An Interesting RICO Case

October 13, 2002

by Bruce Walker

In 1970, Congress passed RICO - the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, which provides for both criminal and civil penalties for those nebulous, sinister groups of crooks who used the law to escape the law like the Mafia. The Department of Justice may wish to consider a RICO case against the Democrat Party.

Does this sound far fetched? Was RICO intended to apply to political organizations? It applies to the Ku Klux Klan and the Teamsters Union. Crime does not stop being crime because it is done behind the grass skirt of political activity. Indeed, the corruption of politics has often been the glue that holds crime syndicates like the Democrat Party together.

Senators, Congressmen and Governors have gone to prison for RICO violations. But could any group as vast as the Democrat Party be considered as a real, life criminal conspiracy? Consider the evidence.

The Democrat National Committee was just fined, paying the largest financial penalty in American electoral history. Gray Davis, Governor of the largest state in the Union, has proposed an illegal and unconstitutional budget with no pretense of its propriety. If Governor Davis issued counterfeit money would his crime be any more serious?

Gray Davis’ long time ally, Gary Condit, obviously obstructed justice and possibly did much more, and yet if Condit won re-nomination, Dick Gephardt had already announced he would campaign for Condit’s reelection (presumably if Condit could "beat the rap.")

Kentucky Governor Patton has been caught in a sleazy affair that involved using his office to help or hurt his mistress. Iowa Senator Tom Harkin has planted a mole inside the offices of his opponent, the same sort of dirty tricks for which Nixon was excoriated. Jim Trafficant, another Democrat in Congress, is now in prison.

Bob Torrecelli has ended his Senate candidacy with the New Jersey Supreme Court acting with the alacrity and decisiveness of a bought and paid for judiciary, with the game plan not to keep a crook out of the Senate, but to prevent a Republican from being elected on a "Good Government" platform.

What is one to think of an association which includes the intimidating violence of the Ku Klux Klan (Senate President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd), convicted felons (Dan Rostenkowski and Jim Trafficant), pathological liars (Bill Clinton and...well, take your pick), anti-Semites (Jesse Jackson, Cynthia McKinney and many others), corrupt machine bosses (didn’t a Daley help run Gore’s campaign?) and traitors?

These are not your run of the mill group of people - no indeed! These are top-level cheats, crooks and scoundrels, the stuff of which Tammany Hall and Boss Tweed was made. And these are precisely the sorts of people - the crooks, cheats and scoundrels - that RICO was originally intended to root out: the big fish, and not the small fry.

What would happen if the government (which once meant "you" and "me") opened a civil and a criminal RICO case against this biggest and worst mob in America? Too big a challenge? Once people thought that the KKK was too big also. Too harmless? Well, do we need to see more about what has happened to the integrity of Presidential and Senatorial elections in our Republic?

Too unbelievable? Yes, until the case is made, it is almost too unbelievable for most Americans. Which is precisely why the case must be made, and made soon, about these bad guys who have taken over an entire political party - lock, stock and barrel - and why we must do it soon. General Ashcroft - here is a real challenge. Here is a mission worthy of Elliot Ness (a Republican) or Tom Dewey (another Republican) - break up this national Democrat Cosa Nostra that may otherwise devour our nation.

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Bruce Walker has been a dyed in the wool conservative since, as a sixth grader, he campaigned door to door for Barry Goldwater. Bruce has had almost two hundred published articles have appeared in the Oklahoma Bar Journal, Law & Order, Legal Secretary Today, The Single Parent, Enter Stage Right, Citizen's View, The American Partisan, Port of Call, and several other professional and political periodicals.

Send the author an E mail at Walker@ConservativeTruth.org.

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