I couldn't help but chuckle when I read about one of the emprisoned Mob Bosses from the 70's & 80's being deported back to Italy. He is being sent back early, having served only 24 of his 45 years.
Rosario Gambino was sent home on a flight from Miami this past week. The AP said he was a frail old man of 67...I'm guessing prison does no-one any good. [I feel bad]Reason for his conviction? Well, we all glamorise the Mafia family lifestyle in the movies, video games and now even playing Mafia Wars on Facebook, so where does selling millions of dollars of Heroin make this glamorous?
Gambino was linked to the "Pizza Connection" probe, which broke a $1.6 billion heroin and cocaine smuggling operation that used pizzerias as fronts from 1975 to 1984.
Even today, we work so hard to teach our youngsters to resist the peer pressure to use, and yet the hard drugs of Heroin, Cocaine and now Meta-amphetamines continue to plague our neighborhoods.
Of course the bulk of today's drug trafficing comes through the open border from Mexico, so the players may be a little different, but we shouldn't forget that for all the movie fantasies and interactive games, people really do get hurt, families suffer and the taxpayer gets hit in the pocket.
Let's see what the Italian authorities do with what's left of Rosario when he faces their court system. Italy's main prosecuter that specialized in crime families during his days of operation, had since been hit decades ago. Italia has been waiting for his return for a long time.
4 comments:
Let's see an article on organised crime in Kingston & Ulster County, Mike,,,
From the gambling & numbers in the City, to the irish mafia behind the scenes in Kingston's judicial system,, we deserve the truth about who is pulling who's strings.
We all hear this & that & see the end result but no one dares mention these real powerful truths.
Screw Gambino, he is over,, talk about today's thugs,,, elected or not,,
thanks,
You'll find some family dynasty running just about every city or county. It's time to flush the crap out of Ulster.
Like in the mob families, they put a few away, but it never seems to stop completely. Maybe this is the season to start thinking long term and plot a cleansing of the system. The ties to the powers of the past still linger. Lets do something about it.
TRB
Oh please this is like the KENNEDYS making their political career busting the Mafia with that Hooligan Irish Sen. from Wisconsin so aptly decried by Truman, Sen. Joe McCarthy.
The truth is that La Cosa Nostra was for the most part, an organization that once enforced a code of some sort of moral decency in this country including the NY area. Most of it was not about murder, hard drugs, or anything of the sort. If an elected official stepped out of line, they kept him in line. If someone with too much money stepped out of line morally, they kept that person in line. So the myth-making also goes in the opposite direction too of embellishment as to power of the Mafia, and the reality is that under such a system, "White Collar Crime" would not go unpunished to the levels it has gone unpunished.
It was the KENNEDY FAMILY that BEGAN to stop both the positive elements and negative elements of "La Cosa Nostra" in this country, Bobby Kennedy in particular creating a career out of so doing. JFK himself had an affair with the girlfriend of Chicago Mafia Boss Sam Giancana, who then the theory goes, turned his ire back on JFK on his trip to Dallas. The veracity of that theory is certainly highly in doubt, there being no evidence to support this theory except in the nearly wholly doubtful figure of Jack Ruby, a poor Jew who got tangled up with the Mob in Chicago growing up. Nevertheless all those theories (unsupported by ANY evidence) are overshadowed by the clear fact that the logic behind countenancing such theories is rock solid in that the two forces of the Kennedys and the Mafia certainly intersected during the political ascendancy of the Kennedy Family in this country in the 1950's and 1960's in particular.
No one has yet been able to stop La Cosa Nostra in Kingston of Gallo-Sottile(to which historically we might add Fiore and now Polacco), but we do see elements of a Mafia Don mindset in each of those leaders. I certainly hope that this does not continue ad infinitum, and that we do not("as a logical result") need a visit from Uncle Teddy Kennedy(as there obviously turned out to be no reason to receive one from Niece Caroline) to "put things a little more proper" in this regard, as they might say in Britain. Of course, such assertions conflict with the mindset of Catholic institutional administration, which is behind a lot of this administrative egotism we see afoot from the office of the Mayor in the last well...uh...let's say 10, 20, maybe 30 years....of the sort and quality that Frank Koenig in his dynasty in that office never felt he had to exercise?
Any less Nun-Skullery in city Government would be a good thing. However at Benedictine Hospital, I say bring 'em ALL back(the Nuns) so they can do something useful, and let 'em all look like Sally Field, and no, I don't mean like relatively pleasant to look at but I do mean wearing the head gear that they used to wear while working at the hospital. And in LIEU of bringing all the "Nuns with Flying Nun Headgear" back to Benedictine Hospital--what I say is this:time to stop Benedictine Hospital in its overauthoritarian administrative bull right now which has already led to the 10 month blowup of the career of the finest physician I have ever seen, which means, healthcare in Kingston hospitals THEN becomes entirely divested of Catholic control, and that energy would have to be invested elsewhere, say, in funding more bingo inspectors by Catholic Charities or something and summer movie in the parks ratings oversight or whatever.
I say dump all the good old boys and girl. It is time for new blood in Countywide offices.
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