The New York City metropolitan area is once again asserting it’s rightful dominance in the all-important category of All-Around Corruption and Official Government Thuggery. This standing has been in some doubt of late, with our own tawdry little State Capital in the semi-city of Albany grabbing headline after headline describing the moral and ethical cesspool that passes for the New York State Legislature. Indeed, State Governments in Illinois and as far away as California and Alaska have been making great strides in the Corruption Sweepstakes, earnestly selling their influence to the highest bidder and shamelessly selling out their constituents, to say nothing of the Federal Government for the 8 years prior to 2009 being the most criminally corrupt Administration in American history.
The Big Apple was slipping badly and Americans were scratching their heads and asking the question: “What’s up with that?” Then just last year, Wall Street came to our rescue when it, as the Control Center For All The Money In The World, collapsed in an orgy of greed, incompetence and naked larceny on the grandest possible scale, plunging the entire world into economic chaos. We were back, people, back with a vengeance! But many of us wondered out loud: was it enough? After all, the details of the Worldwide Money Flush revealed prominent coconspirator culprits hailing from all over the planet, with Wall Street merely having the most March Of Slime Poster Boys per capita. We needed a real live home grown rootin’-tootin’ scourge of a scandal that would repel everybody and let the whole world know Who’s Your Abusive Daddy!
Well, it happened last week, and involved not only two of New York City’s boroughs, Brooklyn and the Bronx, but several mayors of some of New York’s Vassal States across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Money laundering! Bribes! Influence peddling! Legislators! Mayors! Appointed Public Officals! Health Inspectors! Synagogues as fronts for cleaning dirty money! Thieves and goons of every racial, religious, sexual and political persuasion, a Rainbow Coalition of slime! Take that, Chicago! Eat our dust, Louisiana! And best (worst) of all – rabbis involved in black market human organ sales, with pistols involved, for God’s sake! (Okay, bad choice of word there.)
New York has shown the world that we can do it bigger, better and badder than anywhere else. Bernie Madoff, biggest thief ever at $165 billion? A New Yorker, thank you very much! Rabbi Ishak Rosenbaum, the monster who bought poor people’s internal organs for $10,000 and then resold them for 15 times that amount on the human organ black market (How evil is that?), often enforcing the organ removal surgery at gunpoint? That’s right folks, a New Yorker! And guess what, who do you think made charitable donations of stolen money to Rabbi Rosenbaum’s phony charity? That’s right, our very own Bernie Madoff. You can’t make this stuff up, people! And as this far-flung scandal and FBI investigation unfolds it just gets better (worse) and better (worse)! Keith Olberman’s head is spinning trying to pick his TV show’s daily Worst Person In The World!
There are just so many to choose from, and now The New York Daily News has expanded the scope of the scandal into a stomach-wrenching expose of New York City hospitals and their life threatening incompetence, filth, indifference and corruption. Damn, this is good (appallingly horrible)! For those of us wondering exactly what it would take to make all the disgraced CEOs of our major banks and corporations look not all that bad, well, here it is. The human organ ring is downright Satanic, and being run by an alleged Man of God, it makes you wonder what’s worse than Satan. Wow, these people are so damned heinous they are beyond human language to describe them! Do we growl and bark at them? Are there any acts or gestures strong enough to register our complete revulsion?
Doubtful. Even putrid, runny defecation or foul, oozing, infected pustules are mild images compared to preying upon society’s most vulnerable and desperate. Not only that, but costing the lives of countless other such souls who don’t have 150 grand for a contraband kidney by completely corrupting the organ donor system. You’re serial killer material at that point, or maybe worse, since serial killers don’t grow wealthy with all that time-consuming stalking and killing, it’s just a hobby. And since the head of the gang is a rabbi, he ups the ante on sleaze even more by providing anti-Semites and conspiracy wackos plenty of material for their moronic evil-Jews-run-the-world tirades. Just what the world needs, more hate, eh? How’s that for splashing the slime around? The guy’s a virtuoso!
And so Gotham reclaims our mantle. After years of falling crime rates, improved quality of life and boring revitalization of so many formerly troubled neighborhoods, people were talking. There were whispers everywhere that New York City had lost its edge. Well, last week’s arrests put all that gossip to rest and put the lie to the nasty rumors that we were getting soft. Hah! Our public officials are once again front and center on the front page of the newspapers, doing their perp walk and denying the charges. Why, Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall would be proud as can be! It’s like old times again in New York. To which we can only say: How much is that kidney in the window?