EDITORIAL OPINION:
Since Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone lost the term limits case against Democratic Suffolk District Attorney Thomas Spota, Conservative County Sheriff, Vincent DeMarco and Republican County Clerk, Judith Pasquale and he has decided not to appeal, all three candidates will be on the November ballot. But they don't have to spend a penny or a minute campaigning because all three have been "cross-endorsed." The public cannot limit the number of years they can serve, after Judge Gazillo sided with Mr. Spota's attorney and wrote that those three jobs were governed by State Constitutional Law and therefore the public vote on the term limit referendum that showed the public does want term limits, does not apply to them. Though not part of that lawsuit, Republican Angie Carpenter was also cross-endorsed for County Treasurer.
Cross-endorsement or “fusion” voting is a process whereby two or more political parties nominate the same candidate for the same office during the general election. Cross- endorsing is only permitted in seven states: New York, Connecticut, Idaho, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina and Vermont. Laws in the 43 remaining states ban cross-endorsements by explicitly prohibiting multiple party nominations or indirectly requiring that candidates be members of the nominating party. Since candidates can only belong to one party at any given time, the legal effect of these laws is to ban cross-endorsement.(Old Research Report on Cross-Endorsing Candidates by Terrance Adams January 16, 2013)
Years ago on Long Island, the politicians realizing the real power was in controlling the courts, decided to hand pick their judges and "cross endorse" them to allegedly keep the politics out of the judiciary. What a load of bunk that truly was. Unfortunately, people fell for it hook line and sinker. In truth it is politics at it's most raw and insidious as people get political hacks in the seats where the best lawyers and most ethical and judicious men and women should be sitting instead. Today people are switching political parties like they change shoes for the weather and no one seems to think this is an issue.
Mr. Spota, originally a Republican, ran for DA as a Democrat and unilaterally decided to pardon Steve Levy, a Republican as long as he would return the $4 million dollars in campaign funds he raised while a Democrat, before he switched to the Republican Party. Mr. Spota didn't want that money used against his party. It didn't matter that improprieties may have happened in obtaining the campaign funds, as long as the Dems got the money back they didn't care. Even though serious issues were raised in the investigation, Mr. Spota "decided" to let him finish out his term as long as he agreed not to run again. What gave Mr. Spota that power to make a decision like that, is a good, fair and reasonable question. No one has answered it yet.
“There is no question that while the investigation revealed serious issues with regard to fundraising and the manner in which it was conducted, including the use of public resources, I am confident that Mr. Levy did not personally profit,” said Suffolk County D.A. Thomas Spota. “The forfeiture of his 4 million dollar campaign fund demonstrates his acceptance of responsibility for these failings.” It’s a staggering fall for the county executive, who was cross-endorsed in 2007 and won with 96 percent of the vote. After an abrupt switch to the Republican Party last year, he very nearly won a Wilson Paluka vote at the nominating convention, which would have allowed him to run in the G.O.P. primary for governor. (Levy Surrenders Funds, Will Not Seek Third Term in Response to D.A. Probe by Amanda Sterling 3/24/11 )Mr. Spota said Mr. Levy did not personally profit? How is not having to go to jail not a profit personally for Mr. Levy? What about the loss of choice for the tax payers? What about the people who contributed to the campaign, shouldn't they have had a say as to what happened to the money?
In the Godfather, the line from Michael Corleone to the naive Kay went something like, "Right now we buy the lawyers and judges, in twenty years we will be the lawyers and the judges." How prophetic that truly was as once again life imitates art, or was it the other way?
Who gets picked for the phony baloney "steering committees" supposedly assigned to pick the judges? More political cronies and hacks.
Why do they really cross endorse? It is for control of the lucrative and powerful; District, Bankruptcy and Surrogate's court judgeships..."cha ching". In Family and Supreme court with cross endorsements comes the control of appointing lucrative receiverships, law guardianships, forensic appointments, court ordered therapies and control of the fate of any poor family's fortune who happens to fail in their marriage...cha ching...supervised visitation...cha ching...making money on the backs of people and their children who are already in emotional distress...cha ching! Don't get pissed off that you are getting screwed and they are snatching your children or you will be sent to anger management...cha ching!
Years ago, switching political parties was political suicide. No one would ever trust you again. Now, people flip from Democrat to Republican and back, or a side step to Conservative...ideology be damned! Party bosses sell out their constituents and even their own committee people when they make the deals behind closed doors and then announce the cross endorsements as if they are doing the public some kind of service.
In fact, it is all about winning the line...any line...so the politicians can stay on the municipal teat and get that golden pension. It is the tax payers that must be kept out of the loop as to who gets into those plum positions, otherwise how would the fix be in for the politically connected and well heeled? The politicians know as long as they are all on some municipal payroll they are alright, like shirts and skins in gym, everyone goes back to the same homeroom, they just pretend to be on opposite sides for the playing of the game for the public to watch. The public buys the schtick!
In Oliver Stone's Nixon, Fyvush Finkle, the famous character actor played a campaign manager to Richard Nixon. He spoke to Nixon about the mob stuffing the ballot boxes for Kennedy to win in Chicago. When Nixon lost, Finkle said "Dick, they stole it fair and square." Nixon wanted to take it to the Supreme Court like they did with Gore vs Bush. Back then that was verboten. Instead Finkle said, "They'll give it to you next time." They didn't want the public to know the elections are always fixed in some ways. Now people don't seem to care about anything. Anthony Weiner's run for New York City mayor says it all. He lied over and over, sent numerous pictures of his personal parts to several women, lied over and over again when caught and people will still vote for this liar to be mayor! Why?
