Issue 59 Vol III, March 15, 2008

T H I S  O U R  N O R T H  A M E R I C A

This is our colorful America
Khushwant Toor

This is our notorious America! Truly it is!, where once in short while a high ranked politician makes juicy headlines getting busted in a sex scandal. Last Wednesday, March 12, 2008, a lawyer turned, attorney general and finally the New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in disgrace after getting caught in a high profile call-girl scandal. Commonly known as the Crusader against corruption, and known to be in the list for future Presidential candidates, said "I cannot allow my private failings to disrupt the people's work," while resigning from the office. He had spent a good deal of 80.000 dollars on the prostitutes.

He was known as the "Sheriff of Wall Street." Time magazine named him "Crusader of the Year," and the tabloids proclaimed him "Eliot Ness." He became the governor of New York with a historic margin on Jan. 1, 2007, vowing to stamp out corruption in New York government in the same way that he took on Wall Street executives with a vengeance while state attorney general. He also cracked down on prostitution and now himself is caught in a prostitution scandal.

"I am deeply sorry that I did not live up to what was expected of me." "Over the course of my public life, I've insisted, I believe correctly, that people regardless of their position or power take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself," Spitzer said at a Manhattan news conference with his wife, Silda, also a corporate lawyer at his side. He left without answering questions.

Spitzer will be replaced on Monday by Lt. Gov. David Paterson, who becomes New York's first black governor. He also will be the state's first legally blind governor and its first disabled governor since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Though legally blind, Paterson has enough sight in his right eye to walk without any aided, recognize people at conversational distance and even read if text is placed close to his face.

The scandal erupted two days ago when allegations surfaced that the 48-year-old Spitzer, married with three teenage daughters, spent thousands of dollars on a high end call girl by the name Kristen, aka Ashley Alexandra Dupre at classy Washington hotel on the night before Valentine's Day.

Immediately following the scandal unearthed by the FBI, it filed a 50 page affidavit after concluding a high profile enquiry which even surpassed the governor’s own security ring. Opposition party the Republicans demanded Spitzer to resign or threatened an impeachment if he didn't step down.

Although much details about affidavit filed by FBI are still unknown, the inquiry started when banks noticed frequent cash transfers from several accounts and filed suspicious activity reports with the Internal Revenue Service, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The accounts were traced back to Spitzer, leading public corruption investigators to open an inquiry. A law enforcement official said that Spitzer had spent tens of thousands of dollars with the call-girl service Emperors Club VIP. Another official said the amount could be as high as $80,000.

Still another law enforcement official said investigators found that during the meeting with Kristen, Spitzer used two rooms at Washington's Mayflower Hotel — one for himself, the other for the prostitute. Sometime around 10 p.m., Spitzer sneaked away from his security detail and made his way to her room. According to an affidavit, a federal judge approved wiretaps on the escort service's telephone in January and February. FBI agents in Washington had the Mayflower under surveillance when Spitzer was in town.

Here is a list of few of the other prominent sex scandals which made the headlines in the U.S.

Idaho Sen. Larry Craig was arrested in a sex-sting operation in a men's toilet in June 2007.

Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, was linked to a Washington escort service.

Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, resigned from the house after it was disclosed that he had sent sexually explicit text messages to teenage boys who served as interns in the House.

New Jersey Gov. James Mcgreevey, a Democrat, stepped down over a gay affair with a man whom he hired in 2002 to head the state's Homeland Security department.

President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, lied under oath to hide his relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky. Everyone knows what happened to Clinton.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, admitted that he was having an extramarital affair while leading the impeachment charges in Congress against Clinton

Sen. Bob Packwood, a Republican from Oregon, in 1995 resigned after 26 years in Congress. Following charges of been accused of sexual misconduct with 17 women, among others.

 Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, a homosexual in 1990 was reprimanded because his lover had run a prostitution ring out of his Washington apartment.

Sen. Gary Hart, a Colorado Democrat, had second presidential bid end in 1987 after newspaper reported he spent the night on a yacht, with a woman who was not his wife, while his wife was away.

Rep. Dan Crane, a Republican from Illinois, was accused for having sex with a teenage girl.

Rep. Gerry Studds, a Democrat from Massachusetts, was accused of having an affair with a boy.

Rep. Wilbur Mills, a Democrat from Arkansas and chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was caught in 1974 with stripper Fanne Foxe

Jack Ryan dropped out of a 2004 Senate race when his wife filed divorce papers that alleged he had taken her to "bizarre clubs" and asked her to have sex in front of other people.

Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana near to becoming House speaker in 1998 when he acknowledged straying in his marriage. He resigned from Congress a couple of months later.

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Why is Prostitution there?

SO the New York Governor Eliot Spitzer facing ignominy has quite. But has the prostitution suffered or gained in the process? The question is of how and why prostitution, the oldest profession in the world is still in existence and for what. In fact, it is flourishing clandestinely and openly in various ways in the era of globalisation. Child prostitution rings are active through out the world as a deep slur on the face of humankind in this self proclaimed era of great civilisation.

