Humorous fallout from the New Jersey corruption scandal involving politicians, rabbis, body parts, public works and contractors: Former Bergen County Democratic Chairman Joseph Ferriero, convicted about a week ago on federal corruption charges, gets to vote Tuesday because he hasn't yet been sentenced.

As a good Democrat, he would probably vote for Jon Corzine in the gubernatorial race, because Corzine's foe, Chris Christie, was the U.S. attorney who prosecuted Ferriero. But neither Corzine nor Christie is much of a bargain, so what's a crook to do?

Matt Friedman explains at PolitickerNJ.com that New Jersey law allows felons to vote until the time of their sentencing. Ferriero isn't the only pol on this list. So if Republican Christie were to lose the gubernatorial race against incumbent Democrat Corzine by only a few votes, the goniffs would have the last laugh.

Under Pressure, Obama Defends Health-Care Plan (WSJ)

Teabaggers outside, friendly folks inside. Too friendly and too respectful inside, reminiscent of the carefully screened audiences at the "town halls" that Dick Cheney and George W. Bush conducted. Best quote from a teabagger outside: ""Adolf Hitler was for exterminating the weak, not just the Jews and stuff, and socialism — that's what's going to happen." "Jews and stuff" — sounds like a chain of Bar Mitzvah-themed gift shops.

G.M. Puts Electric Car's City Mileage in Triple Digits (NYT)

It took a fucking bankruptcy to make GM get on the stick and finally roll out a fucking electric car.

U.S. economy has bottomed: George Soros (Reuters)

He should know. He's one of the world's most aggressive, barebacking tops.

No surprise that Ron Paul hates "Cash for Clunkers" almost as much as he hates the Fed. Even if you're a well-meaning do-gooder, you can at least listen to the Texas maverick: He's not as obnoxious a critic as lightweight loudmouth Glenn Beck. And every time Ron Paul uses the word "foolishness," he backs it with a good example. He makes some good points here, especially when he talks about how poor and near-poor people are getting the shaft every time a clunker gets shredded.

Not to mention teens looking for that rusted but barely driveable hulk that they covet as a first car. Paul doesn't mention that angle, but Big Money's Matthew DeBord does in "Does Cash for Clunkers Kill Teen Car Dreams?"

Oil prices plunged — maybe because the speculators were too busy trying to fend off regulation during this week's CFTC hearings to manufacture a spike — and the stock market as a whole got dragged down.

As expected, the blowback from the formal announcement of the MicroHoo offensive against Google generated threats of regulatory scrutiny. And Jason Calcanis rips the deal this way: "Yahoo committed seppuku today."

Speaking of dying, the newspaper industry is not only no threat but is barely relevant to the MicroHoo/Google war. See Ken Doctor's "Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal Leaves Newspapers on the Sidelines."

One of the better pieces on the highly entertaining Kosher Nostra sting of pols and rabbis for bribery and other business chicanery — another blow to a Jewish community reeling from momser Bernie Madoff's shanda — comes from Larry Cohler-Esses in the Jewish Daily Forward: "The Syrian-Jewish Community: Solidarity Forever or 'Medieval Minds, Armani Designs'?" Nathaniel Popper weighs in with "Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis Begin To Take Responsibility for Arrests and Scandals." As usual, the Forward tackle angles that the secular press won't touch for fear of being seen as antisemitic.

Spreading faster (so far) than swine flu, the New York pension-fund kickback scandal "has exposed a national network of actors whose schemes are ongoing," Reuters says today.

In N.Y. Attorney General Andy Cuomo's words, "We've uncovered corruption in New York, our government and our retirement accounts — and now we see the scheme reaching companies, individuals and pension funds nationwide."

He's not just blowing smoke: Today, Cuomo announced the arrest of Saul Meyer, from down Texas way. Meyer, a founding partner of Aldus Equity in Dallas, is charged with securities fraud for allegedly paying illegal kickbacks to Hank Morris, the longtime aide to former NY State Comptroller Alan Hevesi.

And he's just talking about scams/schemes/scandals revolving around the state pension fund. The NYC pension fund is a separate deal, and trouble's belching out of that fund, too.

