This New York Times story says that Sheldon Silver, recently arrested for violating corruption laws, was repeatedly reelected by voters “despite years of investigations, suspicions and rumors of impropriety.” In other words, most voters knew that he was corrupt but still wanted him as their representative in the state legislature. Does it make sense for the Feds to say “You voters cannot have the politician that you want”? Should a state be able to opt out of Federal anti-corruption rules? The stuff that Silver was doing doesn’t affect interstate commerce. Why wasn’t this a matter for New York prosecutors and courts to handle as they saw fit?
Separately, I don’t see why it is a news story that political corruption is common in New York. The state and local government is a larger fraction of the economy in New York than anywhere else in the U.S. (Tax Foundation), which means that there is more at stake and therefore more potentially for sale. The New York Post says “Virtually nothing happens [in Albany] that isn’t driven by self-dealing” and suggests that it isn’t too different at the federal level (story).
Coincidentally we’ve been trying to interview some New York legislators this week, trying to add some color to our book. We start by sending them email background such as the following:
We’re interested in the thought process that goes into making family law and are wondering if you can answer some questions for us about New York. Compared to most other states, New York is an outlier in at least the following areas: (1) children who would have a 50/50 shared parenting arrangement in other states would be in the sole custody of one parent in New York (seeing the other parent as an every-other-weekend “visitor”), (2) a custody lawsuit victor earning $10 million per year can collect 50 percent of the defeated parent’s after-tax middle class income (because New York does not use an “income shares” model of child support, unlike most states).
What is the public policy rationale for New York being the land of the winner-take-all custody and child support lawsuit? If this makes sense for children why did neighboring Pennsylvania become more or less a 50/50 shared parenting state?
What is the public policy rationale for taking half of the spending power from a middle class parent who lost a custody lawsuit and giving that money to a rich investment banker or physician? How are children served if one biological parent is more or less impoverished while the other one is made a few percent richer?
What is the rationale for different children having different cash values depending on the judge assigned to the case? Attorneys told us that judges all use the same percentage-of-income formula for calculating child support but they cap the quantity of income used at different levels. So a child support plaintiff in front of one judge could end up with 17 percent of $400,000 every year and a plaintiff in front of a different judge could end up with 17 percent of $200,000 every year. How can it be “justice” when children who live next door to each other yield different amounts of cash given equivalent incomes for the defendant parents? Why doesn’t New York have a state-wide statutory cap on child support like Minnesota, Nevada, North Dakota, Alaska, or Texas?
What is the public policy rationale for different children having different cash values depending on when the defendant parent was sued? As noted in our book, “The co-parent of the first child is entitled to 17 percent of the defendant’s income. The co-parent of the second child is entitled to only 17 percent of the remaining 83 percent. The co-parent of the third child is entitled to only 17 percent of the remaining 69 percent. At this point the defendant has been reduced to poverty by a combination of child support orders and taxes. A fourth plaintiff would be unable to collect anything for a fourth child, even if the previous three plaintiffs had all married into households with high incomes.” If the system is supposed to be for the benefit of children why does one child have superior rights to another depending on when a parent chose to file a lawsuit?
So far most of them are ducking us with creative excuses!
[Mayor de Blasio also likes Silver, according to the New York Post: “Although the charges announced today certainly are very serious, I want to note that I’ve always known Shelly Silver to be a man of integrity, and he certainly has due-process rights, and I think it’s important that we let the judicial process play out,” the mayor said at City Hall.]
“The stuff that Silver was doing doesn’t affect interstate commerce.”
The jurisdictional basis for federal mail fraud isn’t the economic activity of the corrupt acts, but the use of the U.S. mails or interstate wires crossing state lines (“the channels of interstate commerce” theory of the Commerce Clause).
“Why wasn’t this a matter for New York prosecutors and courts to handle as they saw fit?”
Ideally, it would be. But local corruption involving high-level officials has historically not been prosecuted by other local officials. You can see this most clearly with organized crime syndicates, which were virtually immune from local prosecution for decades in New York. Rather, it was the feds and state police that did most of the major crackdowns between 1920 until 1990.
It doesn’t make any difference what individual legislators think in New York (even a majority of them) about child support or anything else. That’s not how things get done in Albany. The governor, Sheldon Silver and Skelos (the head of the Senate) are known as “three men in a room” – they make all the decision and then the legislators have no more to say than the National People’s Congress does in China once the Politburo makes a decision (except there are 25 in the Politburo vs 3 in NY – in China power is more diffuse). Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Given the system, it’s no surprise that New York is as least as corrupt as China.
Silver is accused of violating 18 U.S. Code Chapter 63 (the “Mail Fraud” statute).
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-63
This also covers “wire fraud” : ” Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”
The courts have taken a very broad view of “interstate commerce” to include just about everything.
So if Silver stayed completely off the phone and computer and did all his dealings in person and was paid in gold bullion, he might have been clear of Federal charges, but as a practical matter it’s impossible. New York might wish to secede from the US but that didn’t work out well for the South. Until then, they are subject to Federal law and not permitted to be as corrupt as its voters would like them to be.
I think that the answer to your question can be found in the quotes at the top and bottom of your post. Yes, there have been “rumors of impropriety”, but Mr. Silver is entitled to due process. If he actually gets convicted, and then gets re-elected afterwards, that would be a better time to pose your question.
Vince: “Not actually convicted and in prison” does sound like a high standard for America’s elected public officials. Perhaps Mr. Silver will use that as his reelected campaign slogan.
Silver is my Assemblyman. I have consistently voted against him since I have been looking into his record and his politics. I registered as a Democrat so that I can vote in the primaries, which are the only elections that matter for local politics since the district is 80% democratic. Although, he’s mostly unopposed there due to his power. The majority of voters here blindly flip vote down the column democratic. All Silver does to get votes is send out alternate side of the street calendars and get shuttle bus services for senior citizens. That’s all he needs to do to get re-elected.
So to answer, is he the politician we want? -No, but the machine he’s part of kept him there and he couldn’t be budged from within system.
Phil,
The brilliant Jewish comedian Sasha Baron Cohen said it best, or should I say asked it best, when, posing as a black British rapper named Ali G, he asked a liberal Washingtonian think-tank member the following in one of his HBO bits:
“In America, should clever people get more votes than stupid people?”
Note:
I don’t know how to attach a YouTube video of this moment, but the reaction of the think tanker is priceless. http://youtu.be/XmeGNF0YfS8
The Philippines is notorious for willingly reelecting politicians who have already been proven extremely corrupt. I despair of fully understanding the situation there, but I’m confident it is *not* one we would want to emulate. Also, we don’t need these pockets of local corruption serving as breeding grounds for politicians who inevitably seem to develop national ambitions.
I don’t usually agree with Izzie L but do in this case.
One thing that it is difficult for outsiders to understand is that New York is at the least has the lowest amount of democracy of any state in the union, and there is a strong argument that its system of government does not cross the threshold of democracy. Key decisions are made by unelected agencies, more than elsewhere, legislative bodies are pretty much rubber stamps, incumbents run for reelection unopposed quite often and even when there is opposition it is usually nominal (name on a ballot but no real campaign) and so on. People living in New York sensibly react by not taking much interest in or trying to participate in their political system, since its rigged and and in fact rigged pretty obviously.