Sheldon Silver arrested: ‘Millions in Bribes and Kickbacks’ claimed as Income

[Winehole23]

The five-count complaint on charges of wire fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy, and extortion outlines two schemes Mr. Silver used to leverage his official position as the powerful Democratic leader of the Assembly to rake in cash, which he presented as legitimately earned income for representing private clients.


“In truth and in fact, Silver has obtained millions of dollars in outside income as a direct result of his corrupt use of his official position to obtain attorney referral fees for himself, including from clients with substantial business before the State, and not as a result of legitimate outside income Silver earned as a private lawyer,” the complaint reads.


Mr. Silver collected more than $6 million in outside income from two private law firms since 2002, according to the complaint.


Approximately $700,000 came in “undisclosed bribes and kickbacks” from a scheme in which Mr. Silver used his influence as Assembly Speaker to “induce real estate developers with business before the State” to use a real estate law firm run by an attorney who previously worked as Mr. Silver’s counsel in the Assembly, and which paid Mr. Silver for the referrals.


Another $5.3 million came from the firm Weitz and Luxenberg. $1.4 million of it was in the form of $120,000 annual salary “which Silver received based on his official position rather than any work he was expected to perform.” Another $3.9 million came in attorney referral fees, of which more than $3 million were obtained “through a corrupt scheme” in which Mr. Silver obtained referrals of asbestos cases from a doctor by using his Assembly perch to secretly direct $500,000 in state funds to that doctor’s research.


The complaint alleges Mr. Silver had no involvement in the firm’s asbestos practice and had never performed “any legal work whatsoever” for either law firm’s clients.

Read more at http://observer.com/2015/01/indictme...#ixzz3PfWABP6P

[Winehole23]

Silver's job le is Speaker of the New York State Assembly, the lower house of the legislature, a position he's held since 1994. Due to his extraordinarily long tenure in office combined with the very strong ins utional role of the legislative leadership in New York, that's made him probably the single most important person in the past generation of New York politics.


The saying in Albany is that decisions are made not by the voters or the legislature, but by "three men in a room" — the governor, the Speaker, and the leader of the New York State Senate. Over the past twenty years, governors and Senate leaders have come and gone but Silver has always been one of those three men in the room.

http://www.vox.com/2015/1/22/7870867...silver-scandal

[m>s]

>silverIt's always Jews, every time

[Nero5]

>silverIt's always Jews, every time

Yay! cue the stupid and gullible and look who appears, the try hard nazi with his video of the fall of the third reich where hitler was so stupid as to invade Russia without winter uniforms, sufficient food and having failed failed to learn from Napoleon!
Of course it's 'the jews', just like every kiddy fiddler is white and catholic, every terrorist is brown and muslim, every WASP is a red and blue patriot.
So Silver is dirty, hang him and be done with it, but make m.s second for the sake of the gene pool.

[m>s]

You sound like you're making excuses for Der juden. We all know that they own your ass but you support master like a good goy.

[Nero5]

LOL! Your troll-fu is as weak as your intellect. Here's the picture I paint of you for all who read this thread: consumed recognition of your own mediocrity you simply find it easier to dream of a time where a snivelling devotion to authoritarian leadership would empower you and others like you. The attraction is deep simply because you are too lazy or scared to improve yourself, so in the end you cling to that which cannot be removed: your 'whiteness' and that you view the fact that you are not worth of power as being a conspiracy by the 'others'. The irony of this picture and your Nazi fanboi desires is that is what drove so many Nazi's at the time and yet we all know they lost. Indeed if you had any knowledge of history you'd know that so many Germans lay buried in russian fields due to Hitlers weak minded incompetancy ... and yet you, the fat scion of a suburban USA dream sit behind the greatest source of information ac ulated in the history of mankind and dream of being part of an enemy that your country sacrificed so much to defeat.
I bet your mother is so proud.

[SupremeGuy]

I can't wait to see how the usual suspects spin this, tbh.

[TeyshaBlue]

Because Repugs!!!!!111!!!!

[unleashbaynes]

^this corruption just proves he was really a repug posing as a democrap the whole time!!!

[Dirk Oneanddoneski]

[Nero5]

What a wonderful cartoon for displaying the virtues of the Nazi/far right glee club that MS so loves. Could not have picked a better one to go with his current fanboi video. You see the cartoon is a libel and a lie within itself. The cartoonist attributed to this antisemetic sketch actually did not draw it as you can read here: http://ohpi.org.au/ben-garrison-on-trolls/. So a comment on theft and corruption is commented on by the same, who said americans had no sense of irony!
The joy of this cartoon is that it ties in with the 'new' video that MS has in his sig. You see the Nazi propaganda film that he so loves is in itself a grand libel, yet at the same time it attempts to justify criminal actions. The Nazi party funded it's grand economic schemes by 'nationalising' or stealing private individuals property of other Germans who opposed them - simply put when they had sufficient control of the legal system and the political system they rorted the economy and interesting printed their own economic figures. It was a Ponzi scheme before Ponzi, but at the same time is was also a personality cult before those were fully understood either. The control from the top was such that the followers were happy to slavishly believe what they were told - even when they murdered their own such as with Ernst Röhm, the sexual leader of the SA. But let us not think this out of the ordinary, Hitler was not worried about the sexuality side of things, many top Nazi's were gay (not that there is anything wrong with that), but perhaps this is part of the attraction of Nazi's for MS?

