It Was Snowing, But Now It's Raining Indictments

The weeds of political corruption in New York State are alive and well. And so they should be after being watered and fertilized by the likes of our thug governor.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is busy yanking weeds and managed to grab one of Gov. Andrew *spit* Cuomo's buddies in the process.

Two executives from Cor Development Co. and six other men, including a former top aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, were indicted today in connection with allegations of corruption in New York economic development projects.

Steven F. Aiello, 58, and Joseph B. Gerardi Jr., 57, partners in Cor Development Co., of Fayetteville, were among those indicted. Both men are charged with bribery, bid-rigging and lying to federal authorities.

Six other men were also indicted for corruption.

Most of the allegations involve three major Upstate development projects: the so-called corrupBuffalo Billion; the development of a Central New York nanotechnology hub in DeWitt; and the construction of a power plant in Orange County.

Aiello and Gerardi are accused of bribing Joseph Percoco, a former top aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Todd Howe, a former lobbyist with connections to the Cuomo family.

What is so sweet about this is that Cuomo put the brakes on a political corruption task force, the Moreland Commission, but Bharara wouldn't let it die. He subpenaed the Moreland records and started pulling weeds. Although he found no wrong doing in Cuomo's handling of the Commission, since then he has convicted the two most powerful politicians in NY of corruption.

Looks like he isn't through yet. Perhaps Trump should take a lesson from Bharara. NY State Sen. Sheldon Silver (D) was old and feeble also.

Story here.

Ohhhhh Great....

Another DOCCS employee has been arrested and charged with aiding in the escape of two convicted murderers from the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate NY. And now the State Police think that the escaped prisoners are armed.

Mr. Palmer’s arrest came as law enforcement officers searched 75 square miles of densely forested terrain on Wednesday in pursuit of the two escaped murderers. The New York State Police said investigators are working on the assumption that the pair had a firearm.

The inmates, who the police believe were at a hunting cabin near Owls Head, N.Y., around 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, would most likely have found a supply of weapons there, Maj. Charles E. Guess said at a news conference on Wednesday.

The cabin contained items with DNA matching that of the two killers, Mr. Matt, who turns 49 on Thursday, and Mr. Sweat, 35, and Major Guess said a man arriving there reported seeing “someone fleeing into the woods.”

Investigators had no conclusive evidence that the inmates took a shotgun from the cabin but were operating as if they were armed, in part because almost every hunting cabin in the North Country had at least one weapon, Major Guess said.

NY Legislature To Vote On Repeal Of The SAFE Act

New York State Republicans, at least some of them, are holding hostage the NYC rent control legislation that Gov. Andrew *spit* Cuomo really, really wants in order to repeal the unconstitutional SAFE Act passed in a shameful midnight session in January of 2013.

We need to get our act together to get the leg to pass this. Meanwhile, a 5-day extension was granted to protect renters from being evicted if the rent control law is not passed. This law affects 2 million renters in NYC. The SAFE Act diminishes the rights of 6 million gun owners. Who will get served?

Cuomo's Clusterf**k

Don't look at me, The NY Post went with it.

Cuomo created ‘total cluster f—k’ in escaped-killers hunt

The massive manhunt for two escaped murderers from the Dannemora prison has been hampered by State Police secrecy, inter-agency rivalries, and the disrupting involvement of Gov. Andrew Cuomo on the first day of the breakout, law enforcement sources have told The Post.

Cuomo’s surprise arrival at a still-unfolding escape scene a week ago Saturday generated considerable national publicity for the governor, but distracted investigators at a time when the full facts of the escape were not yet known, the sources said.

[...]“Cuomo’s aides came in and threw out the US marshal, the sheriff [David Favro, like Cuomo a Democrat] and others who were there to help coordinate the search effort. “And they did it without even saying ‘Thanks for your help’ or such, just, ‘Get out so his highness can enter.’

“The State Police are trying to make sure that they’re the ones to catch these guys, that they get all the credit, and as a result, they’re not making full use of the assets that are available to them,’’ the source continued.

Cuomo doesn't realize this, but if you piss off enough people and some things don't go the way you want. The State has turned a manhunt for two extremely dangerous criminals into a kabuki honor/pride theater.

The sources, meanwhile, said the State Police, the lead agency, had repeatedly refused to share information on the design and scope of the manhunt with the local police, the Clinton County Sheriff’s Department, the state Correctional Services Department and the state Environmental Conservation Department, whose police officers are part of the search, as well as the US Marshals Service.

We were talking about it at work this afternoon as one of the cops was involved in the search. He said he never saw anything like it; about 800 cops tearing up the area looking for these two. Suspicion is that they may have holed up in a house somewhere, possibly taken hostages.

Apprehensive In Albany

Our thug governor is rumored to be nervous in his service to the State of New York as a federal prosecutor quietly draws the net tighter and tighter.

