City Hall Corruption? Nah!
by Joe Pulcinella
This Inquirer article is a must-read. It lumps together everything that is wrong with the City of Philadelphia, the stadiums, Septa, the new Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, etc. Check out these selcted paragraphs:
In the first full transcripts of bugged conversations involving the mayor, power-broker Ronald A. White told Street he would "sell" seats in the mayor's box at the new Eagles stadium - for up to $20,000 in campaign contributions. It is legal to use city property for fund-raisers, but prosecutors say White used one of these seats to try to shake down a businessman.
According to a 2002 Commerce Bank memo, Street invited bank executives to his office to talk about how the bank could finance stadium work - then segued to ask Commerce about refinancing Street's own $65,000 mortgage loan. Street got his refinancing, at market rates.
Check out this exchange between now-deceased Ronald A. White and former City Treasurer Corey Kemp:
"We finally doing it the way they used to do us, right?" White told Kemp in a call in early 2003. "It's terrible, ain't it, brother?"
"Oh, no, it's life," Kemp replied. "Yeah, we ain't hurting nobody... . We just doing our thing."
On Oct. 2, 2003, with Street pulling ahead in the polls, a month before the mayoral election, Kemp tells White that they will "rock and roll" in a second Street term.
White then alludes to Street's controversial remark, in 2002, about increasing the minority role in city government.
Said White: "It's really going to be the brothers and sisters."
Kemp: "The brothers and sisters are running the city. We told you."
White: "We must go wild... ."
Gee, wonder why Philly's got so many problems. Just in case this article link goes away, I have the whole thing archived here in PDF format. Makes for an easy way to share the info, too.