Corruption - the cycle continues

Excellent bit of history from Michael Walsh writing at PJ Media:

Ring of Fire, Den of Thieves
�The whole crowd are a complete ring: the Chief of Police, the Chief of Detectives, the Mayor and the City Attorney.� Thus spake special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, the gang-busting lawyer and politician, when he was trying to extradite Lucky Luciano from his protected redoubt in Bill Clinton�s home town of Hot Springs, Ark., back in 1936. After the assassination of fellow gangster Dutch Schultz in the fall of 1935, Charlie Lucky had fled to Bubbles, where he sought the protection of Owney Madden, the English-born Irish gangster who had recently moved his base of operations from Manhattan to Hot Springs.

The charge was pimping, but everyone knew that was just a placeholder for all the other crimes Luciano had committed. As the last man standing after the Castellammarese War of 1930-31, the mob-sanctioned takedown of the Dutchman and Madden�s simultaneous relocation to Hot Springs, the Sicilian-born Salvatore Lucania had survived various attempts on his life (hence his nickname, �Lucky�) to become the mob�s kingpin � and Dewey�s principal target. So when Dewey turned up the heat in New York, Luciano headed down to Madden�s protective embrace in the delightfully corrupt spa burg in the Ouachitas.

Hot Springs was ideally located, just 55 miles or so from the state capital at Little Rock, which was close enough with which to do business and far away so as not to be nosy. When Madden needed something done, he would simply order the governor to meet him somewhere in the woods between the two cities, orders would be given, money would exchange hands, and business would proceed at usual.

Read the whole thing -- Walsh brings it up to today and Clinton and Obama. The connections are pretty obvious once pointed out...