Deja Vu

March 4, 2010

Let’s Be Honest

Tags:: freebies,; government,; graft,; New York City,; Yankees

2010: The media takedown of Governor Patterson, which at first seemed tepid but is now building to a roiling boil, revealed this week that the governor enjoyed (and lied about) a perk which many New Yorkers might consider the most the most egregious use of power in the Empire State—free Yankees tickets.

In addition to violating the state’s ban on gifts to public officials, Mr. Paterson falsely testified under oath that he had intended to pay for the tickets for his son and his son’s friend, according to the commission. Mr. Paterson had never intended to pay for the tickets, the commission determined, and did so only after inquiries from the news media, after which he submitted a backdated check as payment.

The commission has referred the case to the Albany County district attorney, P. David Soares, as well as to Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, for further investigation and potential criminal prosecution.Mr. Cuomo is already investigating Mr. Paterson’s suspected role in trying to suppress a domestic-violence case involving a close aide, David W. Johnson.

Mr. Johnson also attended the World Series game in question and was involved in soliciting the tickets from Yankees officials. The tickets, with a face value of $425 each, were for seats a few rows behind home plate.

1906: George Washington Plunkett, a Tammany Hall politician who once held four public offices simultaneously—pocketing the salaries for three of them— had a personal theory of "honest graft" that he was willing to share with the world on the basis that, for politicians, it just made sense. A few years later, the Cyclopedia of American Government would include a definition of this new kind of perk: "Honest Graft: A phrase of recent origin signifying the activities of public officials in securing favors and sinecure offices for friends, in contradistinction to "graft" in the sense of illegal extortion of public funds. See “Graft.”

Honest graft, for Plunkett, was similar to insider trading—the use of privileged knowledge or power to secure certain favors—and he would be damned if let a good opportunity pass him by:

There’s all the difference in the world between [honest graft and dishonest graft]. There's an honest graft and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: “I seen my opportunities and I took ‘em.”

Just let me explain … My party’s in power in the city and it’s goin’ to undertake a lot of public improvements.

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 take it. I go to that place and 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 for before. Ain’t it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course it is. Well, that’s honest graft.