Columbia University Frat Houses fronted drug ring

WNYC NewsTuesday, December 07, 2010
By Bob Hennelly

Dozens of police officers with dogs and battering rams busted three Columbia University fraternities early Tuesday morning during drug raids.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says five students and three off-campus individuals, who allegedly supplied the campus operation, were arrested.

Columbia University officials say they're taking the alleged criminal drug activity very seriously.  the university wouldn't comment on whether the students would be suspended or expelled.

Police called the elaborate undercover effort "Operation Ivy League."

Kelly says it was the largest drug bust on a college campus in recent memory. The "frat rats" distributed  a wide array of drugs including marijuana, Ecstasy, cocaine, LSD and other stimulants.

In addition to the drug dealing arrests, police charged one of the off-campus alleged dealers for trying to engage an undercover police officer in a conspiracy to kidnap and kill a pair of rival dealers.

Investigators say their undercover operation was prompted by several anonymous tips about illicit drug dealing on the campus. Police say the probe started this past summer.

The prosecution is being handled by Bridget Brennan, the city's narcotics prosecutor.

Officials say one of the students says he was using drug money to help pay his school bills. The police commisioner Kelly said:

This is no way to work your way through college.

Rightardia has never been a fan of college fraternities or sororities. The Greek system provides a pipeline of collegiate preppies to the GOP.


Go to a Young Republican Club meeting  and it will look exactly like  meeting in a fraternity house.


Who are some famous GOP Greeks? Try Larry Craig, the tap dancing Senator form Idaho, or Paul Ryan, the GOP true believer from Illinois.


Do the Democrats have some of these folks? 


Sure, many have been Blue Dog democrats, but for the most part Democrats are not the complete corporate suck ups and sellouts like their GOP brethren.


Most of these kids are the sons and daughters of country club Republicans. These country club Republicans are the same people who are worried that Sarah Palin may be the standard bearer for the party in 2012. Sarah is just a bit too common for their liking.

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Imagine Sarah Palin as president

Imagine Sarah Palin as President of the United States

Paul Begala sees Palin as a lost cause. If the GOP had left her alone in the 2008 election cycle, she might have matured. Rightardia has its doubts.  In the Republican rush for an improbable win in 2008 presidential elections, they sacrificed Palin. They only have themselves to blame.

Palin is interesting because she is attractive and doesn't fit the cookie cutter Republicans that the fraternities and sororities produce. The GOP only has itself to blame for Palin's melt down.

Paul Begala:

Here's the problem. He (Newt Gingrich) is trying to treat her like a serious person. She is not. OK? She is about half a whack job. She does not have the intellectual heft of Newt Gingrich or almost anyone else in the Republican Party, and I think she has proved that.

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Rightardia editorial: You take the high road and I'll take the low road

The US has a class system and it has been this way for a long time. If you are in the upper middle class or better, you are expected to go to college and pledge to a fraternity or sorority. Going greek is an expensive proposition, but it has many benefits.

There is a social structure with leader such as presidents, vice presidents, secretary-treasurer (the guy who does all the work) and the pledge master who runs the fraternity rite of initiation, Hell Week.

Fraternity members get to meet girls from other well-to-do families that live in sororities. Usually a house mother supervises the kitchen where members get at least two meals a day in the fraternity house.

Fraternities also know what college instructors have the easiest classes and maintain test banks on these instructors so the frat boys and sorority sisters have a big edge during mid-term and final week.

The less affluent students have to live in dorms for one or two years before they are allowed to move off campus assuming they have the finances to pay the rent.

Living in a dorm is a more plebeian life. Sometimes several students will rent an apartment to cut down costs. Leaders also emerge in the dormitories and also run for student office and other elective offices in campus clubs.

Once the students graduate, one might think the playing field would be a little more level. It really isn't. Many of the fraternity men and women will have jobs waiting for them because they are part of a plug-in system that could be described as the 'low road.' Most of the fraternity men will become Republicans and join corporations.

The leaders will become active in the GOP and 'go with the corporate flow.' These people do not make waves. Their job is maintain the status quo. It is very comfortable and simple life. The pay and perks of the plug-in Republicans are excellent.

Carl Icahn even noted why he is able to take over most of his corporate targets. Icahn laid out his view of a typical CEO's ascendancy in the corporation:

The future CEO is similar to the president of a college fraternity -- a likeable fellow who is politically astute, but unlikely to take bold actions. The CEO is a survivor who is able to rise through the ranks at a corporation by never offending anyone, even if that comes at a cost to shareholders.

Because they are not the type to rock the boat, rising CEOs are selected and groomed by incumbent CEOs who do not perceive them as a threat. "You have survival of the unfittest," said Icahn.

The Democrat leaders have a much harder road to to hoe. Barack Obama was a distinguished Harvard gradate who could have easily become a plug-in Republican.

Instead he chose to become a community organizer and moved to Chicago to rub elbows with low income people who lived in the 'projects.' His life was harder and the pay was low.

But he gained the organization skills needed to run one of the most effective presidential campaigns in this nations history. A person like Obama who had more humble beginnings has a better understanding of middle class and low income people. Obama took the harder high road to get where he is.

It is easy to contrast Obama with a 'low roader' like George W. Bush who was born with a sliver spoon in his mouth. Bush had virtually no rapport for the poor or other low income Americans. Within days after the Supreme Court installed Bush as president, he indicated his base was the 'have mores' during an inauguration ball.

Of course, some politicians try to walk down the 'middle road' there are moderate Republicans like Olympia Snow and Susan Collins. There are also the Blue dog Democrats.

This would work for the Democrats if there was a stronger middle in the GOP. However, six of 10 Republicans wants the party to move to the right.

Republicans in both the House and Senate have stonewalled most Democratic legislation.

American needs change. Waves need to be made. Clearly the GOP is uncomfortable with change because they are low roaders who been paid and bought by the corporations. This must be a very tumultuous time for them.

You can tell they have been backed into a corner. Lobbyists have been forging documents and we are also hearing the low roaders tell us the bold faced lie that the US has the best medical care in the world.

Then why is our medical system rated dead last in the 23 industrial nations of the world by the World Health Organization?

America is now on the high road with its new Democratic leadership. When this nation is in crises, high road Democrats are almost always elected.

Source: knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/createpdf.cfm?articleid=1392

http://www.icahnreport.com/report/2008/06/about-ceos.html

 

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