Some Notes on the Sheldon Silver Case
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara issued a complaint against New York Assembly leader Sheldon Silver this week. The account alleges among other things that Sheldon Silver used his office for private gain by steering clients to law firms that employed Mr. Silver to be “of counsel.” New York State Legislatures are Part-Time positions and elected members are allowed to have outside employment including outside employment that may constitute a conflict of interest*. This article from 2013 says that New York State legislature members receive just under 80,000 dollars per a year in salary.
New York has a long and colorful history of less than than squeaky clean politics. Zephyr Teachout’s (I still can’t believe this is her real name) surprising showing against Andrew Cuomo in the New York Democratic Primary last spring was primarily because many liberals in New York state consider Cuomo to be corrupt beyond repair.
This still raises the question about whether Sheldon Silver did anything illegal with his office. The complaint is still a big deal. Sheldon Silver was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1977 and he became the speaker of the assembly in 1994. Sam Rayburn only served as Speaker of the House of Representatives for 17 years. Mike Mansfield only served as the Senate Majority Leader for 16 years. This made Sheldon Silver one of the most powerful people in the most powerful and wealthiest States in the United States. For most of my life, New York had a divided legislature with the Democratic Party controlling the Assembly, the Republican Party controlling the State Senate, and the Governorship going back and forth between each party pretty evenly. There is a true-enough ism that legislation in New York is really decided between the Governor, the Speaker of the Assembly, and the State Senate leader because of this almost perpetual divide.
Silver was “of counsel” for a New York personal injury firm called Weitz & Luxemberg and would allegedly use his position in the Assembly to get clients for the firm. “Of Counsel” is a valid position that is very hard to define and the definition seems to change depending on the firm. Sometimes “of counsel” means a largely retired partner who is still kept on hand because of their large amount of knowledge and skills but only works on special or really difficult cases. Other times it means someone with a semi-independent relationship to the firm who is well-above being an associate but is not considered a partner. Being a “rainmaker” and getting cases for a firm is a perfectly valid thing for an Of Counsel lawyer to do. Sheldon Silver was paid a large amount of money by the firm, potentially millions of dollars but if he earned them tens of millions of dollars or more in cases than his salary is justified. The quid pro quo arrangement that Bharara is alleging seems rather complicated. Allegedly Silver got a doctor a state grant for 500,000 dollars and the doctor directed patients with injuries to Weitz & Luxemberg. It seems highly plausible that the grant could have been for legitimate medical research or that the doctor subconsciously directed patients to Luxemberg because of the grant but you would need a pretty big smoking gun to say that the doctor only got the grant because he directed patients to Weitz & Luxemberg.
Preet Bharara is very smart and like all U.S. Attorneys, especially ones in important federal districts, is trying to make a name for himself. His attempts to go after Wall Street after the financial crisis were largely mixed to unsuccessful and this made many Democratic voters disappointed. Perhaps he thinks he can improve his reforming and good government credentials by taking down Silver and come back into Progressive good graces. Silver is a largely a reliable Democratic voter but like many Democratic politicians, he has a way of annoying the upper-middle class and more liberal part of the Democratic base. The most interesting thing to me about Teachout’s primary results is that she cleaned the floor with Cuomo in the wealthy Northern suburbs of NYC but couldn’t hold a candle to Cuomo when it came to getting votes in New York City itself. Teachout’s campaign seemed most popular among college-educated (and largely white) upper-middle class progressives. At least based on her coverage and my friends from New York.
Republican State Senate Leader Joe Bruno was arrested on corruption charges a few years ago and now the state owes him 2.4 million dollars in legal fees. New York State might find itself owning Sheldon Silver millions in legal fees unless Preet Bharara has a lot of good evidence that he is keeping close to his chest.
What is the solution to avoiding this kind of corruption? Potentially turning the state legislature into a full-time position with a low-six figure salary. New York is probably one of the sates that is big and complex enough to justify having a full-time legislative body. The idea of a part-time legislature might be appealing from a romantic prospective but it does not seem to have much to do with the workings of a modern government, economy, and state. The idea seems to like a throwback to a less complicated and technologically advanced time. State legislatures probably have more control and influence over their citizens than the Federal Government and this is where real anti-corruption measures should be focused. I imagine it is also where corruption is easier because the expenses of running for a state legislature are lower than Congress or the U.S. Senate.
Preet Bharara also went after many immigration lawyers for committing fraud by allegedly creating fraudulent asylum applications in 2012. I’m not sure why he thought going after immigration lawyers would help him with the liberal voters though. Although, I do notice that full time immigration lawyers are not given the respect that lawyers working for non-profits or corporate lawyers doing Pro-Bono immigration work get many times.
