So much for ethics

From the NY Post:

Jurors deadlocked recently on charges that City Councilman Larry Seabrook steered taxpayer funds to his mistress and relatives, but Albany last week did them one better — by conspiring actually to reward Brooklyn power-broker Vito Lopez for doing nearly the same thing.

True, Gov. Cuomo and the legislative leaders last Monday proclaimed a new era in clean government — in the form of the state’s (umpteenth) ethics panel.

You can read Cuomo’s lips: “The Joint Commission on Public Ethics...will aggressively investigate corruption and help maintain integrity in state government,” Cuomo vowed, as he announced the new panel members’ names.

“I am confident that . . . the commission will be the toughest ethics enforcer in our state’s history,” he insisted.

Give them credit for the effort, we guess.

But how can anyone take the rhetoric seriously — when the state this month also showered nearly $850,000 in state funds on Lopez’s dubious social-service empire?