Nevada Could Teach Illinois Lessons in Corruption

Most of the major news networks are continuing to run stories on the corruption overseen by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. To recap, Governor Blagojevich was charged, and eventually impeached, with the crime of attempting to sell a seat in the US Senate. Based on the reaction of the currently seated members to Roland Burris, the man he eventually appointed, it appears that more than a few of them think the good governor succeeded in his auction. Since the state of Illinois has the city of Chicago, and since Chicago has a less than savory reputation where its political life is concerned, the folks from that part of the country have begun to act almost smug about the quality of their corruption. Well, I have news for them.

Here in Nevada we have elevated political corruption to an art form. Chicago had Al Capone and other assorted mobsters. Big deal, we still have the mob and a number of them are so deeply ingrained into our politics that a witnessed brutal assault only brings probation. This would not be so unusual except that the order came from the same judge that hammered O.J. Simpson with hard time for using armed associates to get some of his stuff back. Those weapons were not used, by the way.

The judge, Nancy Glass, went out of the way to keep Dominic Rizzolo out of prison, even so far as calling up the defense council, Tony Sgro and advising him to come by in two years, and request she withdraw Dominic's felony plea and replace it with a gross misdemeanor. American Mafia writer, Steve Miller noted this in his column: Even Judge Glass' criminal defense attorney husband disagrees with her coddling a dangerous criminal: "People convicted of violent crimes have their prison sentences impacted by the harm done to their victims." "Any person who uses a... deadly weapon... in the commission of a crime shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for a term equal to and in addition to the term of imprisonment prescribed by statute for the crime." - From the website of attorney Steve Wolfson.

Our District Attorney, David Roger, is no slouch either when it comes to corruption. He is supposedly the one who urged Judge Glass to go easy on his favorite mobster of the week. In the neighborhood of Nevada’s Mr. Rogers, you can only commit a crime if you are a normal working citizen and not a potential or past campaign contributor. Several people have told me that the response from Metro, when they call to complain about a possible crime in progress and they happen to live in a gated community, is that the police cannot respond because it is in a gated community. This is of course a lie. The police have full authority to enter any community they choose to stop a crime. Guess what sort of community the Rizzolos live in.

Here in Nevada we elect our judges. If that isn’t a recipe for corruption, I cannot guess what is. An elected judge is always weighing their decisions on whether or not actually serving justice will get them unelected. Therefore we develop one justice system for the rich and another for the rest of us.

I can name less than a handful of current serving legislators and judges I could trust to do the right thing. Based on the last election, the electorate does not want judges and legislators known to be honest. They will vote for whomever puts out the largest amount of hate mail. We now have another judicial election cycle coming up. God help us all.