{"id":57807,"date":"2015-01-23T11:00:49","date_gmt":"2015-01-23T16:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=57807"},"modified":"2015-01-23T08:15:34","modified_gmt":"2015-01-23T13:15:34","slug":"nys-safe-act-architect-arrested","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=57807","title":{"rendered":"NY’s SAFE Act architect charged with influence pedaling"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Democrat Speaker of the New York State legislature, Sheldon Silver, has been arrested for his participation in a bribery and kickback scheme according to the Daily News<\/a>. <\/p>\n

A complaint of 5 counts accuse him of accepting millions of dollars in exchange for his influence in Albany. Silver has been the Speaker for more than two decades and he’s been party to every piece of legislation to come out of that body, including the gun control SAFE Act that passed in the middle of the night while New Yorkers slept.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many years, New Yorkers have asked the question, \u2018How could Speaker Silver, one of the most powerful men in New York, earn millions of dollars in outside income without deeply compromising his ability to honestly serve his constituents?\u2019\u201d said [U.S. Attorney Preet Bhahara].<\/p>\n

\u201cToday we provide the answer: He didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeaker Silver lied and misled the public about his outside incomes,\u201d U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told a news conference hours after Silver turned himself in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese charges go to the very core of what ails Albany \u2014 a lack of transparency, lack of accountability and a lack of principle joined with an overabundance of greed, cronyism and self-dealing.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Last year, Legacy Governor Andrew Cuomo put the kibosh on an investigation into corruption in Albany when investigators got a little too close to Silver’s antics, but the investigation continued without the governor’s approval.<\/p>\n

Authorities also charged that the corrupt Silver attempted to cover his tracks once a state investigation was launched in 2013, moving to quash a subpoena from the Moreland Commission to Weitz & Luxenberg.<\/p>\n

Silver dismissed the investigation as a \u201cfishing expedition.\u201d The assembly speaker and his staff were involved in negotiations that led Gov. Cuomo to end the commission last year, the complaint said.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Gov. Cuomo created the commission in 2013, but abruptly ended its work last year when the Legislature agreed to ethics reforms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

New york should take a closer look at everything these creatures have done in the last few years – including and most importantly, the SAFE Act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Democrat Speaker of the New York State legislature, Sheldon Silver, has been arrested for his … NY’s SAFE Act architect charged with influence pedaling<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57807\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}