All New Jersey Arrested in FBI sting

A sting that was 10 years in the making came to a successful end in New Jersey last week. It appears that the entire state 44 people, including 3 mayors, 2 legislators, and 5 rabbis and various other citizens were arrested for charges that included money laundering, influence pedaling, and the trafficing of body parts.(how much for a kidney?)

New Jersey continues among the leaders in the nation, with 130 politicians arrested in the last 8 years. Maybe it's the economy. The recession hit New Jersey so hard the Mafia laid off three judges, a police chief and two mayors.

But we have a long history of this stuff. Back in the 80's the Abscam Scandal involved a NJ Senator.

In the 1990's CBS news called my hometown, Edison, the most corrupt town in the nation.

Was it because our town sold a park with historical significance to a developer for 2 million bucks, then when they realized their mistake, bought back part of it for 6 million? To ensure the developer took the deal, they condemned and seized "abandoned" land across the sreet and included it. By the way, the "abandoned" land had a bus depot on it and the bus business was in excess of a million dollars a year. That didn't matter.

Nope, that didn't even figure in it.

The godfather of corruption in Jersey politics is Frank Hague. He never made more than $9000 in a year, yet after 30 years as mayor of Hoboken, he left an estate of $5 million. This was back in the 50's, when a million dollars was big money.

Our largest city, Newark, has not had a mayor leave office without a jail term following since 1962. The last mayor is currently serving a 20 year term.

I suppose we should look the bright side. We have 566 municipal governments. So the means 563 officials didn't get arrested.

Yet.

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