Opinion

The scam behind the scam

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly — and New York City councilmen, it appears, have to stuff their pockets with taxpayer cash.

No surprise, then, to learn that Bronx Democrat Larry Seabrook was indicted yesterday on 13 federal charges relating to a series of fake nonprofits he allegedly set up to embezzle city funds.

Just last year, former Manhattan Councilman Miguel Martinez and two aides to then-Councilman Kendall Stewart of Brooklyn pleaded guilty in similar scams. Who’s to doubt prosecutors have more pols in the crosshairs?

But what makes Seabrook’s case interesting is not so much the scale of the glomming — but how much of it was abetted by the grievance-mongering of New York’s professional activists.

Take the $300,000 grant Seabrook secured in 2006 for his North East Bronx Redevelopment Corp., ostensibly to boost FDNY minority recruitment. According to the indictment, much of the cash went straight into the pockets of Seabrook’s girlfriend, sister and nephew.

Irony abounds: The FDNY, recall, has been labeled racist and worse for its supposed dearth of minority firefighters; that gap was the rationale for an activist judge’s decision last month to cast aside merit-based hiring at the department in favor of race-driven quotas — and to hell with public safety.

Yet all the while, Seabrook — himself African-American — is said to have stolen a good portion of the funds meant to correct the imbalance.

It’s despicable — but don’t expect the judge to re-examine his dangerously foolish decision.

On a more mundane level, Seabrook is also alleged to have taken $50,000 in kickbacks from a subcontractor he helped impose on the new Yankee Stadium construction project. Prosecutors say his tool was the so-called Community Benefits Agreement, which lets local pressure groups shake down developers.

The effect is to transfer productive development dollars into the hands of folks like Seabrook — even as the surrounding area starves for jobs.

All of this, of course, comes on top of the $1.2 million in run-of-the-mill council pork Seabrook allegedly shoveled into his sham nonprofits.

If convicted, Seabrook deserves a long stretch up the river.

But the larger lesson in all this is that when politicians play the guilt card regarding minority or community “empowerment,” that card may be coming right straight off the bottom of the deck.

Surely Seabrook isn’t the only dealer in the game. We wish the feds further good hunting.