the citizen-viewer

Pennsylvania’s governor, Ed Rendell, explains why he’s the last major politician who still publicly backs giant slot machine parlors in Philadelphia:

A recent report revealed Pennsylvania slot machines are the most profitable on the East Coast, according to New Jersey casino officials.

After the results were tallied for earnings in fall 2007, The Pocono Downs was rated the most profitable. Philadelphia Park came in third, and Southwest Pennsylvania’s Meadows and Chester were fourth and fifth respectively.

Governor Rendell is thrilled at the recently released figures.

“I always knew gambling would be popular here especially with our older people who like slots,” said Gov. Rendell.

more

Live video: Counting the votes collected by Philly’s Ballot Box last Tuesday. Usually active between 9am and 11pm.

The, um, citizen’s election commissioner is usually working at the table at the right. Except for Saturday, which is mostly a day off.

(Press the green arrow to play. If the video isn’t working, then we must have finished counting.)

There’s only a week to go before Philadelphia’s primary elections on May 15.

Sure, you got your guys running for mayor and city council. Sheriff too. But the most exciting contest isn’t on the ballot. Not exactly on the ballot, that is.

That’s because the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided that letting Philadelphians vote whether casinos should be built within 1500 feet of their neighborhoods would violate the rights of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board to be the only entity that can decide anything about where casinos can go in the state.

On your waterfront? If we say so. In your back yard? If we say so. In your bathtub with you while you’re soaping up? That’s right, if we frigging say so!

Normally, you would think the courts would step in if Philadelphia actually passed and tried to enforce a law that said, in effect, “no, you can’t build them there even if you do frigging say so.” In this case the court stepped in to say that Philadelphians are forbidden from even expressing their will on the issue.

Well, that’s not precisely true. Rather than actually decide, and have to explain its reasoning, the court ordered the question struck from the ballot while it takes its sweet time to decide—and while the election in question passes right on by, into the pages of history.

This after 27,000 Philadelphians signed a petition to put it on the ballot, and after city council voted twice, unanimously, to put it on the ballot. The law says the question goes on the ballot, and the ballots were duly printed up, when the courts made their non-decision on behalf of the gaming board, backed by Foxwoods and SugarHouse. Those are the two well-connected gambling companies that won the licenses to build their giant slot parlors on the city’s waterfront, right next to tight-knit, 150-year-old neighborhoods.

And why did the casinos and their friends in Harrisburg put a stop to the referendum? Maybe because they knew they would lose, and lose bad? No, they say. Because they wanted to save the city from losing money on a referendum that its residents obviously want to vote on, and chose to vote on. Seriously, that’s their reasoning. I’m not kidding.

Whaddaya figure those scrappy Philadelphians did? They said: You won’t let us vote? No, you can’t stop us from voting!

And that’s where the excitement comes in. Can these meddling kids really set up a citywide election in less than three weeks from start to finish? The citizen-viewer is pulling for them. Partly because what they’re doing is ballsy, potentially history-making, and way cool. And partly because this particular citizen-viewer is one of them.

So click on Philly’s Ballot Box and see how it works. Volunteer — hundreds already have, but more are needed to staff the boxes, tally the votes and throw a hellacious victory party when it all comes off.

This is a citizens’ ballot, after all. And if you can’t volunteer, at least vote (yes, you have to be a registered voter in Philadelphia — and in this Philly election you only get to vote once).

This is the people taking democracy into their own hands. And that’s where democracy feels so right.

PS: The new video “Church Casinos” is here.

It’s great to see that Philadelphia politicos still know how to play the game.

Congressman Bob Brady is in a five-way race for the Democratic nomination for mayor. Brady, by the way, has also been the county chairman of the Democratic Party since 1986.

A couple of weeks ago, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article by Craig R. McCoy and Marcia Gelbart that leads off this way:

Bob Brady has promised that, if he is elected Philadelphia’s mayor, he’ll fight no-bid contracts and nepotism. He was the first candidate to sign a pledge promising to wipe them out.

