Word: money
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Cosa Nostra's most profitable gambling operations was at one of the few places in the U.S. where most kinds of gambling are legal: Las Vegas. The Mob's technique there, known as "skimming," was as simple as larceny and as easy as shaking the money tree: a part of the cash profits from six LCN-controlled casinos was simply diverted before the figures were placed in the ledger books. How much cash was spirited away in this manner, eluding both state and federal taxes, no one can say precisely. After the Government became aware of mob influence and forced...
Another legacy from the Sicilian Mafia is Cosa Nostra's almost mystical concept of respect. Something like the Oriental notion of "face," respect means more to a Cosa Nostra mobster than money. If he does not have the regard of his fellow members, he is nothing, even in his own eyes. An equally high value is placed on loyalty. It is not always honored, to be sure, but it nevertheless remains a powerful binding force within the organization. Indeed, the very human characteristics of respect and loyalty, together with the organization's dynastic structure, offer some clues to its remarkable...
...with safe constituencies can carry on the way they used to. By pacifying their constituents with assorted favors, Congressmen as diverse as South Carolina's hard-drinking Mendel Rivers and Harlem's high-living Adam Clayton Powell are still able to ride out allegations of impropriety. Where money is concerned the public is more exacting. As a Senator from Massachusetts, Daniel Webster maintained a private fund that had been collected from wealthy businessmen. He was criticized for it, but he had nothing to worry about: he was elected by a state legislature dominated by these same businessmen...
...Money's Worth. Vidal claimed that he had deliberately enticed Buckley into the TV eruption as a public service. "Looking and sounding not unlike Hitler, but without the charm," Vidal wrote, "he began to shriek insults in order to head me off, and succeeded, for by then my mission was accomplished: Buckley had revealed himself. I had enticed the cuckoo to sing its song, and the melody lingers...
Buckley concedes that he was agitated -but properly so. "My pulse was racing and my ringers trembled as wave after wave of indignation swept over me. And then suddenly Vidal was whispering to me. 'Well,' he said, smiling. 'I guess we gave them their money's worth tonight!' " As for calling Vidal "queer," Buckley apologizes for doing so "in anger," but he still considers Vidal an "evangelist for bisexuality" whose "essays proclaim the normalcy of his affliction and his art the desirability of it." He is "not to be confused with the man who bears...