David Patti, president and chief executive officer of the Pennsylvania Business Council, says he is sad. We can just imagine his tears hitting his keyboard as he typed out the missive that appeared in yesterday's Central Penn Business Journal.
"I am sad for Pennsylvania. Yet another round of indictments for public corruption has rocked the Capitol...It makes me sad....What saddens me most about public sector corruption is the taint it puts on government service and public policy." (Central Penn Business Journal 11/20/09)After reading that, you'd think that Patti was a pure and virginal observer of Pennsylvania politics. He does make an oblique mention of having participated in "public service," but he doesn't mention exactly how he conducted himself while employed by the Commonwealth.
What Patti fails to mention is that while a staff person for the State Senate Republican caucus, he was doing the exact kind of activity that he is so sad about now:
"David Patti, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Business Council, said legislative staffers have worked on political campaigns in both parties for generations...As a staffer in the Senate Republican Policy Development and Research Office in the 1980s, Patti said he embraced the chance to join campaigns. 'It’s what we loved to do,' he said." (Patriot News 9/22/07)Everyone who worked with Patti at that time knew him to do massive amounts of campaign work in the Capitol on state time and using taxpayer paid resources. He is lying if he contends otherwise.
We're getting a kick out of the blubbering and denials emanating from the Capitol in the wake of Corbett's grand jury presentments. Patti's editorial filled with crocodile tears is one of the best examples of this hypocrisy yet.
How does a bloke who knows NOTHING about business get to be CEO of the PA Business Council, or any business group for that matter? This guy is a career poli-crat. (tm) who mastered the art of sucking up to powerful politicians to get where he is.
ReplyDeleteThe Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and all its government branches, agencies, and entities are the persuasive all-pervading educator to our citizens as intended by William Penn, Pennsylvanians' and the some Founding Fathers as Ben Franklin. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.
ReplyDeleteAs everyone knows, crime is contagious when it begins and is not stopped.
Indeed, if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto him; it invites anarchy. To declare that the end justifies the means, to declare that the government may commit crimes without consequences, would bring terrible retribution, chaos, and breakdown of our society.
Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are guidelines to the citizen.
At the same time, the right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, and by blogs, all political questions, conduct, and events, is to examine the health of all political institutions. It is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact, to their existence, that without it we must fall into despotism and anarchy.
So I am growing tired of seeing AG Corbett trashed here, I am is sympathy for Team Casa and now Perzel and his People caught in the cross hairs of practices that seem more normal than criminal.
But I am thankful we have a place to argue, learn, and discuss the solutions of a problem brought upon government by government and now must be resolved by government or the people by their votes in the future.
It is one thing to be passionate about your views, beliefs and allegations towards others, but it is important to be decent toward each other too.
Truth, in its tussle for acknowledgment, passes through four distinct stages.
ReplyDeleteFirst, we say it is damnable, perilous, unruly, and will surely upset society.
Second, we declare it is sacrilegious, infidelic and contrary to the Bible.
Third, we say it is really a matter of no importance either one way or the other.
Fourth, we declare that we have always upheld it and believed it.
It is time to tell the truth, not spin it, and the sooner we do it, face it, and embrace it, the sooner we can work together to help each other overcome our faults and ask for a helping hand.
The power of authority is never more subtle and effective than when it produces a psychological “atmosphere” or “climate” favorable to the life of certain modes of belief, unfavorable, and even fatal, to the life of others.
ReplyDeleteThe corrosion of every government begins with the decay of the values on which it was founded.
When law enforcers are shown to have such unwavering honesty, only the most impolite among us would question the methods they use to get their man.
The common citizen considers constitutional guarantees as bothersome “Technicalities” that obstruct straightforward law enforcers in the performance of their duties.
It is the common fate of the lazy to see their rights become prey to the energetic exercise of guarding your rights and freedom from others greedom.
The circumstances upon which God or People with Rights be given within the constitution is eternal vigilance.
The irony is when this condition if broken by those employed to enforce the laws because it causes servitude in the disguise of the consequences of one’s crime, and the punishment of one’s guilt.
These are the days when men of all societal regulations and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted to not wary of being troubled.
When the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing inspiration, when originality is taken to be a mark of instability, and when, in small alteration of the original fable, then the tasteless replaces the insipid.
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. Fate waits the same for the free man as well as for him incarcerated by another’ power.
Never forget, power without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish. No matter how noble the original intentions, the seductions of power can turn any movement from one seeking equal rights to one that would deny them to others.
It is not when you start telling the truth, it is more when you do it, this is why he being saved.
ReplyDelete