But for four Brady family members, it might not make a difference. They already have government jobs or benefit from a no-bid contract, an Inquirer review shows.

The most notable instance is Brady’s wife, Debra. The facts in the following are drawn from the Inquirer and elsewhere as noted, served up in a different order and garnished with speculation and idle musings.

The story begins, as so many Philly stories do, with Vince Fumo, the high-ranking Democratic state senator who was recently indicted (on 139 counts, baby!) after a long FBI investigation.

Fumo’s long-time aide and fellow indictee, Ruth Arnao, is married to a fellow named Mitch Rubin, who is described as a close friend of Fumo.

In January of 1999, Rubin created a legal services company called Philadelphia Writ Services. Only four months after Philadelphia Writ was created, then-Mayor (now Governor) Ed Rendell gave it a city contract to deliver notices of lawsuits and that kind of thing. Since then Rubin’s company has taken in over a million dollars a year from the city, without ever having to bid against other companies for the job.

Sometime that same year, 1999, Brady got married to Debra. He may have met her while she worked at Philadelphia’s Redevelopment Authority, where Brady used to be on the board, but like the fact that Debra used to be an Eagles cheerleader, it’s not important.

Somewhere along the line, Mitch Rubin hired the new Mrs. Brady on at Philadelphia Writ. Rubin says she’s “a key employee, handling billing, payroll and office management” who has “a flexible schedule, sometimes working at home on a computer.”

For this, she gets paid — well, first, take a moment and think about what might be a reasonable salary for doing these tasks at a smallish local company. OK, got it? Now let’s see how your guess measures up to what Mitch Rubin pays Debra Brady: $100,000 a year. That’s 116,500,000 tugriks, for any Mongolians out there.

She can buy many fine, strong horses for tugriks like that.

Now we go off a tangent, make that two. If tangents aren’t your style, skip ahead four paragraphs.

Debra Brady also takes home $10,500 a year, plus $800 a meeting, for sitting on the board of Independence Blue Cross, a post she got because she’s a consumer. Hey, there’s no reason to think that the wife of a congressman and Democratic county chair would have any better chance of getting that spot than anyone else.

Not just wives either. Mitch Rubin is also chair of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission; he got the seat vacated by none other than Bob Brady. In 2003, when Rendell became governor and Rubin became chair, Brady’s son Robert got a job at the commission. He now makes $86,000 a year as assistant director of operations.

Joseph Brimmeier, who got his job as director of the Turnpike Commission at the same time Rubin was elected chair, explained it all to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “I’ve never denied that when a job applicant comes to me and has a reference from a politician, I follow it up…If I find out that he or she is a good person and can do the job, I’ll hire them. I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done.”

Under Brimmeier, the commission paid $220,000 to consultant Mike Palermo, a Fumo associate. According to the 267-page Fumo indictment, in which Palermo appears as Senate Contractor No. 4, on page 42, there’s no record of him doing any work for that money, at least not for the Turnpike Commission—although there is plenty of evidence of him doing work for Fumo personally, for no pay at all.

Back to Philadelphia Writ. The jewel among jewels in the article is this:

Although he said her husband had no role in her being hired, Rubin said her family background had one plus: It made it easier to ride herd on the firm’s workers, many of whom have Democratic Party ties.

“Who are they going to complain to, Bob Brady?” Rubin asked.

How about their actual boss? Ah, I see. Rubin seems to say that Brady is their actual boss. They just get paid in city money is all. Philadelphia Writ, a company that makes millions on no-bid city contracts, would therefore be a device to siphon city money to Democratic party stalwarts, including his friend Bob Brady’s wife.

It’s kind of a branch of the Democratic party organization that feeds directly from city coffers, thanks originally to Ed Rendell. Mitch Rubin, like Brimmeier in the tangent above, sees so little wrong with this that he doesn’t even bother to hide it.

Brady’s explanation: “It’s a small town.” Maybe that should be his campaign slogan, instead of “the change Philadelphia needs.”

Citizen-viewers, this is how it’s done!