October 5, 2010

“Another Broward politician is booked”
The Miami Herald
Today

“Kraft and husband turn themselves in.”
The Sun-Sentinel
Today


The banality of corruption is revealed by headlines, the champion of which was printed in the Hudson Dispatch, a paper of late and happy memory, in 1977.

“U.S. Attorney says no new Hudson County indictments today.”

There is one very good thing to come out of this public affirmation of private concupiscence.

Diversity, the goal not the quota of Affirmative Action, works.

Since the most recent spate of “no stove is too hot to steal” arrests it is well to note that the perps, real or alleged, reflect the goal of modern American Liberals in Broward County. No one said that the big motley tent, a tent that excludes no one, shouldn’t include crooks, grifters, and poltroons. That it does and that it represents a true cross section of public figures now or soon to be wearing stripes is a serendipitous thing.

A quick look at some of the shining stars of Broward County who are either in jail or going to jail reveals some of the following:

#1 – A confessed sex offender
#2 – A calorically challenged woman
#3 – A Napoleonic sheriff
#4 – A commissioner waving a loot bag
#5 – A commissioner waving a gun
#6 – Some White people and some Black people
#7 – Some Christians and some Jews
#8 – Alas, no homosexuals. But wait! It’s still early.

I was born and raised in Hudson County, New Jersey.

One mile from where I lived a grammar school was built in 1958. It featured $900 waste baskets, $4600 desks, and $9500 storm windows. The Hudson County coroner doubled his profit and raised his internal rate of return to infinity by burying two indigents in the same pine box and billing the County for two funerals. A Federal Judge stopped my uncle from voting in 1971 when he discovered he died in 1956.
My wife has relatives in Chicago. Doesn’t Cook County have its own wing in local state and Federal prisons? The Governor of New York was playing hide the salami with some hookers. The Governor of Illinois was a hooker.

Even though I wasn’t raised on a farm the lesson of the rooster was learned early on.

When I got to South Florida three things happened that should have foretold all.

#1 – A Brinks armored truck filled with a day’s pickups overturned in Ft. Lauderdale. Bills and coins went ass went chockablock onto the street. In a show of unity that every urban activist proud the community scarfed up all the free money. Every day another police officer, a man who drew the short straw, would go on television and tell the street people to return the money. Everyday the street peopled laughed their collective asses off. A teenager returned 85 cents and got a weekend on Disney World for a reward. No other moneys were ever returned.

#2 – It took two days of first rate police work to find a 350 pound missing man in the Miami airport. He was changing planes in Miami en route from Haiti to the School of Medicine at Duke University. A growth was to be removed from the side of his face. It weighed 60 pounds. He spoke no English. He was as Black as an Ace of Spades. Let me repeat that description. A 350 pound Black man, a man who speaks no English, a man with two heads, went walkabout in the Miami airport. It took two days to find him. I know it’s a big airport but how many people could fit that description?

#3 – Broward County was determined to give a hotel to a Black man. That the donee, a man who gofered for Mayor Marion Barry, didn’t have the good sense to say “Yes” is a matter for a different discussion. A Black County commissioner tried to backdoor some money into the hotel project, a project on which she would vote. When the Commission counsel advised her that it was illegal she demanded, and got, a second opinion. When the new lawyer told her the same thing she backed off. The voters turned her out. A Florida Congressman, the only Congressman who was a felon before he went to Washington, put her in charge of half of Broward County for the 2000 Census.

This is not to suggest that Republicans are without fault.

Yesterday’s indictments in the Alabama gambling industry show that Black and White, male and female, Republican and Democratic and put aside their difference when it comes time to dip their wicks or their wickettes in the public honey pot.

It is generally known that Republicans lack the wit to be universal crooks. They will go for the big score but they lack the staying power to glom nickels and dimes from the mite box.

When bi-partisanship is the rule, Republicans and Democrats put aside their differences and steal quarters off the top of a hot stove before they steal the stove.


The last stage of cocaine addiction is when you believe you are ten feet tall and bulletproof, not to mention that you sing and dance very well too.

A collective loss of septums occurs when one party becomes the only party.

Hudson County, Cook County, Broward County.

No public dollar is safe in any of those places.

In 15 years in Broward County there has been one non-Democratic County Commissioner. He was appointed by the Republican Governor when the Democratic Commissioner pleaded guilty to stealing from himself. The voters promptly turned him out of office at the next election.

Speaking of conspiracies, there was a Republican elected to the post of Property Appraiser. When he announced that he was going to switch parties he died. Go figure.

Speaking of “figures”…

The most recent Broward County indictee has been accused of taken $10,000 from the Chaits, pere et fils. They were real estate developers of whom is could be said that they would have bribed their way into the oven contract at Auschwitz. The benefit for them for their $10,000 was a $500,000 reduction in “remediation fees”. Those fees show a role reversal in the usual chain of public/private boodling. Usually the for profit private guy bribes the public guy. Here the public guy charges the private guy fees for what may or may not happen.

Having some knowledge of the world of “white envelopes” I assure you that the going rate for saving $500,000 ain’t 10 grand. 10 grand is what the developer pays for your daughter’s rhinoplasty. In one case a Hudson County Mayor got his wife a greatly expanded chest. She didn’t have to testify against him. Some before and after bathing suit photos settled the issue.

Not only was the latest perp walker a crook but she was a dumb crook who sold herself short. If you are going to be hung better for it to be for 3 sheep than 1 goat.

The immediate solution is to re-create the tumbrel brigade. It proved to be the most efficient and cost effective way to keep Madam Guillotine busy.

A more drastic solution would be another successful French model.

During the military phase of fighting the pernicious Albijensian heresy the Cardinal ordered his military subordinate to raze the town and kill all the inhabitants.

“Some of those people work for us,” said the hesitant General.

“Kill them all. God will know his own”, said the righteous cleric.

God would not have made the task Herculean unless She intended to send us a Hercules.

“Throw all the bastards out.”



KS