Thursday, July 23, 2009

Psssst...The You Know What's in the Apple Jacks


I have a theory on why New Jersey politicians are uncontrollably corrupt.

There's something in the Jersey drinking water that triggers a rogue "impaired judgment" gene in the same people who have the "I want to run something, be in charge of something, but I can't figure out what to be in charge of... I know... I'll be a politician" gene.

I went to a wedding in Linden 20 years ago, where nine guests had won at least one elected office and also served time in prison.
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44 Charged by U.S. in New Jersey Corruption Sweep
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A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.
The case began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in a seaside town. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, it mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes in New Jersey’s recent past.
It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash — once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000.
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