American corruption is exceptional, too
He was hardly a household name, and he owed his authority to
the votes of a few thousand people on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. But for
more than two decades, Sheldon Silver was one of the most powerful people in
New York politics. He held up budgets, cut deals, blocked projects he didn’t
like and doled out public dollars with little accountability. Governors came
and went, but Silver seemingly was speaker of the New York State Assembly for
life — beyond the reach of good-government critics, investigative journalists
and ethics watchdogs. Until last week.
On Jan. 22, Silver was
arrested, handcuffed, fingerprinted and brought before a judge, accused of an array of corruption charges.
(Silver did not have to enter a plea, but he has denied the accusations.)

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