Dear Editor,
U. S. Attorney Preet Bharara is definitely shacking up Albany. Normally a corruption case like Assembly Speaker Sheldon would be sufficient, but he claims he is just getting warmed up. Here are some interesting statements: “It seems to be that every time effective investigators like the ones we work with begin to turn over rocks, they find creepy crawly things. If I could put 50 prosecutors on public corruption, chances are they would not be lacking for work.”
Some of his inspiration comes from a book by former Democratic State Senator Seymour Lachman who wrote a book about his frustrations in Albany entitled “Three Men in a Room”. This tile was a reference to the troika that ruled Albany for decades: the governor, the assembly leader and the senate majority leader.
Bharara responded thus: “Why three men? Can there be a woman? Do they always have to be white? How small is the room that they can only fit three men? Is it three men in a closet? Are there cigars? Can they have Cuban cigars now? After a while, doesn’t it get a little gamy in that room?”
Yet Bharara said there was a serious point behind his satiric imagery: “When you have a lot of concentration of power, that can give rise, common sense will tell you, to a culture in which people take shortcuts, people are not as open and transparent as they might be, people think they can get away with things, and that’s never good for democracy. The Legislature itself has to figure out what rules makes sense so they don’t become even more of a mockery, with indictment after indictment.”
There are investigations pending for Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Senator Tom Libous.
Much of the material came from work done by the Moreland Commission, which was disbanded by Governor Cuomo. Maybe our good governor should have examined these files a bit more closely before he handed them over to prosecutor who takes his job seriously. Maybe we will find a few things in Cuomo’s closet.
Sincerely,
Ed Nizalowski
Newark Valley, N.Y.
