{"id":3515,"date":"2008-06-11T08:42:18","date_gmt":"2008-06-11T13:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=3515"},"modified":"2008-06-11T08:42:18","modified_gmt":"2008-06-11T13:42:18","slug":"the_most_backhanded_mob_name_ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/06\/the_most_backhanded_mob_name_ever.html","title":{"rendered":"The Most Backhanded Mob Name Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"

For a guy with ties to such culinary masterwork<\/a> it seems odd that his nickname was something so pedestrian<\/a>:<\/p>\n

You’d want to believe that the schemers who kept New York City’s school-bus industry under the Mafia’s thumb for more than 30 years would be a pretty tough bunch. Who else could keep mayors, bureaucrats, and prosecutors at bay for decades while feeding like voracious bedbugs off the city’s most vital enterprise?<\/p>\n

But consider Salvatore “Hot Dogs” Battaglia, the hapless ex\u00e2\u20ac\u201cunion official who must face a federal judge later this month for sentencing, having admitted his own role in the extortion schemes that have long plagued the bus business. Prosecutors argue convincingly that Battaglia, a former school-bus driver, was groomed for his position by the powerful Genovese crime family. The mob was so satisfied with his performance, the government says, that it even made him a soldier — a rank supposedly reserved for those with criminal talent.<\/p>\n

The government is a lot less convincing when it describes this sad sack as “organizer, leader, and manager” of the school-bus rackets. The life and career of Sal Battaglia, 61, suggest more Ralph Kramden than John Gotti. He was a go-along-to-get-along guy lucky enough to find himself in the right place at the right time, a schnook with a swollen ego that his Mafia pals were happy to massage as long as he kept the money flowing and a sometimes restless rank-and-file union membership under control.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Annotation: Tom Robbins’ “shocking” Rao’s article<\/a> makes “Hot Dogs” seem a lot worse than Battaglia sounds here; keep this in mind when reading Tom Robbins articles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a guy with ties to such culinary masterwork it seems odd that his nickname was something so pedestrian: You’d want to believe that the schemers who kept New York City’s school-bus industry under the Mafia’s thumb for more than 30 years would be a pretty tough bunch. Who else could keep mayors, bureaucrats, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insert_muted_trumpets_sad_wahwah_here"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}