this “scandal” is something like putting out mousetraps while the house is on fire.
we have a twice-unelected president who plunged us into a preposterous, unwinnable and extremely murderous war, whose money-is-king administration runs the rest of the country in accordance with corporate interests, we have new orleans still a shambles after a year of so-called emergency relief, we are toe-to-toe with both iran and north korea in confrontations where threats to set the nukes flying are being hurled on every side and — oh yeah — the likelihood of larger, more explosive, more deadly terrorist attacks (not just here, but everywhere) has grown from a possibility into a certainty.
but the fact that hevesi let his sick wife be taken to doctor appointments in a city-owned car is making headlines. who are we kidding here? what public official does NOT use public assets for private business from time to time. some more than others, but it’s certainly the norm rather than the exception. what about giuliani & christine back in the days of their affair? and before anybody starts screaming about the “taxpayer dollars” that are being wasted here, let me give you some other ways that taxpayer dollars are being wasted by non-public officials. (without mentioning the tens of billions on getting our own people and a hundred thousand civilians slaughtered in iraq. that’s too obvious.)
let’s take, for example, the special prosecutor recently named to “investigate” the so-called hevesi scandal: david kelley. he works for a big-shot law firm: cahill, gordon & reindel. take a minute to see how they earn their money: http://www.cahill.com/practices/020
over the years, i’ve worked for many similar big-name law firms as well as investment banks, and if you think that hevesi’s use of a city car to shlep his wife around is such a big deal, your eyes would fall out of your head if you saw what goes on at these companies. and while only those (almost always men, btw) at the very top have their own chauffeured cars to use exactly as they please, everybody else has “vouchers” for one black-car service or another: again, to be used exactly as they please. and they are! delivering roses to the mistress, sending personal shoppers out to buy their holiday gifts, even — in one case so flagrant that even us low-level flunkies heard about it — taking a black car from NYC to Boston for a basketball game, having the driver wait until the game was over, and take them back again. the tab for that one ride (and this was back in 1983, thank god i’m no longer a low-level flunky at a law firm) came to over $800. this is business at usual in corporate america, and is especially evident in the legal and financial industries.
but but but, i hear you spluttering, that’s not public money, the taxpayers aren’t footing those bills. the hell we ain’t! who do you think is paying the bills at those companies? when a corporation dishes out millions in legal fees, where do you think that money comes from? from the corporate welfare so liberally given to wealthy firms by the republicans, that’s where. there are very lucrative companies in this country that, through a variety of “legal” mechanisms, pay virtually NOTHING in income tax, give NOTHING back to the country that makes them so rich. property tax abatements, “incentives” to open offices in this or that city that amount to get-out-of-jail free cards for these companies to pay no taxes at all for a period — usually years-long — after the office opens. the twisted logic behind this is that it will create new jobs in that city. right. and the people getting those new jobs are paying exorbitant tax rates to finance the break that their city has given away. corporate welfare is as insidious as it is complex.
and there is no oversight at these corporations in terms of who is using what car or how many vouchers for which purpose. the execs and partners are the invulnerable cocks of the walk who take privilege as their due and would no doubt be astounded by any criticism of their wanton excess. going even further, most of these expenses — not just the cars, but the lavish “receptions”, holiday parties and offsite “retreats” that are a staple of american corporate life, are also deductible as business expenses. so there is actually an incentive for these leaders to abuse their percs, because the percs offset what little tax debt comes due at the end of their fiscal year and hey, why give it to the government when we could intangibly keep it to enhance our already opulent executive lives?
hevesi has been a good controller. nobody disputes that, nor has his performance at all been brought up as an issue. yet we are hiring — at taxpayer expense, of course — a special prosecutor to investigate this bullshit case. well, before david kelley even gets his lawyerly ass into gear, i’d like to see one thing: a complete record of all his black-car, voucher, or company plane trips since he’s been at cahill, including a list of who was in the car, who was not in the car, and the explicit business purpose of the trip.
heads up, people — the pot is about to call the kettle black, and we are all paying for the privilege of this travesty.
oh, and by the way, who do you think funds the infrastructure of our legal system? who pays the judges and clerks and juries? one guess.
