Posted on 06/06/2008 1:38:46 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3
NEW YORK (AP) — A veteran New York City crane inspector has been arrested on charges of taking thousands in dollars of bribes and falsifying reports.
James Delayo, an assistant chief inspector with the city's cranes and derricks division, is charged with collecting thousands of dollars in bribes from a crane company.
The city's Department of Investigation said Friday that Delayo tampered with licensing exams by providing the answers for crane operator exams to a crane company.
The city says Delayo's alleged conduct has nothing to do with the two crane collapses that killed nine people since March.
I just had to do it.
Ah, and can the mafia be far behind? The construction industry has major problems with the mafia, which for years told them what to do, what not to do and who to bribe. Giuliani actually did manage to knock them back (prior to becoming mayor), but I doubt that much has been done about the Mafia since his time. And of course now NY is stuffed with the Russian/Albanian mafia, so things have ratcheted up another notch in viciousness.
That's right: China! Dangerous crap imported to the United States that kills this nation's citizens, who would have imagined it?
Someone is corrupt in NY City? Oh say it ain’t so!
Being Chinese, I’d expect the name to be something like Rucky Rife Clanes!
A lot of the blame lies with the people of New York themselves.
Mention corruption and they’ll snicker and say that’s the way the wheel gets greased or some such cynical nonsense. They look at you like you’re some kind of redneck throwback if you disapprove. Corruption is cool! It’s the big city way!
But when they uncover what those bribes are buying (unreported safety violations) they act like they had no idea it might actually put them at risk!
Turns out they’re the naive ones. They missed the inevitable fact that an unscrutinized bureaucracy will grow exponentially until its sole purpose is to serve its members and the vendors who grease their palms. It’s true in NY and it’s true in Washington. We’ve grown a monster who’s now ruling (and risking) our lives
Its members no longer serve us. They’re the insiders: they know how to slip more and more money into the budget without our knowing, they know how to redirect that money to their personal benefit, and they’ve grown so powerful that we have no tools to challenge them. They can make our lives miserable if we refuse to go along. It’s a real dilemma and it makes me sick that we aren’t hearing any of this from our party.
And then there’s the media. I hope, but won’t hold my breath, that we’ll see some editorials wondering who ELSE in that department knew what was going on? Which inspectors was he directing to overlook problems? What happened to the company(s) that bribed him? Will all operators be re-tested since we don’t know which ones cheated? Like I said, I won’t hold my breath. These are sacred “public servants” about whom the MSM seems infinitely incurious. Like bridges falling down and credit card scandals, this will be treated as an anecdotal instance, not as an example of the cancer growing our society and threatening our economy...if it doesn’t kill us first.
Ping
Watch it, Yanqi pig!
China not does export just any dangelous clap!
China export onry the best good-good dangelous clap in the world!
You keep bad mouth China, and we kill Kenny; brame you!
I know their oil drilling rigs are junk and drilling contractors in west Texas better not get caught using Chinese drill pipe or drill collars downhole.
Chinese drill pipe and collars cannot pass magnaflux testing when they are brand new. If you use them you are going fishing.
You’re absolutely right on all those counts. I grew up in NY and lived there for many years as an adult, and I could never understand how people could (a) shrug off corruption and then (b) have hysterics when all the blocked fire exits that the bribed inspector had never reported resulted in the death of somebody they knew.
I never wanted Giuliani as President but I will say that he was very good at breaking up the corruption rings in various city agencies. Of course, unless somebody keeps after them, it comes back again.
And nobody wants to “keep after them”.
“Public servants” get the automatic benefit of the doubt. They’re treated as saintly until something hard and fast is proven. I know there are some good ones. But even they probably keep quiet about the corruption and abuses all around them. Everyone feathers every one else’s nest.
We’ll see if any of the hard questions get asked and—even more unlikely-—answered. My prediction: This inspector gets treated as an anecdotal case of a guy gone bad. No one will investigate who else had knowledge. No one will raise questions about (possibly) all those department employees who own boat slips in the Hamptons. Will ALL crane operators be retested?
It just makes me ill that we’ve allowed this ruling, pampered, exempt-from-scrutiny, self-serving, Privileged Class to grow amongst-—and we’re paying for it!
Everyone howls at corruption in the private sector, but at least most CEO’s are under the scrutiny of a board and, possibly, government agencies (unless they’ve been paid off, monetarily or politically!). But we rely on our politicians to police the public sector...a foolish reliance, because pols have no interest in disclosing the corrupt nature of a bureaucracy from which they themselves profit.
Note the penalties for this inspector’s crimes. Then imagine what OSHA would do to a company with an employee who did this. Those light penalties had to be written into law and some pol had to sponsor it. And the public had no idea all that back scratching was going on. Well, they may have suspected but it’s just too hard to uncover these things before a tragedy occurs. We’re just plain screwed.
Not sure, but let me guess.
"Shoddy goods/get rich selling to Westerners"? "Crappy Chinese Crane Company"? Any of those sound right?
Though I have no idea who manufactured the piece of garbage, I wasn't the least surprised when I heard on a TV news report that the crane was imported from China.
I am no fan of Communist China, but let the investigation determine the real causes, don't let them be dismissed as “cheap Chinese junk”.
Well, the story on NBC said the crane was manufactured in China, and with all the unsafe crap they’ve been importing with impunity, the charge was plausible in the extreme.
I am a Heavy Construction contractor working in both NYC and New Jersey and have personal experience in what I knew occurred and what was reported, the shame of it is they don't about the facts...more of what sounds good...what grabs attention.
I don’t know about NYC, but last night I heard on the local AM ABC affiliate that three cranes here, in the Seattle area, had recently been shut down for structural problems...and that they had been manufactured in China.
Any word on who made them, I don’t know of a Chinese manufacturer?
Americans are quickly learning that all those inexpensive Chinese products are coming at a steep price.
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