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A completely unexpected problem
Well, nobody could have foreseen this, surely.
[S]tate elections officials in Albany say that Mr. Espada did not register his campaign for Senate this year; and he could face more than $6,000 in fines. It is not the first time he has run afoul of the State Board of Elections: His 2000 Senate campaign was fined for failing to submit finance reports.
In 2005, three employees of a Bronx nonprofit health care company run by Mr. Espada, the Soundview HealthCare Network, pleaded guilty to diverting $30,000 from programs for family care and AIDS treatment to one of his campaigns. Mr. Espada was never charged.
And...
City officials have accused Mr. Espada of numerous violations in his 2001 run for Bronx borough president, including reporting fraudulent contributions to receive matching public funds and failing to report contributions from Soundview.
“Their conclusions were wrong,” Mr. Espada said, adding that he was committed to continuing to fight the matter in court.
Of his critics, he said, “They hate me because I’m not perfect.”
“I’m going to get better,” he added. “I’m a work in progress.”
Let there be special elections and primaries, please.
Update: Uh oh, the sarcasm trap strikes again. Apparently, Gatemouth decided to blog about this post, not realizing the presence of said sarcasm; and just to make sure everyone knew how clever he is, emailed it to our entire team. So, everyone, please take a moment to acknowledge how awesome Gatemouth is; he'll explode if you don't.
A few years ago,
that was my state senatorial district. I used to try to lobby then Senator Efraim Gonzalez -- about public school funding for example. He and his staff were utterly confused. It seemed to me they were reforming that great Eli Wallach line: Constituents -- we don't need no stinkin' constituents. Mr. Espada has always struck me as cut from the same corrupt cloth.
Creating a political movement to drive such dinosaurs into extinction was a task I did not know how to do.
The trivia fiend in me
cannot let this pass. The correct quote,'Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!' was delivered by Alfonso Bedoya, in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948). One of the greatest films ever produced in Hollywood, and a brilliant meditation on the corrosive power of greed, it should be required viewing for every CEO and elected official.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqomZQMZQCQ
Well, you are right in that that's the original line
But, it's been used more than once. Blazing Saddles is one and another is one of those spaghetti westerns staring Clint Eastwood in which Wallach, playing a Mexican bandit, uses the line with what sounded to me like a Yiddish accent. (The Good the Bad & the Ugly?)
Ummm,
not to make a federal case out of a trivia question, but I'm pretty familiar with both of those films, and I don't recall the line coming up in either one.
I'd be more likely to believe that Brooks misquoted (intentionally) it in Blazing Saddles, since his films are pastiches of cultural references, and it would be possible that I've forgotten it in that context, buried as it would be under a mountain of other one-liners and Madeleine Kahn's immortal Lili von Schtupp. But The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a period piece, and while there may be some ironic distance in it, I don't recall anything as obviously anachronistic and self-referential as quotes from other films. Wallach's performance is the best thing in the movie, IMO. He's hilarious (intentionally).
The Mel Brooks clip
is here . I will research the eli wallach line that lives in my memory shortly
Thanks.
I first saw "Blazing Saddles" the day it opened, so I was completely unprepared for what awaited me. It may have been the hardest I ever laughed at a movie in my life.