Aaron Neumann wrote:
"Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael Ward and Nicole Engisch were the victorious prosecutors. But Ward wasn't willing to give Minneapolis the all-clear. 'The structure of city government revealed some vulnerabilities to corruption.'
WM: Typical of the US Attorney's office and the FBI throughout this "case."
Asst. US Atty. Ward's job is to ferret out corruption in government. He went in like gang busters, having had to wire and script Ortega and Herron to get anything, and he discovered that two city council persons had collected a sum of $22,000 (Herron) and $2,700 (Biernat), the first from two local businessmen, but Ortega was wired and scripted at the time he turned any money over to Herron. The second, Biernat, got $ from union people.
Ward just spent upwards of a quarter million dollars on investigation and trials and prison space, but netted only $24,700--not a time to crow.
He is saying that there are opportunities for corruption in the Mpls. system. Well, duh. Any other system you came name will have opportunities for corruption.
What he doesn't say, but I think his behavior for the last six years shows, is that for all the money and effort, Minneapolis is pretty clean under the laws we presently have. People imply that politicians are corrupt, by definition, but it doesn't seem to be true. V. Heller says they take "favors." Could be true. (I'm fairly suspicious about some of the stuff I've observed.) But no one has anything like proof that these things are happening, including the guy who had money to throw around quite liberally, Mr. Ward, acting for the US Government.
They have also implied that Herron took money from many others and that Sabri gave money to others, but those folks would not come forward. I think it's cow ca-ca, and hip deep on a tall cow in the case of Herron.
I feel sorry about this whole fiasco, but kinda happy that Mpls. is not really corrupt.
I also think there's a big difference between political corruption and political boneheadedness. We seem to see a lot of the latter.
WizardMarks, Central ________________________________
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