New Jersey - The Corruption State
Newsday today reports on New Jersey's corrupt political culture and the massive number of indictments and convictions of public offials in the past few years:
Since 2002, 128 public employees in New Jersey have been convicted on federal corruption charges. About a third of those were elected officials, including state lawmakers, mayors and town council members.
Those numbers back up New Jersey's reputation as a corruption hotbed, fueled by TV shows like "The Sopranos." Experts say the state's labyrinth of local boards, commissions and councils has created fiefdoms where fraud and abuse flourish.
This amounts to a lot of work the federal government to prosecute. What strikes me however is the complete lack of local and state prosecution of corruption. With the number of both local and state police jurisdictions around the state, it seems that if public corruption is being ignored that our entire justice system in NJ is only serving to provide traffic enforement and to protect citizens from the recidivist drug and criminal culture in our cities.
New Jersey's federal corruption arrests in 2007 included:
_ Six former mayors, including James, who was convicted of steering cut-rate city land to a one-time mistress.
_ Assemblymen Alfred Steele and Mims Hackett, Jr., charged with trading public influence for bribes. Steele pleaded guilty in October. Hackett has pleaded not guilty.
_ State Sen. Wayne Bryant, charged with steering millions to a medical school in exchange for a no-work job worth tens of thousands of dollars every year. He has pleaded not guilty.
_ Five Pleasantville school board members convicted of steering public contracts in return for bribes.
Of New Jersey's 150 public employees facing federal corruption charges since 2002, 49 held elected office, including 18 mayors, 15 councilmen and six state lawmakers. All but 20 defendants pending trial were convicted by plea or by jury. Two officials charged in 2005 died before they were tried, according to an AP analysis of U.S. attorney arrest announcements.
Federal. Always Federal.
Read the entire article here.
Labels: federal, New Jersey Corruption
posted by Dennis @ 12:30 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
What are news media folks doing to expose the corruption by these NJ politicians? I thought the good news media guys like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity would do in-depth coverage of this.
We need laws to prevent new taxes and to rescind many of the taxes of the past 5 years by eliminating many programs and reducing state workforce by 25%.
Not only does the national media not seem interested in what is going on in New Jersey, much of the local media doesn't have much to say either. The Sharpe James trial was one of the most egregious examples. I kept having to search for articles buried deep in New Jersey newspapers to attempt to blog on it. The conviction was then a one day story and disappeared.
And, oh by the way, he is still a legislator in Trenton.
The New Jersey State Police are corrupt. They are jsut as evil as the politicians.
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