which is important enough,” Levy said. “The performance of these swing suburban voters could serve as a bellwether for the political direction of the entire country.”

UPDATE: Meanwhile, In Colorado Today...

And something very special happened in Colorado today. The 5th congressional district-- primarily El Paso County-- is the reddest district in the state (R+14). It's an evangelical hellhole centered around Colorado Springs. Obama did poorly both tines he ran and in 2016 Trump, a great ethical and religious figure, crush Hillary 57.2% to 33.2%. Hallelujah! Right-wing crackpot-- and incumbent-- Doug Lamborn, was knocked off the ballot today by the state Supreme Court. There are 4 other Republicans on the ballot, two of whom, state Senator Owen Hill and El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn, have been running serious primary campaigns, and three Democrats are vying to get on the ballot, one of whom, Stephany Rose Spaulding, has relatively serious campaign.

Just hours after the Supreme Court decision, the Denver Post reported that "While the decision-- that Lamborn’s re-election campaign improperly gathered voters’ signatures to land a spot on the ticket-- is unlikely to mean his 5th Congressional District seat leaves GOP hands, it injects the very real prospect that a fresh face will take over after years of unsuccessful challenges to Lamborn’s reign." Lamborn says he'll challenge the decision, presumably in a federal court.

Meet Katherine Brezler-- Hope For A Better New York State

About a month ago, New York had some important local elections that ended very well. One was to for County Executive of Westchester. The incumbent, Trump crony Rob Astorino-- on whom Bannon and Mercer spent over a million dollars trying to stave off defeat-- was beaten 116,767 (57%) to 89,463 (43%) by Democratic state Senator George Latimer. Latimer's district (SD-37) starts at Glen Island Park and Parkway N at the top of Van Cortlandt Park in the south, and shoots north through parts of New Rochelle and Southeast Yonkers into Bronxville, White Plains, Eastchester, Larchmont, Mamaroneck, Harrison, Rye, Portchester, Purchase, Armonk, Bedford and all the way to Katonah. Now we have an opportunity to fill that vacant seat with a stalwart super-progressive, Kat Brezler, just endorsed by Blue America and just what the Senate needs to keep the Republicans and Andy Cuomo in check. I asked her to introduce herself to DWT readers with a guest post, which follows.

Billionaires Get Handouts. My Students Can’t Get Toilet Paper-- Fight For The Future Now
-by Katherine Brezler

I am Kat Brezler. Founder of People For Bernie-- a grassroots campaign that came out of Occupy Wall Street, Ready for Warren, Zephyr Teachout’s digital team and candidate for New York State Senate. But before all of that, I am a public school teacher.

I have had the privilege of teaching in New York public schools since 2005. Last year my class and I received the rare opportunity to attend the Lincoln Center ballet. I couldn’t wait to see the joy on my student’s faces as they took in the opulence.

During intermission, I took two students to the restroom. As I stood outside waiting for them, I wondered what they had noticed; was it the marble countertops or the brass knuckling on the chairs? Eventually the doors flew open, and the glowing faces of my students greeted me.

“Ms. Brezler, did you know that their bathrooms have TWO toilet paper rolls?!”

While billionaires get a handout, my students-- and students across the country-- get one roll of toilet birthday. Every year that I’ve been a teacher, that roll is gone well before the year is over. Simple hygienic necessities should not be subject to budget constraints. Our teachers and students deserve dignity and respect.

Currently, Republicans control 32 State Legislatures and 33 Governor’s seats. They have over 4,000 elected officials with exposure in their local communities, ready to run for higher office.

This is how they have gotten more than 300 abortion restrictions passed in the last five years and how they can get away with gerrymandering districts, packing the courts, and changing the tax code to benefit the wealthy while middle-class families struggle.

My entire career has been spent serving in economically disadvantaged communities, I have seen the consequences of these actions first hand. I have had enough. If these lawmakers won’t stand up for my kids, then I’ll do it myself: by running for State Senate in Westchester, New York.

Due to the successful election of George Latimer to Westchester County Executive, his seat will be vacated in January when he assumes office. Governor Cuomo has an option to call a special election to fill this and other legislatie vacancies. If the Governor calls a special election, the Westchester Democratic County Committee will meet to pick the Democratic nominee to run for the 37th State Senate District. This means 600 district leaders at most, possibly as little as 15 chairs have the power to nominate for the democratic party’s some 90,000 registered Democrats in district. There is no primary. This is what I like to call a “shotgun wedding”. The special election will happen in short order. I need your help to reach out to district leaders and chairs so they know what’s at stake for the future of the district. Can you sign up to volunteer with our campaign at www.katbrezler.com?

As Democrats we don’t have a bench. It is vital that we work together to elect officials that can keep up momentum and represent the working and middle-class. I implore residents of the 37th Senatorial District to call their Village and City County Committee Chairs and tell them to endorse Kat Brezler for State Senate. We need to start building our bench right now to ensure that our future isn’t a repeat of the past. I don’t put up with bullies in my classroom, and I certainly won’t put up with bullies in Albany or in The Capital.

The maximum contribution in this race is $11,000. I don’t have that stuffed into my couch cushions, but Trump and his cronies surely do. This campaign is fueled by small contributions, not large corporations. Please donate [by tapping on the thermometer on the right] so that together we can build a future that we can all be proud of.

