Shadow Governments and Pay-to-Play: the LD37 Connection

Ferrierocrats Guilty of Spousal Abuse (2.50 / 2)

The old saw about trapping rats in a corner is apparently true. The Ferrierocrats are out in force with their rabid claws.

It is not surprising that the Ferrierocrat reaction to good government is to resort to spousal abuse.

Is it fair to vicously attack the Assemblywoman's husband, Frank Huttle, when no one in LD37 attacked Ferriero's wife? No one made any comments about her job performance as a judge nor did anyone ever comment on the submission or withdrawal of Mrs. Ferriero from a list of superior court judgeships. Tsk, tsk, shame on you BlueBergen.

Frank Huttle happens to be an outstanding tax attorney and business lawyer who has built a very fine legal career without the help of government contracts.

In contrast, Joseph A. Ferriero used to be an ambulance chaser before he became a political Boss. Since his reign as Bergen Boss began, he has parlayed his political career into lucrative government contracts that have enabled him to feed at the public trough with all the sloppy manners of a muddy pig. And that is precisely the problem with the entire system in New Jersey.

The findings of Ferriero's compensation at PVSC is about himself and not his law firm. He is the attorney for PVSC and he was compensated thus. He is also the political Boss who controls the flow of pay-to-play money in and out of his organization and has the power over various patronage.

See the links? Money-pay-to-play-patronage-PVSC taxpayer funded compensation.

DeCotiis is a law firm of longstanding reputation in the expertise of various complicated governmental legal matters. They are good at what they do. But I do not defend DeCotiis's involvement in pay-to-play.

However, neither Mr. Robert DeCotiis nor Mr. Al DeCotiis hold a public position as party or governmental official. They do not run a political organization and do not control patronage or the execution of election campaigns, etc.

If the pay-to-play loopholes were finally closed, the DeCotiis law firm and other private businesses would benefit because they would no longer feel the pressing of the warm barrel of a gun to their heads when the political Bosses like Ferriero ride into town and rob them of their hard earned money by forcing them to fork over the pay-to-play ransom.

It is apparent to me that the reforms and oversight regulations being proposed by the LD37 legislators in their "clean up New Jersey" program would cover all such contractors with public authorities, including the DeCotiis law firm. To her credit, Assemblywoman Huttle doesn't give the DeCotiis law firm a free ride.

So all you have, BlueBergen, is a bunch of empty rhetoric in defense of your indefensible political Boss.

And it certainly sounds like a case of ugly spousal abuse to me.

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by: TerryMalloy-OnTheWaterfront @ Fri Oct 12, 2007 at 13:43:47 PM UTC

wow (0.00 / 0)

"If the pay-to-play loopholes were finally closed, the DeCotiis law firm and other private businesses would benefit because they would no longer feel the pressing of the warm barrel of a gun to their heads when the political Bosses like Ferriero ride into town and rob them of their hard earned money by forcing them to fork over the pay-to-play ransom."

Seriously??  That is an intense imagination you've got there.  Let me get this straight.... the Decotiis firm has a gun to their head forcing them to contribute bags of money in exchange for the millions of dollars in contracts they recieve?  I must be crazy to not realize that they would be doing this all for free if it weren't for the big bad Democratic party forcing them to contribute and then making them take the 12 million against their will. 

"That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be-it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be." -Saul Alinsky

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by: BlueBergen @ Fri Oct 12, 2007 at 21:01:46 PM UTC

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re: wow (0.00 / 0)

Seriously???  Let me get this straight...  You mean that people go onto a field called a "diamond" with gloves, a stick, and one round leather object called a "baseball" and this is considered a sport?

I certainly do not agree with the poor-little-rich-firm sycophantry in the post above, singing the ethical praises of the DeCotiises and Huttles, but Terry Malloy has the definition of pay-to-play down perfectly.  Lawfirms, engineers, and the like have to "pay" in the form of political contributions to those in power in order to "play" in the game of public contracts.  It is really very simple and, while not illegal, disgusting to most rational observers who do not benefit from the system (and even many who do).

In numerous private conversations with those who engage in the pay-to-play political contribution system on both sides of the aisle, they have all indicated their contempt for the system.  Many have used that exact metaphor in fact -- the boss holds a gun to their heads.

Firms like DeCotiis are so overwhelmingly large and specialized that they face very little competition and would likely win many of these contracts even with more rigorous pay-to-play reforms in place.  What they would not appreciate is increased public scrutiny on the size of, scope of, and need for these contracts.  So while they may grouse privately, they are not lobbying hard for any reform efforts.

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by: Somewhere In The Swamps @ Fri Oct 12, 2007 at 22:05:41 PM UTC

[ Parent ]