The Blizzard of 2006 was a two-day storm that buried New York City and much of the northeast under up to two feet or more of snow. Although technically not a blizzard (with sustained winds of between 20-30 miles an hour in most areas) except in parts of Long Island and elsewhere, this snowstorm buried New York City under a record 26.9” of snow, breaking the Read the rest of this entry »
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Ok so 3 more posts today that I’ve dug up – I’m an information JUNKIE on this stuff lately. Give em a browse and let me know what ya reckon. They’re just from a few different sites I’ve been surfing lately that are generally good for information like this…
Misunderstanding Allegedly Led New Jersey Mom to Stab Son, Try Suicide
BERGENFIELD, NJ — A New Jersey mother Read the rest of this entry »
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Ok so you might find the next few links interesting. These are from around the web, just random snippets that I’ve picked up in my reading, but I found some very cool information in them. You might too. Here goes…
NJ FOOTBALL: Sparta upends Roxbury, Bergen Catholic knocks off St. Joseph
The Ramsey school earns its 19th consecutive victory overall and its 33rd in a row Read the rest of this entry »
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Mortgage refers a way to secure a loan using real estate property as security. It is the most popular way of purchasing real estate. Mortgage payments are of two kinds- Fixed Rates Mortgage (FRM) and ARM (Adjustment Rate Mortgage).
In FRM, monthly interest repayments are fixed for the lifetime of the loan. In ARM, interest is fixed for a particular period of time after Read the rest of this entry »
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Eamon Javers, Fred Barbash
Tue Dec 9, 6:03 PM ET
A visibly disgusted FBI special agent Robert Grant stood at a podium in Chicago during a press conference today announcing the arrest of Gov. Rod Blagojevich and hurling his contempt at the entire political culture of the state of Illinois.
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“If it is not the most corrupt state in the United States, it’s certainly one hell of a competitor,” Grant said, his disheveled shock of black hair giving some indication of the dramatic and stressful events of the day.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald termed the events leading up to the governor’s early-morning arrest by the FBI, “a corruption crime spree,” and said it was “an appalling statement about what’s been happening in Illinois government.”
So just what is the problem with Illinois?
It certainly seems like Illinois has a particular sweet spot for corruption: Blagojevich’s own predecessor as governor, George Ryan, went to jail in 2007 in a 6-1/2 year sentence for corruption of his own.
And two other Illinois governors have faced legal trouble in modern times: Governor Otto Kerner, Jr., who was mocked locally as “Blotto Otto,” and former governor Daniel Walker, who was charged in a savings and loan scheme involving fraudulent loans for repairs on his yacht, which was called The Governor’s Lady.
Fitzgerald, who is known as a crusading prosecutor for his role in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case, seemed to throw up his hands in despair, saying: “We’re not going to end corruption in Illinois by arrests and indictments alone.” He stressed that rooting out corruption would depend on the willingness of the people of Illinois to solve the problem.
In that, Fitzgerald may be on to something. It turns out that a state’s culture is at least as important to its degree of corruption as the aggressiveness of its law enforcement officers.
And it’s also true that some states are just plain more corrupt than others.
In an early attempt to explain why that is, the late Temple University political science professor Daniel J. Elazar argued in the 1960s that the United States can be divided in to three general political cultures, moralistic, traditional and individualistic.
In a moralistic culture, the professor argued, government is considered to be a good thing, and officeholders expected to look out for the general welfare. In a traditional culture, citizens expect a hierarchical society. And individualistic cultures value private efforts over collective ones. Broadly defined, the moralistic areas of the US were New England and the Midwest, the Traditional areas were clustered in the south, and individualistic culture centered on the Atlantic seaboard in states like New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and … Illinois.
It’s the individualistic states, where there is an ethos that encourages people to be out for themselves, where corruption most easily takes root, argue some political scientists. Just look at the states that make up the group: “That’s the corruption rogues gallery,” says Colgate University political science professor Michael Johnston. “Every state has its own flavor,” he says, “but they all have a very high level of risk for corruption.”
