The Godfather

197 The Godfather

The big guns of yesteryear must be green with envy. Capone, Gotti, Luciano, Lansky. All drooling and wondering why they hadn’t thought of it.

Protection, prostitution, numbers, sports books, race track books. Concrete, labor unions, even drugs: small potatoes.

Look what the White House Crime Family is about to accomplish. A stooge in every federal regulatory agency. This isn’t hidden. It’s right there in the Federal Register. They call it establishing a policy office headed by an appointee. But this really is a gold mine.

You’re the electric company. You want to burn old coal, which is dirty. You go to the Environmental Protection Agency, and there sits a White House Family capo. You want freedom from the oppression of regulation? Sure. No problem. I do you a favor and maybe – and this time may never come (to quote Vito Corleone,) I might ask you one in return – not something you can’t do, but something you might do anyway. Brilliant.

Maybe you have a chicken factory and there’s salmonella hanging out. You know this. OSHA knows this. But – there’s that trade of favors again.

Fooling around with concrete and construction? That’s chicken feed.

The Waterfront? The Family tried to muscle in on that, too, when they wanted to put their Kuwaiti stooges in charge of the shipping ports. It didn’t work. But have they stopped trying?

Can the present Godfather make this “policy” thing happen? Yes, by “executive order.” Does The Council (or Congress) need to go along? Nah.

This Crime Family doesn’t believe in councils. Almost every other crime family in the world sends representatives to the UN. These guys don’t care. They’re going to do what they’re going to do.

Wars? The Mob wars of New York and Chicago have nothing on the mob wars today. Then it was about who gets to run the loan sharking on which block. Now, it’s about oil.

The fictional Corleone family wanted to “go legit.” This bunch couldn’t care less. And they have a LOT of soldiers to enforce their whims.

The Moustache Petes brought guys over from Sicily to do the small jobs and the dirty work. A boatload here and there every now and again.

The White House Family brings over boatloads of Mexicans and Guatemalans and Hondurans. Same thing. Ask either Pete or George and they’ll deny it. But that’s what they do.

We should have laws against this stuff. Oh, wait. We DO. Small matter when you control the pawns on the Supreme Court.

They had a small setback in the election of 2006. Opposing gangsters made a move on them and won a lot of territory and the rights to parts of the spoils. But no worries. There’s plenty to go around for everyone.

Wetting the beak is what the Sicilians call it. That’s kindly. To the rest of us, stealing is what they call it.

So where are the “RICO” laws? Because if this ain’t racketeering, what is?

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2007 WJR