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The 7 - Current Events & Politics - Holy Cow - Spitzer is dirty?
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Guru Zim
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#1 Posted on 10.3.08 1356.49
Reposted on: 10.3.15 1359.01
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/10/spitzer.ap/index.html

There's a news item I didn't expect to see.

Cue Flea ranting
Promote this thread!
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#2 Posted on 10.3.08 1406.35
Reposted on: 10.3.15 1408.02
Sorry, the site you requested has been disabled (emperorsclubvip.com)

C'mon Google cache...


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So THAT'S what they call it. "Concierge luxuries."
CRZ
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#3 Posted on 10.3.08 1456.35
Reposted on: 10.3.15 1459.01
FOX News now reports that he's resigning (foxnews.com). Wow, that was quick.

EDIT: CBS 2 also reporting (wcbstv.com)

(edited by CRZ on 10.3.08 1511)
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#4 Posted on 10.3.08 1704.27
Reposted on: 10.3.15 1707.35
Wow. While I'm not morally opposed to the whole prostitution thing, I think Spitzer should resign for sheer stupidity. How dumb do you have to be to be a politician and go to a place like that (not to mention give you real name and everything). Honestly, pay in cash. Get a peudonym. Hell, get an honest mistress who'll keep her mouth shut. Going to an actual whorehouse, and letting them keep records on you? Idiotic.

David Paterson (Lt. gov) won't be a bad replacement, and while I might be mistaken I think would be the first blind chief executive in history.
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#5 Posted on 10.3.08 1941.02
Reposted on: 10.3.15 1942.08
I think he was trying to be smart. From what I've read, they are getting him for "Structuring".

Basically, he was trying to hide his transactions by keeping them low enough to not be reportable, but he set off a threshold somewhere at his bank (or someone was nosing about in the celebrity files and found something close enough to structuring to call the FBI)

Structuring is the reason you can't get 6k then 6k to avoid the 10k limit before forms are filed.

From what I've seen they thought he was doing this to avoid bribes being found - but that's kind of odd since it is in the wrong direction (money leaving his accounts).

I bet there is more to this. I bet someone abused their power, somewhere.
kwik
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#6 Posted on 10.3.08 2101.02
Reposted on: 10.3.15 2101.42
    Originally posted by Guru Zim
    I bet there is more to this. I bet someone abused their power, somewhere.


As a New Yorker (who voted for Spitzer in '06):

The sheer hypocrisy of this is stunning, on so many levels. In '06, he blew (no pun intended) into the governorship as the anti-corruption, Attorney General, who took on Wall Street to keep it clean. In not even 18 months, he's managed to alienate most of the Legislature (which, to be fair, is par for the course in Albany), allegedly used the State Police to spy on one of said Legislators to monitor his travel, to see if there was any dirt to be dug up, and has now not only gotten caught in a prostitution ring, but caught visiting (more than once), a 3k-an-hour hooker. Add in the fact that he may have also paid for the hooker's train ticket from NY to Washington for at least on liaison (which, in the end, will probably be the fact that brings him down, he'll resign to avoid major federal time), AND that he was, again supposedly, into things that a HOOKER "might not consider safe". Took him less than a year and a half to go from the squeaky-clean hero who would end Albany dysfunction, and clean things up once and for all, to the "do as I say, not as I do" screwup.

He hasn't officially resigned yet, but official events in Albany are being postponed left and right, there are no public events on Spitzer's schedule tomorrow, and the rumors are still flying hot and heavy that he's going to quit tonight. Personally, I don't think he can last the week. Even if he cuts a deal, he's burned too many bridges with this stunt, and there's no way that he can continue to deal with the Legislature, let alone the rest of the state.
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#7 Posted on 10.3.08 2137.13
Reposted on: 10.3.15 2138.02
Never cross state lines when doing something that could be considered even slightly illegal. That is one of the first tenets of life. Crossing state lines lets the feds come out to play. If you are a former attorney general, you should know this. A few people on Wall Street must be getting a nice chuckle over the great crusader going down over this.
Now, the important question: If Eliot doesn't resign immediately, does he remain a superdelegate?
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#8 Posted on 10.3.08 2335.09
Reposted on: 10.3.15 2335.17
    Originally posted by redsoxnation
    Never cross state lines when doing something that could be considered even slightly illegal. That is one of the first tenets of life. Crossing state lines lets the feds come out to play. If you are a former attorney general, you should know this. A few people on Wall Street must be getting a nice chuckle over the great crusader going down over this.
    Now, the important question: If Eliot doesn't resign immediately, does he remain a superdelegate?


