A Despicable Vendetta, Pittsburgh Style
Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2012 6:48 pm
Every four or five years I get a speeding ticket. The circumstances are always the same. I am traveling along, moving with the flow of traffic, well above the posted limit, and I get nailed by a cop. Last time it was because I was driving a red Mercedes with out-of-state plates (I had just bought it in Maryland and had MD temp plates on it). This made me irresistable to the cop, who freely acknowledged to me that both he and 500 other people were traveling this piece of road at exactly the same speed, but he only had time to ticket one of us, and this was just my unlucky day.
It's no excuse and it's no defense, but the fact is, everyone else was doing the same thing (driving over the limit) at that time. I pleaded guilty and paid my fine.
A local Republican state legislatrix, Jane Orie, was sentenced to prison today for...pretty much...running her legislative office the same as every other legislator in the state.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html
The case (and at least one more to follow) is the result of a high-level feud between two powerful political families in Western Pennsylvania. The Democrat District Attorney, who holds ALL the trump cards as well as statutory immunity, had his family (Zappala) insulted by a member of the legislator's family (Orie/Melvin) in connection with shenanigans that went on when the Commonwealth was awarding its first casino licenses.
The DA planted a student intern in Orie's legislative office (to be fair, this is merely my personal belief, and that of many others), and she - the intern - promptly found herself shocked, SHOCKED, by the fact that some of the employees therein - all employees of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania - were ENGAGED IN POLITICAL ACTIVITIES while on State time!
God, my heart.
It is a well-known fact that such employees are prohibited from engaging in political activities when they are on the state's dime. It is also well known and understood that such employees are invariably politically selected, beholden to the legislators, and thus are more than willing to engage in politicking on their own time: evenings, weekends, and such. it should be well-known that the line between "state" time and "private/political" time is often blurred, as "political" phone calls come in during the day, lunchtime errands are run, and so forth. As long as "state" work is not left undone, what's the diff?
So the DA, after an exhaustive and lengthy investigation, found irrefutable evidence that the legislative employees were doing campaign work on company time. The Defense tried, among other things, to make the case that the said Legislatrix had left strict instructions to her office manager to see that that never happened, and so was not responsible for what she didn't know about. On its best day, this was a lame defense. She was guilty as hell.
But in an almost comically inept gambit, the Defense produced an obviously-forged internal memo to that effect (I forget the exact details), in which the signature was photocopied from another document, all of this resulting in a mistrial and re-trial.
Orie was rightly found guilty of not only having her state employees doing political work on company time, but also of forging the document. She would appear to be headed for the slammer for 2-1/2 to 10 years.
One might note that there was no allegation that any of this was done for the personal benefit of the Legislatrix; she got no money or other benefit, and one might also note that she is in a safely-republican district, with no real threat of being voted out of office. Her next career move probably would have been the U.S. House.
The way this case evolved and the selective prosecution hinted at the possibility that Orie was targeted because of the insult to the Zappala family. Doubt was completely removed when the DA moved to charge Orie with the cost of prosecuting the case, and to sieze her retirement fund, with a total claimed personal financial obligation in excess of two million dollars. This has never before occurred in Pennsylvania, in connection with a prosecution of this type.
Further, Zappala has charged Orie's sister, Jane Orie Melvin, an Associate Justice on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, with basically the same crime. Her trial is pending. No doubt she is also guilty as hell.
What can you say? Both of the Orie sisters were conducting their State business and their campaigns in the same way that every other state legislator does, but they are "special cases" in that they were caught in the crosshairs of a petty, vindictive DA, Michael Zapalla.
Both Orie and her sister have been hard-working public servants in the best sense of that expression, with no prior hint of self-dealing, or unethical conduct. Several Pennsylvania legislators have recently been prosecuted and convicted for scams that not only constituted political skullduggery but they also lined their own pockets with cash and extraordinary benefits from the public trough. A few years ago, the legislature voted itself a hugh pay and pension increase in the middle of the night, and the perpetrators were punished mightily at the ballot box. Thus, the public has been receptive to the prosecution of Orie as just another case of the same type. But it has not been.
