On the front page of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review (April 29, 2013) is a story about the corrupt manner in which contracts have been awarded on the Pennsylvania turnpike. The article states:
“Giving money to candidates to help with lucrative contracts was common and expected, according to two contractors mentioned in a damning grand jury report that produced criminal charges against eight people connected with the Pennsylvania Turnpike. . . .
“For us, it’s [making payments to PennDot managers] all about marketing,” [said one of the contractors]. ”
On the surface, this is just another corruption-in-government-and-business story. Unfortunately, it’s a little more than that.
More than a year ago I sat in a room as part of a legal team taking depositions from road contractors who were being sued for making false statements to the federal government. The alleged false statements were that they were supplying inspectors with a lower level of training than was called for in the contracts.
One contractor, testifying as to his improper payments to PennDot officials said words to the effect, “It was just marketing.”
I glanced at a colleague in disbelief. This guy had not only admitted to making illegal payments, but he was admitting that the payments were part of a marketing plan –a way to get business. In other words, I give you money and you give me a contract. That’s what marketing is.
It’s called “Pay to play.” And often the pay part is cheap. One contractor mentioned in the newspaper story paid $5,000 to Gov. Ed Rendell’s campaign three months before he was awarded a hundred fifty million dollar contract to work on the turnpike.
The importance of these stories is they illustrate the depth of business-government corruption. It is so commonplace that its participants often don’t even realize they have broken the law. It never occurs to some of them there was anything wrong with these payments. Everyone does it. That’s how the system operates.
We have a serious problem. The cancer has metathesized. It now affects the government from the highest levels down to mid-level bureaucrats.
It appears that these people and hundreds of thousands like them have no awareness of the difference between right and wrong. In fact, the common idea seems to be that whatever benefits the actor is right, regardless of the law, of ethics, of quality of work, or of implications for the government.
This sort of self-centered wrongdoing is like graffiti. It destroys the quality of life wherever it appears and, ultimately, it undermines the government that is its victim, for now agents of the government have made the government complicit in crimes that funnel tax dollars to those willing pay.
For generations we have paid no attention to who gets elected to public office, even to the point of electing a man without a birth certificate as president, and we may now be at the point of no return.
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