Mayor of LA-area city resigns amid bribery charges
CUDAHY, Calif. – The mayor of the small Southern California city of Cudahy has resigned amid federal charges that he took bribes from a prospective pot dispensary owner.The resignation of Mayor David Silva was announced Tuesday at a council meeting in the city of 25,000 people 10 miles south of Los Angeles, where cheers came from angry residents who had gathered to demand the mayor quit. Vice Mayor Frank Gurule made the announcement, Silva did not attend.
Here's the kicker: the bribe was only $17K. This dude threw away his career, his good name, and his freedom over the equivalent of a freakin' Toyota Corolla. It's not surprising that politicians can be bought - it's how cheap the price really is. Even worse, he split it with the town manager and a city councilor - that's $6K each, not even.
I'm sure this wasn't his first foray into payola. It probably started small - a dinner here, sporting event tickets there. There's more than likely a lengthy stretch of "questionable donations" to his campaign, or unexplained consumer electronics, etc. that caused someone to start taking notice of hizzoner's changes of heart or business allocations.
I wonder if he'll get his own radio show, like Tom Finneran did in Boston...
That is all.
Another dispatch from...
(image courtesy of Robb Allen)
2 comments:
I can beat the $17k figure. Here's a link to fairly recent past in the Kentucky legislature. 10% of sitting legislators were caught in an FBI investigation (BOPTROT) where some took as little as $100.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Blandford
I still think the answer to special interest lobbying is for every citizen in America to pony up $10 a year and use the pool to bribe lawmakers to repeal every law made in the last 30 years, then sit down, shut up, and vote no.
If a lawmaker thinks we need a law badly enough to give up his cut, he's free to try. But he'll need a lot of other lawmakers who are also willing to make that sacrifice to get it done.
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