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Spitzer was marked
for takedown
Governor's enemies most likely
responsible for tapping his phone, setting him up
Wednesday 11 March 2008
Dallas Hansen
Eliot Spitzer, the Democratic governor of New York and the state's
former Attorney General, looks to be on the ropes—although a
technical knockout, in the form of his resignation, hasn't yet been
achieved.
A summary of the scandal as I see it: Mr. Spitzer's bank snitched
him out to the Internal Revenue Service after several “suspicious
transactions” --involving large-sum transfers broken into smaller
amounts--caught their attention. The IRS, concerned he might
be laundering bribe money, then notified the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, who proceeded to acquire wiretap warrants. In the
process of eavesdropping on the Governor's telephone calls, the FBI
discovered that Mr. Spitzer's shady transactions had nothing to do
with his being on that take but rather had everything to do with his
penchant for top-tier callgirls. The FBI then moved to indict the
principals of Mr. Spitzer's preferred escort service—one of many,
many in the New York City metro area.
It's no secret that Mr. Spitzer made plenty of enemies both during
his time as Attorney General and later as Governor. He went after the
chairman and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard Grasso,
whom Mr. Spitzer accused of being excessively compensated for his
role as the head of that not-for-profit enterprise. So despised on
Wall Street is the Governor that traders reportedly cheered when the
news of his scandal broke. More recently, Mr. Spitzer was
reported to have sicced State Police upon New York State Senator Joseph
Bruno, a Republican, with orders to shadow the Senator in an effort
to dig up any dirt on him.
As one CNN.com reader so accurately put it, “If all Congress was
cleared of men who had been with prostitutes -- including
interstate transactions -- the Congress would be just about
empty.” Indeed, there's a long history of high-ranking politicians
paying for sex services, the most infamous recent example being a 1989 Washington Times story
that implicated top Republicans in a ring that offered underage
callboys.
Dig a bit further into history, back to turn-of-the-20th-century
Chicago, and you'll find “Bathhouse” John Coughlin and Michael
“Hinky Dink” Kenna, aldermen of Chicago's First Ward who oversaw
the South Side Levee District—then the country's most notorious brothel
neighborhood. Coughlin and Kenna were voracious in their appetite for
bribes from brothelkeepers, including the legendary Everleigh
Sisters, who ran the country's most exquisite brothel, where
customers frequently spent $200 (1900 dollars) a night for a
good time. The Lords of the Levee, as the aldermen were known,
were not only never scandalized or indicted for their well-known
corruption—they both served in Chicago's municipal politics until their
deaths.
Since rich men frequently pay for sex, and polticians are—relative to
the general population—invariably rich, it follows that a good
portion of them consume sexual services with some frequency. And in
the realm of politics, a poltician's enemies can use the threat of a
sex scandal as a means of blackmail. Undoubtedly the FBI is sitting
on information concerning the sexual indescretions of many other
politicians—that Mr. Spitzer's happened to come out on Monday,
March 10, 2008 was unquestionably the product of specific human
will.
My advice to Mr. Spitzer—however unlikely it is that he'll read it—is
to lay low and wait for this to blow over. He ought not to resign—if
he does he'll be washed up for good, whereas weathering the storm
might leave him only stronger for the future.
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