Dirty Jersey
(adapted by right from cc photo by TheTruthAbout)
Illinois and Louisiana have been making most of the recent headlines, but New Jersey is renewing its claim to fame as a land of political corruption. Federal agents swept up “about 30 people including several mayors, in a federal investigation into alleged public corruption and a high-volume, international money-laundering conspiracy.” But there’s more!
The probe also involves the trafficking of body parts, according to a person familiar with the matter. One of the individuals who was arrested Thursday morning is an alleged organ dealer, this person said.
According to a statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Newark, the arrests related to the public-corruption probe included Peter Cammarano III, the newly elected Democratic mayor of Hoboken; Dennis Elwell, mayor of Secaucus, also a Democrat; state Assemblyman Daniel Van Pelt, a Republican; and Democrat Leona Beldini, the deputy mayor of Jersey City.
Mostly just funny.
26 Responses to “Dirty Jersey”
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July 23rd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
That’s what you get when you send Mafia wise guys to Harvard Business School: vertical integration. Instead of burying their hits, they’re selling the organs.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
I guess in Jersey it’s a little harder to keep track of where the bodies are buried.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:41 pm
But what’s with several RABBIS doing the perp walk?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090723/ap_on_re_us/us_nj_corruption_arrests
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:42 pm
From the above story: “several individuals from Brooklyn and New Jersey were charged with offenses ranging from the trafficking of kidneys from Israeli donors ”
Why do I have the suspicion that they might actually be from Palestinian donors?
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Because you don’t know anything about organized crime in Israel?
Or in Brooklyn?
People see the forelocks and the black suits and assume Hasidim are all wimpy, bookish, meek little thing.
Some of those guys are bad mofos.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:55 pm
One of the novels from Charlie Huston’s vamp series features badass Hasidim, in the most hilarious way.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Rabbis and organ dealers? Great. Just great.
The blood libelers were the original birfers. Don’t get them started.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:03 pm
The Hammond B3 has incredible resale value. If it’s a crime to sell them, I’ve never heard of it.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Where will the New Jersey Republicans meet after global warming floods their state?
In Secaucus, of course . . .
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Mostly just funny.
Easy for you to say; you don’t live here and have to pay your taxes to these crooks.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:08 pm
In Secaucus, of course . . .
LOL.
The Hammond B3 has incredible resale value. If it’s a crime to sell them, I’ve never heard of it.
I always feel smugly superior when another commenter makes a joke I considered posting, but then refrained from because it seemed too sophomoric.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Illinois and Louisiana have been making most of the recent headlines
Don’t forget Alaska!
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Onion headline from the McGreevey era: “Gay Man Admits to Being Governor of New Jersey.”
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
I hate to be the one to pull the punch bowl, but 170 public officials arrested for corruption in just 8 years in one state is not funny.
Then again, maybe that’s all we can do as Americans -laugh at our third world ineptitude.
July 23rd, 2009 at 1:54 pm
I love New Jersey. A newly elected mayor(just two weeks in office), an organ dealer, several rabbis all arrested by the FBI… I smell the next Cohen brothers movie.
July 23rd, 2009 at 3:19 pm
@Jeff Davis and James Gary:
The organ business makes a real racket.
July 23rd, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Wait! I thought only Republicans were corrupt!
The New Jersey Democratic party is one of the most corrupt organziations in the country. It can put Obama’s Chicago to shame.
Especially, the Hudson County Democratic machine. Slimiest crew ever. Robert Menendez is arguably the most corrupt Senator in Congress. New Jersey can only pray that he is somehow entangled in this mess…somehow. What a lowlife and dirtbag.
And this just isn’t now. This goes back to his days as mayor of Union City. He took part in this stuff all the time. Try to build affordable housing in Union City? Time to meet Robert Menendez. No HUD funds for you unless..well, you know…donate to the Democrats.
But hey, Menendez, Corzine and Lautenberg…what a classy bunch of guys, they were big backers of Mayor Cammarano. You know, your typical liberal Obama supporters.
Say hello to Governor Christie.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
It’s really just at the national level that Republicans are noticeably more corrupt than Democrats.
At the state and local level, there’s really not much of a difference.
It’s probably up there with the Ohio Republicans and the Alaska Republicans.
Obama’s Chicago seems to be an island of honesty in a sea of Chicago politics. The difference between the “Lakeside Liberals” like Obama, who go on to national office, and the machine cronies who stay at the city, county, or state level goes back decades. College professor, reformist, minority – c’mon, you don’t know crap about Chicago politics if you’re trying to cast Barack Obama as the second coming of Mayor Daley.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I’m not. But I know about NJ politics. And specifically Hudson County. Senator Martinez is probably the most corrupt in the state. Like I said, the state will be better off if by the grace of god, he’s implicated in this mess.
There’s a prominent Democrat for ya…you betcha.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Samuel,
It appears you are pissing in a pool that has no other swimmers.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:56 pm
A big demand for kosher kidneys, I guess!
July 24th, 2009 at 10:49 am
There’s a man who has no apparent connection to this case…you betcha…but who is a prominent Democrat…you betcha…and who you’ve decided is worth focusing on instead of the actual crooks implicated in the case…you betcha.
Oh, did I mention that he’s a prominent Democrat? You betcha.
July 24th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Joe from Lowell,
Are you kidding me? Do you know a thing about Obama’s career?
Obama got cozy with Daley when he started his Presidential run (and they’d been able to work together before that), which was why you had Obama praising Daley and Daley sticking up for Obama.
Obama may have been a reformer at one point (though he was, from day one, willing to use hardball tactics that Machine politicians use-like getting people knocked off the ballot late in the game so you run pretty much unopposed, which he did in his first election), and he certainly was pretty harsh on Machine politicians back in his salad days. That was a long time ago.
Take a look at what he said about Eugene Sawyer in Dreams from My Father, where he described Sawyer as a machine hack (albeit not by name-but he’s talking about the black politician who took over from Harold Washington as mayor), and the praise Obama heaped on Sawyer when Sawyer died.
Or look at some of the people in Obama’s inner circle-David Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel, for starters.
Obama isn’t a Daley puppet, to be sure-just a fellow cloutocrat. The kind who can sit down and say “ubi ist mea?” with the Burkes, the Strogers, the Madigans, the Jones (especially Emil Jones, his political mentor), the Jacksons, et. al., and get his piece of the pie. Maybe he still thinks progressive thoughts when he gets his cut.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
“One of the individuals who was arrested Thursday morning is an alleged organ dealer,”
Does he have a service department? I’m having a lot of trouble with the bus-bars in my Hammond A-100.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Dear Chicagoan, Obama is now in way over his head. He is making the classic Democratic mistake of covering the backs of all the people who will gladly put a knife into his. He also seems to have a real problem with the military. I think he believes what they tell him. Can he really be that stupid?
Does he ever ask himself “What the fuck is the military gonna do for me, that they were unable to do for Bush in eight years? Or does he really believe he is so smart that know that he, Obama the great military genius is President, we will win the Wars on Iraq and Afghanistan? If so, it’ll be hard to decide if he is more dangerous than stupid.
And the fact that he made any remarks on the Gates thing during a press conference on health care shows how extraordinarily pedestrian his intellect really is.
He is gonna get screwed, screwed good, by the very people he is protecting now. He’s a chump.
July 25th, 2009 at 4:51 am
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