Katherine Brezler is a second-grade teacher in The Bronx and a candidate for New York State Senate in the 37th District. You can find her on Facebook and follow her on Twitter at @KatBrezler.

Upstate New York Voters Just Elected A Dead Trumpist To The State Legislature

Friday, WYSL hate talk radio host/wing-nut Assemblyman Bill Nojay, a loud and early Trumpanzee backer, was due in court on fraud charges after embezzling money from a trust fund he had handled as an attorney. Instead, he decided to shoot himself a few feet from his family's burial plot at Riverside Cemetery. Longtime DWT readers may recall Nojay from 2012 when we looked into his deranged incitement of racial hatred against Japanese-American progressive congressional candidate Nate Shinagawa.

We don't celebrate anyone's suicide at DWT, not even a deplorable piece of crap like Nojay, who had the worst voting record of any member of the New York Assembly. After all, he had a wife and 3 children and both his parents are still alive. The world is, however, much better off without him, not just because of his racism and vicious right-wing politics, but because of his typically Republican crooked business practices.

Nojay has been at the middle of various controversies recently. He was a silent partner in a company that won a tentative contract to oversee the second phase of the $1.3 billion Rochester schools modernization project. And he was one of four defendants in a fraud trial in Cambodia, where Nojay and three other men formed a company to process and export rice. The four were accused of obtaining a $1 million investment from a wealthy Cambodian, then shutting the company down.

While multiple media outlets Friday linked Nojay's criminal charge to either the school modernization or the Cambodia project, the Cambodian case had nothing to do with it. And while agents reportedly found the alleged fraud as an offshoot of an investigation into the modernization program, the criminal charge had nothing to do with that matter either.

Instead, Nojay was to be criminally charged in connection with the alleged disappearance of funds from an account he managed for a longtime client and friend, architect Carlton "Bud" DeWolff, sources said.

DeWolff said Friday afternoon that the FBI had informed him several weeks ago that $1.8 million from the escrow account had been traced to Nojay, who had access to the money as DeWolff's lawyer. At first the FBI thought DeWolff was involved in diverting the funds but DeWolff said he convinced them that he had not been.

It's unclear how much of the money Nojay was accused of embezzling.

The funds originated from a major project for which DeWolff provided architectural services-- the King Hussein Center for Biotechnology and Cancer, a large medical complex near Amman, Jordan. The funds in the escrow account were intended to pay for DeWolff's services.

DeWolff said Friday that in recent weeks Nojay had returned much of the money that had been taken from the escrow account.

Yesterday, the NY Times reported that voters in his very Republican district-- which stretches from Pittsford southeast of Rochester down through Honeoye Falls, Geneseo, Mount Morris, Nunda and Dansville to just south of Hornell (all of Livingston County, southern Monroe County and northwestern Steuben County) were urged by the GOP "to cast their ballots for a dead man. Three men in a room are preparing to pick his political heir. The funeral has yet to be held, but the struggle to replace him is already on... Republican party leaders in the three counties that fall partly or fully within the 133rd Assembly District-- Livingston, Monroe and Steuben-- will choose someone to run as the general-election Republican candidate in his place. They have until 10 days after his death to do so, or about a week" from today.

The choice of a successor for Mr. Nojay lies with the chairmen of the Republican parties in each of the three counties, whose votes will be weighted according to the percentage of votes cast in each county the last time Mr. Nojay was elected. Given the district’s deep Republican bent, whoever ends up with the nomination will most likely go on to Albany next year to join the Republican minority in the Assembly.

Lowell Conrad, the chairman of the Livingston County GOP, who will have the biggest say in who gets the nomination now, said he wants to replace Nojay with someone "as close to him as possible, philosophically." Presumably he's talking about the racism and Trumpism and all that crap that Nojay espoused in public, not Nojay's private penchant for stealing whatever wasn't nailed down and super-glued.

So what happened? Counting finished at 11:30 PM (ET) and with all the votes now counted, Nojay won. There are 34,432 registered Republicans eligible to vote in the 103 precincts that make up the 133rd Assembly District. The corrupt, dead wing-nut beat the live Republican mayor of Honeoye Falls, Richard Milne, 2,736 (60.25%) to 1,763 (38.82%).

The Problem Of Fraud, Wrote Dante, Is That It "Gnaws Every Conscience"

So many New York state legislators and leaders of the legislature are currently in prison that when former state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Nassu County) was sentenced to five years in prison on Thursday, most New Yorkers, inured, just shrugged it off. After all, Republicans are on the verge of nominating Donald Trump for the presidency and the level of Trump's self-entitled corruption is of a magnitude hard to measure compared to poor nepotistic Skelos'. The federal judge sentenced Skelos' rotten son, Adam to six-and-a-half years in prison, even more than his father's sentence and, addressing Dean, said "You sent a message that you, one of the three most powerful politicians in New York state, were in some measure corrupt, and that you used your official position for personal gain." The two Skeloses had been found guilty of conspiracy, bribery and extortion last December. A week earlier Skelos' Democratic counterpart, state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was sentenced to 12 years in prison after being convicted of fraud, extortion and money laundering. Too bad they missed Cuomo so far-- and Schumer.

