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How the Kennedy Empire was Built
www.ytedk.com ^ | many

Posted on 05/06/2006 2:13:42 PM PDT by bkepley

- He formed alliances with crime bosses in major markets, among them Boston, New York, Chicago, and New Orleans. These would come in handy years later when his son was running for national office. Among his mob associates was Frank Costello, former boss of the Luciano crime family, who bragged, "I helped Joe Kennedy get rich." Sam Giancana, who would later figure prominently in Jack's presidency, called Joe "one of the biggest crooks who ever lived."


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Government; Miscellaneous; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: corruption; frankcostello; kennedy; kennedyfamily; luciano; samgiancana
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To: Little Bill

I think most of the family fortune came not from bootlegging, but from manipulation on Wall Street, which would qualify as "insider trading" under today's regulations, if not those in force then.
Joe was as much a mobster as any Sicilian.


41 posted on 05/06/2006 3:01:44 PM PDT by hellbender
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To: hellbender

The Crash

The factual accuracy of this section is disputed. Please view the article's talk page.

Kennedy formed alliances with several other Irish-Catholic money men, including Charles E. Mitchell, Michael J. Meehan and Bernard Smith. He helped establish the Libby-Owens-Ford stock pool, an arrangement in which Kennedy and colleagues created an artificial scarcity of Libby-Owens-Ford stock to drive up the value of their own holdings in the stock. Using inside information, and the public's lack of knowledge, a pool operator would bribe journalists to present that information in the most advantageous manner. The stocks would then change in price up or down depending on the position favoured by the pool.

Kennedy got out of the market in 1928, long before the Crash, locking in multi-million dollar profits. Indeed when the 1929 crash did come, he made money due to his short positions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kennedy,_Sr.


42 posted on 05/06/2006 3:05:57 PM PDT by Thinkin' Gal (As it was in the days of NO...)
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To: tobyhill
"I heard they started as bootleggers?"

The story back then was that ol' Joe stockpiled hooch during the Prohibition era and had the tacit approval of Franklin Delano Roosevelt because of the generous campaign contributions.

When Prohibition was lifted in the early thirtys, guess who had the inventory to flood the market?

43 posted on 05/06/2006 3:10:13 PM PDT by nightdriver
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To: Huntress
All of your analysis is "well said"....
A little more food for thought...

1. A problem with man's law gets fixed with money or political pressure.

True enough.... but eventually there are too many holes in the story to hold any more water -- or rum.

"Somebody's got to go to prison...."
-- Harvey Keitel as the lead FBI agent in National Treasure

2. A problem with God's law gets fixed with a donation and a special dispensation from the Church.

Sadly true enough for a priesthood on the take...BUT...

God's spiritual law of sowing and reaping seems to have come home to roost more than once hereabouts....

Especially the reflection on your first additional comment: The sins of the father... will be visited down to the third and fourth generation.

As they reap the sad consequences here on earth from time-2-time... the eternal factors of God's law will eventually see justice done in all cases!

3. They've never quite figured out how to get around the laws of physics, however, so Bobby's son Michael had to pay for playing touch football on the way down a ski slope.

Some people who try to defy the law of gravity only end up proving that scientific thesis once again....

Not only Micheal... but JFK Jr.... as well!
You can't turn that winged-wonder sideways and upside down -- without mimicking the flight path and ultimate landing velocity of a free-falling refrigerator...

Sad but true -- thanks for the post

44 posted on 05/06/2006 3:15:13 PM PDT by Wings-n-Wind
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To: mmercier
I am laughing so hard I have decided to take the wife out for a good drunk.

Don't tell me you're going to trade her for the good drunk.:)

Old Joe went through hell, though in his last 8 miserable years. After his stroke, on December 19, 1961, he was almost totally paralysed and incoherent in his speech until his death.

It was so cruel, because he'd managed to get his second son elected president, and then he could no longer walk or talk. He sat there and was told of JFK's murder in 1963, and then RFK's murder in 1968. He, who had always been a control freak, couldn't do a thing about it.

It's been said by several that after he was told of Chappaquiddick in 1969, that he just gave up, stopped eating, and then, of course, he died in November, 1969.

A few years before his stroke, he'd seen an old acquintance that had suffered a bad stroke and was wheel-chair bound. He was horrified to see the change in that man, and repeatedly said he hoped that would NEVER happen to him. It did, and he had to sit and watch helplessly for the next 8 years. Mega-hubris, maybe...

45 posted on 05/06/2006 3:16:50 PM PDT by xJones
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To: mmercier

"My question is how can it be demolished given our current political state...?"

Go West, Young Man.


46 posted on 05/06/2006 3:19:28 PM PDT by truth_seeker
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To: surely_you_jest

Yes, poor Rosemary Kennedy, who it turned out had not been mentally ill at all, but merely rebellious, particularily against the ironfisted rule of Mother Rose. This was enough for the Mother of all Kennedys. In Emmett Tyrrell's grim phrase, Rose "had her lobotomized and parked her with the nuns."

Rosemary died in a Wisconsin convent not long ago. She's in Heaven, now.

Hope she doesn't feel too lonely up there.


47 posted on 05/06/2006 3:27:39 PM PDT by elcid1970
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To: bkepley

I thought it was seven generations. I know that I have genealogical connections to the King of France who sentenced the Knights Templers and he was cursed so my son refers to it as the pizza curse because he can never get the pizza he orders by phone. It got watered down after the first seven generations.


