Originally Posted By: OakAsFan
Originally Posted By: IvyLeague
The Kennedys certainly went after the mob but their efforts died with them. Law enforcement really didn't get the backing they needed to go after the mob until the Reagan administration in the 1980s.


So, you're just going to double down on this fallacy, huh?

Research Bobby Kennedy's tenure at the Justice department. He added hundreds of agents to target the mob, when there had only been dozens or so up to 1960. He restructured the department around this agenda, meaning, his restructuring was PERMANENT, and still in effect to this day. It made way for the RICO act, a bill that was introduced by a DEMOCRAT, John McClennan of Arkansas, and which was essentially the final nail in the coffin for the mob's heyday.

Look, I get the Reagan admiration. I'm from California. Sacramento, of all places. Even Democrats here get all gushy over him. But man, you are just so far off in thinking that Reagan in any way spearheaded the federal government's crackdown on the mob. It's ridiculous, and rips about a hundred pages out of any history book. The Kennedy White House's aggression toward the mafia could be the reason the John and Bobby were killed. A lot of credible historians have come to this conclusion. After all, it well documented that they wanted to. The mob doesn't set out to kill a president because they consider him and his party to be allies.


Nobody is denying the Kennedys' efforts against the mob. From the time of Apalachin in 1957 until the death of John in 1963 and Bobby no longer being AG in 1964, the mob was under a lot of pressure. But it's well known that after that short time span, the mob had a reprieve of sorts until the 1980s. Restructuring or not, the same heat was not there through the rest of the 1960s and 1970s. And it's not just a coincidence that the real national push against the mob happened in the 1980s. RICO had already been in place since 1970 and Hoover had been dead since 1972. But it wasn't until certain initiatives by the Reagan administration gave law enforcement the resources it needed that a real, sustained effort against the mob happened.

Now, I am aware of certain appointments Reagan made that can be called into question. But to use Teamster support as a reason to believe the mob "supported Reagan" is quite a leap and they didn't exactly get what they may have wanted in return. Furthermore, to keep focusing on these two presidents alone, where you exaggerate Kennedy while overlooking Reagan, is to ignore the overall history of mob ties to politics in various cities down through the years. It was almost exclusively Democratic politicians and political machines. But you appear to want to do that because you seem to have entered this topic, not with an objective and correct view of history, but more with simply a desire to be politically partisan and get defensive about Democrats.