This is a very disturbing episode. A very valuable elected official is personally ruined, and will spend time in jail and probably be financially ruined, for executing her office in exactly the same way as every other legislator in Pennsylvania. And the perpetrator is immune from any official ramifications for carrying out this personal vendetta. It sucks.
It's no excuse and it's no defense, but the fact is, everyone else was doing the same thing (driving over the limit) at that time. I pleaded guilty and paid my fine.
A local Republican state legislatrix, Jane Orie, was sentenced to prison today for...pretty much...running her legislative office the same as every other legislator in the state.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html
The case (and at least one more to follow) is the result of a high-level feud between two powerful political families in Western Pennsylvania. The Democrat District Attorney, who holds ALL the trump cards as well as statutory immunity, had his family (Zappala) insulted by a member of the legislator's family (Orie/Melvin) in connection with shenanigans that went on when the Commonwealth was awarding its first casino licenses.
The DA planted a student intern in Orie's legislative office (to be fair, this is merely my personal belief, and that of many others), and she - the intern - promptly found herself shocked, SHOCKED, by the fact that some of the employees therein - all employees of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania - were ENGAGED IN POLITICAL ACTIVITIES while on State time!
God, my heart.
It is a well-known fact that such employees are prohibited from engaging in political activities when they are on the state's dime. It is also well known and understood that such employees are invariably politically selected, beholden to the legislators, and thus are more than willing to engage in politicking on their own time: evenings, weekends, and such. it should be well-known that the line between "state" time and "private/political" time is often blurred, as "political" phone calls come in during the day, lunchtime errands are run, and so forth. As long as "state" work is not left undone, what's the diff?
So the DA, after an exhaustive and lengthy investigation, found irrefutable evidence that the legislative employees were doing campaign work on company time. The Defense tried, among other things, to make the case that the said Legislatrix had left strict instructions to her office manager to see that that never happened, and so was not responsible for what she didn't know about. On its best day, this was a lame defense. She was guilty as hell.
But in an almost comically inept gambit, the Defense produced an obviously-forged internal memo to that effect (I forget the exact details), in which the signature was photocopied from another document, all of this resulting in a mistrial and re-trial.
Orie was rightly found guilty of not only having her state employees doing political work on company time, but also of forging the document. She would appear to be headed for the slammer for 2-1/2 to 10 years.
One might note that there was no allegation that any of this was done for the personal benefit of the Legislatrix; she got no money or other benefit, and one might also note that she is in a safely-republican district, with no real threat of being voted out of office. Her next career move probably would have been the U.S. House.
The way this case evolved and the selective prosecution hinted at the possibility that Orie was targeted because of the insult to the Zappala family. Doubt was completely removed when the DA moved to charge Orie with the cost of prosecuting the case, and to sieze her retirement fund, with a total claimed personal financial obligation in excess of two million dollars. This has never before occurred in Pennsylvania, in connection with a prosecution of this type.
Further, Zappala has charged Orie's sister, Jane Orie Melvin, an Associate Justice on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, with basically the same crime. Her trial is pending. No doubt she is also guilty as hell.
What can you say? Both of the Orie sisters were conducting their State business and their campaigns in the same way that every other state legislator does, but they are "special cases" in that they were caught in the crosshairs of a petty, vindictive DA, Michael Zapalla.
Both Orie and her sister have been hard-working public servants in the best sense of that expression, with no prior hint of self-dealing, or unethical conduct. Several Pennsylvania legislators have recently been prosecuted and convicted for scams that not only constituted political skullduggery but they also lined their own pockets with cash and extraordinary benefits from the public trough. A few years ago, the legislature voted itself a hugh pay and pension increase in the middle of the night, and the perpetrators were punished mightily at the ballot box. Thus, the public has been receptive to the prosecution of Orie as just another case of the same type. But it has not been.
This is a very disturbing episode. A very valuable elected official is personally ruined, and will spend time in jail and probably be financially ruined, for executing her office in exactly the same way as every other legislator in Pennsylvania. And the perpetrator is immune from any official ramifications for carrying out this personal vendetta. It sucks.