The Mafia way of life may seem like a romantic updated version of the western movie played out on the streets of the big cities where the good guys and the wise guys who share the same instincts and values do battle before an enthralled public but it is actually very different. The Mafia is really just a group of uneducated thugs making money by victimizing the public. Initially, the Mafia was setup as a prominent supplier of bootlegged liquor, but it has spread into many different areas of crime. During this research paper I will discuss three aspects of the Mafia which are crime, structure and decline in leadership.
The Mob siphons off public funds, rigs contracts, corrupts unions which many hard working people with legitimate jobs are a part of, smuggles drugs, and runs illegal gambling rings. These are some of the ways the Mob negatively affects our community and harms innocent citizens. Any illegal activity that brings in big money the Mafia is part of. Union corruption has been the primary focus of many federal investigations and by the end of the 1980’s, four unions, the Teamsters, Longshoremen, Laborers, and Hotel and Restaurant Employees union, had all been identified as mob dominated. Not only does the mob find money makers in the United States, they finds ways to bring money to them from other countries. Alien smuggling generates more than $3 billion a year for the mob. Mobsters will kill without remorse and threaten anyone who won’t go along with what they are doing. To keep free from the arm of the law "corrupters nullify the law-enforcement and political processes primarily by outright bribery and other rationally designed forms of ‘influence’ such as contributions to political campaigns and promises to deliver votes in a particular area." One might think that corruption and bribery is not a problem, but one noted political analyst suggests that "the underworld" contributes 15 percent of the
3 costs of local and state political campaigns which causes one to think that the mob may have a strong hold on many powerful politicians. Mafia involvement with legitimate business’s affects the public in many ways. Respectable bankers have become unwitting allies to the Mafia and most of the securities stolen in the United States during the last two decades are lying safely in the vaults of respectable banks, hypothecated for legi...
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The decade of the 1920s was full of deception, corruption, and degeneration. The very embodiment of these qualities was the institution of the Italian-American Mafia. The syndicate began in Sicily and spread to encompass United States politics and the national economy. The post war era left the nation in a recession and vulnerable to organized crime. Changes in the country's attitudes and outlooks on the future paved the way for organized crime on a large scale. People were too preoccupied with bootleg booze, sexual promiscuity, and get-rich-quick schemes to notice the downward spiral of the government's respectability and integrity. The decadence of the decade and the feel good mentality of America's youth provided opportunities the industrious underworld leaders sought in order to gain control of the syndicate. The Mafia supplied America with the vices it longed for and in return America let the Mafia get away with murder. Not only did the syndicate accumulate power but also profited financially through prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging. These activities were the foundations of the Outfit's financial and political empires. Mafia power soon began to eclipse the authority of the law enforcement agencies, and the struggle between responsibility and autonomy began.
Transcendentalists Thoreau and Emerson conveyed strong, specific viewpoints on the world through their writing. The transcendentalist ideals differ vastly with the lives lived by most of the modern world today. Firstly, the two differ on views of self-reliance. Secondly, they have different outlooks on the government and organized groups. Lastly, transcendentalist and modern American views vary by the way they view nature. These differences between transcendentalism and life today are essential in understanding life then, as well as life now.
