"[Booker] first jumped onto the political stage by helping turn his campaign against then-Newark Mayor Sharpe James into a critically acclaimed documentary about the problem of municipal corruption. In “Street Fight,” Booker is depicted as the earnest clean-government insurgent and James as the uber-corrupt machine politician...James was indicted and imprisoned on charges that he used his office to enrich himself and to “steer city-owned land to his one-time mistress.” For that kind of old school graft, he was held up as the icon of corruption..." ... "Booker did not just raise massive amounts of campaign money from the thieves on Wall Street and then attack President Obama on behalf of those thieves. He did not just orchestrate a secret $100 million deal with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that the Washington Post notes was designed to help those donors circumvent the public and “remake (Newark) public schools in the way they want to.” On top of all that, he also leveraged his municipal office to personally pocket hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate speaking fees. Additionally, in a move that makes James’ larceny look altogether quaint, Booker convinced his tech-industry backers to bequeath him an entire company – and then tried to prevent the multi-million-dollar gift from showing up in campaign disclosure reports." ... "In this illusion, the Jameses, Edwardses, Jeffersons, Jacksons and small-time crooks in Albany are the biggest forces of evil doing the most harm to American democracy through their multi-thousand-dollar scams – not the hordes of well-groomed lobbyists, high-class corporate executives, well-paid fundraisers and elite politicians who have made a multi-billion-dollar industry out of buying and selling influence."
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 15:33:29 +0000
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