On January 6, seven more employees of the Pennsylvania legislature pleaded guilty to doing partisan campaign work with state resources. See this story. The partisan campaign work included many types of activity, including work against the Green Party’s statewide petition in 2006 and Ralph Nader’s 2004 petition. In Pennsylvania, all petitions are deemed to be valid if the petition has more than the required number of signatures. However, any individual may challenge a petition. No statewide minor party or independent petition had been challenged in Pennsylvania since 1938, until 2004. Such challenges are a great deal of work for the challenge. The challenges undoubtably would not have occurred if the challengers had not had the benefit of state government resources.
I wish the article had mentioned Nader or the Greens. But maybe these particular people weren’t involved in that part of it? Or was it just more trouble than it was worth to specify this?
Let’s see — what wrongdoing does the story cite? “Between 2004 and 2006, House Democrats awarded more than $1 million in previously secret government bonuses to hundreds of staffers. Most of that, the government alleges, was given to aides as rewards for working on political campaigns on state time.” That’s pointing in the right direction, but it’s not exactly clear or specific.
The article does note that the idea of the “scheme” was “to stick the taxpayers with the cost of helping Democrats win elections.” But the only specific act described was this: “Manzo, who served as chief of staff to then-Majority Leader Bill DeWeese (D., Greene), was also charged with putting his girlfriend, a former beauty queen, into a no-work state job in a phony state office above a cigar store in Pittsburgh.” I wonder what was in the rest of the “10 felony counts of theft, conflict of interest, and conspiracy” to which he pled guilty. . . .
Here’s another article…this one from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that mentions the Green Party and Carl Romanelli in the last two paragraphs:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10007/1026432-454.stm
What percentage of party hack employees actually do *legal* work ???
Are ALL party hack regimes about the same ???
What day will the economy really go bust ???
P.R. and A.V. — before it is too late.
@2: Thanks!