Elections Have Consequences
He's Not So Tough When The Bad Guys Don't Carry Blackberries
By Dan McLaughlin Posted in Democratic Governors | Eliot Spitzer | New York | State Politics — Comments (19) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Eliot Spitzer, like Rudy Giuliani, first made his name as a tough, hard-nosed prosecutor. Both men earned the dislike of big business for their aggressive approach to white-collar crime.
But the reason why Spitzer will never be Rudy is that he never did have the stomach to take on anybody but legitimate businesses - and certainly not violent criminals. Now, New York State is getting a bitter taste of the Spitzer approach to violent convicts.
In New York, you see, the Parole Board is run by a gubernatorial appointee, presently a Spitzer appointee named George Alexander. And what has been the result of the new management? Look at the numbers:
235 violent felons, including 215 convicted murderers, have been released by the state parole board in the first year of Gov. Spitzer's administration, records show. That's 58% more than the 148 violent felons paroled in 2006, the last year of Gov. Pataki's tenure.
Some were locked away for crimes so heinous that previous state Parole Boards refused to set them free up to five times before their luck changed under the Spitzer administration, a Daily News analysis has found.
Read On...
The News report has some vivid examples of the offenders involved, including:
College student Jose Parmes was 27 in 1981 when he hurled his 10-month-old daughter out a sixth-floor window after fatally stabbing girlfriend Iris Torres, 28, and cutting off her left ear. Parmes jumped out the same window. His daughter landed on a second-floor fire escape and survived. Parmes, now 54, got 16 years to life in 1982. He was released in May after being denied parole four times.
Frank DiChiara was 35 when he fatally shot 13-year-old Germania Zurlo in February 1978. She'd arrived home from religious instruction to find him rifling through her Brooklyn apartment. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1979 and released in September after twice being denied parole. He's 65.
Louis Mortillaro was a 28-year-old bank teller when he went to the Brooklyn home of his estranged wife, Doreen, in 1983 and plunged a knife into her neck, face and back as the couple's 11-month-old daughter watched from a playpen. Detectives found Mortillaro drinking in a bar blocks from the crime scene. Mortillaro, 49, was freed in November.
More details here and here. New Yorkers voted for Spitzer - and now we are reaping the consequences.
« If Gregoire Were a Republican, This Would Be Front Page, Above the Fold in the New York Times — Comments (8) | Billion-Dollar Marty — Comments (7) »
Elections Have Consequences 19 Comments (0 topical, 19 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
I knew under that tough exterior Spitzer had a soft interior. Well that opens 215 cells for miscreants like businessmen.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
can't be targeted by lucrative follow-on civil suits by Spitzer's allies in the plaintiffs' bar.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
but to me, this is worse than graft, or corruption. This is like pronouncing a death sentence on random citizens because you know that a certain percentage of these creeps will commit some capital crimes.
This is the sort of thing which would almost make me condone actual mob violence against the politicians.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
have medical conditions that are expensive to treat behind bars.
His recent budget has some interesting proposals:
- Increasing taxes on private health insurance providers as well as the people who use them (by over $250M) in order to finance Medicare.
- Taxing internet sales.
- Increasing the taxes on gasoline and home heating oil.
- Increasing taxes on car registration 400%.
and here's a strange one..
- Increasing taxes on 40oz. Malt Liquor bottle sales from 12 cents to $2.25. (I guess increasing taxes on beer would have been too unpopular).
====
"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison
with the number of campaign issues he's given the Republicans running for State Senate. They're the only thing that can slow these awful proposals. If the Democrats take the Senate this year they will become a rubber stamp to inane budgetary items like these.
Funny thing about raising taxes on private health insurance - it's likely to increase the uninsured problem as the new taxes will price more middle income folks out of private insurance. It's bad enough that we pay income taxes to fund medicaid - now I have to pay additional taxes because I can afford coverage? This is punishing the exact behavior that we want (for people to maintain insurance) in order to increase the demand for single payer, state-run insurance.
I would note - the hedge fund industry seems to have chosen to base itself in places like Greenwich, CT and other CT suburbs. I suspect that it's because the tax/business environment in NY is so bad, that they're willing to take the distance from the center of the action to save money. I can't imagine that other companies won't follow (AXA Financial recently gave up most of it's space near Rockefeller Center to relocate most of its people to Charlotte, NC and Jersey City, NJ - most of their employees won't be working in NYC by the end of the year).
It's not like thes guys fiddled with stock option dates.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
New Yorkers are moving down here in groves. My only hope is they don't try to turn my neck of the woods into where they came from - oops...to late.
--roxer
Proving how pathetic the left really is.
_____________________________
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
--Aristotle
They never once tried to dissuade women from having abortions.
Crisis Pregnancy Centers: there are certain things that are just beyond the pale.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_6_54/ai_84107372
"People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors." -Edmund Burke
He's still at work in that area, too.
"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill
Criminal prosecutions in New York State are handled by local elected District Attorneys. And given the unbelievable drop in violent crime here (New York City is now the safest large city in America) they seem to be doing a good job. Why would Spitzer have wanted to fix what was working, even if he had the responsibility? He took on the white collar criminals in part because the Bush Administration wasn't doing ITS job.
That would include centers that were counseling pregnant teens on options other than abortion.
Suing the gun industry for making guns.
Suing utilities in other states for polluting New Yorks Air.
If you don't understand why the above are an abuse of office I doubt anything I could say would enlighten you.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
that they would settle vice spending the millions of dollars (and bad p.r.) to fight the charges.
I only recall one or two taking him on and they both won (one was Hank Greenberg at AIG).
Interesting that he doesn't take on Medicaid fraud. In the 1980's, NY had 270 Medicaid fraud investigators. Now, Medicaid spending has increased over 6 fold and we have 17 inspectors. The unions have pressured him not to intervene.
The NYT did a series on Medicaid in NY and estimated Medicaid fraud in NYS alone is over $10 Billion per year - and thats just the overt (fake patient, fake medical practice, billing for non-existent services) and does not include overcharging or billing for services that are not required.
====
"Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." -- James Madison
As AG, Spitzer took on people like Hank Greenberg and the directors of the New York Stock Exchange only because they were guilty of being successful.
To this day Greenberg hasn't been charged with a crime. Spitzer himself acknowledged that his prosecution-by-press-release of AIG was based on a creative interpretation of a never-used statute from the 1870s.
Yet Greenberg is out of a job, and AIG's shareholders (including millions of the ordinary people that Spitzer convinced he was "protecting") are out billions of dollars in destroyed equity.
I hate Spitzer. In a just world, his fate would be cruel and unusual.
Spitzer was and is nothing but a thug. Ask anyone who has had a small or mid sized business in NYC. His goons would go around and use the legal code as a shakedown mechanism.
Its really no surprise that he is letting out the worst of the worst. Their presence on the street reinforces the public need for government. (At least for people that can't live in enclaves or afford their own security)
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777