People also seem to love to vote the incumbents no matter what, most of the time. Or the brother or son of a familiar name, as if we long for the days of the monarchy once again. Mario Cuomo was Governor, so now Andrew should be just fine as governor, right??? Maybe not so much if you have any kind of memory at all. Remember this?
When Cuomo became HUD Secretary in 1997, he axed a federal program that had saved the U.S. $2.2 billion between 1994 and 1997 and re instituted a system that lost the government money while earning billions for favored friends. He fired a former HUD official whose company designed the program. That wasn’t the only money big money lost. When Cuomo was secretary, HUD reported that $59 billion was missing! It couldn’t say where they money went, because it failed to produce audited financial statements.Let's not forget about the expose by The Village Voice or this little article that packed quite a punch...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development is renowned for corruption. Historically, fraud has been so pervasive and blatant that the Sopranos episode on it was disturbingly realistic. ( From the Komisar Scoop...Lucy Komisar 2006 )
Let us also not forget about the fact that casino gambling is the one and only true goal of this governor and his upstate minions and he will not stop until he gets that accomplished for the boys that put him in office. Every treaty we have ever had with the American Indians of New York has literally been broken or ignored. We couldn't have a casino at Yonkers or Aqueduct, yet...so they used a loophole and called it a "Racino". Cuomo is acting like there needs to be a vote to allow casino gambling in New York. What a crock...we already have it at Aqueduct and Yonkers. The only difference is there are no live dealers and croupiers yet. That is all. Go there now, today, they have slot machines, electronic table games, craps, poker, roulette and oh that's right, horse racing as an aside. It is obvious from the grounds, the money is not being put into the racetrack operations, but all investments seem to be preparing and just waiting for the law to change and then you will have live croupiers and dealers and the "Racinos" will be the true "Casinos" they already practically are. Bait and switch completed. The vote is a farce.
As HUD secretary from 1997 to 2001, Cuomo pushed government-sponsored Fannie and Freddie to buy more home loans to low-income borrowers with impaired credit, in an attempt to end what he thought was lending discrimination against minorities. By 1999, they had committed $1 trillion in such high-risk loans.
But Cuomo still was not happy. So in 2000, he hiked their affordable-housing quota to 50%. That meant Fannie and Freddie had to devote fully half their mortgage financing to “underserved” borrowers with unproven or damaged credit. To help them meet that drastic new goal, Cuomo pressured them to relax their lending criteria and invest in sub prime loans. He also authorized them to buy sub prime securities.
This isn’t ancient history. The quota Cuomo set in 2000 remained in force through 2004 and beyond. Four years after he required Fannie and Freddie to commit half their lending to support affordable housing, they together commanded almost half the sub prime securities market. Credit quality suffered while risk soared. By 2005, most of the loans they’d bought had down payments of 3% or less. Many had no down payment at all. By 2008, Fannie and Freddie had drowned in a toxic soup of bad sub prime paper.
Relevance to New York voters? Like the rest of taxpayers, they are on the hook for an estimated $1 trillion in losses in what could end up being the mother of all bailouts. Meanwhile, related foreclosures are still rattling Wall Street. (ANDREW CUOMO’S SCANDAL…By Ruth King/October 21, 2010)
If the District Attorney can stay in office in perpetuity, this situation is rife with possibility for corruption. Mr. Spota can decide to only prosecute those people who are not in his political clique. Some say he is doing that already.
Because of the power of prosecutorial discretion, the district attorney already has, no one is safe from the wielding of Mr. Spota's political agenda being served before justice, if he so chooses. He can also look the other way to crimes being committed by his friends or friends of friends. It has already proven true with Mr. Spota's "handling" of the Levy matter. As long as he got the $4 million dollars, he let Levy slide, an action tantamount to accepting a political bribe and yet no one seems to care. Mr. Spota is not exactly an enlightened despot and who ever gave him that kind of political capital and power anyway? How could you take it away now? As long as the political bosses, and I do mean bosses control the pick, the people are sitting ducks for malicious prosecution or failure to prosecute when necessary if the bad guys hurting you are friends of the DA who could be in power until he dies.
Unless people demand politicians to adhere to some kind of ideology that is meaningful to them, whatever that belief is, be it conservative or liberal or whatever, or that we at least as a people demand that the politicians keep our promises to a great people like the ancestors of our nation, what kind of ethical behavior can we reasonably expect from these elected officials?
One answer is publicly funded elections, a limit to the amount of money you can spend, free airtime to legitimate candidates in all cases and a limit to the time you can campaign before any election.
Until and unless you have been grist in the judicial mill you probably believe that the courts are just like on television, like Law and Order. You might still believe that ultimately ethics and rule of law, justice and right will win the day. To know the reality of the horror of cross endorsement, show up any morning at Suffolk County Family, Criminal or Supreme Court in Central Islip, to see the long and endless lines of fish ready and waiting for easy shooting in their political pork barrels.
When you have cross endorsements and no term limits you have the death of democracy pure and simple.
