Word: public
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Nowhere has organized crime subverted more than a tiny minority of public officials. But a minority can be enough both...
General affluence and increasing public interest in sports such as football and basketball hike the stakes and make the potential for corrupting athletes great. Even if he does not succeed in fixing a game, the Cosa Nostra agent finds information about a team's morale or physical condition priceless in helping him to set odds. On just such an information hunt, a scout for Chicago Handicapper Burton Wolcoff wangled his way into the clubhouse of the Los Angeles Dodgers a few years back. Learning that Sandy Koufax, who was scheduled to pitch that day, was having even more arm trouble...
Many of the Cosa Nostra's legitimate business fronts were acquired when the owner could not pay his debt. Some public officials were acquired in the same manner. Over his head in various business deals, James Marcus, the former Water Commissioner of New York City, took a loan at 104% annual interest. When he was unable to pay, the gangsters found him a willing victim for other schemes, including graft on city projects. In the case of Marcus, as with many other public officials, the loan was almost certainly a come-on for what the Mob really wanted: a good...
LESS well remembered than Lord Acton's celebrated aphorism about the corrupting effects of power is his dictum that "Everything secret degenerates; nothing is safe that does not show it can bear discussion and publicity." Carl Jung agreed that "all personal secrets have the effect of sin or guilt." These statements aptly define the attitude of a democratic society-particularly the U.S.-toward its leaders. The man in public life has a private life that is not exclusively his own. It is assumed that the people's right to know includes the right to know all, or almost...
...reaction to the Chappaquiddick mystery once again illustrates that in the processes of public judgment, perhaps the most powerful factors are appearance and imagination. Scandal is a relative matter. How people react to an alleged or suspected indiscretion depends on time and place, on who knows and who tells, on the prestige-and vulnerability-of the persons involved. Pure caprice is often a factor. What one man gets away with for a lifetime may destroy another overnight. Charles Parnell fell from power because of the honest love of a married woman, while his near-contemporary, David Lloyd George, remained Prime...