Vol. 72/No. 14      April 7, 2008

The scandal-mongerers kept buzzing when David Paterson, Spitzer’s replacement, called a press conference less than a day after he took office to bare all of his marital difficulties. In the days that followed he elaborated further on his affairs and added that he used illegal drugs three decades ago.

Many working people are voicing frustration at the flood of “news” about the private lives of politicians.

“I’m getting tired of the sex scandals,” David Bowman of Brooklyn wrote in a letter to AM New York. “Enough already. Let’s talk about something else, like the state budget.”

Cops and prosecutors used extensive electronic surveillance and pried into records of private communications to fish for the evidence they used against Spitzer.

The investigation began when Spitzer’s bank filed a “suspicious activity report” with the Treasury Department after he made a series of cash transfers from several accounts. The use of such reports has increased greatly in recent years. In 2003, banks filed 413,000 suspicious activity reports; in 2006 that number rose to 1 million.
 
 
Related articles:
De-pornographication of politics
 
 
 
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