Good Government

In New York state the gettin' was extremely good for one powerful family;

Former New York State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos got his son a no-show job with a medical malpractice insurer who was lobbying the Legislature, according to a federal indictment.

Father and son “engaged in a corrupt scheme” to cash in on Skelos’s position at the helm of the Senate, according to the indictment handed down Thursday by a federal grand jury in Manhattan. Skelos and son Adam pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from campaign donors and firms with business before the state, according to the indictment.

Which, as the Insurance Journal story makes clear, is pretty much textbook economics (if the textbook is Public Choice). In addition;

Adam Skelos also pocketed title-insurance commissions from real-estate developers with business before his father, prosecutors said. The elder Skelos helped win a $20,000 payment from a large real-estate investment firm for his son and $10,000 in monthly payments to Adam from a company in Arizona that makes water filters to treat polluted stormwater run-off and water contaminated by fracking.

The two men referred “implicitly and explicitly” to Dean Skelos’s ability to use official actions to reward or punish targets of their five-year scheme, according to the indictment.

They went into politics to do good, and they ended up doing well.