More Corruption Allegations Against Andrew Cuomo

No wonder Sheriff Andy Cuomo has his anti-corruption Moreland Commission people put the kibbosh on investigating his own campaign donations:

ALBANY — Before and after handing out giveaways like the “Jimmy Fallon tax credit” to film and TV production companies, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and state legislators cashed in.

A Daily News/New York Public Interest Research Group analysis found that New York’s film and television industry has lavished Albany pols with more than $900,000 in campaign donations since 2010, with Cuomo raking in the largest haul.

The governor has taken $219,000 from the industry, including tens of thousands of dollars early this year while he was pushing to expand a production tax credit program to cover shows that relocate to New York, like Jimmy Fallon’s “The Tonight Show” and “America’s Got Talent.”

The language in the budget bill that eventually passed the Legislature in March seemed so tailored to Fallon’s show that it came to be known in Albany as the Jimmy Fallon tax credit.

That budget also extends the popular $420 million production tax credit program through 2017.

The vote came two months after CBS, Disney, Fox, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Brothers Entertainment and the New York FILM Political Action Committee gave Cuomo a combined $25,000 on Jan. 16, with most reaching the $5,000 annual corporate maximum donation.

The film and TV industry also gave $130,000 as the budget was being negotiated to a Democratic Party account that was promoting Cuomo’s agenda at the time.

The timing raises eyebrows for government watchdogs.“All too often, tax breaks are given to industries that write a lot of campaign checks,” NYPIRG researcher Bill Mahoney said.

It's the same pattern over and over again with Cuomo.

He takes money from donors, donors get stuff in return.

Overseas gambling interests gave him $2 million through his Committee To Save New York PAC.

He expanded legalized gambling in the state.

Real estate interests handed him or the Democratic Party apparatus he controls nearly half a million in campaign donations.

 

He gave them $35 million in tax breaks.

Now we have the movie and TV industry showing generosity to Cuomo and the Democratic Party apparatus he controls and the movie and TV industry getting tax breaks in return.

As I say, this is a pattern with Andrew Cuomo and it has a name for it:

Quid pro quo corruption.

No wonder Cuomo is going to shut down the Moreland Commission now that it has been revealed that the governor's office put the kibbosh on subpoenas from the Commission relating to the donations Cuomo has received from the gambling interests and real estate industry.

And no wonder Cuomo shut down the Committee To Save New York PAC rather than reveal who its corporate donors were.

 

When you're as crooked as he is, you want to cover your tracks. 

 

So far, he's gotten away with this stuff, but he will get greater scrutiny when he runs for president in 2016.

When the pattern is as clear as this, you cannot hide it forever.