Let's face it, the American political establishment stinks of corruption from top to bottom. Trump in office would make it worse. So would Hillary Clinton in office. Anyone who votes for either one of them is complicit in what they bring with them. A Democrat voting for Hillary as the lesser of two evil is on the same moral grounds as a Republican voting for Trump as the lesser evil. The lesser of two evils is, first and foremost, evil.



Dante's 8th circle of Hell, dedicated to fraud, includes 10 subdivisions-- bolgie-- and although there are politicians scattered throughout hell, the 5th bolgia of the 8th Circle is the designated home of corrupt politicians who are eternally being boiled in tar. No doubt a place is being prepared for 75 year old Michel Temer right this moment. He is a leader of the bloodless coup d'état against Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff. As a NY Times editorial asserted Thursday, "there is no evidence that she abused her power for personal gain, while many of the politicians orchestrating her ouster have been implicated in a huge kickback scheme and other scandals. Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled last week that Eduardo Cunha, the veteran lawmaker who has led the effort to oust Ms. Rousseff, must leave office to stand trial on corruption charges. Vice President Michel Temer, who took charge of the country on Thursday, could be ineligible to run for office for eight years because election authorities recently disciplined him for violating campaign finance limits." The same day a Times news piece by Simon Romero reports that Temer immediately went to work shifting the Brazilian government from a moderately center-left orientation to a dangerously right-wing one.

The new Brazilian president’s first pick for science minister was a creationist. He chose a soybean tycoon who has deforested large tracts of the Amazon rain forest to be his agriculture minister. And he is the first leader in decades to have no women in his cabinet at all.

The government of President Michel Temer — the 75-year-old lawyer who took the helm of Brazil on Thursday after Dilma Rousseff was suspended by the Senate to face an impeachment trial-- could cause a significant shift to the political right in Latin America’s largest country.

“Temer’s government is starting out well,” Silas Malafaia, a television evangelist and author of best-selling books like “How to Defeat Satan’s Strategies,” wrote on Twitter.

“He’ll be able to sweep away the ideology of pathological leftists,” Mr. Malafaia added of a conservative lawmaker whom Mr. Temer chose as education minister.

...To many of Mr. Temer’s critics, the shift is perhaps most evident in the role of women in his and Ms. Rousseff’s administrations.

The contrasts could not be more glaring. Ms. Rousseff, 68, was a former operative in an urban guerrilla group. She was tortured during the military dictatorship and eventually rose to lead the board of the national oil company before becoming Brazil’s first female president.

Until recently, relatively few Brazilians had even heard of Mr. Temer. When they did, it often involved references to his wife, Marcela Temer, 32, a former beauty pageant contestant who is 43 years younger than he is. They met when she was just 18.

A profile of Ms. Temer in Veja, a newsmagazine, caused a stir by glowingly referring to her as “pretty, demure and of the home.” It said Mr. Temer was “a lucky man” to have such a devoted, unassuming housewife as a spouse, especially one who wears knee-level skirts.

The magazine did not mention the tattoo on the nape of Ms. Temer’s neck featuring her husband’s name, but the message was clear: Mr. Temer, a law professor and career politician, embodies a more conservative approach than Ms. Rousseff in the corridors of power and in his own home.

Then there is the issue of race. After a long stretch in which Brazil pressed ahead with affirmative action policies, Mr. Temer’s critics point out the lack of Afro-Brazilians in his cabinet, especially when nearly 51 percent of Brazilians define themselves as black or mixed race, according to the 2010 census.

“It’s embarrassing that most of Temer’s cabinet choices are old, white men,” said Sérgio Praça, a political scientist at Fundação Getulio Vargas, an elite Brazilian university. He drew a contrast with Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, who formed a cabinet in which half of the 30 ministers are women.

Revolution In The Village

Glick, bad news

-by David Keith

I taught calculus in college. I really love mathematics.

However, the word "Math"-- referred to by the Hillary-bots as #math-- now causes a painful nausea in me.

Simply saying that math-- what these folks are too dumb to understand is more simple arithmetic than math-- proves Bernie has no chance at the nomination is silly and should be a dis qualifier for future employment (in the Democratic Party…I’m sure there will be a home for these stooges in the GOP after their Cleveland gun fight or at the Emily’s List Tribunal in the Beltway).

A mature dialogue would address the fact that based on delegate "rules"-- those cooked up by party bosses-- Bernie’s chances at securing the nomination are growing smaller after each contest. This is a sad reality, but a reality nonetheless.

However, I believe Bernie’s campaign has the potential to change the Democratic Party. And small examples of that change may very well come THIS cycle, with your help.

For instance, in New York State, Bernie supporter (and former anti-Cuomo crusader) Zephyr Teachout is well on her way to victory. (This is the Democratic seat held by a Republican that the self-funding, childish husband of Facebook’s Chris Hughes-- Sean Eldridge-- failed to garner 37% in last cycle.) People all over the district, and the country, recognize Zephyr’s genuine desire to fight back (both against the corporate/conservative wing of her party and across the aisle) on behalf of working people. Her Revolution is being aided by Bernie, and has a very good chance of landing her in Congress.

However, this select Congressional seat is not the only place where a fellow-revolutionary can beat back against the conservative wing of the party.

