The New York Attorney Generals office took up interest in racing when the slots were approved. There were many headline grabbing scandals, from the A-One Rocket/Gambling ring indictment, the Mutuel Clerk issue, the Waiter taking big tips front pager and the Jockey weight scandal.
All of these headlines grabbed front page news and were used as leverage to try to discredit NYRA out of the slot casino. In the end they were publicity stints and the only convictions were in the mutuel clerk scandal were 16 clerks were convicted of cheating on their taxes in a scheme were they shorted their till at the racetrack. Spizter spent millions on these crusades and used them to build his reputation as corruption fighting progressive crusader. The New York Times reported one Spitzer racing scandal after another and started to refer to NYRA as the "beleaguered NYRA, "another scandal" The New York Times was doing Spitzers bidding. Was the underlying reason for these crusades just to secure the Aqueduct casino for his Manhattan real estate mogul friend Richard Fields? With the backing of the New York Times and a complete stranglehold on the New York media Spitzer was elected with 69% of the vote, the people fell for what he was selling hook line and sinker.
The people hurt by Spitzer are not just the taxpayers and his family. Those particularly devastated by Spitzer's corruption are those that got caught in the steamroller. How about the life of Braulio Baeza and Mario Scalafani? These two were caught up in the jockey scandal. This scandal was headline news back in 2005 and helped cement Spitzer's reputation as a corruption fighter. However there was no crime, just headlines and a complete misunderstanding of the rules of races. The case was quietly thrown out of court last September after three years of court battles. Costing the taxpayers millions of dollars and ruining the family's of two men.
With the complete ruination of Spitzers career the lesson for the mases is do some research before you vote. Heartfelt commercials should not be the only thing they look at when the examine who they vote for. Spitzer received 69% of the vote and the steamroller only took a little more than a year to expose himself as a arrogant criminal. Someone should have pointed the steamroller to proverb 16:18. Looks like Joe Bruno is going to have to help get the steamroller out of the ditch.
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3 comments:
The fact that 16 clerks were convicted shows that the NYT wasn't "doing Spitzer's bidding, but were instead doing thier job: reporting the news.
Your blog is dreadful.
I don't see your point -- doing a lot of research would have only revealed a politician who appeared to be a ethical upstanding individual who fought corruption.
No one short of the hooker service and the FBI knew a few months ago that this was going down... how would more research by voters reveal anything other than what was on the surface? Also I somewhat agreee that the New York Times wasn't dong Spitzer's bidding... NYRA wasn't an innocent lamb here.
As a racing fan is was quite easy to see that Spitzer has always been a crook. The time when Spitzer began his crusade to rid racing of wrong doers corresponded to the time when the slots were introduced. There was nil action before the slots legislation.
The Spitzer plan from the start was to make headlines to discredit NYRA, score gaming campaign cash, then score again taps the slot revenue stream. When these NYRA headlines were being floated out on a regular basis Spitzer started raking in thousands (millions?) in donations from gaming groups like Richard Fields and Richard Fields/Excelsior became a front runner to secure the Aqueduct VLT's. How could any racing fan read the Baeza indictment and not laugh? This was a completely bogus indictment that any racing fan could have torn apart like a wet paper napkin. Santos 15 lbs over at Belmont then rode at the Meadowlands later that day at listed weight? How could the New York Times report these these clearly bogus allegations, when a dreadful internet blog can so clearly see that the allegations are riddled with falsehoods? Anyone with a basic understanding of racing was in the catbird seat to see right through Spitzer. Spitzers quest to secure the slots and the campaign money chasing the slots were the primary motivation for the mid 2000's NYRA scandals.
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