Moral degradation and hypocrisy go hand in hand in that  most powerful courtly.  Highly developed yet putrid and reeking with scum and slime.

According to Columbia School of Journalism Professor Sree Sreenivasan , two scholars, Sudhir Venkatesh, the Columbia University sociologist and expert on Chicago gangs (author of "Gang Leader for a Day") has done research with Freakonomics" and co-authored with Steven Levitt on prostitution, too.

Sreenivasan quotes from Emily Bazelon's piece in Slate, "Why is Prostitution Illegal?”  And, it says shouldn't prostitution laws come down to working conditions and the laws that would lead to better ones for sex workers? According to  by economist Steven Levitt and sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh, despite all the fighting and all the preaching, we apparently don't know that much about the specifics of the structure of the sex market - how much prostitutes make on average, how many tricks they turn a year, how frequently they and their pimps and johns actually get arrested.

To start filling in the gap, Levitt and Venkatesh looked at data from the Chicago Police Department. They found that women working the streets were making $27 an hour but less than $20,000 a year (they don't log a lot of hours). The risks of the trade were serious: "an annual average of a dozen incidents of violence and 300 instances of unprotected sex." There was also a "surprisingly high prevalence of police officers demanding sex from prostitutes in return for avoiding arrest."

Professor Sreenivasan writes, “That looks like another argument against the bans on prostitution - presumably women wouldn't be caught in this particular trap if they weren't worried about going to jail in the first place. Levitt and Venkatesh also offer up this statistic: Prostitutes get arrested about once per 450 tricks, and johns even less frequently. Two lessons here: a law that isn't being enforced much may not be worth having; and Eliot Spitzer looks really, really unlucky.”

Venkatesh has written a Slate piece himself that asks a counter-intuitive question: "Did Spitzer get caught because he didn't spend ENOUGH on prostitutes?" From Skinflint:  The first thing that grabs your attention about the sex scandal involving Eliot Spitzer is, of course, the client. But, there's another aspect to the story that should raise eyebrows: $4,300. That's the bill Spitzer incurred for his dangerous liaison at the Mayflower hotel. Who would pay that much, and could you ever really get your money's worth?

In fact, $4,300 is not an altogether alarming sum of money in the high-end sex market. Spitzer got a bargain - and that may have been his downfall. Oh really! How  hackneyed is this argument. Moral uprightness and mature human relations do not count if we keep building these arguments in this fashion.

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America: rising number of hate groups

A new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released recently  finds that "anti-immigrant sentiment is fueling nationwide increases in the number of hate groups and the number of hate crimes targeting Latinos." The report "found that the number of hate groups operating in America rose to 888 last year, up 5% from 844 groups in 2006. That capped an increase of 48% since 2000 -- a hike from 602 groups attributable to the exploitation by hate groups of the continuing debate about immigration."

This year, SPLC added the prominent anti-immigration group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) to its list of hate groups, prompted by FAIR's promotion of the conspiracy theory of the "North American Union" and the "theory that Mexico is involved in a secret plot to 'reconquer' the American southwest." Last year, FAIR warned that the so-called "McKennedy" comprehensive immigration reform bill proposed in the Senate "will destroy America."

Anti-immigrant sentiment is fueling nationwide increases in the number of hate groups and the number of hate crimes targeting Latinos. the Southern Poverty Law Center, in a report titled "The Year in Hate," said it counted 888 hate groups in its latest tally, up from 844 in 2006 and 602 in 2000.

The most prominent of the organizations added to the list, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, vehemently rejected the "hate group" label and questioned the law center's motives.

FAIR said the center was using smear tactics to boost donations and stifle legitimate debate on immigration. "Their banner may be 'Stop the Hate' but it's really 'Stop the debate,' " said FAIR's president, Dan Stein. "Apparently you can't even articulate an argument for immigration reform without being smeared."

The law center's report contends there is a link between anti-immigrant activism and the significant rise in hate crimes against Latinos in recent years. According to FBI statistics, 819 people were victimized by anti-Latino hate crimes in 2006, compared with 595 in 2003.

"The immigration debate has turned ugly and the result has been a growth in white supremacist hate groups and anti-Latino hate crime," said Mark Potok, director of the law center's Intelligence Project. "The majority of anti-Latino hate crimes are carried out by people who think they're attacking immigrants, and very likely undocumented immigrants."

Many new groups had appeared in the border states of California, Texas and Arizona, where illegal immigration has been a particularly volatile issue.

The center's critique of FAIR was endorsed by a major Latino group, the National Council of La Raza. The council's vice president for advocacy and legislation, Cecilia Muñoz, said FAIR's leaders were polished in public forums but represented "a very unsavory set of views."

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