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What we need is a Museum of Corruption.
Then we, as well as friends from outside our heavily weeded Garden State, can see countless public officials repeating the same act (promise favors, extend palm, accept cash) without considering getting caught.
As a kid, I learned a lot about corruption by reading the Hudson Dispatch and the Jersey Journal. It amazed me that this kind of thing could go on, especially when assaults, robberies and “true” crimes against people happened far too often on the Hudson County streets where I lived.
I’m old enough to remember Musto and Mocco and the like, how they shared the quid pro quo blueprint — talking the talk, walking the walk. And I remember how, like those before them, they rose to power as (what else?) reformers, and fell into disgrace as corruptible thieves.
As an adult, I’ve covered enough public corruption to understand the depths of behavior that greed takes these people.
Tony Slotwinski once ran the Perth Amboy Housing Authority. Despite a healthy infusion of federal money at the end of the 1980s, the authority’s buildings remained a mess — especially its two high-rise towers.
Hard-working people, some with more than one job, looking for a better life, had to try and make do in tenements teeming with the stench of piss, open-air heroin dealing and elevators that never worked.
At the low rises, frozen tenants kept complaining about winter boiler breakdowns. When such emergencies “popped up,” Tony didn’t have time to bid the job out: Under federal law, he simply had to choose from a list of contractors who’d agreed to come running in the night.
It was easy to find Tony’s top 10. Two were making obscene amounts of money fixing the same busted boiler — over and again. In fact, if you added up the emergency repair costs these two guys alone got over 18 months (and, of course, I did), the authority could’ve bought itself at least THREE brand new boilers.
But no. Tony kept ringing up Mr. Fixit and Mr. Fixit Too.
The figures were intriguing enough to publish, in what was then The News Tribune of Woodbridge.
Would you be surprised to learn that the FBI later found that Tony, on his measly director’s salary, had a gorgeous mini-yacht docked down the Shore?
Or that it was paid for by Mr. Fixit Two?
I got to stand outside the federal courthouse, directly in Tony’s path, moments after a judge sentenced him to three years in prison.
“What do you tell the people of Perth Amboy, Tony?”
Instead of clamming up, Tony could’ve said: It’s just the way we do business, my friend.
One thing has changed, and that’s the tactics of the pursuer. Where once we’d see the fall of one corrupt pol and then another, now we get them in bunches.
None of the three mayors or assemblymen the government says it caught red-handed has any real juice in Trenton — or even around here, for that matter.
But together, they make for a nice little bow atop yet another stack of criminal complaints against yet another stack of public employees who apparently see nothing wrong with a little action on the side.
And now, a quick joke: Five rabbis walk into a criminal investigation and find a kidney.
“What do we do with it?” one says.
“I know!” says another. “We’ll sell it on the black market.”
“I’d give an arm and a leg for a kidney that good.”
All five plead not guilty.
(Rimshot.)
At the center of this Brothers Karamazov-thick tale of pols who dirtied their hands and rabbis who laundered their money is a most fascinating character, the worst-kept secret in informant history: Solomon Dwek, who swindled investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars, then found a way to wiggle out of a long prison stretch by using his silver tongue on pols from North Jersey who’d never heard of ‘im. I like to call it “Rabscam.”
Shades of Jerry Free, who conned Paterson Mayor Marty Barnes into favoring his bids by turning the mayor’s house into a palace and footing the bills for hooker-filled vacations.
Barnes, to his credit, spoke for all corrupt politicians when he said he deserved the graft for all the hard work he’d done for the city.
Anybody see a theme here?
Based on that theme, wouldn’t the New Jersey Museum of Corruption be an awesome attraction?
Here’s the Jim McGreevey wing. It’s next to the Lord Cornbury wig. As Robert Wuhl notes on HBO’s “Assume the Position,” New Jersey’s first colonial governor not only gave his relatives jobs — he was also a cross-dresser.
Here’s the Abscam Hall, filled with 31 politicians — among them, N.J. Sen. Harrison Williams — who got conned into taking cash by American FBI agents posing as Middle Eastern shieks. And the Oscar goes to….
Over here is an interactive amusement area. In the corner is former Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski’s filing cabinet. The trick is to find which drawers have the envelopes stuffed with cash that he stashed there. He forgot.
And here’s a miles-long scroll of voters who cast ballots two or three times the same day. Some of them were actually alive when they did. Most weren’t.
The second floor is devoted entirely to Newark, as it should be. Here’s Sharpe James, whose lust for his lady friend left him little choice but to quietly steer cheap city land her way to flip at obscene profit. The lesson, kids: Always think with your brain.
Ssssshhhhh…. We’re about the enter the Addonizio Atrium. Hugh was another mayor who thought Newark was his personal piggybank. If you listen intently enough, you can still here him saying that you can’t make much dough as a congressman, “but as mayor you can make a million bucks.”
Don’t worry about new entries. As Chris Christie has said, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel — only in New Jersey, the fish jump in by themselves.
With so many municipalities, school districts, freeholder boards and other agencies in the state, Christie said, there’s bound to be busloads of clueless bastards who think there’s nothing wrong with a little skim.
Who knows? One of them could be reaching under a diner table right now.
Have no fear. We’ll be waiting to immortalize the greedy folk in our grand museum.
Have to admit, though: My worst nightmare is that we build the thing, then find out later that whoever gave the plan final approval also took an envelope stuffed with cash — from a would-be corrupt promoter played by Uncle Floyd.
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