About 130 miles south, on the Island of Manhattan, labor leader Arthur Schwartz is building a grassroots army to fight back against the all too Sheldon Silver-like, thirty year incumbent Deborah Glick.

A very astute political operative told me recently that Glick looks like Hillary, sounds like Hillary, and votes like Hillary.

I personally think that is an insult to Hillary.

Deborah Glick is a creature of Albany’s back rooms where should-be-prisoners like Jeff Klein and Sheldon Silver have roamed for years. (Granted Silver is now roaming in a jail cell). Glick’s connection to these thugs is being increasingly noted in the press. This trend will continue.

This Assembly seat (which holds its primary in September) was a Teachout stronghold in 2014, when she inspired many New Yorkers during her valiant effort against King Cuomo II. I think it is safe to say that this seat-- which includes Greenwich Village-- will produce similar numbers for Bernie in tomorrow’s primary.

All of these factors point to a real opportunity for Schwartz, who just so happened to be the Sanders Campaigns’ official ballot access attorney this cycle.

A community activist for 25+ years, Arthur can defeat Glick, and inspire many in our party to believe that #math just isn’t going to be enough for the right wing of the Democratic party to beat back the people. If you'd like to contribute to Schwartz's campaign, you can do it here:

The Stink Of Corruption In New York This Month Is Very Much Bipartisan

3 New York crooks-- 2 going on trial and the one in the middle on Hillary's Leadership Council

Sheldon Silver is from the Lower East Side; his Assembly district-- first won in 1976-- includes the world's worst cesspool of corruption, Wall Street. He became Assembly Speaker early in 1994 while Mario Cuomo was governor. He was Speaker during the terms of George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson and Andrew Cuomo and he was widely considered not just grotesquely corrupt but also a manipulative dictator. Last January he was arrested on federal corruption charges and a week later he resigned as speaker.

When federal prosecutors subpoenaed a law firm to learn what exactly Sheldon Silver, the powerful leader of the State Assembly, had done to earn the hundreds of thousands of dollars the firm paid him each year, prosecutors received just one file.

It was exceptional in two ways, they say.

First, Mr. Silver had performed a bit of lawyering on behalf of a client: He helped a legislative employee settle a private property dispute.

Second, Mr. Silver did not receive any payment for his efforts.

Other than that one instance, Mr. Silver “never did any actual legal work,” Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a news conference Thursday. “He simply sat back and collected millions of dollars by cashing in on his public office and his political influence.”

The story that unfolded in the federal criminal complaint filed on Thursday reads like a political thriller, a lurid tale of abuse of power whose main character squeezed a tidy fortune out of the obscure but lucrative legal niches of asbestos lawsuits and property-tax reductions, while capitalizing on his position at the front gate in Albany where lobbyists and special interests seek passage through the legislative process.

Juggling more than half a dozen bank accounts, Mr. Silver-- who went before a judge to hear the charges and was released on a $200,000 personal recognizance bond-- steered public money to help those who would privately help him in return, the complaint alleges. He also meticulously covered up his scheming, it said, even meeting at his office in the State Capitol to draft side agreements that hid his actions.

When an anti-corruption panel appointed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in July 2013 started asking questions about Mr. Silver’s income, the speaker fought the commission’s authority to do so-- deploying taxpayer-funded lawyers to do battle in court, and portraying the battle as a constitutional fight, not an effort at self-preservation.

Ultimately, Mr. Silver helped cut a deal with Mr. Cuomo to have the panel shut down entirely. But rather than ending the investigation into Mr. Silver, as the speaker had hoped, the panel’s disbanding inflamed Mr. Bharara, whose investigation culminated in the early morning arrest on Thursday.

Last April April 25, Silver was indicted on more charges-- making illegal investments, with money he had taken as kickbacks or bribes, through private vehicles, bringing him a profit of $750,000. He's still a member of the Assembly and his trial begins tomorrow This is going to be quite a month in New York politics, with a major politician from each party on trial. The Republican is Dean Skelos, former state Senate Majority Leader from southwest Nassau County, just east of JFK. The district includes the 5 Towns (Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere, Inwood, and Hewlett), Atlantic Beach, Long Beach, Lido Beach, Valley Stream (where I grew up), Malvern, Lynbrook, Oceanside, Rockville Centre, South Hempstead. He was arrested on his federal corruption charges, which include extortion and solicitation of bribes, last May. He was forced to step down as Majority Leader but, like Silver, he's still a member of the legislature.

Of course, the big media story in New York about the twin trials is that the fetid political culture in Albany is on trial.

Court papers in the two cases suggest that testimony in Federal District Court will expose in granular detail what watchdog groups say is a seamy world where big money and politics have long intersected with government.

There are accounts of kickbacks disguised as legitimate income; no-show jobs for a lawmaker’s son; and the use of state money to influence a doctor to refer clients to a favored law firm that, in turn, paid millions of dollars to a lawmaker.

The alleged acts are typical of a culture, according to the watchdog groups, that has made Albany practically synonymous with corruption and stubbornly resistant to reform, keeping citizens-- and even most lawmakers-- in the dark about much of the legislative work and spending done in their names.

For more than two decades, Mr. Silver and, for a lesser period, Mr. Skelos, have presided over the machinery comprising, along with the governor, the so-called three men in a room who have historically controlled much of the state’s policy, legislative and budgeting decisions.