I'd assume that he would, but never underestimate the dislike bordering on sheer hatred that the Legislative leaders have for Governors in New York. If there is any way to enact a recall, or impeachment, you can bet it'll come soon.

The key is the feds. If they give him a deal where he would avoid major federal charges by resigning, he'll take it and get the hell out of Dodge. But really, this is one of the more graphically blatant examples of career suicide that I've ever seen. He was in office, what 13 or 14 months, and managed to, in just about one fell swoop, knock away 8 years of incredible popularity as Attorney General, plus a decent prosecutorial career before it.

For the record, if (when?) Spitzer does resign, the Lieutenant Governor of New York is David Paterson, who would become the first African-American Governor of New York, and only the 4th in American History. He may also be the first to hold the post while legally blind, as he lost most of his sight due to a childhood infection.
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#9 Posted on 10.3.08 2358.45
Reposted on: 10.3.15 2358.49
Man, 18 months ago people were talking up Spitzer as a possible future presidential candidate. He should've just followed Clinton and JFK's lead and saved his whoring for after his election.
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#10 Posted on 11.3.08 0819.55
Reposted on: 11.3.15 0821.33
    Originally posted by Guru Zim
    I think he was trying to be smart. From what I've read, they are getting him for "Structuring".

    Basically, he was trying to hide his transactions by keeping them low enough to not be reportable, but he set off a threshold somewhere at his bank (or someone was nosing about in the celebrity files and found something close enough to structuring to call the FBI)

    Structuring is the reason you can't get 6k then 6k to avoid the 10k limit before forms are filed.

    From what I've seen they thought he was doing this to avoid bribes being found - but that's kind of odd since it is in the wrong direction (money leaving his accounts).

    I bet there is more to this. I bet someone abused their power, somewhere.


Spitzer got hoist by his own petard, not by anybody abusing their power. He got caught because the prostitutes he was frequenting were so expensive that he needed to shuffle funds around to pay for them. Moving the funds around the way he did triggered some fairly automatic bank inquiries into potential embezzling or money laundering. Based on the pattern of money transfers, the bank, as required by law, forwarded the information to the IRS who opened an investigation into Spitzer to see if he was laundering money from bribes. Ultimately, Spitzer was just too dumb to properly conceal his actions or hide them from people just like him, prosecutors.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Tim
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#11 Posted on 11.3.08 0828.44
Reposted on: 11.3.15 0829.01
Boy, I bet Jim McGreevey is just tickled pink over this, huh?
RYDER FAKIN
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#12 Posted on 11.3.08 0832.08
Reposted on: 11.3.15 0832.50
GURU: Cue Flea ranting

Gloating would be a better word! I think the line was (from 5 years ago) "with that guy's vices, he'd be lucky to be elected dog catcher". This one has certainly made my year

FLEA


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#13 Posted on 11.3.08 0835.12
Reposted on: 11.3.15 0836.44
    Originally posted by Guru Zim
    I think he was trying to be smart. From what I've read, they are getting him for "Structuring".

    Basically, he was trying to hide his transactions by keeping them low enough to not be reportable, but he set off a threshold somewhere at his bank (or someone was nosing about in the celebrity files and found something close enough to structuring to call the FBI)

    Structuring is the reason you can't get 6k then 6k to avoid the 10k limit before forms are filed.

    From what I've seen they thought he was doing this to avoid bribes being found - but that's kind of odd since it is in the wrong direction (money leaving his accounts).

