6661 Germantown Avenue • Philadelphia, PA 19119 • 215-438-4000
May 24, 2012
Published Every Other Week
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Points to Ponder
Recognizing we are on a glide path to what is likely to be the most fractured election in 150 years that will drill down to the local level, each issue we offer opinions that will reflect concerns at the national, state, and local level.
You can watch or listen to the mainstream and cable news outlets and hear all manner of reports claiming that we are “trending” one way or another, and using this data, conclusions are drawn as to how well our economy is rebounding and/or growing. The political motivation from now until November will keep the rhetoric and the numbers moving with motives running from distraction to factual representation. But to use one of my favorite phrases: “Even a blind man can tell when he is walking in the sun.”
The amount of debt generated through government spending this year has exceeded the total gross dollars produced by our economy for the first time; except during a world war. This shameless disregard for responsibility to the citizenry rests on the shoulders of every legislator and the President. The congress is obligated to prepare a budget and has the ultimate responsibility to submit it for approval and it has not done that.
If you are from Philadelphia you know that “WAM” is the abbreviation for “Walking around money” that ward leaders and politicians of all stripes have passed out in cash for years on Election Day to guarantee outcomes. But this kind of WAM pales in comparison to the public dollars doled out without proper compliance through elected leaders to what appear on the surface to be legitimate developments that claim public interest and community rebuilding as their primary objective. For years the compliance portion of this distribution process has been sidestepped and much of the funding only goes to insiders and those developers who recycle large portions of those public dollars back to the very politicians who approved them. This process is known as “Pay-to-play” and is accepted practice by both parties and, sad to say, most voters; who feel the day may come when it works for them.
Wake up voters, take off the blinders and stop rationalizing that a one party town delivers the goods in a more efficient manner while providing quality of life to the most at the lowest cost. Of course that has been the sell here since the late 1960s and now we have a voter registration that is about 88% to 12% in favor of the Democrats. To make it worse the so called “opposition Republicans” sold out years ago under what is unofficially known as the proportional patronage program where a number of Republicans can hold no-show or no-performance jobs they cannot be fired from for any reason. When this condition becomes that critical, then it is the obligation of the major news media to become the functional opposition party and challenge all that the corrupt machine doles out on a daily basis. Now this is where I tell you that machine actually funds the major newspaper in this city; the Inquirer, and so many of the other news sources are so in love with Mayor Nutter, David L. Cohen, and the others who run this city, that they often omit or back-page the more damaging information to those in elected leadership.
It’s Not the Federal and There Are No Reserves
While the national press seems more interested in keeping us distracted with some of the petty nuances of the Republican primary, the real tragic issues of a failing government rumble on unreported or at least underreported relative to their significance.
Germantown Settlement Far From Settled
When Germantown Settlement and one of its many affiliates filed for bankruptcy protection last year the city political establishment did all they could to bury it. The same is true for those elected officials at the state and federal level who actually did most of the heavy funding over the 25 plus years that Settlement ruled real estate development in Germantown, and was at the same time recipient of all manner of funding dollars for social services made available by a relationship with the political establishment so intertwined that Tammany Hall could have taken lessons.
On October 21, 2010 respected journalist and media commentator Juan Williams was fired from National Public Radio for comments he made on a major cable news/opinion network where he was a part-time contributor, and possibly the most prominent example of a political perspective opposite of that of the Fox Network.
Some of us thought that the usually take charge Sam Katz would breathe new life into the oversight board that was designed to rescue Philadelphia from its own fiscal suicide a few years back, but most importantly to keep it from returning to the practices that nearly bankrupted it. We have not heard much from the new chair as we watch a city further crumble under the weight of its own mismanagement. The Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority, or PICA Board has the broadest of watchdog and enforcement powers and it was intended to maintain it indefinitely.
Public Money. Nonprofits and Politics
It has such a nice, clean ring to it doesn’t it - - a non profit corporation? We all know from the mainstream press that profit making corporations are inherently evil and run by greedy right-wing capitalists who send their money off shore to hide it from the tax man.