The Eliot Spitzer scandal comes as a shocker to me.
Spitzer has been a good friend of a good friend of mine, and I spent a little time with him and his nice wife, Silda, at a rehearsal dinner and a fancy wedding in New York a few years back when he was AG.
He seemed like a really smart, savvy, hard-charging, ambitious politician. Nothing sleazy about him.
Rectitude was his calling card, and he’s trumped himself with it.
He always wanted to be the first Jewish president, but Russ Feingold has nothing to fear from him now.
I don’t care much for sanctimonious hypocrites, and I thought Spitzer was better than that.
And I just don’t get these politicians and their Achilles Heel—well, it’s a little north of that, I guess.
To his credit, in his public life, Spitzer made the right enemies: the Wall Street fixers who bilked the American public.
But in his secret private life, he has disgraced himself, and anyone watching the scene could not help but feel for his wife, Silda, and their daughters.
I do wonder, however, whether his own privacy was violated in this instance.
How come the feds can look into anybody’s financial transactions and sniff around for improprieties?
Spitzer got snagged after IRS “investigators conducting a routine examination of suspicious financial transactions forwarded to them by banks found several unusual movements of cash involving the governor,” according to the New York Times.
So banks now are in the practice of ratting out their own customers?
Even as we luridly watch the fall from grace and power of another pol, we should at least be alert to the possibility that the government is overreaching once more, with the help of the private sector.
For a related story, click here: http://rawstory.com.