Late last week, when the news broke that the Evil Empire State’s Governor, Andrew “The Godfather” Cuomo, “saw his gross income more than double last year, to $417,748 for 2016 (from $196,243 the year before)” because of sales from his “memoir,” I was incredulous. Really? New Yorkers are largely morons—recall that they elected the carpetbagging Hitlary Clinton to the Senate, let alone The Godfather to gubernatorial graft—but gracious, I thought even these idiots had their limits.

Turns out they do. Rather than selling ca. 20,000 copies of his dreary tome, Cuomo foisted only 3200 volumes on readers (and even that could be bogus: “There’s a company called ResultSource, which effectively allows authors to game the system and simply buy their way onto the [bestsellers’] list. It’s very straightforward — ResultSource just buys a ton of their books from those select stores and disguises the purchases to make them look ‘organic.’”)

News Corp. owns The Godfather’s publisher, HarperCollins. And guess who wanted certain legislation pending before New York State’s rulers to benefit the publishing industry while Cuomo was peddling his drivel: that’s right, News Corp. I suspect that Bill Martin, who alerted me to this story, marvels at such a staggering coincidence.

Normally, I include a link to Amazon when I mention a book for your ease in buying it. But I’m confident that won’t be necessary in this case. Unless the nightly sirens and “gun-violence” from homicidal cops are so loud in your neck of the woods you can’t sleep either, a la those 3200 New Yorkers.

The Best of Becky Akers