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Showing posts from April 15, 2006

They're Baaaack, Part 1

Those of us from Mahoning County know about corruption. The entire area has always had a bad reputation as a mob connected area. Saturday Evening Post called us “Bombtown, USA”. Sometimes I will take visitors on “The Mob Tour” to show various landmarks of nefarious repute including gathering places, business fronts, locations of the various car bombings and shootings ranging from the late Calla Mar restaurant to the corn field where one of the syndicate leaders was murdered a few years back. The degree of this dirty business could not have happened without a complete corruption of the area's legal and political system. As a lawyer, I can tell you that it was difficult to make a living in a system where justice was governed by fee drawers, kickbacks, fee couches, and judicial and prosecutorial payoffs. It wasn’t that the system was corrupt. It was how deep the corruption went, including such innocuous entities as the local water and sanitary district, school boards, and local dentis