[m>s]

LOL! Your troll-fu is as weak as your intellect. Here's the picture I paint of you for all who read this thread: consumed recognition of your own mediocrity you simply find it easier to dream of a time where a snivelling devotion to authoritarian leadership would empower you and others like you. The attraction is deep simply because you are too lazy or scared to improve yourself, so in the end you cling to that which cannot be removed: your 'whiteness' and that you view the fact that you are not worth of power as being a conspiracy by the 'others'. The irony of this picture and your Nazi fanboi desires is that is what drove so many Nazi's at the time and yet we all know they lost. Indeed if you had any knowledge of history you'd know that so many Germans lay buried in russian fields due to Hitlers weak minded incompetancy ... and yet you, the fat scion of a suburban USA dream sit behind the greatest source of information ac ulated in the history of mankind and dream of being part of an enemy that your country sacrificed so much to defeat.
I bet your mother is so proud.

America didn't sacrifice in the way of actual fighting, just supplies. The Russians won and only because it was 50vs2. Nice essay though tl;dr the rest

[m>s]

Lol the fake unsubstantiated gay libel. You're going to have to do better than that if you want to rustle my jimmies.

[Nero5]

Good lord...are you really that dumb!
The USA lost 213,400 dead in WW2 in Europe fighting against Nazi Germany, but I'm glad you value American lives so much.
OH no the gay comments about the Nazi party are well founded in serious research. You just need to read some.

[m>s]

...the Russians lost 20 million+, 200k isn't in a world war. They got there late after the real fighting was over. Hilarious how they still lost even what they did fighting 16 year old hitler youth and 3rd tier conscripts at 30% fighting strength without air support. And almost lost the battle of the bulge?? Lucky those armored divisions literally ran out of gasoline because otherwise you were toast.

[Nero5]

LOL! read history, really go read some.

[m>s]

I know more about history than you ever will, I challenge you to read a book that isn't written by an Israeli

[TeyshaBlue]

lol UTA

[m>s]

I think uta has that world renown history and political science teacher Allen sachs, he would know a few things and so would UTA students I'd assume

[TeyshaBlue]

It's Alan Saxe, nimrod. And he's well known in North Texas. World renown? Not so much.

[Blizzardwizard]

What a wonderful cartoon for displaying the virtues of the Nazi/far right glee club that MS so loves. Could not have picked a better one to go with his current fanboi video. You see the cartoon is a libel and a lie within itself. The cartoonist attributed to this antisemetic sketch actually did not draw it as you can read here: http://ohpi.org.au/ben-garrison-on-trolls/. So a comment on theft and corruption is commented on by the same, who said americans had no sense of irony!
The joy of this cartoon is that it ties in with the 'new' video that MS has in his sig. You see the Nazi propaganda film that he so loves is in itself a grand libel, yet at the same time it attempts to justify criminal actions. The Nazi party funded it's grand economic schemes by 'nationalising' or stealing private individuals property of other Germans who opposed them - simply put when they had sufficient control of the legal system and the political system they rorted the economy and interesting printed their own economic figures. It was a Ponzi scheme before Ponzi, but at the same time is was also a personality cult before those were fully understood either. The control from the top was such that the followers were happy to slavishly believe what they were told - even when they murdered their own such as with Ernst Röhm, the sexual leader of the SA. But let us not think this out of the ordinary, Hitler was not worried about the sexuality side of things, many top Nazi's were gay (not that there is anything wrong with that), but perhaps this is part of the attraction of Nazi's for MS?

[ElNono]

Albany has been breeding corruption for a long ass time. It's at least nice to see they keep catching these guys. It's the only way to get better.

[Winehole23]

sentenced to 12 years:

Mr. Silver was convicted on Nov. 30 of charges that included honest services fraud, money laundering and extortion. Upon his conviction, he forfeited his Assembly seat. Two weeks later, Dean G. Skelos, who as majority leader had been Mr. Silver’s Republican counterpart in the State Senate, was also convicted of corruption.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/ny...-sentence.html

[RandomGuy]

LOL! Your troll-fu is as weak as your intellect. Here's the picture I paint of you for all who read this thread: consumed recognition of your own mediocrity you simply find it easier to dream of a time where a snivelling devotion to authoritarian leadership would empower you and others like you. The attraction is deep simply because you are too lazy or scared to improve yourself, so in the end you cling to that which cannot be removed: your 'whiteness' and that you view the fact that you are not worth of power as being a conspiracy by the 'others'. The irony of this picture and your Nazi fanboi desires is that is what drove so many Nazi's at the time and yet we all know they lost. Indeed if you had any knowledge of history you'd know that so many Germans lay buried in russian fields due to Hitlers weak minded incompetancy ... and yet you, the fat scion of a suburban USA dream sit behind the greatest source of information ac ulated in the history of mankind and dream of being part of an enemy that your country sacrificed so much to defeat.
I bet your mother is so proud.

+1

Very well put.

[RandomGuy]

America didn't sacrifice in the way of actual fighting, just supplies. The Russians won and only because it was 50vs2. Nice essay though tl;dr the rest

oooh too many words...



Nero pretty much nailed it, and all you have is "nuh-uh".