Tarnished Silver

“CORRUPTION’S such an old song that we can sing along in harmony/ And nowhere is it stronger than in Albany.” These lines from “Hamilton”, a musical about Alexander Hamilton now playing in New York, got an especially loud laugh on January 22nd. That morning Sheldon Silver, the long-serving and powerful Speaker of the New York state Assembly, was arrested by the FBI and indicted in a federal court on five corruption charges. Each charge could carry a sentence of 20 years.

According to the complaint, Mr Silver, a Democrat who has served in the Assembly for 38 years and has been Speaker for 21, received more than $6m from two law firms. This included $700,000 in “bribes and kickbacks” for inducing “real-estate developers with business before the state” to use a particular property-law firm; and $5.3m from Weitz and Luxenberg, a law firm that handles personal-injury cases.