After the 5 years of being apart from Dana, Kevin finally gets the letter that Dana has come back to get him. He was happy to find Dana on the Weylin's Farm and he tries to get away with her so they can leave the negative experiences behind them. When they try to get away, Rufus comes with a gun and tries to force Kevin into giving up Dana, so he could take her as a slave. Kevin didn't want to give up without a fight so he begins to become possessive of Dana. “Kevin stared at him. Until Rufus began to look uncomfortable instead of indignant.” (Kindred,185). Kevin changes from kind to possessive because he sees the way Rufus looks at Dana the same way he looks at Alice. Kevin understands that Rufus would do anything to keep Dana with him, so he must be possessive in order to keep Rufus in check. When Kevin comes back to the present, he does not come back the same. He has a Southern accent and he doesn't seem to remember how to use technology. He seems to be angry with himself because he struggles to get back into the present. When Dana tries to help him ease his way back into the present, he snaps and glares as at her which is something he had never done to Dana. “He stopped, glaring at me... The expression on his face was like... something I was used to seeing on Tom Weylin” (Kindred,194). In the five years, Kevin was in the antebellum south, he could have adopted the ways of the racist slave owners as he did the southern accent. Kevin is already showing their racist ways when he glares at Dana when she tries to help him, His action was like a white person to a black person in the Antebellum South. The experience negatively impacts Dana and Kevin because Kevin is not the same and kind man he was when Dana married him. Kevin comes back to the present as a stranger living with Dana because she doesn't
The first, most important thing to mention about Ralph Waldo Emerson is that he was not a Transcendentalist philosopher (Bloom 1). Ralph Emerson was a poet, critic, essayist, and a believer of morals (Bloom 2). Many people look at what he wrote in his books and essays, and they took his ideas from his speeches and turned them into a way of life. His ideas and beliefs earned him the role as the chief spokesman for American Transcendentalism (Siepmann 300).
Chris Mccandless and Ralph Waldo Emerson are true followers of transcendentalism. They include all of the concepts in their lives every day. They both are certain, that they must use all of concepts. Including the five I’s of transcendentalism, the way they see nature, how they tried to seek, to find their identity, and lastly their independence.
Transcendentalism is a major concept that originated in New England from 1836 to 1855. It is the idea that people have knowledge about themselves that rises above or goes beyond the five senses. The man credited with leading this revolutionary movement was Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was born in Boston, and used his experience at Harvard and as a Unitarian Reverend to help start this revolution. He eventually would come to the conclusion that the individual is more morally just than religion. He started this shift with his book Nature, which he published in 1836. Nature was a collection of papers, an essay that read like a disjointed nightmare would. This revolution has translated into modern society; however, there are still many aspects of
more clearer when put in the light of an analysis of how the mafia enterprise
During 1869-2014 the Sicilian mafia in America evolved in a number of ways such as: the change in rules, leaders, how it is run, the change in code and power over American society. These topics will be covered throughout this essay and will give you a detailed explanation furthermore the history of the evolution that took place. The Sicilian Mafia started in poor Sicilian ghettos in America and spread into the cities striking fear into the American society. With around 2,500 members it is seen as the most powerful and the most active Italian organized criminal group in the United States of America. The Sicilian mafia is more commonly known as La Cosa Nostra.
The Mafia is a secret criminal organization that has great economic and political control over large parts of Sicilian society and operates both criminal and legitimate enterprises in the United States. It is believed to have started during Sicily's late Middle Ages, beginning as separate bonds of strong-arm enforcers hired by local landowners. It eventually evolved into a network of independent groups governing in rural areas. With the Sicilian immigration of the late 19th century, the Mafia began to operate in several large United States cities. During the period of Prohibition it monopolized the trade in bootleg liquor and controlled loan sharking, gambling, and prostitution. Competing Mafia families established mutually recognized territories, reaching agreement by negotiation or by intimidation. By the mid-1930 the Mafia had taken on the institutionalized structure that is now typical of organized crime in the United States.