But the regional theory has one big flaw: The most corrupt states aren’t in the “individualistic” part of the country.
In 2007, the publication Corporate Crime Reporter crunched Department of Justice statistics to rank the 35 most populous states of the nation by corruption. The top three? Louisiana, Mississippi and Kentucky – which can be better thought of as broadly representing the “moralistic” states. Illinois didn’t even break the top five, coming in sixth on the list.
What gives? Colgate’s Johnston says that there’s more to it than just regional character. He’s been studying political corruption since the 1970s, and has concluded that there are several key ingredients for political corruption. He says those include multiple political cultures competing for dominance, such as rural versus urban voters, tightly balanced party competition, and an elite political culture in which politicians expect to see corruption in their daily lives.
“Corruption becomes a self fulfilling prophecy,” Johnston says. “There’s a real qualitative change when people walk out the door of their home each morning expecting to have to make payoffs.”
That certainly seems to be the case in Illinois.
The scandal involving Otto Kerner Jr., for example, only came to light because one of the participants deducted the value of bribes paid in the 1960s–to win freeway exits and other favorable treatment for her horsetrack—in her income tax returns. The logic was that the payments were simply a part of doing business in Illinois. By the time the payments for services rendered came to light in the 1970s, Kerner was a federal judge and resigned in the scandal.
With that kind of political tradition, Blagojevich may have presumed that he’d find a receptive audience for his alleged pay-to-play entreaties to other Illinois political figures.
And just a few days ago, The Chicago Tribune reported that Fitzgerald had been shocked that a federal sting uncovered a ring of Illinois police officers who had allegedly participated in what they thought was a drug ring – even going so far as to help offload and deliver packages they believed to contain drugs from airplanes landing at an airport in the states. “When drug dealers deal drugs, they ought to be afraid of the police – not turn to them for help,” Fitzgerald said at the time.
Not only does corruption seem to be concentrated in certain states, it also seems to go in waves throughout history.
Louisiana, the most corrupt state in the nation, has a long and colorful history with political vice. “I steal money,” legendary Democratic Gov. Huey Long once boasted to an audience at Louisiana State University in the 1930s, “but a lot of what I stole has spilled over in no-toll bridges, hospitals and to build this university.”
Long was assassinated in 1935. His successor as governor, Richard Leche, was forced to resign amidst a string of high level scandals but was sent to prison afterwards for his part in a scheme to sell trucks to the Louisiana Highway Department.
Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards was pursued by prosecutors for virtually his entire four terms. He relished the image of a populist rogue, and contended that voters in Louisiana didn’t care about conventional corruption. The only way to lose an election, he famously cracked, was to be “found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.” In 1988 he was convicted and sent to Federal prison after being found guilty of racketeering, extortion and money laundering in connection with help he provided Edward J. DeBartolo, Jr., in securing a casino license.
Maryland, part of that Atlantic coast “individualistic” culture, had an amazing run of corruption of its own in the 1960’s and 70s. During that period some 15 high elected officials were convicted of political corruption, the most famous being Spiro T. Agnew, who resigned as Richard Nixon’s vice-president in 1972 after pleading no contest to charges of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in cash from contractors in exchange for state contracts.
Agnew’s successor, Marvin Mandel, took office as Governor in January, 1974 promising that the state would no longer be “a postmark for greed, for corruption, for kickbacks and payoffs.” Three years later he was convicted on Federal charges of accepting roughly $350,000 in gifts and favors from close friends in exchange for state contracts and sent to prison. Mandel’s conviction was overturned after he served his sentence when the Supreme Court said the law under which he was prosecuted was being misused.
It became clear during that investigation that bribery had become part of the business model for many state and county contractors, and in quick succession, the county executives of suburban Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County were indicted and convicted of similar crimes.
One of the more candid of those officials, then-Anne Arundel County Executive Joseph Alton, said in interviews at the time that he had simply been playing by the rules as understood in Maryland at the time. “It’s like I got caught going 35 in a 30 mile zone,” he said.
