Mayor Eric L. Adams has been indicted..

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Good. I have zero problems with this news. I hope he has a great lawyer and has his day in court but I hope the case is in good order and proceeds quickly to a verdict. In the mean time, so many underlings have already resigned from pressure as SDNY worked this case, if Adams resigns (as he should), the city may be without a handful of key roles until an election can be held so the replacement can re-fill those positions.

This is also why all of us should want to continue defending the legal frameworks that protect an independent professional civil service. Corruption in government isn't automatically a sign we need LESS government. It's a sign that the same crooks we have in the private sector also come to work in the public sector and need to be rooted out no matter where they show up to work.

As another related example, earlier in this week, the Southern District of New York filed indictments against two chiefs within FDNY for corruption. Once the pandemic locked down the economy, the two chiefs decided to make money by taking bribes in order to expedite requests for individual building owners or construction firms. Moving up a scheduled inspection by a week could save a builder or owner tens of thousands of dollars avoiding delays waiting for permits or (possibly) avoiding the need to correct failed inspections.

Is corruption of two FDNY leaders a reason for cutting expenditures on the fire department? Or a reason for prosecuting the two crooks and hiring someone who has ethics and understands the mission to continue the work? The SDNY investigation was aided by multiple people within FDNY who started seeing oddities in department budgets and began reporting signs of abnormal actions to law enforcement.


WTH