Political blogger and TBC contributor Gary Tilzer says that this NY Post front page sums up the upcoming trials of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos—and political corruption in general. He cites disgraced former State Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith who told a government informant, “that’s politics in New York. It’s all about the f–king money.”
Tilzer says the near-simultaneous trials of Silver and Skelos demonstrate that the corruption bipartisan. “New York is about to get schooled on Albany’s culture of corruption, kickbacks and bribes,” says Tilzer.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has cast the allegations as symptomatic of a “show-me-the-money culture” that had transformed New York’s statehouse into “one of the most corrupt governments in the nation.”
Tilzer reserves some of harshest criticism of political corruption for the New York media for failing to pursue independent investigative reporting to uncover corruption in government and politics. “They act like stenographers of Preet Bharara’s news conferences, instead heeding his request that they start investigations because prosecutors alone can’t end political venality,” blogged Tilzer, who is based in Brooklyn.
Gary Tilzer can be found at TrueNews blog and on Twitter: @unitednyblogs.
The Bronx Chronicle will be following the Silver and Skelos trials as they unfold. We want to hear from our readers. Please share your thoughts in our comments section and on Facebook.
From the ever-blunt NY Post:
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