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Nov. 6, 2009
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Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
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JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec. 11, 2008 / 14 Kislev 5769

Good Old-Fashioned Graft?

By Mona Charen


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The response of Kathryn Jean Lopez, whose column appears on this site, to the arrest of Rod Blagojevich was priceless. "Finally, a political scandal you can talk to your children about. No room at the Mayflower. No myspace page. No Gay-American announcement. Just good and evil and money and power corrupting." Rod Blagojevich is part of a storied American tradition. By selling government posts, shaking down businesses that had dealings with the state, and maneuvering to get lucrative jobs for his wife and himself, Blagojevich was practicing "honest graft."


The distinction between "honest graft" and "dishonest graft" was elucidated by a turn of the century politico named George Washington Plunkitt, a Tammany Hall man. Tammany was the political machine that ran New York, which was then a lot like Illinois is today. "Everybody is talkin' these days about Tammany men growin' rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin' the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft … Yes, many of our men have grown rich in politics … I've made a big fortune out of the game … but I've not gone in for dishonest graft — blackmailin' gamblers, saloon-keepers, disorderly people, etc."


No, he explained, here's how "honest graft" works: "Well, I'm tipped off, say, that they're going to lay out a new park at a certain place. I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before. Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? … Well, that's honest graft."


That was how things were managed in the early 1900s. How is it done today? Gov. Blagojevich, who had authority to appoint a successor to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, instructs his aide that "The trick is … how do you conduct indirectly … a negotiation?" Actually, on the evidence of these secretly taped conversations, Blagojevich was anything but indirect. "We were approached 'pay to play,'" he told an aide on Dec. 4, "That, you know, he'd raise me 500 grand. An emissary came. Then the other guy would raise a million if I made (Candidate 5) a senator."


Seeing himself in possession of a valuable commodity, Blagojevich wasn't about to give it away for mere gratitude. "It's not coming for free. … I've got this thing and it's (expletive) golden, and, uh, uh, I'm just not giving it up for (expletive) nothing. I'm not gonna do it." Then, demonstrating a fine appreciation for his legal authority, he added, "I can always use it. I can parachute me there." At another point, he was subtlety itself: "I want to make money."


No doubt he was inspired by the example of his wife, who is heard demanding in the background of one call regarding the Chicago Cubs, that her husband should "hold up that (expletive) Cubs (expletive) … (expletive) them." He liked her advice well enough to ask the aide what he thought of it. Not a shock from a guy who could demand a $50,000 campaign contribution from the director of a children's hospital before releasing $8 million in state funds for the kids.


Plunkitt had some other reflections on public service. He noted that "What tells in holdin' your grip on your district is to go right down among the poor families and help them in the different ways they need help … If there's a fire in Ninth, Tenth, or Eleventh Avenue, for example, any hour of the day or night, I'm usually there with some of my election district captains as soon as the fire engines. If a family is burned out I don't ask whether they are Republicans or Democrats, and I don't refer them to the Charity Organization Society … I just get quarters for them, buy clothes for them … and fix them up till they get things runnin' again. It's philanthropy, but it's politics, too … Who can tell how many votes one of these fires bring me? The poor are the most grateful people in the world, and, let me tell you, they have more friends in their neighborhoods than the rich have in theirs."


On second thought, Blagojevich wouldn't be fit to shine Plunkitt's shoes.

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