The burgeoning scandal of pay-for-play during the previous administration of Alan Hevesi ("Murdoch smells a Rattner," "Hedge-fund thief of public pension money pleads guilty") has prompted his fellow Democrat and successor Tom DiNapoli to take this action.

And now N.Y Attorney General Andy Cuomo, already wallowing in an embarrassment of riches that will surely propel him to higher office, is extending his probe to investments by New York City's pension funds.

However, in this new probe, the city's comptroller, Bill Thompson, is no Alan Hevesi — or not that we know of. Thompson has asked Cuomo to investigate. (As if Cuomo wouldn't have knocked on his intraparty rival Thompson's door at some point anyway.)

Just today, Thompson is calling for a ban on the use of placement agents with the city's pension funds.

Cuomo's office released a statement saying "we applaud" Thompson. Cuomo then crossed off fellow Democrat Thompson from his list of investigation targets.

As the few surviving Democratic officials not involved in current scandals are congratulating one another, they're closing barn doors all over the place. But there's still a bad smell emanating from these makeshift vaults of public money.

Once again this week, my colleague Tom Robbins plunges into the widening scandal. This time he's focusing on "The Torch," former Jersey senator Bob Torricelli, one of the more notorious members of the Democratic Party.

Yes, Torricelli's name is surfacing in the pension-fund scandal. Hold on a minute: No charges, so don't get all excited.

In all these cases, except for some minor players, all suspects are expected to seek pricey legal advice and maintain their innocence until they're proven guilty and then probably afterward, on advice from those lawyers.

Despite the breathlessness of this morning's scoop-sounding stories (Post's is here; WSJ's here), Rattner's link to the probe of former comptroller Alan Hevesi's mess was reported nearly a month ago by Ken Lovett in the Daily News.

But oh, what an opportunity this is for Murdoch to skewer his mortal enemy the Times — Rattner is a former Times reporter turned investment banker and is a close adviser to Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and a big macher in the paper's dealings with the city that resulted in its new midtown HQ.

Lovett reported on March 25 ("Low-rent film Chooch tied to Albany pension fund scandal") Rattner's link to the probe of the scandal. The financier's Quadrangle group, which he left to head Obama's task force on the auto industry, was already being mentioned in the same breath as Hevesi pal Hank Morris, a key figure in the pension-fund probe.

Steven Rattner, head of Barack Obama's auto task force, has been probed in connection with the scandal swirling around pension fund "finder's fees" during the administration of former N.Y. state comptroller Alan Hevesi. That's what the Wall Street Journal is reporting.

The investment-firm muckamuck was the "senior executive" named in an SEC complaint about dealings in the alleged kickback scheme. Rattner or his firm, Quadrangle, haven't been accused of wrongdoing.

As I previously noted, see my colleague Tom Robbins for other coverage of the Hevesi scandal.

It's obvious that the scope of the scandal revolving around veteran Democratic pol Hevesi will only widen in the coming days. From the WSJ piece:

Time for your Two Minutes Hate (or, in this case, your Eight Years Hate).

If Cheney's sweating probes of the Bush-Cheney Era, this is a good time to dredge up the Kazakhstan bribery intrigue.

Amid all the bonus talk and other financial news, some people are still wondering why Dick Cheney chose this month to throw acid in Barack Obama's face on CNN.

As always, follow the money.

Yes, Time's Bobby Ghosh has a valid reason for ruminating:

Yes, yes, yes, torture, torture, torture. But maybe we can also look at the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), under which several probes of alleged U.S. corporate bribery overseas are proceeding with little publicity. Some of the cases began during the Bush regime; others predate it. It's for sure that the Bush-Cheney people weren't exactly eager to pursue many, if any, of them.

FCPA Blog has a nice little roundup — "Unfinished Business" — of some of the probes (including one in which the government is calling out Avon's business practices in China).

But the one I'm thinking of is the long-delayed U.S. v. Giffen, a bribery case swirling around oil-rich Kazakhstan that I wrote about several years ago because of its possible connection to Cheney and/or other U.S. government officials.

There's a murky Cheney angle regarding Kazakhstan (so murky that we don't know if he has a direct connection to Giffen's alleged wrongdoing).