The Fix Is In--Everywhere

When the governor announced the 11-person commission to study how the juvenile justice system got so fouled up in Luzerne county, my golf partner read the story and laughed out loud.  “How?  I’ll tell you how,” he snorted.  “You’ve got business types with money on one side and government types with no money on the other side.”  I argued, “according to that formula, everyone cheats.”  He smiled.  “You’re learning,” he said.

The real surprise with this new governor’s commission isn’t that they’ve formed one; it’s that they’ve formed only one.  There could be lots of studies employing any number of curious people. 

The juvenile justice system is certainly a place to start.  Even if you don’t believe the judge sold children into prison for money—and I don’t—there were still crimes aplenty.  The two judges are on their way to prison, eventually, but the same corrupt system is still in place.  There are other juvies in the state operated or owned or controlled by some of the same players who were involved in this.  They’ll find other ways to influence other officials to see things their way.  Count on it—there’s money involved.

Doings in Luzerne county are all the rage these days, but let’s not forget our friends from the north in Lackawanna county.  Wasn’t the baseball authority up there going to transfer its banking business to the bank of its chairman?  The guy who was also a county commissioner?  Remember he said he knew nothing about it?  Just a coincidence, we were told. 

Come to think of it, isn’t he the same commissioner who hired his buddy to run the workers’ comp funds?  Isn’t the buddy on his way to prison after being found guilty on 19 counts of fraud, money-laundering and the like?  Stole hundreds of thousands, they say. 

I know, you’re thinking that this kind of stuff usually just happens with small-time politicians.  Really?  What about the State Senator from Scranton who owns the very building he rents—to himself—as a politician?  Not only that, he double-dips by also renting space to his re-election committee.  The Senator, aptly named Mellow, is saying that what he’s done these many years is not against the law and not an ethical problem.  Well then, why didn’t he tell us about it before?  Why did we only find out through his wife’s divorce papers? 

Moving up the political food chain, we’re now finding the same dynamics at work in the national health care debate.  Conservatives say that the “Joe Sixpack” rabble which is shouting down members of Congress at town hall meetings is spontaneous.  It’s not.  Disrupters are getting their marching orders from groups funded by the industries which stand to lose most if we get universal coverage.  Insurance companies and Big Pharmacy are paying the groups who are organizing the people who, ironically, are protesting against their own interests.                 

There’s plenty more irony where that came from.  President Obama promised not to continue business as usual.  Well, I think he’s doing a vastly better job than George Bush, but still.  It appears we’re trading a war in Iraq for one in Afghanistan.  Obama’s guys will tell us that at least we have enemies in Afghanistan, and they’re right.  But I worry that we’re inspiring more support for the Taliban by fighting them than by leaving them alone.  And I’m damned sure we’ll never do anything close to winning. 

The President has also chosen as his top economic teams guys who drank the old poisonous Kool-Aid and helped engineer the phony gains of the past decade. 

The fix is even in with the networks.  The New York Times is reporting that GE, parent to MSNBC and Newscorp, parent to Fox News, met and agreed to stop their children from fighting.  The adults got together and decided that the kids should stop criticizing each other on air.  The guise was more civility between Keith Olberman and Bill O'Reilly, but the net effect is to make corporate decisions about what is news and what isn't.  Sends a chill through old news guys like me.

That’s the problem with promises about cleaning up the corruption.  If you start small, you look up the line and realize that whatever good you’re doing will be offset by bigger crooks with bigger appetites and more power.  If you start large, you end up having to hire the very same kinds of people who got you into the mess you’re trying to repair, often because they’re the only ones who know how the damned systems work.