The two trials-- Mr. Silver’s case is to begin on Monday with jury selection, and the case against Mr. Skelos, who is going on trial with his son, Adam, is scheduled to start on Nov. 16-- could run as long as six weeks each, so they will probably overlap for about a month. Never before have two lawmakers of their stature gone on trial at the same time in New York.

...The charges against the two men fall in line with generations of senior legislators in Albany, where corruption has endured for more than a century, with four previous Senate majority leaders and three speakers indicted. When Mr. Cuomo was elected governor in 2010, he vowed to restore integrity, a task that has eluded him so far.

The governor’s creation of the anti-corruption panel in 2013, known as the Moreland Commission, brought high hopes; it began to uncover what many of its members believed were the institutional problems forming the bedrock of Albany’s troubled culture.

Among them were two broad issues that are expected to figure prominently in both trials: ineffectual campaign finance laws that give moneyed interests-- especially large real estate developers-- outsize influence; and lax financial disclosure rules that allow corrupt lawmakers to list part-time jobs or consulting work to mask political payoffs. Often, this work is listed at law firms that represent clients with business before the state. These laws and rules, largely written by the lawmakers themselves, are seldom enforced.

Perhaps these trials will lead to some meaningful reform. Jesse McKinley writing last week for the Times suggested that "[w]ith corruption and the policing of government still pressing issues in New York’s capital, state ethics regulators have proposed that state elected officials be barred from accepting and asking for campaign contributions from any person or group under investigation by, or involved in legal action with, their offices. The proposal, made this week by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, which investigates violations of state ethics and lobbying laws, would extend current conflict-of-interest policies that apply to state employees to also include the governor, the state comptroller, the attorney general, state legislators and their re-election campaigns."

Maybe "Smelly Shelly" Silver is answerable to the laws we have after all: Part 2, Laws? What laws?

Just what connection do I see between Smelly Shelly and "Moneybags Mikey" Khodorkovsky?


Man with a microphone (but is anyone listening?): Ex-oligarch, ex-convict Mikhail Khodorkovsky "has grandly declared that he would guarantee Putin's safety if he left power peacefully."

by Ken

Last night, in Part 1 of this two-part "Maybe 'Smelly Shelly' Silver is answerable to the laws we have after all" series, I took note of the multi-count indictment handed down Thursday by a federal grand jury against former NYS Assembly Speaker "Smelly Shelly" Silver. The indictment covers nearly $4 million squirreled away by the Smellyman in a pair of schemes involving sums paid to him by law firms essentially in exchange for -- or so the feds allege -- using his position to either steer state funds in desired directions or to secure passage of desired legislation.

There had been, you'll recall, heavy speculation that Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his team were reluctant to press the grand jury for an indictment knowing how difficult it is to prove a quid pro quo in the movement of money into the pockets of a politician. We heard from a source, Susan Necheles, "a former prosecutor who has defended political corruption cases," who said that if you can't prove NYS legislators' quid pro quo, "even when the people they're earning money from also want political favors from them," then "that's not criminal, it's just politics."

And in fact, we're hearing blowback from Albany about how mean USA Preet is being to them, and showboating. Just last weekend a bunch of crybabies bent the ear of the New York Daily News's Kenneth Lovett for a moderately amusing piece, "Albany lawmakers cry foul over Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's tactics," which came with a deck so long, there seemed hardly any need to read the actual piece:

While many are praising his willfulness to take on corruption in Albany, more than a dozen lawmakers and other insiders are upset over the means by which Bharara conducts his business, including his way of keeping the spotlight on him and his method of attacking the entire legislature as one.

Now the fact is that USA Preet never said, or in my hearing hinted, any such thing. If that's what these upstanding legislators are hearing, maybe they're hearing some other voices, possibly voices much closer to them. As for horning in on a state legislature, which shouldn't even fall under his jurisdiction, and the charge of showboating, I don't think it's my imagination that until the day Smelly Shelly was arrested, when understandably all hell broke loose, USA Preet kept about as low a profile as someone in his position finally could. And even on arrest day, it wasn't the Preetster who was out front, but his guys and the FBI guys who worked on the investigation.

For that matter, I don't see any reason to believe that USA Preet would have ever gotten involved in the Albany cesspool if the State Legislature had shown the slightest inclination to set and maintain any decent sort of ethical standards. But they haven't, and they don't, and unless they're forced, they won't.


SO WE ASK WHAT DO SMELLY SHELLY AND
"MONEYBAGS MIKEY" HAVE IN COMMON?"

Yes, finally we're getting to the point I've been threatening to make for ages now. When the shocking story of Smelly Shelly's arrest broke, I still had floating around my head pieces of Julia Ioffe's January 12 New Yorker profile of the bloodied-but-unbowed Russian ex-oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovksy, "Remote Control: Can an exiled oligarch persuade Russia that Putin must go?." Actually, I've already shared my "money" quote, and I don't think I can do much better than to share it again, with maybe a little boldfacing.

First I need to repeat the context I set when I presented the quote originally: "Before Khodorkovsky was brought down by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, you'll recall, he had at a remarkably young age amassed a fortune that made even the fortunes amassed by the other rampaging oligarchs look ho-hum. And today, while he remains, as Ioffe puts it, 'unapologetic,' he's a little, um, defensive about what he did."

