As a lawyer
and unabashed progressive liberal I am not proud to be a
Pennsylvanian or a registered democrat within its borders. Our Commonwealth’s legal and governmental
institutions are operating in a manner that makes the federal dysfunction
appear to be a well oiled machine. Elected
democrats are making matters worse. Let
me count the ways.
The
promise of a socially enlightened Democratic Governor has degraded into a
budget impasse that is beginning to cause irreparable damage to the very
individuals who were to receive an increase in badly needed services. Moreover,
while education was the centerpiece of Governor Wolf’s campaign, poor school
districts are being strangled as they struggle to maintain even the most basic
learning environment. Somehow, making
the sick, suffering and most needy in Pennsylvania go through a near death
experience before the cavalry arrives does not seem fair or just.
No solution is
in sight as Pennsylvania’s credit rating prepares to plummet and legislators
wait for the party across the aisle to blink. The budget is not the place to
draw an ideological line in the sand as human services scramble to save what
they can. It is a place for old fashioned horse trading to get the services up
and running for those who need them.
Our Democratic
Attorney General and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court are the laughing stock of
the nation. Kathleen Kane’s legal
license has been removed because of pending perjury charges and is now
ineffective as Pennsylvania’s top prosecutor.
The only function in which she can excel is to slowly release her hoard
of sensitive emails that continue to embarrass a Supreme Court Justice and
possibly other members of the “old boys’ network” who she claims are
responsible for her difficulties. While
no one can seem to explain how the offending emails and the perjury charges are
related these two important Commonwealth institutions continue to lose
credibility and respect.
The Supreme
Court suffered a previous blow when another sitting member, Justice Seamus
McCaffery, resigned last
October as a direct result of the email scandal. I was encouraged that a new group of
reformist candidates were running for the three Supreme Court openings in
November. The opportunity to reshape Pennsylvania jurisprudence for decades to
come seemed like a breath of fresh air.
My elation with the democratic Supreme Court
candidates was severely dampened with the recent wave of attack ads sponsored
by democratic interest groups.
Predictably, the Republican candidates are now responding with attack
ads of their own. In my view these ads
are unnecessary, unprofessional, confusing to voters and undermine the legal
profession and our highest court. This
is exactly the wrong message for so called reformist candidates to send.
With the
Governor’s office, legislature, Attorney General and Supreme Court paralyzed by
inaction or scandal, what is to be done? One can only hope that all candidates
for the Supreme Court will denounce the attack ads in an attempt to return a
semblance of decorum to these important campaigns. Further, let us hope the
ghosts of former Governors Tom Ridge and Ed Rendell return to the halls of
Harrisburg to help guide our misplaced lawmakers to a commonsense solution to
the budget debacle. Lastly there is
always the possibility that Attorney General Kane will cop a plea deal and sail
off into the sunset to join the disgraced politicos who have preceded her.
Only then can
Pennsylvania return to the ranks of the commonly mediocre rather than the
present borderline ungovernable.
While I share your dismay with the current state of the commonwealth I feel you have been unfair to the Governor who is merely trying to govern. The problem is the naive notion, rampant in conservative corners, that you run for office by pledging never to raise taxes and then just sit there waiting for someone else to do the heavy lifting - that's the problem!
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