Book notes

"Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires" by Selwyn Raab

• Parallels between Al Capone and John Gotti -- Both were backwater mobsters who came to power by being exceptionally vicious (including, in the case of Gotti, executing a boss). Both fell in love with the limelight, thereby becoming a big target for the government. Both were convicted with new instruments of prosecution against organized crime (Capone, tax evasion; Gotti, RICO). Both suffered from disease and died in prison (Capone, syphilis; Gotti, neck and head cancer).
• Under RICO, it is a crime to merely belong to a crime organization. So Gotti's high profile not only generated government interest in him but actually generated evidence against him.
• John Gotti, Jr., mob boss by his mid-20's, is yet another great example of the downside of nepotism. (Gotti wanted to set up a dynastic succession). Among Junior's acts of brilliance was his storing unregistered guns and the names of new mob inductees in the wall safe in his office.
  
• After moving to Arizona under the Witness Protection Program, Sammy "the Bull" Gravano became a contractor for the installation of swimming pools. Nevertheless, he was compelled to also become the largest drug dealer in the Southwest.
• Loan sharking, numbers, drugs, and theft generate cash for the mob, but the real foundation of mob money and power is labor unions.
• The Italian Mafia was formally organized in 1931. The organizational structure was modeled after the Roman Army. (So to is the Roman Catholic Church, according to friend whose uncle was a cannon in the Church) .
• Raab cites the impeding end of Prohibition as the catalyst for the formation of the Italian Mafia, but I wonder if the clean government movement of the early 2Oth Century did not also have an effect by reducing the career options for personality types that are predisposed toward corrupt activities. And where are these personality types now? Lobbying and trial law?