Where's Batman When You Need Him?

People are weak and give into temptation, that's why corruption is shocking, but not surprising. If you're a high-profile person who's brazenly corrupt like former Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich, it's both shocking and surprising. He didn't even bother to disguise the fact that he was selling a U.S. Senate seat for cash. The same is true for discreet, yet studiously corrupt people like Barnard Madoff, who spend their lives devising and implementing intricate (but unoriginal) plans to cheat investors out of billions. What if you're both? What if you're a corrupt politician, so shameless and yet so calculating that your lucre forms revenue streams? Then it's shocking, surprising and newsworthy. Meet New York City Councilman Larry B. Seabrook.

It's difficult to summarize his activities, but Ray Rivera and Russ Buettner come close in their article on the front page of today's (6/11) New York Times. They claim that a non-profit organization that Seabrook created ten years ago, The African-American Bronx Unity Day Parade, ". . . never received I.R.S. approval to actually operate as a non-profit. It has never filed a tax return. And, it seems, it has never run a parade. But in recent years it has netted more than $100,000 in city money by leasing space at one price from Bronx landlords and then subleasing it at a far higher price to three nonprofit groups whose rents were later reimbursed by the city. . . And the nonprofit groups. . . were all affiliated with Mr.Seabrook. He helped secure government contracts for them and financed them with city funds he controlled, and each of them paid at least one of his relatives either salaries or consulting fees." If that isn't clear, there's an accompanying chart with four paragraphs of description, eleven graphic elements, sixteen different sums of money and arrows going in every direction. We're getting into "The Joker" territory, here. Worse, Jack Nicholson as "The Joker."

Schemes like Seabrook's make me yearn for the charms of a simpler, but no less corrupt, era in New York City. 1858-67, to be exact, when William M. "Boss" Tweed was leader of the Democratic political machine called Tammany Hall and George Washington Plunkett was ward boss for the fifteenth assembly district. In a series of talks, set down by William Riordan and published in book form as Plunkett of Tammany Hall, the ward boss explains his theory of "Honest Graft." Briefly stated and at no risk of oversimplifying, it's, "If my friend gets his contract, I get my kickback and the city gets their bridge, whose out?" Not only did Plunkett put his theory into action, he believed in it until his dying day. "If my worst enemy was given the job of writin' my epitaph when I'm gone," he said, "he couldn't do more than write: 'George W.Plunkitt. He seen his opportunities and he took 'em.'" Yes, his tactics were illegal and immoral, but they resulted in The Washington Bridge, the 155th street Viaduct, the grading of Eighth Avenue north of Fifty-Seventh Street and additions to the Museum of Natural History among other public works.

Councilman Larry Seabrook wouldn't even give African-Americans a parade. A lousy parade! In the Bronx! That's low.