We might add just this additional bit of context for the breakout of the wealth grab that characterized Russia's economic transformation from SSR to post-Soviet entity:

Boris Yeltsin’s post-Soviet government implemented radical market reforms but instituted almost no legal structure to control them. Khodorkovsky was perfectly positioned to take advantage.

Now here's what Moneybags Mikey told Ioffe (as noted, with emphasis added):

When people say, ‘It was impossible to live back then without violating the law,’ I say, ‘Come on, don’t make me out for a fool,’ ” he said, with a sneer. “When there are so few laws and they’re so imperfect, you have to be a total idiot not to be able to find a way to do what you want without violating the existing laws.”

He had only taken colossal advantage of a nearly lawless landscape. “Back then, I didn’t grasp the fact that people of a slightly older generation than me simply couldn’t adequately assess the opportunities in front of them,” he said. “In this case, we are—or I was—also victims of the same problem. Because we got property but in a flawed way.”

He went on, “We weren’t the Rockefellers, but we weren’t modern Americans, either.”

Did you get that?

MONEYBAGS MIKEY: "When there are so few laws and they’re so imperfect, you have to be a total idiot not to be able to find a way to do what you want without violating the existing laws."

And JULIA IOFFE: "He had only taken colossal advantage of a nearly lawless landscape."

Now do you see why coverage of Smelly Shelly's day of shame set me thinking again about Moneybags Mikhail?


"SO FEW LAWS, AND SO IMPERFECT":
WELCOME TO NYS LEGISLATIVE ETHICS

One refrain you'll note throughout the coverage of Smelly Shelly's legal situation: NYS legislators are in fact allowed, almost without restriction, to rack up outside income," because our Legislature is presumed to be part-time. That's right, every once in a while our legislators entrust the care of the family farmstead over to the rest of the family and the farmheads and set out on the arduous trek to Albany, where they transact some official business and promtply set out on the return trek to the farm. It's citizen democracy at its best.

Yeah, right.

The fact remains that the way the Legislature was set up, it's practically assumed that legislators will do outside work, since they can hardly be expected to support their families on the pittance coughed up by the State of New York. Actually, it's far from what you or I would probably consider a pittance, especially when you add in all the extras, in either perks or outright cash, members earn for doing pretty much anything beyond showing up.

You're probably thinking, well, that's kind of iffy. After all, when your job is doing the state's business, it might seem awfully difficult to avoid conflicts of interest in performing outside work. Still, it's easy enough to see which sources of income might fail the smell test by looking at legislators' disclosure forms for their sources of outside income. Well, ha-ha and ha! Because the legislators don't have to disclose all their sources of outside income.

This is one of those utterly unaccountable oversights that somehow the Legislature has never gotten around to rectifying. Oh, I'm sure they've meant to, and somehow every time they have, well, something came up. Like they had to hurry home to chop some firewood or slop the pigs.

This was in fact one of the things our governor, "Boy Andrew" Cuomo, had in mind when he organized that commission that caused such a ruckus to look into ethical problems in state government. It was so important to him that as soon as the the "money guys" of some state legislators being poked at by commission investigators happened also to be "money guys" of Boy Andrew. Wham, end of investigation, end of commission!

Nevertheless, just this month Boy Andrew was back at it. As the head read on a post by Newsday's Michael Gormley, "Cuomo says he will force State Legislature to accept his ethics measures." As far as I know, the governor has made no mention of forcing himself to ponder gubernatorial ethics.

Still, the law is what the law is, and when you look at the rackets set up by, or at least on behalf of, Smelly Shelly, it's hard -- at least for me -- not to think of Moneybags Mikey declaring, "When there are so few laws and they’re so imperfect, you have to be a total idiot not to be able to find a way to do what you want without violating the existing laws."

Certainly that includes finding out just how far you can stretch those laws. When you dig into the details of the crimes alleged by the federal prosecutors, and see all the devices and strategies devised to hide what is alleged to have been going on, and the gaps even in following such laws as there are, you get a pretty good idea that everyone involved understood perfectly well how bad these things stunk. So it's kind of a relief that on the basis of the evidence the U.S. attorney's office presented to that grand jury, the jurors decided that yes, the charges deserve to be pursued to trial.


ONE LAST LESSON FROM THE SERIAL
PLUNDERING OF MONEYBAGS MIKEY

I would have liked to touch on a bunch more points that crop up in Julia Ioffe's profile of Khodorkovsky, which is definitely worth a read if you have newyorker.com access. As she notes, Mikey has freely reinvented himself ideologically a number of times, by coincidence all times when his reinvented self happened to suit his current financial self-interest. Forget presenting a "democratic" alternative to Russia's once and apparently for-all-time (at least until he loses control) strongman Vladimir Putin. None of those selves would seem well adapted to a principled "for love of Mother Russia" alternative.

For example, when Khodorkovsky started making his fortune through his sleazily won control of Yukos, the former state oil monopoly, Ioffe -- drawing on a 2002 Foreign Affairs article by Leo Wolosky, "at the time the deputy director of the Economic Task Force on Russia at the Council on Foreign Relations" -- notes:

Very little of this wealth was making it back to the parts of the country that were producing it. Instead of paying taxes, which could have been used to repair the decaying Soviet infrastructure, Khodorkovsky and his colleagues were depositing the funds in an offshore network.

