Question: Q: Way before the DNC maybe tried to sway the convention, the mob did

After a dramatic Republican national convention in Cleveland that saw Donald Trump finally become the party’s official nominee, Hillary Clinton will this week accept the formal nomination of the Democratic party.

US national conventions have always been big business opportunities. As one longtime ally of the Bush family reportedly said: “For people who operate in and around government, you can’t not be here.” Although some of the usual donors to the Republican national convention, such as Ford and UPS, stayed home this year, the host committee was able to raise nearly $60m from American businesses. Yet historically, the “people who operate in and around government” are not only legitimate businesses but also, sometimes, less-than-legitimate ones.

Take the 1932 Democratic national convention. As I explain in my book about the hidden power of organized crime, from which this article is adapted, the nomination that year had come down to a contest between two New York politicians. Al Smith was a reform-minded former governor aligned with Tammany Hall, the Manhattan-based Democratic political machine. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the sitting governor, was running against him, and he was not aligned with Tammany.

If Roosevelt was to win the nomination at the Democratic national convention, he needed to neutralize the Tammany threat. That meant figuring out what to do about the mob.

Through their control of liquor and vice markets in southern Manhattan, Tammany’s stronghold, the Italian American mafias and Jewish-heritage gangs that made up the New York mob had developed growing power in Tammany affairs over the preceding years.

The mob leadership now saw a huge strategic opportunity at the Democratic national convention to leverage that power into something even bigger: influence over the next occupant of the White House.

Mob leaders Lucky Luciano, Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky all accompanied the Tammany Hall delegation to the convention in Chicago. Their mafia associate Al Capone provided much of the alcohol, banned under prohibition, and entertainment.

Costello shared a hotel suite with Jimmy Hines, the Tammany “grand sachem”, who announced support for Roosevelt. But another Tammany politician, Albert Marinelli, announced that he and a small bloc were defecting and would not support Roosevelt.

Marinelli was Tammany’s leader in the second assembly district, its heartland below Manhattan’s 14th Street. During prohibition, he had owned a trucking company – run by none other than Lucky Luciano. Luciano had helped Marinelli become the first Italian American district leader in Tammany, and in 1931 forced the resignation of the city clerk, whom Marinelli then replaced. This gave Luciano and Marinelli control over selection of grand jurors and the tabulation of votes during city elections.

Now, the two were sharing a Chicago hotel suite.

Why were Costello and Luciano backing rival horses, and through them, rival candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination? Was this a disagreement over political strategy?

On the contrary, the evidence suggests that the Mob was playing both sides, to place themselves as brokers in the Democratic nomination process.

Roosevelt needed the full New York state delegation’s support – and thus Tammany’s – if he was going to win the floor vote at the convention. But he also needed to avoid being tainted by the whiff of scandal that hung stubbornly around Tammany – and the Mafia.

Roosevelt responded to the split by issuing a statement denouncing civic corruption, while carefully noting that he had not seen adequate evidence to date to warrant the prosecution of sitting Tammany leaders, despite an ongoing investigation run by an independent-minded prosecutor, Sam Seabury. Picking up his signal, Marinelli threw his support behind Roosevelt, giving him the full delegate slate and helping him gain the momentum needed to claim the nomination.

The mob’s role may not have been decisive. Roosevelt’s nomination had numerous fathers, not least John “Cactus Jack” Garner, a rival presidential candidate to whom Roosevelt offered the vice-presidency in return for the votes of the Texas and California delegations. But it was a factor.

If the mob leaders were not quite kingmakers as they had hoped, they were certainly players. As Luciano reportedly put it, “I don’t say we elected Roosevelt, but we gave him a pretty good push.”

Luciano was nonetheless a newcomer to national politics, and seems to have been quickly outsmarted by his candidate. Having secured the nomination, Roosevelt loosened the reins on Seabury’s corruption investigation, making clear that if it developed new evidence, he might be prepared to back prosecutions after all.

Seabury quickly exposed significant Tammany graft in the New York administration. The city sheriff had amassed $400,000 in savings from a job that paid $12,000 a year. The mayor had awarded a bus contract to a company that owned no buses – but was happy to give him a personal line of credit. A judge with half a million dollars in savings had been granted a loan to support 34 “relatives” found to be in his care. Against the backdrop of depression New York, with a collapsing private sector, 25% unemployment and imploding tax revenues, this was shocking profligacy and nepotism.

By September 1932, the mayor had resigned and fled to Paris with his showgirl girlfriend. In early 1933, Roosevelt moved into the White House and broke off the formal connection between Tammany Hall and the national Democratic party for the first time in 105 years. He even tacitly supported the election of the reformist Republican Fiorello La Guardia as New York mayor.

Luciano was pragmatic about having been outsmarted. “He done exactly what I would’ve done in the same position,” he reportedly said. “He was no different than me … we was both s–ass double-crossers, no matter how you look at it.”

This story was originally published on the Conversation.

A: At the Democratic National Convention in 1932, the mafia tried to take control of proceedings. Makes Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s leaked emails seem vanilla


Q: Pension freedoms: withdrawal figures ease fears of 'Lamborghini' pensioners wasting savings

It still means a worrying proportion of withdrawals – 43pc – were potentially for sums above 4pc. Some 4.2pc were for sums greater than 10pc.

It cannot be said with certainty, however, that these retirees have withdrawn unsustainable sums because individuals may have multiple pots, from different employers, for example, or income from defined benefit pension or other investments.

The pension freedoms give those with defined contribution savings greater flexibility over how they spend their pot.

Money can be taken out in lump sums, with 25pc of each withdrawal tax-free, leaving the remainder invested inside the scheme, or 25pc of the whole fund can be taken tax free and then further withdrawals can be made through “drawdown”. In this case recipients pay income tax at whatever rate the income takes them to.

The ABI reported that, in the first year after the reforms were enacted, £4.3bn had been withdrawn in 300,000 lump-sum payments, with an average withdrawal of £14,500, while £3.9bn has been taken out via 1.03 million drawdown payments, with an average payment of £3,800.

The changes in the rules free retirees from the obligation to buy an annuity – where rates of return are at record lows – in order to generate a retirement income. Sceptics had predicted that savers would withdraw unsustainable sums or blow their money on frivolities.

Before the introduction of the freedoms, the then pensions minister, Steve Webb, said he was relaxed about how pensioners spent their savings – even if they used them to buy a Lamborghini sports car.

A:
Answer: Predictions that wastrel pensioners would use the new freedoms to blow their retirement savings look wide of the mark after industry figures showed that the majority of withdrawals were at prudent levels.