March 20th, 2008
Old thoughts about Eliot Spitzer
Just came across old words posted here after the 2006 elections:
I’m glad Eliot Spitzer won as New York governor. Finally dispensing with the lap puppet Pataki.
Spitzer is a powerful moral force, already hated by Wall Street muscleheads for his piecework prosecution (as state attorney general) of their routinely corrupt business practices. I imagine he will begin to get the Cuomo treatment. We’ll see how he holds up.
(â€Cuomo treatment?†Mario Cuomo, by means that remain mysterious but likely to my mind, was blackmailed out of politics as his time to run for president approached — told that if he made a run something awful would be revealed/done. He quietly conceded and left public life.)
Drew says:
A victim-less crime. A good man gone.
Paterson had the chutzpah to say something to the effect of “there’s trust to be regained”. Puh-leeze! The trust has now been lost as hope of reform recedes.
Spitzer’s departure is a great loss for the people of New York State. The media and the Albany establishment continue, at this writing, to crow about “disgrace” and so forth. I doubt that most voters in New York State care as much about the former governor’s foibles as they do about the entrenched Albany corruption. The former is of little real consequence; the latter has an ongoing negative material impact upon the lives of each and every person in the state. That simple calculus explodes the hypocrisy of this sham moralism that is used to discourage good people from public life and — in Spitzer’s case — to evict them from it. It’s a sad day for us all.
March 30th, 2008 at 2:07 am