New Jersey, another so-called “individualistic” state, also has an infamous political culture.
U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, based in Newark, prosecuted more than 130 public officials during his seven years in office. Among them were the mayors or executives of Paterson, Irvington, North Bergen, Essex County and Newark itself as well as the president of the State Senate.
Just last month, another powerful former New Jersey State Senator was convicted of procuring millions of state dollars for a state university in exchange for a phony job there that helped him triple his state pension. “Like Turnpike traffic and the stink from the Linden oil fields, political corruption is one of those ugly aspects of life in New Jersey,” the Newark Star-Ledger said recently, as it produced a multi-media “rogues gallery’ of recently-convicted office-holders.
Colgate University’s Johnston says one good thing about making a career of studying political corruption is that it never goes away.
“You never run out of things to talk about,” he said. “And everywhere I’ve been in the United States, people say, ‘If you want to learn about political corruption, come to our town.’”
The Corrupt States of America?
The publication Corporate Crime Reporter crunched Department of Justice statistics in 2007 to rank the 35 most populous states of the nation by corruption. The publication calculated a corruption rate, which it defined as the total number of public corruption convictions from 1997 to 2006 per 100,000 residents.
These are the results:
1. Louisiana(7.67)
2. Mississippi (6.66)
3. Kentucky (5.18)
4. Alabama (4.76)
5. Ohio(4.69)
6. Illinois (4.68)
7. Pennsylvania (4.55)
8. Florida (4.47)
9. New Jersey (4.32)
10. New York (3.95)
11. Tennessee (3.68)
12. Virginia (3.64)
13. Oklahoma (2.96)
14. Connecticut (2.80)
15. Missouri (2.79)
16. Arkansas (2.74)
17. Massachusetts (2.66)
18. Texas (2.44)
19. Maryland (2.31)
20. Michigan (2.14)
21. Georgia (2.13)
22. Wisconsin (2.09)
23. California (2.07)
24. North Carolina (1.96)
25. Arizona (1.88)
26. Indiana (1.85)
27. South Carolina (1.74)
28. Nevada (1.72)
29. Colorado (1.56)
30. Washington (1.52)
31. Utah (1.4117)
32. Kansas (1.4109)
33. Minnesota (1.24)
34. Iowa (0.91)
35. Oregon (0.68).
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I hope you’ve been enjoying my posts lately. I thought I might do something different today and rustle up a few bits of info from around the WWW. These are some of the news items and blog posts that have been popular over the last few weeks. Leave me your thoughts.
Tenafly official accused of theft
The former president of the Registrars Association of New Jersey — Read the rest of this entry »
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Like many of the New England states, New Jersey is a winter wonderland. Many people think of New Jersey as nothing but city but there are many activities to take part in both in town and on the Jersey shore. Here are a few things that take place in February that are great for the weekend or a family vacation. From the glacial lakes to the cross-country skiing trails, Read the rest of this entry »
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Tiny Teterboro, New Jersey is situated just south of Hackensack at the edge of the Meadowlands only twelve miles from midtown Manhattan. This Bergen County borough is mostly known for its airport, as the residential properties in the town are few. Indeed, recent census figures put the town’s population at just 18 souls! Meanwhile, business dominates the town Read the rest of this entry »
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Back with more news for you today. It’s amazing how much good information there is on this stuff out there if you know where to look. Three in particular that I found really valuable were…
BCUA Power Facility Wins NJ Clean Energy Leadership Award
… has won a New Jersey Clean Energy Leadership Award – an honor bestowed by the state's Clean Energy Program. “We'd Read the rest of this entry »
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The top Montclair local news headlines from Yahoo! News – Yahoo! News
Shoppers skip Black Friday chaos in favor of Cyber Monday online deals
Cyber Monday refers to the first day back at the office after the Thanksgiving weekend Full Story; Read the rest of this entry »
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