How much you want to bet if this story involved Republicans the story would be all over the national nightly news?
Scandal in the statehouse: 12 Democrats face corruption charges
A SORDID TANGLE of corruption, cash and sex rocked the Statehouse yesterday in a political scandal that left one current and one former legislator and 10 current and former staff members facing criminal charges.
Among the accusations leveled by two state grand juries: Former top legislative staffer Mike Manzo got his lover, a twenty-something former rural beauty queen, a $29,000 job and $7,000 bonus mostly for doing her schoolwork.
State Attorney General Tom Corbett announced the charges against the 12, all Democrats, in a news conference in Harrisburg.
“It’s a very sad day in Pennsylvania,” Corbett said.
The long-running investigation began with a Harrisburg Patriot-News story about secret bonuses to legislative employees. The 12 are accused of using public funds to finance political activities, a vacation, meals for friends and Manzo’s no-show job for his girlfriend.
It doesn’t stop there:
The allegations strike at top party staffers in the House, and more charges are expected, say prosecutors. Court documents suggested that hundreds of Democratic staffers might have been involved in illegal work.
How does some of the media in Philly respond? By asking why there is no investigations being done on Republicans.
Reporters pressed Corbett yesterday on why he was charging 12 Democrats in an election year, rather than waiting until he’d investigated the Republican caucuses also.
Isn’t that special? So a scandal involved some Dem’s….big deal. But what about the Republicans?
Translated this means if a Democrat gets in trouble its all just a distraction, if a Republican gets in trouble it’s a swamp of corruption.
But maybe, just maybe, the reason the Democrats were being hauled into court first is because of this:
At the end of 2006, after winning back control of the lower chamber, House Democrats gave nearly $1.9 million in bonuses to 717 aides – more than the other three caucuses combined.
Or this?
Corbett said yesterday he’ll probe Republicans and Democrats and that he had focused first on House Democrats because investigators discovered they were beginning to destroy documents relevant to the case.
But hey, three times more money was being doled out by the Democrats AND they were destroying evidence is just not enough to placate the media when its a Republican doing the investigating.
The thing is that both parties have their corruption. I will make no excuse for a Republican caught with his hand in the till either but it just seems that when a Democrat gets into hot water all we hear is the “its all partisan” and “its just a distraction” kind of crap. When the Republican gets into trouble its up on the national nightly news and all the talk is of the “culture of corruption.”
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hmmmm, drain the swamp of corruption etc…oh how things have changed once oaths were taken.
Anyone got a link to that pamphlet? Might have some appropriate draining-of-the-swamp promises in it.
This was front-page news in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this morning. I was pleased to see that they mentioned party affiliation in the first paragraph. The PPG is usually pretty decent when it comes to neutral reporting, though.
Will be interesting to see if this swings control of the statehouse back to the Republicans. After the 2006 election the Dems ended up in control by some tiny margin (like 102-100 or something). On the one hand this should hurt them in the upcoming elections, but on the other all Republicans are facing a headwind this fall…
i always wonder how they can think that they will get away with any of this. i don’t care what party they are from, they always think they can get away with it. makes a person who pays their taxes and follows the rules a bit pissy because they do end up getting a slap on the wrist usually.