From the NY Post:

Cuomo increasingly ‘paranoid’ over corruption probe

Paralysis and “paranoia’’ brought on by US Attorney Preet Bharara’s ongoing corruption probe have come to define Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his administration with just seven days to go in the legislative session, a worried Cuomo ally and others have told The Post.“Something is wrong. The place is paralyzed and the governor is not right. He seems frantic at times. He’s not acting the way he normally did,’’ said the ally, a prominent Cuomo political backer and longtime associate who has contact with the governor’s administration on a near-daily basis.

[...]Bharara’s investigation of Albany corruption that led to the indictment of two leaders of the Legislature earlier this year “badly shook’’ Cuomo because, he said, “nobody on the inside doubts that Bharara’s ultimate target is the governor himself.’’

The insider’s assessment of Cuomo’s peculiar behavior was echoed by others close to the governor’s office. One described Cuomo as “kind of lost, kind of out of it.’

A man running scared, panicky, makes mistakes. This should be fun to watch as Preet turns the heat up through leaks to the press. Just a week ago the Post ran this commentary:

US Attorney Preet Bharara moved “a giant step closer” to Gov. Andrew Cuomo late last week with an indictment that alleges insurance exec Anthony Bonomo, a top Cuomo contributor whom the governor made chairman of the New York Racing Association, gave a lucrative no-show job to state Sen. Dean Skelos’ son, sources have told The Post.

“Bonomo is Cuomo’s guy, and he wouldn’t offer anything to Skelos’ kid without first making sure it was OK with the governor or his people,’’ said a senior state Democrat.

“The fact that Bonomo, like Dorego, is cooperating with Bharara brings the whole investigation a giant step closer to Cuomo,’’ the Democrat added, referring to Charles Dorego, a top official at Cuomo megacontributor Leonard Litwin’s Glenwood Management.

Spending Like A Drunken Liberal - Other People's Money

Once again the thug stuck his paws into the cookie jar. Did I say thug? Pardon me, I meant incompetent thug.

NY Gov. Andrew "Bite Me" Cuomo just pissed away tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to create less than 80 jobs.

You’ve seen Andrew Cuomo’s TV commercials, the ones that say, “The new New York is open. Open to innovation. Open to ambition. Open to bold ideas.” The spot is promoting the Start-Up NY program.

Now the results are starting to come in: 76 jobs so far.

In the entire state. From a program that has spent $28 million advertising its own existence.

That’s $368,000 per job.

Start-Up NY sounds great on its face. It’s a tax cut. Who could argue with that? The problem is that it’s a very, very narrow tax cut. It’s only for certain kinds of businesses that do certain kinds of things in certain areas of the state. Surprise: It’s had very narrow effects.

We'll need to get a list of Cuomo's friends who have benefited from this. 

The program is little more than a gimmick which seeks to mask New York’s status as one of the worst business environments and high tax quagmires in the nation. In order to make things look a bit less horrible than they are, the program offers a discount tax rate to new businesses and a variety of other investment incentives. The main problem with this scheme is that these benefits are very much temporary, and assuming your business does manage to somehow survive for a few years you are lumped right back in with everyone else after that and pay the crippling state rate. Further, the smaller communities which “benefit” from these programs see only a handful of jobs out of it (as noted above) while having to make up the shortfall in their local budgets by taxing the residents all the harder.

Cuomo Learns His ABC's

New York's thug governor can save his campaign war chest as a dowry for his daughters. From the NY Post:

Top New York Democrats are whispering for the first time that Hillary Clinton may not be their presidential candidate next year. And while they’re far from agreeing on whom it might be, they do agree on one thing: It won’t be Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

“People in the party all hate him,’’ one of the state’s best-known Democratic operatives told The Post.

A prominent Democratic elected official added, “There’s an ABC factor at work here. It’s ‘Anybody But Cuomo.’’’

In a series of interviews remarkable for their hostility toward Cuomo, several top Democrats well known to the public told The Post that should Clinton be forced to abandon her quest for the presidency by the scandal over her private State Department email accounts, there is no clear alternative for New Yorkers.

There's a new sign on the White House lawn:

Self Fulfilling Prophecy

New York's Democratic thug Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks the truth. As long as he and other crooked politicians are in office there will be corruption in Albany.

There will always be corruption in government — and Albany is no worse than anywhere else, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday. 

“You’ve always had and you probably always will have some level of corruption,’’ said Cuomo in an interview with New York 1.

 And he likes it that way.

“Power corrupts, and government is a source of power, you have it in the City Council, you have it in the state Legislature, you have it in the Congress of the United States, so, that continues.”

His remarks stood in stark contrast to those of US Attorney Preet Bharara, who last week noted that state lawmakers are more likely to be arrested than be tossed out at the polls.

“When you have a degree of corruption that is that deep and pervasive and frequent, that’s a big problem,” Bharara told MSNBC.

Story here and more here.