Excellent thread guys. I would have weighed in earlier but there's a cable line down on my block and I'm without internet service for the time being. I'm actually in a Barnes And Noble with my laptop right now.

I'm glad to see that some of the younger guys here are smart enough to not be impressed by "the life". I have to admit, that as a younger guy, it impressed the hell out of me and believe me, as our friend Turnbull said, you truly are better off washing dishes. But you live and learn, acually you're very lucky if you live and learn.

Anyway, as far as RICO, listen to TB and DC. I have little to add other that the fact that it actually sprang from the McClellan hearings of the the late 1950's. It's roots being the Landrum-Griffin Act, kind of a working man's bill of rights, formed to protect union members from corrupt union officials.
However, union lobbyists quickly knocked it down. A furious John McClellan bit back by drafting the now famous RICO Act of 1970.

As stated earlier, it sat on the shelf, largely unused, until the Reagan administration and a gung-ho prosecutor by the name of Rudy Giuliani put it to use in the mid 1980's.

It was truly the beginning of the end for the mob as we'd come to know it.