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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.
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