Spitzer gets his own Spritzer

The bigger they come, the harder they fall... -- Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

by blogSpotter
Unless you've lost all of your five senses, you must know by now that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has been brought down by a sex scandal this week. It appears that he solicited prostitutes from an elite NYC service called Emperors Club VIP. His last "encounter" cost him $4,300 (not counting the governorship, his career or his credibility). The dalliance was traced by wire transfers -- the very type of sleuthing he did as NY Attorney General.

Spitzer was known as "the enforcer" as AG, and he had several noteworthy cases:

o Computer chip price fixing case involving five chip companies
o Investment bank inflating of stock prices involving @ 10 banks
o Gambino family domination of NY garment trade
o NYSE excessive compensation for Dick Grasso
o Unlawful insurance "override" commissions

Looking at his track record, he actually did a great deal of good. Short of being Batman or Superman, he brought down greedy institutions in all their many manifestations. Spitzer is a died-in-the-wool Democrat and as such has supported many liberal causes. He worked for immigrant rights, same sex marriage rights and he was even a super delegate pledged to Hillary Clinton. An irony in all of this is that Hillary loses another delegate when Spitzer steps down (which is speculated to be today).

More on the down side, Spitzer received bad publicity for sending home style maven Martha Stewart up the river for a year. Martha's infraction was miniscule compared to the cases above, and many people thought that the prosecution of Martha's case was very heavy handed. Martha's embarrassment pales next to Spitzer's as it turns out.

Much along the lines of Bill Clinton, Spitzer became foolhardy and careless in his rambling ways. My own take is that each of these men was so fueled with ego and arrogance that he mistook himself for a "God" of sorts -- like Icarus who didn't believe his wax wings would melt by flying too close to the sun. In a final analysis, we come back to Lincoln's quote: "You can't fool all of the people all of the time". Now Lincoln, as the charter member of Log Cabin Republicans probably had first hand experience himself with that quote. And Spitzer can probably recover some of his lost credibility in private practice, as long as he is willing to retire his rambling ways.

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