Tomfoolery in the Garden State

Last week, the FBI stormed New Jersey (including my own block) to arrest 44 in an elaborate cross-state corruption scheme. Among the detained were five rabbis, three assemblymen, two mayors, and a partridge in the pear tree. In fact, there were so many people arrested that they had to use an old school bus -- the only vehicle large enough to hold them all.

The details are a little sketchy -- something about money-laundering rabbis and a black-market kidney -- but the pattern is familiar enough. The feds nabbed some smooth-talking alleged swindler, in this case a failed real-estate mogul named Solomon Dwek, who then curried favor with prosecutors by agreeing to wear a wire and fish around with cash-stuffed envelopes. Before long, he had hooked a whole school of greedy politicians.

One of these fish is the mayor of my very own town -- Peter Cammarano. The 32-year-old leader who’s held office for 23 days (seriously) has already been caught on a federal wire tap telling a cooperating witness, who was about to hand him $5,000 in cash, he would be “treated like a friend” when his projects came up for approval. This morally-flexible, Tony-Soprano-wannabe risked his reputation, career, and freedom for $5,000!

The list of lowlifes included Italians, Jews and Irish; Hispanics, blacks and whites. Democrats and (one) Republicans. Men and women. People aged 33 to 87. The ironic part? None of those charged has been fingered by the feds as being a member of the Mafia. That’s progress, right?

I laugh along with my fellow Hoboken-residents, in the same way we laugh about our landfills, our pollution and the New Jersey Nets. But it’s only funny until you realize that, as a taxpayer, I’m the rube footing the enormous bill. God bless America and words like tomfoolery.