Tammany Hall, the greatest criminal organization of its age, spanning the era from Aaron Burr to Boss Tweed to Boss Croker and Charlie Murphy, was the perfect marriage of Democrat Party politics and organized crime. Though thought dead and buried with Carmine DeSapio, it never really went away. In the 1930s, it molted and set up shop in the small city of Hot Springs, Ark., where gangster Owney Madden established a Tammany South, an open city that welcomed gangsters like Frank Costello and politicians like Sen. John McClellan alike, and sent a young William Jefferson Clinton back as its gift to America.

Thinly veiled — and sometimes not so thinly veiled — shakedowns were a way of life for Tammany politicians. At first they were backed up by the power of muscle, of Tammany’s fleet of thugs and gangsters who made sure their voters got to the polls and made equally sure the other guy’s stayed well away. In New York, informal precinct bosses — called “sheriffs” — were recruited from the city’s notorious street gangs, including the Eastmans, the Five Points Gang (whence sprang Al Capone) and Madden’s own Gophers, the terrors of the west wide in what is now Chelsea. The New Black Panthers, standing outside that Philly polling place with billy clubs, are nothing new in American politics. If you knew what was good for you, you voted for the Tiger early and often and you gave and gave and gave.

Illegal? So what? Effective? You bet. (more…)

Those of you who wish to understand the criminal organization masquerading as a political party — that would be the Democrats — need only to remember one thing: the very first Democrat vice-president, Aaron Burr, shot and killed one of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton. Although charged with murder in both New York and New Jersey Burr, of course, skated. The tone was set right from the start.

Of even greater lasting impact, however, was Burr’s transformation of the Society of St. Tammany into Tammany Hall, from a social club into the most rapacious big-city political machine in the country, one whose power lasted well into the 20th century and formed the model for similar machines — in Chicago, Kansas City and elsewhere — across the country.

If and when Tammany is thought of today, it conjures up images of Irishmen in bowler hats and three-piece suits, mustaches bristling. But Tammany’s position at the nexus of the Democrat Party and New York City’s burgeoning gangland, especially at the turn of the century, is where it really made its mark. Tammany employed fleets of shtarkers — “strongmen” like the great Monk Eastman, leader of the ultra-violent Lower East Side street gang, the Eastmans — to beat up Republican voters and otherwise intimidate the electorate.  It doled out patronage (Tammany was unalterably opposed to the civil-service system, although it later co-opted it). And it never missed an opportunity to take an opportunity: “I seen my opportunities, and I took ‘em” may as well have been the official motto of the Wigwam on 14th Street. (more…)

Just yesterday I wrote:

For a Chicago pol, whose path to prominence came not via intellectual brilliance or personal charisma but through behind-the-scenes machinations to get opponents thrown off the ballot or have their sealed divorce records made public, “by any means necessary” is not only a tactic, it’s a categorical imperative.

Well, looky here: “We Will Not Be Silenced, 2008.”

Maybe the New Black Panther intimidation case is not an isolated event. This could be the tip of a very large iceberg… stay tuned. But — (more…)

New York State, one of the most corrupt political entities on the planet, has long been a graveyard for aspiring African American politicians.  As Mayor of the City of New York, David Dinkins — the first and so far last black mayor — presided over the infamous Crown Heights race riot in 1991, as well as a horrific murder rate that topped 2,000 homicides a year during his infelicitous one-term administration, and was easily defeated by Rudy Giuliani in their electoral rematch in 1993.

But most black politicians never even get that far. Although demographics have shifted, the state is still largely controlled by the bastard idiot children of the Tammany Hall ethnic groups — the Irish, the Italians and the Jews — who grabbed controlled of the Democrat Party starting in the late 19th century and never let go. (Someone should write a novel on this subject!) For years, the Republicans controlled the state senate under their leader, Joe Bruno, the Democrats ran the assembly under their leader, Sheldon Silver, and the two criminal organizations split control of the state house under various hapless nonentities like George Pataki.

Until David Paterson found himself sitting in Albany in the wake of Eliot “Love Client No. 9″ Spitzer’s sudden resignation, black politicians needed not apply — as Carl McCall, the former state comptroller, found out in 2002, when he fought a bruising primary battle for the Democrat gubernatorial nomination against Andrew Cuomo, son of the former governor, and incurred the wrath of the Clinton Machine.  The sleazy, slippery Cuomo, currently state attorney general, had Paterson in his sights this year and probably would have defeated him in a primary until the New York Times did his dirty work for him and Paterson announced he would not run this fall. (more…)