    I bet there is more to this. I bet someone abused their power, somewhere.

What is the basis for your bet? If he's trying to hide his transactions by structuring, then that's a good reason for someone to investigate. And, the bank is investigating money laundering, not trying to trace bribes. It's not a celebrity thing or an anti-Spitzer campaign. It's simply complying with bank regulations on anti-money laundering as well as federal law. In this case, the money trail lead to expensive whores rather than drugs or terrorist financing or whatever.

Anytime someone with his overinflated and misplaced sense of moral rectitude and self-righteousness goes down, I can't feel bad for him. It's not surprising that someone with his history of abusing power gets caught in something stupid like this. What a piece of garbage. Amen to what Tim said--Good riddance to bad rubbish.
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#14 Posted on 11.3.08 1106.21
Reposted on: 11.3.15 1107.03
It makes sense for the Feds to look into him for structuring if he is depositing amounts of money under the limit. I get that part - if you are receiving bribes and depositing them in small amounts, it should set off an alert.

What I don't get is how the Feds would be investigating him for bribery because he was withdrawing amounts of money under the limit. I could buy a drug investigation, or if they suspected HIM of bribing people, or even if it was a prostitution sting. I can't see how they turn around from "Person A is withdrawing $5000 at a time. Person A is Spitzer. Let's make sure he isn't receiving money from people".

Spitzer was the AG. He has to know what structuring is. Hell, I know what it is just because I was moving money between an ING account and my checking account when I sold my condo last year.

I just hope for the bank's sake that this popped up on an automated audit and that there wasn't a breach of confidentiality somewhere. I can easily envision the scenario where an employee is dinking around looking at MVP accounts and they decide to take it upon themselves to report suspicious activity. The absolute first thing that Spitzer needs to do is to get that audit trail of who was in his account. I would bet you that the feds were "tipped off" by someone who shouldn't have been in the records. A tipster is much more likely to be politically motivated than an automatic audit process, and I have to think that a former AG would be smart enough to know how to avoid setting off an automated process.

I think Spitzer should not resign, personally. When you break it down, he paid for (expensive | kinky) sex, and in the process of doing so he associated with criminals. If he was doing this as AG, that's a definite conflict of interest.

I dunno, I guess I don't see how this is really all that much worse than if he had a mistress that he was shuffling around the country. If he was "paying" a mistress with $5k worth of jewelry every week, would you care as much?

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#15 Posted on 11.3.08 1324.07
Reposted on: 11.3.15 1326.02
    Originally posted by Guru Zim
    I think Spitzer should not resign, personally.
You're a kook!
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#16 Posted on 11.3.08 1328.15
Reposted on: 11.3.15 1329.01
This probably shouldn't surprise anyone. They have studied deviancy/abberant sexual behavior pretty extensively. There findings are pretty consistent. The Spitzer/Craig types are the ones more often than not involved. My empathy goes out to the family, esp the daughters.

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#17 Posted on 11.3.08 1547.49
Reposted on: 11.3.15 1548.27
GEORGE FOX!

Click Here (wnbc.com)


FLEA

(edited by RYDER FAKIN on 11.3.08 1648)
Guru Zim
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#18 Posted on 11.3.08 1605.48
Reposted on: 11.3.15 1606.03
    Originally posted by CRZ
      Originally posted by Guru Zim
      I think Spitzer should not resign, personally.
    You're a kook!
Oh, I don't know. It would have been way worse if it had been some starry eyed intern, who was bowled over by the power and position. "George Fox" ended up paying $4,300 to the service for the servicing I'm pretty sure Kristen probably didn't know or care who Spitzer was, and was doing it for the money.

Now, remember, prostitution is generally illegal for a couple of reasons. 1) It's immoral according to many religions. This isn't the reason that we use to make it illegal though - we say 2) It victimizes women.

Do you really think this high class, high price prostitute was a victim here? Even without knowing her life story, can't you concede there is a possibility that being a prostitue has been a great move for her, and that she's living a better life than she might have had with many different career options?

