The Soprano State: Corruption, New Jersey Style

I haven't read this book but, with all due respect to its authors, I think both Massachusetts and, especially, Louisiana have nothing to worry about.

Any decent/recent book about Boston politics and Whitey Bulger, for example, will show far more corruption in an average day in downtown Boston than is dreamed of by our own Belleville and Florham Park-dwelling LCN members over a year. And Louisiana is much, much worse!

You could probably add Detroit to that list now as well.

What a blatant rip off of the curiosity for all things Soprano. I am full of admiration.

Whitey was never a politician (ask any of the scores of people he had whacked). The corruption surrounding him was Federal, and it went to the heart of the FBI; his FBI handler was permitting him and his sidekick, Steven "The Rifleman" Flemmi, to commit murder, then he tipped them off when they were about to get busted for it. The FBI agent, John Connoly, is serving time for that little stunt, and he is about to go on trial for not preventing the murder of one of Bulger's ex-rivals.

Whitey's brother, however, Billy, was President of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts(aka the state legislature). Then he was President of the University of Massachusetts until it became apparent that he probably aided and abetted -- or at least knew about -- his brother's whereabouts.

But you are right about Corruption as an art form in Massachusetts, and Boston in particular. It is the stuff of legend. In the late 1960's I took a course from Murray Levin titled "Corruption as a Form of Government: a Study of the Massachusetts State Legislature." It was sold out every year, I heard, and attended mostly by pre-law students with an eye for future public ... ahh ... service.

New Jersey, from what I have seen in the ten short years I have lived here, has lots and lots of corruption, but none if comes close to Boston's Curleys, Fitzgeralds, and Dapper O'Neills, on the slickness scale. I suggest a book (may still be in print) titled "The Rascal King," about James Curley himself. He made Huey Long look like a minor leaguer...

There was a third Bulger brother, Conan, Jackie, who was a court clerk. He lost his pension as a result of felonies and perjury charges unrelateds to either of his brothers' travails. He sued for its reinstatement, as did his ex-university head brother in a similar matter. Both lost.

My reference was to the fact that, when it comes to writing a history of Boston during the years when Whitey was "pals" with FBI agents, authors can understandably never resist pointing out the political milieu in which the drug-dealing, extortionate Whitey moved. Much of the tenor of which was set by his brother and his corrupt State House cronies. (I'm sure the course you took was a fun one, something your classmates took to heart in surprising ways.)

As public records make very clear, too, William Bulger lied under oath when he told investigators he hadn't heard from his fugitive brother, because he had more than once. But you do have to have some shreds of admiration for Whitey for, during a pre-indictment "Grand Tour" of Europe, supposedly setting up a network of cash-filled safe deposit boxes which he could dip into as necessary while on the lam. And also for having not one but TWO longtime mistresses to choose from as a buxom traveling companion in flight.

Against Whitey Bulger, NJ's own slob gangsters pale by comparison. Even when it comes to the willingness to commit mayhem on others. Against Billy Bulger, not even Dick Codey cuts it here.

Again, however, Louisiana seems to be much, much worse. Mayor Ray Nagin of NO is but one modest example of the political floundering that marks the state, and even the handful of FBI agents who partied with Whitey pale against the well-documented pre-flood sins of the NOPD. Just that something like 28% of NO's cops didn't bother to return after the flood says something about life in LA, something horrible.