Corruption

==Insights==
===Post-Gazette Letter to Editor: Cronyism city===
Bob O'Connor got one thing right regarding city/county mergers;
Pittsburgh and Charlotte are "100 percent different" ("Merger's Aim
Would Be Better Services, O'Connor Says
<http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06173/700242-53.stm>," June 22). Unlike
Pittsburgh, Charlotte hasn't been controlled for six decades by a
political machine that has controlled access to everything from park
shelter permits, to city jobs and contracts for their own personal benefit.
The logical and obvious result of any merger of services is that county
residents will end up seeing the higher taxes, lower quality services,
routine abuses of public resources by officials and the vote buying with
sweetheart contracts to unions that many ex-city residents fled.
Mere claims to the contrary by the very officials who stand to benefit
from the city's corrupt, one-party, machine politics spreading
countywide simply don't hold water. They have a long way to go in making
a sound argument to county residents that integrating the city's system
of patronage, nepotism and cronyism won't simply extend the city's
financial chaos and political tyranny to the rest of the county.
Paul Galvanek, Shaler
==Institutional Corruption==
==Links==
* Crime and Punishment
* Robert Ney, ex-Congressman from Ohio given 30-month sentence.
===Media===
* Trib Laurel to Steve Zipalla, 
* The slush fund grows: Institutional corruption in the Post-Gazette, June 19, 2006
:What an unconscionable scam. The Pennsylvania General Assembly's slush fund grew from $135 million in 2004 to $187 million in 2005. In an argument that could be propounded only by a liar and accepted by a fool, the Legislature says the fund gives it "independence" from the governor. Why, a tyrant might hold it hostage to this or that by refusing to sign a budget -- hence threatening to put the Legislature out of business.
* Corruption: the 'second insurgency' costing $4bn a year The Guardian -- One third of rebuilding contracts under criminal investigation by Julian Borger in Washington, David Pallister, December 2, 2006
: The Iraqi government is in danger of being brought down by the wholesale smuggling of the nation's oil and other forms of corruption that together represent a 'second insurgency', according to a senior US official. Stuart Bowen, who has been in charge of auditing Iraq's faltering reconstruction since 2004, said corruption had reached such levels that it threatened the survival of the state.
* Corruption-Marraccini-news of Elizabeth, PA in 2007, former district judge
==Insights==
* Corruption or Integrity? from Democracy Rising PA
* Assessment Bribe from Philly in September 2007