"Whole regions of Russia are being impoverished," Wolosky said.

And we can hardly bypass Moneybags Mikey's anounced vision for the future:

Khodorkovsky is preparing for a revolution, convinced that Putin, despite his overwhelming popularity and his support inside the military and the security services, will soon fall from power. Khodorkovsky’s efforts may seem quixotic or irrelevant to almost everyone in Russia who bothers to pay attention, and yet he persists. He has people inside Russia organizing activists and preparing them for the 2016 parliamentary elections, even though he doesn’t believe that they will have an effect on real politics in the country. He has launched a Web site where Russian journalists write about the government’s many sins. One of his allies is busy working on a post-Putin constitution. Less than a year out of prison, Khodorkovsky has grandly declared that he would guarantee Putin’s safety if he left power peacefully.

“When the moment comes, the leftists will be organized, the neo-Nazis will be organized, and Putin will have the special services at his disposal,” an Open Russia activist told me. “And, when it’s go time, we want to have our hundred thousand people in the mix, too.”

But to get back to our subject, I did promise you a story I think relates, concerning the problematic relationship between Khodorkovsky and his future nemesis Putin. By the time the latter came to power, Ioffe tells us, Mikey had already performed his most recent self-reinvention, this one breaking out of oligarchitude. The time had come for him to stabilize his wealth, for which it was necessary to make Yukos a regular international-trading-and-investment-partner-grade company, and the stark reality was that "in order for our capitalization to grow, we needed a more transparent political system."

This was certainly not a traditional oligarchical position. Surely the last thing economic pillagers and plunderers want is political transparency. But Mikey's situation had changed. He wasn't trying to make a fortune; he'd already made it, and now he wanted to hold onto it.

Which seems, alas, to have somewhat clouded his perception of what was going on around him. Putin, we're reminded, came to power "promising to rein in the oligarchs." Does it really need saying that just about the last thing he had in mind was "a more transparent political system"? Yikes!

This situation was sketched for Ioffe by Natalia Gevorkyan, "who helped conduct the interviews with Putin that make up his autobiography, First Person." Ioffe writes (with, again, some highlighting from me):

After being elected to the Presidency, in 2000, Putin began to surround himself with K.G.B. alumni and friends from St. Petersburg, men who had fallen behind in the nineties. Now that they were in power, the imposition of legal structures and transparency was not in their interest; it would only prevent them from amassing the sort of wealth that Khodorkovsky had.

By 2002, Putin had driven two powerful oligarchs––Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky––out of the country and seized their media assets. According to [onetime Khdorkovsky business partner Leo] Nevzlin, Khodorkovsky didn’t understand the signals the Kremlin was sending: show fealty or leave. On February 20, 2003, at a business round-table with Putin, Khodorkovsky pointed to a questionable deal that had caught his attention as an oilman. He implied that Igor Sechin, an old friend of Putin’s who was also in the K.G.B., had enriched himself through the deal. When Khodorkovsky asked Putin to look into it, Putin snapped, “Yukos has excess reserves, and how did it get them?” The message was clear: you got yours, now stay out of the way as we get ours.

In the months that followed, Yukos’s offices were raided by the prosecutor general’s office. That summer, shortly after Khodorkovsky’s fortieth birthday, his lieutenant Platon Lebedev was arrested. Yukos employees fled the country, and Khodorkovsky’s friends and lawyers advised him to do the same. He refused.

The rest is history.


I'M NOT SAYING SMELLY SHELLY'S NYS
IS JUST LIKE MONEYBAGS MIKEY'S RUSSIA

Still, there is a certain angle from which the view looks kind of similar. Think of the way those NYS legislators bridle at outside interference in their little empire. (Say, is this not the Empire State?) Ethics-mongerers come and go, sometimes even in the governor's office, or a U.S. attorney's. But the principle that seems honored above all else in our State Legislature is: The people who came before us got theirs; now it's our turn to get ours.

I bet President Putin would understand.

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Maybe "Smelly Shelly" Silver is answerable to the laws we have after all: Part 1, The indictment

He used to be such an important person, not just respected but feared. Now the feds are sitting on nearly $4 million of his moolah, he's facing real prison time, and he's got some Internet clown calling him "Smelly Shelly."

by Ken

So much for the hopes of former NYS Assembly Speaker "Smelly Shelly" Silver to wriggle out from under the heap of hurt piled on him last month by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara ("Say it ain't so, Shelly Silver -- and see whether anybody believes you") at the indictment stage. (I see that I myself referred erroneously to Smelly Shelly having been "arrested and indicted." No, he was arraigned upon arrest, but the indictment(s) remained to come.) In recent days observers have been pointing to this coming Monday as a turning point in his case -- the date by which the feds would have to either properly indict him or -- well, not. There was talk that USA Preet might have difficulty getting the grand jury to issue an indictment because of the difficulty of proving a quid pro quo for the roughly $4 million they say piled up in the Smellyman's coffers via corruption.

