Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

PB, multiple media reports indicating he has been indicted in NY’s Southern District.  What type of involvement would bring a Federal Indictment?  David Patterson’s moment in the sun, first black NYS governor, first blind gov to boot.  Holy power vacuum in Albany.

Prof. B, I thought of you as soon as I heard this news.

I hope some MSM outlets will contact you for comments. Right now, the cable network talking heads (e.g., Greta Van Susteren on Fox News) are repeating the conventional wisdom to the effect that Spitzer is hated on Wall Street “because he was cleaning up the corruption there.”

In fact, as I perceived it, he was hated because most of what he was doing to harass and demonize corporate America had to do, above all, with elevating the image and reputation of Eliot Spitzer, and that much of what he did was neither cost-efficient, moral, or reasonable.

But as a genuine corporate governance expert, I hope the MSM will get your nuanced and well-informed views.

He is “customer/client 9” in the indictment, and shipped money from NY to Washington DC, also phone and text messages across state lines.  He is not a listed defendant.

No one has said anything about the ‘cost aspect’ - these girls were not cheap, i.e., could a humble civil servant pay $5k per hour for a 7-Diamond hooker or was someone else picking up the tab…

SoS

Democrats keep this up and we will have to start calling them the Whiggs.

I hope Spitzer doesn’t resign over this.  David Vitter didn’t.  (To be fair, I’m not sure Vitter ever actually prosecuted hookers.  But still.)

One interesting note . . . It seems that Spitzer is on the verge of resigning this evening.  How very unlike a democrat to step up and resign when confronted with a scandal based on marality (or anything for that matter).  I shall believe it when I see it.

He needs to resign immediately.  His efforts to paint corporate america as evil has done terrible things to what has made this country great...private enterprise.  Now is the time to get him off the political stage since it was all done to boost his image for political power.  Let him rise and fall even quicker when the true image of this quack is shown in the light.  I always thought he doth protest too much.

Joel: See my comment above on the Vitter analogy.

"So what exactly was Spitzer into that an apparently experienced high class call girl wouldn’t think were safe?”

Since most expensive call girls engage in unprotected conventional sex, he probably wanted unprotected unconventional sex.

(Though I suppose it’s just possible that he asked her to dress up as Hillary and call him “Bill.")

Spitzer must resign immediately. There is no other way out of this mess. He can never function with any credibility now that this is “before the public.” I am not pointing fingers at the man, mind you. He is a man and like all men, however exalted his official station in life, is weak when it comes to the desires of the flesh. But his high office and his personal weaknesses do not mix, so he must resign for the good of the state and his party, not to mention for the sake of his poor wife and family.

Spitzer is just another Democrat sleazeball from which a huge portion of American voters just seem to look the other way!  Clinton, Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, Reid, Durbin, Kennedy, ... the list is very long!!!  I suppose there must be some good Democrats but they are very hard to find.

Jesus said, “Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone” Spitzer didn’t listen.  Turns out the stone(s)he threw were boomerangs!

Hello,
can you give me a link to your blog?
Thanks
Marguerita
The PoignantFrog
p.s. let me know

Prof. Bainbridge wrote:  “For the chief law enforcement officer of the state to be caught breaking the very laws he is charged with (and has in the past) enforced as against others raises questions that simply are not present when a mere legislator breaks the law.”

I disagree.  If you believe legislators are less subject to the law than executives, well, that’s a unique belief.

All I see here is the massive hypocrisy issue of a man who formerly crusaded against prostitution being guilty of it himself.  Jimmy Swaggart with a law degree, basically.  (Swaggart, FWIW, didn’t resign either.  No one resigns over these things.)

Personally, I have no problems with Spitzer’s attacks on the corporate world. That said, he should resign, partly for the reasons PB outlines, partly because only a total idiot would do something so stupid in a high profile position and also partly because public officials are exemplars whether they like it or not (which is why Vitter had to go as well).

Reagan: I split my sides laughing at (not with) your comment, given the the almost constant stream of recent Republican scandals as of late. I mean really. But I guess we all need a good joke now and again. (Where’s Craig? Vitter? to name _but_ a few).

To PB: I can understand your view (I don’t agree with it, but I can see it) that Spitzer was spouting his never ending high-minded moral decrees against business. But I think a case can be made, and often is, that extreme free market capitalists (such as yourself) are just as moralistic, you just start from a different set of moral axioms that you take to be obvious (and probably so obvious you don’t see them as moralistic in character).

Seems like it’s all in the eyes of the beholder to me.

All these sleazy politicians caught with their pants down should resign based on possibility of their being blackmailed or otherwise compromised by the embarrassing nature of their conduct.

Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving hypocrite.  A contemptable self serving egotistical jerk, I doubt he has enough respect for the people of NY to do the right thing and resign.

So much for his hopes to be Hitlary’s VP.

