CLEAN GOVERNMENT: N.Y. Pay-to-Play Plot Fueled by Bribes, U.S. Says.

A senior investment manager for New York’s state pension fund accepted bribes including drugs, prostitutes and tickets to a Paul McCartney concert from two brokers in exchange for millions of dollars in fixed-income business from the fund, prosecutors said.

Navnoor Kang, who served as the New York State Common Retirement Fund’s director of fixed income and head of portfolio security, was charged along with the two brokers, Deborah Kelley and Gregg Schonhorn, according to court documents filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.

The case exposes the seamy side of the management of pension money, where investment professionals sometimes engage in so-called pay-to-play tactics to win lucrative commissions. Along with cash and prostitutes, their alleged bribes included ski trips to Utah, a long weekend in New Orleans and cocaine for a pension fund official overseeing tens of billions of dollars in assets held on behalf of more than 1 million state employees.

The allegations are the latest to rock the state pension fund, the nation’s third largest with $184 billion in assets.

Why are Democrat-run states such cesspits of prostitution, drugs, and white-collar crime?