Clearly Eliot Spitzer represents the very worst of the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do nature of politics. While he was busy making up crimes to further his career, he was personally arranging meetings with $5000/hour call girls.
He invented new legal maneuvers to indict Wall Street bankers, greatly inflating the power of the state attorney general (the herd arguing Bush orchestrated has overstepped his powers wouldn’t have a vocabulary to describe the NY AG racket). He also used his office to wage personal battles against foes like Dick Grasso, chair of the NYSE, for too high a salary. As with many Spitzer cases, there was no evidence to support the charges and the motive was good PR, all criminal charges were dropped.
His conceit extended to other arenas. Like any Democrat official, he knew he was smarter than everyone else and therefore entitled to make decisions for everyone else. From an October 2004 interview with the Atlantic (linked by NRO):
By 2004, Spitzer was deep into his campaign to clean up Wall Street, and some critics on the right had accused him of going beyond law enforcement to a point where he was effectively creating new regulation through the threat of litigation. In a profile in The Atlantic, Spitzer dismissed these critics: “They reflexively evoke the words ‘free market’ without an understanding of what the term means. I believe in the market as much as anybody, but I believe I understand it better than they do. I understand that a market needs to have rules by which it lives.” Spitzer’s comment missed the point of much of the criticism — that as a state attorney general, he was not the person who should be making the rules.I personally am all for legalized prostitution, legalized drugs, and legalized (insert victimless crime here). If most drugs were legal tomorrow, I’d wait in a decent-sized line to buy a few joints. (But they’re not legal, and that absurd fact has prevented me from taking any pleasure from THC. Sad but true.)
What I can’t accept is that hypocrisy in public officials. If it’s good for you, why are you special? Why did you, Mr. Spitzer, put other people in jail for what you enjoy, too? We all realize that one man can’t change laws by himself, but speaking out on these fucking ridiculous laws would be a good place to start. Not only has Gov. Spitzer taken an oath to uphold the laws as they stand, he has zealously prosecuted the statutes he was flouting. Ethically, he was opening himself to dangerous blackmail scenarios and, legally, he was breaking federal banking laws.
And worst, now this maggot (no offense to any shit-eating insects) is refusing to submit his resignation because to do so would ‘give up his biggest bargaining chip’; he will make a plea agreement where relinquishing his throne is the punishment for the federal charges he faces. What an absolute scumbag! I honestly hope the federal attorneys turn down any offer of using a tarnished elected position as leverage, the Assembly moves on with impeachment, and the man is sentenced after a very public trial. What a Democrat!
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