Just yesterday morning, for example, Bloomberg News's Patricia Hurtado filed a report that was headlined "Grand Jury Deadline For Sheldon Silver Tests Case's Strength." In her report, Patricia shared insight from a couple of insiders:

Susan Necheles, a former prosecutor who has defended political corruption cases, raised doubts about the charges and said they’ll fail without convincing proof of a quid pro quo.

“We have a part-time Legislature which is allowed to earn money on the side, even when the people they’re earning money from also want political favors from them,” she said.

“That’s not criminal,” she added. “It’s just politics.”

E. Stewart Jones Jr., a lawyer who last year won an acquittal for former New York Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno on corruption charges, said there’s nothing illegal about referral-fee arrangements that are disclosed to clients.

“These relationships have existed for decades,” he said in an interview. “The lawyers have done nothing but refer a case, and that’s been permissible and ethical.”

No doubt, proving a quid pro quo where political corruption is concerned is tough. You don't usually find a document along the lines of:

I, the undersigned [insert name here], acknowledge payment of $[insert amount here] from [insert name of political figure and office held] in exchange for his/her promise to [insert brief description of favor promised; please limit to 250 words, or attach extra sheets].

Signed, [sign document here]

Or audio or video tapes to the same effect.

Sure, there are dumb pols, but you like to think that a guy who -- speaking entirely hypothetically here -- has the smarts to engage in a couple of rackets that net him a minimum of $4 isn't apt to be that stupid. On the other hand, it isn't entirely unknown for a prosecutor to assemble a case with circumstantial elements that require a jury to connect some of the dots, based on the evidence.


SMELLY SHELLY IS INDICTED

Unfortuntately for Smelly Shelly, he's a step closer to having his fate decided by a jury, because yesterday the feds got their grand-jury thumbs-up. The NYT's William K. Rashbaum reports (links onsite):

A federal grand jury in Manhattan voted on Thursday to indict Sheldon Silver on the fraud and extortion charges that were the basis of his arrest last month, and led to his ouster as speaker of the State Assembly.

Mr. Silver was arrested on Jan. 22 on a five-count criminal complaint that detailed two alleged bribery and kickback schemes in a case that has upended Albany. The three-count indictment, handed up in the United States District Courthouse in Manhattan, charged him with mail fraud, wire fraud and extortion under the color of official right.

Two charges in the complaint — a mail fraud conspiracy count and an extortion conspiracy count — were not included in the indictment. A spokesman for the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment on why the counts had been dropped.

The indictment of Mr. Silver, 71, a Lower East Side Democrat who had served as the powerful speaker for two decades, suggests there is little prospect of plea discussions at this stage in the case, and moves the matter toward a possible trial. He remains a member of the Assembly.

Mr. Silver’s lawyers, Joel Cohen and Steven Molo, said in a statement that their client was not guilty. “We can now begin to fight for his total vindication,” the statement said. “We will do our fighting where it should be done: in court.”

Mr. Silver is scheduled to be arraigned at 3 p.m. on Tuesday before Judge Valerie E. Caproni of Federal District Court. She will preside over the case.

So at this point all that stands between Shelly and a jury of his peers is whatever plea agreement his legal team can hammer out with the prosecutors. If you wanted to look at the process cynically, you might say that the principal effect of today's development is to dramatically redefine the positions from which the two sides will now be negotiating.

No doubt, though, the prosecution team is going to be hearing that phrase "quid pro quo" a lot during the back-and-forth. Proving that Smelly Shelly -- and here, it shoujld be noted, we're no longer speaking hypothetically -- used his position to stockpile potential lawsuit referrals in exchange for the millions of dollars in referral fees he racked up, or that he used his control of Assembly purse strings to move public moneys into the hands of other parties in exchange for other payoffs -- this really and truly isn't a snap.

Don't get USA Preet mad!

But the Smellyman's team has to know now that USA Preet isn't about to back down. His public statements have given strong indication that he's really peeved about the blatant corruption in Albany, not least because of the way our governor, Boy Andrew, summarily shut down the investigation he himself had set in motion -- peeved both by the rampant corruption and by the way he got snookered into cooperating into an investigation that turned out, as soon as investigators' inquiry into some of the legislators' money guys turned out to be looking at some of Boy Andrew's money guys, to be just a bit of political theater, a mere side show really, that could be shut down at the governor's convenience (or perhaps inconvenience).

Now if there's anything we learned from all those seasons of Law and Order, it's that prosecutors sometimes take the cases they prosecute personally. And while you don't want this to get out of hand -- law enforcement really shouldn't be a matter of a class of lawyers pursuing grudges -- it's certainly not entirely a bad thing. It might have been nice if USA Preet and other federal and state prosecutors had taken the massive malfeasances involved in the Great Economic Meltdown of 2008 more personally. Yes, yes, I know, a U.S. attorney can never get ahead of what he can prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, and sometimes making cases that you lose is worse than not making any cases at all. Still . . .

Let's not pretend that Smelly Shelly is, even if everything the feds say about him is true, the most corrupt officeholder in the U.S. today. But what he's accused of is big-time, and the amount of trust invested in someone who occupied as powerful a position as he did has to make him accountable. It might be nice if some other prosecutors in other jurisdictions were inspired by USA Preet's present example.


TOMORROW: Once and for all, what do Smelly Shelly and "Moneybags Mikey" Khodorkovsky have in common?

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