La Cosa Nostra Perhaps one of the most poignant moments in American cinema is the closing scene in the film “The Godfather” when Don Vito Corleone’s son Michael takes over his father’s position... and one of the most unforgettable moments, a severed horses’s head lies bloody in a man’s bed. It is this tradition and brutality that characterizes the Mafia, a secret Sicilian society that lives and functions just as much today on American soil as it did and does still in Italy. To understand this organized crime, one must begin to understand how it came to be organized in the first place. During the medieval times in Sicily, Arabs invaded the land and native Sicilians fled and took refuge in the hills. Some of these refugees formed a secret society that gave protection to the people in exchange for money. This group took their name, “Mafia” based on the Arabic word for refuge. In America today, one can hear it also be called “La Cosa Nostra”, or “This Thing of Ours.” In the 1700s,Wealthy people would receive a card with a black hand drawn on and if they did not pay the money, they could expect murder, theft, and violence. During the time Mussolini was ruling Italy, this secret society was under heavy persecution and many fled to the United States. “Don (term for the boss or head of a Mafia family) Vito Cascio Ferro fled to the United States in 1901 to escape arrest. He is known as the Father of American Mafia.” (La Cosa Nostra) Many Italian immigrants came to the United States through Ellis Island in New York, which is today the most important center of organized Mafia crime in the United States. The new American Mafia came to power during the Prohibition by organizing the sale of outlawed alcohol, but after Prohibition was revoked, the Mafia needed a new “racket.” During the war, the Mafia got government issued ration stamps and sold them on the black market. These days the Mafia is involved in running prostitution, unions, construction, and gambling. New York, also called the “City that never sleeps,” houses the Five Families of New York. These Families are highly influential and powerful crime families and each holds claim to certain “rackets.” The Five Families are: Gambino, Bonano, Lucchese, Colombo, and Genovese. While all people in the Mafia are required to maintain certain silence about the workings of the Family, a code of silence called “Omerta,” d...
Organized crime is a collective result of the commitment, knowledge, and actions of three components: (1) Criminal groups, who are core persons tied by racial, linguistic, ethnic or other bonds; (2) Protectors, who are persons who protect the group’s interests; and (3) Specialist support, which are persons who knowingly render services on an side-job basis to enhance the group’s interests. In order to thrive, an organized crime group needs many different elements. First, it needs an ensured continuity of members, clients, supporters, funds, etc. Additionally, it needs structure, criminality, violence, memberships based on common grounds, and a willingness to corrupt a power and profit goal. Generally, mafia organized crime groups disguise themselves behind the ownership of a legitimate business to avoid questioning from the Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) regarding any financial sources. The ille...
Peter Maas declares organized crime the “biggest business in the country” (Maas). “The largest and best known organized crime group is the nationwide organization variously known as the ‘syndicate’, the ‘mob’, the ‘Mafia’, and the ‘Cosa Nostra’” (Nash, Jason O-155). Some activities of the Mafia include gambling, loan sharking, pornography, illicit drugs, and racketeering. The Mafia began in Sicily, but did not retain to just that one location. In fact, in the late nineteenth century many of the Sicilian members immigrated to the United States (Nash O-155). The Mafia in the United States contains members that are Americans with Sicilian ancestry (“Mafia” M-48). There are several Mafia groups in the United States. Law enforcement authorities agree that there are around twenty-five groups that operate in large cities across the nation (Nash O-155).
Rape and sexual violence is a very serious problem that affects millions of people each year. Rape is someone taking advantage of another person sexually. Sexual assault can be verbal, physical, visual, or anything that forces a person to join in unwanted sexual contact or attention. ("Sexual Assault.") Rape is one of the most underreported crimes. In 2002, only thirty-nine percent of rapes and sexual assaults were reported to law officials. ("Sexual Violence: Fact Sheet.") Victims sometimes do not report that they have raped because of shame or feeling that it was their fault. It is never the victim's fault. "Victim blaming" is holding the victim of a crime to be in a whole or in partly responsible for what had happened to them. Most victims believe this. ("Myths and Facts about Sexual Violence.")
the situation is, and victim blaming is one of those. Victim blaming is where someone does a really terrible thing like rape, and they try and blame it on the victim to make it look like it was the victim’s fault. There is no law to protect the people that this happens to. It is a serious matter and needs to have attention brought to it.
Assigning blame has become an increasingly difficult and complex concept to understand, especially in our legal court system. I associate blame with being held responsible for the consequences of one’s intentional actions. In regards to sexual assault cases, I think the blame should not be placed on the victims, but rather on the perpetrators. Victim blaming justifies the perpetrator’s actions, discourages sexual assault reportings, and can have psychological effects on the victim.