The Golden Age of the Grifter - Part 2
When this newspaper, only two months ago, published an editorial lamenting the fraud and con-artists in our midst - focusing on the Crypto ponzi-scheme FTX and its con-man CEO Samuel Bankman-Fried - we didn't expect things to get so much worse, so quickly. But look at us today, with a US Congressman who is internationally reviled as a sociopath and con-artist, and new young barbarian con-artists rising up hungrily among us, to try to take his place. The story of George Santos is a warning to all people who enjoy the comfort and security of a modern bourgeois existence. A warning that people will lie, cheat, steal, bamboozle and commit crimes, to take that for themselves. And trash everyone else to get it. It is a reminder that we abandon the objective reality of "truth" and the moral courage to reject liars, at our dire peril. George Santos is not just a liar, he is a career criminal. What one newspaper in Brazil called a "20-year crime wave" of stealing jewelry from women and pawning it; of forging checks to steal others property; of threatening his victims with false police charges or threats of deportation to stay silent. Nasty and vile. Santos' stole $3,000 from a disabled US Navy veteran, Richard Osthoff, which killed Osthoff's only companion - his service dog Sapphire - who needed the money for emergency surgery. Santos' stole the money for frivolities - shoes or clothes - but he left Ostoff alone and contemplating suicide. Santos didn't care. He used and discarded a vulnerable man to satisfy his sartorial appetites. Recently, Nassau Legislator Joshua Lafazan (D-Syosset) has been holding nearly daily press conferences to denounce Santos - but really to promote himself to try to succeed him. Never mind that Lafazan took $700,000 in stolen FTX money from Bankman-Fried, or that Lafazan is under federal and District Attorney probes for illegally taking $100,000 from a Centre Island financier, concealing the money, lying about it, and then putting that towards $160,000 of potentially illegal "straw money" into his failed 2022 congressional campaign. Lafazan lied to the Communist Party for support in 2020, then lied to the Conservative Party in 2021, and then lied to the police in 2022. Never mind - he lied and used people to get himself ahead. Santos is an alleged Republican; Lafazan is an alleged Democrat. But in truth neither one really believes in anything - and both are just cynically using the party system - and well meaning people - to get themselves ahead. It is time for decent people to identify Grifters for what they are - and shun them.