Prof. B, you asked: “So what exactly sort of things was Spitzer into that an apparently experienced high class call girl wouldn’t think were safe?” I wouldn’t read too much into that by itself. I’m told that bright, high-class call-girls are scrupulous in insisting upon condom use, for example, even when selfish customers want to go “bare-back.” No glove, no love.

My take on today’s announcement begins with my recollection of a 2005 NYT Sunday Magazine article by Noam Scheiber on “Spitzerism”: It’s entitled “Spitzer ‘casts himself not just as an enforcer of the law per se, but also as an enforcer of a broader social compact.’” http://www.beldar.org/beldarblog/2008/03/spitzer-casts-h.html

Spitzer was a “crusader.” For some reason, most people today consider that to have been one of his good points.

People don’t commonly associate “crusader” with a moralist going (far) out of his way to initiate unprovoked attacks on people who simply behave in a way their church (or whatever secular equivalent) doesn’t approve of, without any concern for the costs to their own society, let alone the community of those they hate.

"Hey Mr. Clean, you’re dirty now, too.”

--Neil Young

I agree with the person who said that Spitzer’s worst offense is dragging his wife out onstage to stand by him.
He should be strung up by his heels in a public pillory while little kids throw bits of of his official portraits torn down from schools and post offices into his face. I would also add that these moral dictators are always the ones who crack.
The whole hypocritical edifice of religion and morality should topple like the temple when Samson yanked on the chains.

Word on the cable news networks is that Governor S. is working on cutting a deal and resigning is the only chip has--hence the delay in the resignation.  Any thoughts?

Fox news (apparently straight-faced, fair and balanced) has Dick Morris offering his views on today’s Spitzer fiasco. Is irony the word to describe this?

What’s the more important story of the day--that the governor of New York has a sex addiction, or that 5 U.S. soldiers died in a pointless war not worth one drop of American blood? Nice diversion, though.

PB, multiple media reports indicating he has been indicted in NY’s Southern District.  What type of involvement would bring a Federal Indictment?

My understanding is the fact that he “transported” the prostitute “across state lines” turns the case into a federal issue.

"He is a man and like all men, however exalted his official station in life, is weak when it comes to the desires of the flesh.”

Speak for yourself, Justinian. I ain’t weak in such matters.

I am a college classmate of Spitzer. Princeton 1980. We moved in different circles, but I have to say I am not surprised today.

He was the typical student government jackass, power-hungry in his little tiny area of influence, a real pr1ck.

Even then he had scary-dead eyes, like a damn shark. He struck me as a ruthless SOB at the time, and I didn’t have much to do with him thereafter.

Totally in character what happened today.

While it’s true that there have been a spate of repugs getting caught in sex scandals over the last couple of years, these things don’t come pre-labeled R or D.  If you take the long view, say, oh, about the last 40 years, you’ll find every bit as many dummycrats as repugs caught up in sordid sexcapades, if not more.  The point being that they aren’t unique to or the domain of one side or the other, and that being the case it’s disingenuous to try to posture as if it is.  Either way.  The thing that makes Spitzer’s case different is the zeal and relish with which he self-righteously prosecuted other perps caught up in prostitution rings.  And then this.  I say it makes him downright evil.

"So what exactly sort of things was Spitzer into that an apparently experienced high class call girl wouldn’t think were safe?”

Wonkette had the answer--the initials are A.F.

And no matter what Spitzer did, it does not excuse malfeasance on Wall Street, in the boardroom, or anywhere else.

Wall Street has produced two fraud-boosted bubbles in ten years, with precious few master of the universe going to prison where they belonged.

Balls, str.

Keep your eye on the ball, people. The Feds have already said that the prostitution business was just something they stumbled on while investigating something else. Democrats are working hard to make this into a sex scandal, which they can spin away, instead of the financial and ethical scandal that’s the real story. Don’t let ‘em distract you.

The real story is that Spitzer was patronizing and supporting one prostitution ring, while using his office as AG and later Governor to prosecute other rings. In other words, he’s the “mouthpiece” for a gang of pimps who’s using State power to take sides in what is, de facto, a slave-ring conspiracy. It fits the rest of his behavior, which is that of an extortionist.

Regards,
Ric

Relax. It’s not a sin to appreciate poetic justice along with the regular kind.

What’s even more ironic is that by arranging his “trysts” in Washington, he literally “made a federal case out of it.” Now that’s poetic.

To put it in perspective, assume for the sake of argument that he had “one night out on the town” a month.  The cheapest call girl in that outfit cost $3000.  Not even adding in the cost of a 4-star hotel room, travel, dining, and related expenses that’s $36,000 a year to get his rocks off.

Even on the Governor’s salary it’s hard to imagine covering up this kind of money laundering - unless the money came from “unofficial sources”, ie. graft.  They REALLY need to ask him some pointed questions about this.

Orion:

Not to say the source of the money should not be investigated, but his father is incredibly wealthy.

For a book about prostitution, you may be interested in Naked in Haiti: A Sexy Morality Tale About Tourists, Prostitutes & Politicians. http://www.dankingbooks.com will get you there.