Progressive Review - Although the public was repeatedly told Bill Clinton came from Hope, Arkansas, acutally, when he was 7, his family moved to the long-time mob resort of Hot Springs. Here Al Capone is said to have had permanent rights to suite 443 of the Arlington Hotel. Clinton's stepfather was a gun-brandishing alcoholic who lost his Buick franchise through mismanagement and his own pilfering. He physically abused his family, including the young Bill. His mother was a heavy gambler with mob ties. According to FBI and local police officials, his Uncle Raymond -- to whom young Bill turned for wisdom and support -- was a colorful car dealer, slot machine owner and gambling operator, who thrives (except when his house is firebombed) on the fault line of criminality.
Paul Bosson, Hot Springs Prosecutor - In Hot Springs, growing up here, you were living a lie. You lived a lie because you knew that all of these activities were illegal. I mean, as soon as you got old enough to be able to read a newspaper, you knew that gambling in Arkansas was illegal, prostitution was illegal. And so you lived this lie, so you have to find some way to justify that to yourself and, you know, you justify it by saying, "Well," you know, "it's okay here."
Virginia Kelly, Clinton's mother (1923-1994) - Hot Springs was so different. We had wide-open gambling, for one thing, and it was so wide open that it never occurred to me that it was illegal - it really didn't - until it came to a vote about whether we were going to legalize gambling or not. I never was so shocked.
Hot Springs before the Clintons
In the 1930s, Hot Springs represented the western border of organized crime in the U.S with the local syndicate headed by Owney Madden, a New York killer who had taken over the mob's resort in Arkansas. Owney Madden was an English born gang member who had been arrested more than 40 times in New York by the time he was 21. Madden got the assignment from his boss, Myer Lansky. The plan for Arkansas was modeled on an earlier one in which Governor Huey Long opened a Swiss bank account into which the mob would put $3 to $4 million annually for the right to run casinos in the state. Lansky then moved to Hot Springs where he hired Madden, former operator of Harlem's Cotton Club. According to one account, "The Hot Springs set up was so luxurious and safe that it became known as a place for gangsters on the lam to hole up until the heat blew over."
Hot Springs was where Lucky Luciano was arrested and brought back for trial prosecuted by Thomas E.Dewey. According to one account, "Dewey proclaimed Luciano Public Enemy No 1, and a grand jury returned a criminal indictment against him that carried a maximum penalty of 1,950 years. . . He was arrested in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and extradited back to New York. There, in the New York State Supreme Court he was tried, and on June 7, the verdict of guilty was returned. Eleven days later, he was sentenced to a total of from 30-to-50 years in state prison. It was the longest sentence ever handed out for compulsory prostitution."
THE DICE MAN - Owney Madden laid the groundwork for gangsters on the lam to hide out in Hot Springs. The city had a resort-like atmosphere and elegant nightlife, with people coming and going all the time. This was the perfect situation to "hide" mobsters who couldn't be seen in their hometowns. Al Capone would stay at the Arlington Hotel when things got too hot in Chicago.. . .
5 comments:
The Guardian is presently running a fluff piece about Hillary defending 'trustworthiness' on CNN. For this reader it was some amusing stuff reminiscent of Nixon assuring us that "I am not a crook"
Posting as much, the comment was pulled by the Guardian moderators for violations of commenting standards. Et tu, Guardian? So, they're in the bag, too? Such must have been the price for publishing Snowden
Of course, this is about Bill. About Hillary, just remember she was a rich girl who went to elite private schools before becoming a corporate lawyer selling connections to the governors office. And that was her 'progressive period' before she went on to sell the Lincoln Bedroom to corporate donators, went on to represent Wall Street in the US Senate, and discover that she's never met a war she didn't like and played the Dick Cheney role in starting the war/disaster in Libya.
So just because Bill was born in a town where illegal activities were prevalent, people should vote against Hillary?
Pretty silly.
@Caro Because her career is a lengthy catalog of shameless support for the most powerful and corrupt, the origins of which are an innate conservatism and appalling sense of entitlement, yes, Hillary Clinton is held accountable for her own behavior.
This is somehow confusing?
Hi, Anonymous, why are you afraid to tell us your name?
What's confusing is the Hillary hatred I see on the left, when she is the only possible candidate currently running or intending to run for president in 2016 who could actually get elected and who could get some progressive issues passed. That will especially be true if you doubters would actually get behind her and help to elect a Democratic Congress to make passing such issues more possible. You're actually standing in the way of progressive issue promotion.
What's also confusing is that those who helped derail her in 2008 ended up nominating someone more conservative than she and then wouldn't demand of him the things that they're now demanding of her.
Double standard there, but it's what I guess I should expect from the intellectually sluggish.
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