Among voters on the liberal/progressive side of the aisle, “corruption” always bothered the middle and upper class progressives more than it did the poor and working class liberal/progressives. This has been the case since the 19th century as far as I could determine. To the poor and working class voters, the allegedly corrupt politicians were the ones that could do things for you during the 19th century and possibly still today. They could get you a city job working in the parks or walking a police beat rather than a worse job in the private sector, help you navigate the various bureaucracies you would encounter, and provide turkeys for family at Thanksgiving. You gave them your vote because if you were poor or working class that was the one thing you might have to give. This wasn’t an ideal situation, it was rather horrible, but without a welfare state it was the only way the poor and working class voters could get government services. The middle class and upper class progressives were aghast at this for reasons both noble and not so noble. The same is still true today. In a recent history of Tammany Hall called Machine Made, the author noted that if Tammany existed today, they would be aghast that political workers aren’t doing more to navigate immigrants into citizenship and than organizing them as voters.Report
Even with the welfare state, if things get bad enough — corruption is “helpful” — it keeps people around, and working, when there’s not really enough money. As a temporary solution for “our city is imploding” — i’ve seen worse.
The problem comes in dismantling the corruption afterwardsReport
Another way to put why middle class, educated types care more about corruption than upper and working class voters is because they are hurt more by it than upper and working class voters. Rich and working class voters can tolerate corruption because various forms of corruption directly help them. It could allow them to mine on federal lands or get through the criminal justice system. For educated, middle class people corruption hurts them. That is why they care about it.
I think your right in your solution. The only real way to avoid corruption is to make elected officials and civil servants perceive it as unnecessary by giving them good salaries and benefits. That is the normal solution in most other countries. Like many other things, Americans seem to reject the obvious solution though.Report
“Morals are for the Middle Class. The Rich don’t need them and the Poor can’t afford them.”-George Bernard Shaw.Report
That sums it up rather well.Report
Quick! Back to the vaccination thread!Report
@leeesq
“I think your right in your solution. The only real way to avoid corruption is to make elected officials and civil servants perceive it as unnecessary by giving them good salaries and benefits. That is the normal solution in most other countries. Like many other things, Americans seem to reject the obvious solution though.”
Right…because it’s worked out SOOO well in the halls of Congress. Paying them full time doesn’t change the fact they are corrupt. It just changes the excuses why.Report
I worked with a woman, last name Teachout. She was a teacher. I found this awesome.Report
The account alleges among other things that Sheldon Silver used his office for private gain by steering clients to law firms that employed Mr. Silver to be “of counsel.”
A racket known as “The Giving Tree”.Report
I suspect that there are lots of hidden costs to corruption such that even the poor would be better off if there corruption was vastly reduced. It is just that the middle class feel the deadweight loss from corruption more keenly. But it doesn’t follow that the costs to the poor don’t outweigh the gains. They just might be unaware of those costs but keenly aware of the gains.Report
I also suspect that the way the poor see it, the rich get away with corruption most of the time from their point of view and they want in because some of it makes their lives easier. They can get goodies. Getting rid of corruption without programs designed to help the poor is probably a non-starter.Report
@murali
I don’t disagree but it is still interesting to me that Cuomo cleaned up in NYC and it does make me think about the bridges to gap in liberalism between various groups.
In Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower she talked about the differences between the elite in Britain and the United States at the turn of the century (and I suspect some of these hold true today). In 19th century Britain, the aristocrats and rich presumed themselves to be the natural politicians and really the only people who should be in government. Even the new rich were distrusted because Capital was an unsavory way to make money as opposed to land and rents. This is why so many manufacturers were in the liberal party I suppose (causing the liberal party to have its own dissents between the Gladstonians and the radicals like Lloyd George).
In the U.S., the closest thing we had to aristocrats largely kept away from politics because politics was seen as low. Friend theorized that Teddy Roosevelt wouldn’t last long because he would not be able to deal with saloon-keepers and their clients on a prolonged basis because of his elitism.
I suspect a lot of good government types would be shocked by what non-middle class Democratic voters expected of politicians and they are potentially shocked by NYC’s minorities going strong for Cuomo.
This is not to say that Silver is not guilty. He very well could be guilty. And this is not to take way from your point at hidden costs.Report
Murali,
I dunno. Demand destruction of a significant degree can be mitigated, temporarily, by corruption. This avoids the problem of needing to create new housing/infrastructure in other places, by keeping people’s asses in their homes here.
And of course, whether that’s a good idea depends on whether you’re throwing money at St. Anthony’s Wilderness or Pittsburgh — one is going to recover, the other we’re rather glad isn’t.Report
Is there any empirical evidence to this idea that poor and working-class people don’t mind corruption or mind it less than the middle or upper-middle class? It is possible that voting for Zephyr Teachout is a suitable proxy for measuring feelings on corruption, but it is also possible that it is just some form of upper-middle class signaling behavior.
If it’s the latter then the argument that the poor care less about corruption becomes a circular argument. In other words, if you define anti-corruption behavior as essentially analogous to middle-class norms, then of course the poor will appear corrupt.Report
Yes, of course there is. We have thirty years of election data here in Pittsburgh. (Yes, everyone who gets elected mayor has a D. I can tell you who is/was corrupt and who wasn’t — or you could just ask the FBI).Report