Daddy Issues: Corruption in New York and Shanghai
But, in paging through the complaint, one is struck, most of all, by the audacity of Adam’s alleged efforts to capitalize on his family name. In December, 2011, Adam “sought and obtained from his father’s Senate Office records of top donors” so that he could “attempt to sell products to these donors.”
.. New York, Illinois, Louisiana, and Kentucky have claims to the title of “most corrupt state,” depending on how you measure them. On a per-capita basis, Louisiana is the champ, but recently New York has surged: three of the past four Senate leaders have been indicted, a governor was forced to resign for hiring prostitutes, and the comptroller was found to be taking kickbacks. Skelos is the twenty-third New York State lawmaker to be indicted or charged with a crime since 2010.
.. The awkward fact is that cases of “princeling” corruption in the Communist Party, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party have more in common with each other than any of them would care to admit.
.. certain Wall Street banks are in a dispute with the U.S. government over its effort to use foreign-bribery laws to punish them for giving jobs to the princeling relatives of Chinese officials and state-owned company managers, in the hope of getting deals. (J.P. had to close down a program called “sons and daughters.”) Certain banks, according to theWall Street Journal, object to the investigation not because they deny such things happen but because they believe it is “threatening to criminalize standard business practices in some countries.”