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Bravo, Republicans! Just when it looked like your party would have to deal with and vote on actual campaign finance reform, you saw Pedro at the end of the bar, a man who follows no campaign laws at all to help bail you out. Who better to take home at the end of the party than a guy who hasn't filed a single campaign report, even though he was elected last November and it's now June?
You (and the rest of us 19 million or so New Yorkers have no idea who contributed to his campaign, how he spent that money or even if he again used his taxpayer funded hospital for electoral purposes (again) to get elected! This ethical ticking time bomb didn't even have a campaign committee to legally handle a single red cent until a few weeks ago when Malcolm Smith told him he had to get right with the BOE and file something. How on earth was he even allowed to be sworn in in the first place? He spat on the already lame campaign finance laws your zombie corpse party spent 40 years defending.
Well done, GOP! G-d only knows (literally) where the money came from and where it went. I'm sure you'll be happy to defend your new Bronx Zoo pet when it turns out that Pedro is just as slimy and crooked as he has always been and maybe even more so than the man he replaced, the guy who is heading to prison. Amirite? I mean, he'll have to file a campaign report and stuff, but I'm sure there's a perfectly kosher reason he's hidden everything from the BOE, his constituents and the rest of the state. Pedro and his finances are a mystery box, Dean, and now you own it, senator. We have no idea who bought and paid for his campaign and, more to the point, neither do you.
He's all yours now, Dean Skelos. Surely you'll embrace him just as tightly when he blows up in your face, right? Because you know he will. He always does. And surely this is the last time he'll cut a deal with someone on the other side too. Lucky you.
I can see what caught your eye about Pedro. He's seriously ethically challenged. So are you. It's a match made in heaven. Or some backroom in the Bronx.
Oh and did you tell him he actually has to move to the Bronx now? Was that part of the deal? Or will he just keep hiding behind babies every morning when he leaves his home in Westchester?
Update! Dean's new best buddy tried to extort $2 MILLION DOLLARS for his bogus non profits before Dean took him home. Congratulations again, Republicans!
State Senator Pedro Espada Jr. requested more than $2 million dollars in Senate earmarks earlier this year for two groups with links to the health care organization that he founded and which appeared to have been created in part to receive such grants, according to several Democratic officials and aides with knowledge of the requests.
But Senate Democrats rejected the grant requests in early April because they could not confirm that the groups were legitimate nonprofit organizations. Around the same time, Mr. Espada began discussions with Senate Republicans to leave the Democratic caucus, ending with the Republicans' stunning surprise takeover of the Senate on Monday.
At the end of March, Mr. Espada requested $1,348,000 in grants for the Bronx Human Services Council Inc., an organization that registered with the state as a nonprofit organization on March 26, roughly a week before the state budget deal under which the Senate and Assembly were allocated some $170 million in pork-barrel spending, known as member items.
State records indicate that the council is headquartered at the same Bronx address as a clinic that is part of the Soundview HealthCare Network, which Mr. Espada founded. The chairman of the board of Soundview, John A. Feliciano, Jr., is also listed as a special assistant on Mr. Espada's Senate staff, according to Senate records.
Mr. Espada also requested $875,000 for Green ECO Energy Incorporated, a group that was created on March 19. State records list the contact for the organization as Daniel Pagano, a lawyer who works part-time for Mr. Espada as counsel to the Senate Housing Committee and who is also representing the senator in his ongoing dispute with the state Board of Elections over missing campaign filings.
Democratic aides said that the Senate earmark request for Green Eco Energy listed the nonprofit's address as 1786 Adelaide Court in East Meadow, N.Y. The same address is also listed on campaign filings from Mr. Espada's political action committee as the home address of David C. Collymore, who is also the medical director of Soundview, according to Mr. Espada. (The Soundview network is currently under investigation by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo.) |
