Breaking News!
Former N.Y. State Assemblyman, Albany House Speaker and representative of the Lower East Side of Manhattan Sheldon Silver is still convicted!
Sheldon Silver is still convicted after being found guilty two weeks ago for his reprehensible and corrupt misuse and abuse of an elected political position to enrich himself with 4 million dollars worth of referral fee kickbacks through steering taxpayer funding through close friends in real estate firms from his district and a doctor pal he hooked up to his favored crony law firms.
Sheldon Silver went from his initial 12 year sentence which was generously dropped last year in an appeal citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s McDonnell Decision that made political bribery legal to the gloriously deserving 130 year sentence that was dropped on the career establishment Democrat hack.
Sensing the potential debilitating effects, permanent shame and confirmed disgrace of being incarcerated, Shelly Shady now has mustered the audacity in appealing for the third time for an acquittal. Showing yet again his insatiable proclivity to waste taxpayer dollars after getting caught plundering it, for more hearings to avoid his fate of the end of his existence in a federal prison cell. And it doesn’t at all help that he is not going to be officially sentenced until the last day of September, giving him and his dutiful attorneys ample time to conjure some obscure precedence to get him off.
It ceases to amaze the determination of this prick, who has shown more effort and tenacity scheming and machinating for himself and his buddies and now refusing to accept the verdict for his confirmed crimes, avoiding accountability and mocking justice and his former constituency in the wretched process.
But at least he’s still convicted and still a pathetic cowardly worm.
In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter as another equally venal pol who will promulgate the same policies will take Silver’s place. It would be the same if a uniparty red faction apparatchik were somehow be elected to that seat- who would notice a difference.
In the managerial state, low-ranking individual politicians are just as interchangeable as the faceless masses of constituents.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…
I disagree with your holding of the McDonnell SCOTUS decision as allowing official bribery because it concerned the state of Virginia as not having met the burden of proof that McDonnell had actually used the authority of his office in return for a gratuity. The decision being unanimous should illustrate the weakness of the state of Virginia’s case. A loophole in the law as written no functionary of the managerial state will bother to really correct.
It can’t really be used as a shield legally or logically but might be used by pols of sufficiently high standing as a fig leaf cover for their lawlessness and (assuming the courts would have the temerity to cite it as reason for throwing the case without wording from the statute to support it) only as long as they still care to maintain the veneer of legitimacy. Or official bribery laws will have such wording as to allow a McDonnell style loophole.
But apparently it’s not working for Silver.
Don Cavaioli
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