48 posted on 05/06/2006 3:31:50 PM PDT by Mercat (It's still Easter and we are the Easter people.)
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To: Arizona Carolyn
I fully agree with you on JFK's being politically closer to today's GOP than the moonbats .

My problems) with the Kennedy's was the mafia's being good enough for them to use to get to the oval office, but their then trying to absolve themselves of all that by playing the white hat and to the mafia's black hat once they got to the WH.

There was also the way those inbreeds tried to snob Onassis as some sort of eurotrash hoodlum that 'wasn't worthy' of Kennedy's friendship, etc.

Not to mention the way they made nice with the Third Reich.

I simply cannot stand that family. Much less respect them.

49 posted on 05/06/2006 3:33:49 PM PDT by TeddyCon
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To: xJones
I was surfing thru MSNBC earlier today, and some lefty news babe happened to be discussing the Patrick Kennedy story, and she made this comment in passing: "The first family of american politics, the Kennedys". I almost barfed! So, JFK was prez, and Teddy is senator...and miscellaneous Kennedy brats are in lesser offices...when you compare the Bushes, it seems to me that with two presidents, Florida Gov., and the offices held by GHW Bush and his father, that "First Family" description rightly belongs more to the Bushes. Not to mention the CLASSY first family.

The drive-by media makes me more disgusted daily.

50 posted on 05/06/2006 3:34:25 PM PDT by greyfoxx39 (I LIVE in a border state, fine the employers and the illegals will go home!)
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To: bkepley
Here is a great site with interesting documentation. Peruse the history and then fgo tothe homepage for more Kennedy information.
51 posted on 05/06/2006 3:39:58 PM PDT by Nomorjer Kinov (If the opposite of "pro" is "con" , what is the opposite of progress?)
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To: xJones
Old Joe went through hell, though in his last 8 miserable years. After his stroke, on December 19, 1961, he was almost totally paralysed and incoherent in his speech until his death.

It was so cruel, because he'd managed to get his second son elected president, and then he could no longer walk or talk. He sat there and was told of JFK's murder in 1963, and then RFK's murder in 1968. He, who had always been a control freak, couldn't do a thing about it.

My personal theory is that was his earthly punishment for having his daughter Rosemary lobotomized.

52 posted on 05/06/2006 3:41:55 PM PDT by Huntress (Possession really is nine tenths of the law.)
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To: Huntress

A very interesting read is "I Hear You Paint Houses" the memoir of Jimmy Hoffa's hitman as told to a lawyer and published poshumously. He tells how mad Hoffa and the mob were about RFK going after organized crime, how he delivered hundreds in cash to Mitchell to get Nixon elected, and how a rifle was smuggled to Dallas.


53 posted on 05/06/2006 3:57:05 PM PDT by ClaireSolt (.)
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To: bkepley

The Uthurian dynasty -- it carries into this day.

There are already more politically successful Bushs than there are Kennedy's.

That evil old man and his BIL Honey are seeing the results of their evil from Hell.

There won't be peace in that family until there is no Kennedy blood in politics.


54 posted on 05/06/2006 4:02:55 PM PDT by freedumb2003 (Any guest worker program that does not require application from the home country is Amesty.)
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To: Nomorjer Kinov

If you look closely, you'll see that's the source of the original post... ;-)


55 posted on 05/06/2006 4:09:05 PM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: TeddyCon
My problems) with the Kennedy's was the mafia's being good enough for them to use to get to the oval office, but their then trying to absolve themselves of all that by playing the white hat and to the mafia's black hat once they got to the WH.

By numerous accounts, the mafia didn't like the Kennedy ingratitude, either.

Bobby Kennedy, whom old Joe had insisted be appointed Attorney General (even though he'd never even tried a case in a courtroom) had a really wild hair up his rear about busting "organized crime" leaders. His brother got elected (with more than a little help from his father's friends) and then Bobby forgot that you're supposed to dance with the ones that brought you. Or at the very least, don't use all the power of the AG's office to go after them....

It's interesting that after his brother's assasination in Dallas, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy stayed completely away from the Warren Commission investigation. He was devastated, described as being in terrible anguish for months, but the most ruthless and vindicitive of old Joe's sons wouldn't have any part in investigating his brother's murder.

56 posted on 05/06/2006 4:18:02 PM PDT by xJones
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To: Wings-n-Wind
You can't turn that winged-wonder sideways and upside down -- without mimicking the flight path and ultimate landing velocity of a free-falling refrigerator...

Actually, a free-falling refrigerator would fall more slowly than JFKJr's plane...

57 posted on 05/06/2006 4:23:13 PM PDT by Squawk 8888 (Yay! It's Riding Season!)
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To: bkepley
This book has a GREAT chapter on that family of oil barons and windfarm-fighters,
The Kennedys

"Do As I Say, Not As I Do" by Peter Schweizer

58 posted on 05/06/2006 4:24:23 PM PDT by VOA
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To: bkepley

Years ago I read in a Kennedy book that Old Joe had the gall once to bring his mistress Gloria Swanson on board when he and Rose sailed to Europe.


59 posted on 05/06/2006 4:25:55 PM PDT by Atlantian
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To: Huntress

dont forget Michael was also a child molestor with his 13 year old babysitter!!


60 posted on 05/06/2006 4:33:42 PM PDT by Luigi Vasellini (60% of Saudis, 58%of Iraqis, 55%of Kuwaitis,50% of Jordanians married 1st or 2nd cousins. LOL!!!)
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