I'm pretty outspoken in my belief that we should stay out of other people's business. I don't personally care if he did this or not.

Unfortunately for Spitzer, I'm not in the majority it looks like.

So for everyone who thinks I'm a kook - would you rather have Spitzer, Condit, Craig, Gary Hart, Clinton - are these all the same to you or are some worse than others?

I personally see the ones where a position of power or authority was abused as worse than what Spitzer did. He paid for sex, he wasn't trying to prey upon someone looking to get ahead by sleeping with the boss.
kwik
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#19 Posted on 11.3.08 1616.41
Reposted on: 11.3.15 1617.11
    Originally posted by Guru Zim
      Originally posted by CRZ
        Originally posted by Guru Zim
        I think Spitzer should not resign, personally.
      You're a kook!
    Oh, I don't know. It would have been way worse if it had been some starry eyed intern, who was bowled over by the power and position. "George Fox" ended up paying $4,300 to the service for the servicing I'm pretty sure Kristen probably didn't know or care who Spitzer was, and was doing it for the money.

    Now, remember, prostitution is generally illegal for a couple of reasons. 1) It's immoral according to many religions. This isn't the reason that we use to make it illegal though - we say 2) It victimizes women.

    Do you really think this high class, high price prostitute was a victim here? Even without knowing her life story, can't you concede there is a possibility that being a prostitue has been a great move for her, and that she's living a better life than she might have had with many different career options?

    I'm pretty outspoken in my belief that we should stay out of other people's business. I don't personally care if he did this or not.

    Unfortunately for Spitzer, I'm not in the majority it looks like.

    So for everyone who thinks I'm a kook - would you rather have Spitzer, Condit, Craig, Gary Hart, Clinton - are these all the same to you or are some worse than others?

    I personally see the ones where a position of power or authority was abused as worse than what Spitzer did. He paid for sex, he wasn't trying to prey upon someone looking to get ahead by sleeping with the boss.


I think if it was JUST that he paid for sex, he might have skated on this, but there is too much bad blood that has cropped up between the governor and the legislature and he's just got no real way to get it back at this point. He's got no credibility left after getting nailed doing one of the very things that he built his reputation on rallying against. The Assembly Minority Leader has already started the clock on impeachment proceedings, saying that if Spitzer doesn't resign by Thursday, the articles will be submitted. Perhaps I'm being a bit cynical in ALSO assuming that the fact that his replacement would be historical on more than one level, doesn't have a history of being someone who would be as antagonizing as Spitzer was, and the fact that the state budget (which needs to address a deficit of somewhere in the vicinity of 5 billion dollars) has to be passed by April 1 may also play into this.

I don't know though- I'm more amused at the sheer idiocy of this situation than outraged, but if you were to force me to vote in another gubernatorial election right now, I'd probably vote for someone else, Spitzer was a fine Attorney General, but I don't think he is totally suited to be Governor.
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#20 Posted on 11.3.08 1618.59
Reposted on: 11.3.15 1619.03
I just want to make sure I understand your position. You seem to be saying it's okay to only obey the laws YOU feel are worth obeying and ignore the rest of them. Is that pretty much it?

Or are you saying that it's okay for a rich dude to pay thousands of dollars for a "date" but you probably would rather not have any old skank in front of your house trolling passersby for half an hour for a twenty?

Maybe he's a sicko pervert who likes to (insert your favourite "demoralization of women" action) while he screws around. Is it so okay then, or is it okay until the woman has a psychological breakdown decades later?

Believe me, I'm the first guy to stand up for legalizing everything (what a poor choice of words!) but the fact remains that there are laws on the books in 2008 and it sucks to be you if you're the dumbass that gets caught, and yes there SHOULD be repercussions. (That pretty much applies to everybody on your list - poor Gary) (Condit, not Hart)

Spitzer's salary is paid by the citizens of New York - do they not have a right to expect some accountability for his actions?

Thus endeth my rhetorical questions which you are free to answer, or completely ignore. (for now.)
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