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Citizen’s Bank Park, 7:45 PM last night  by JEFF FUSCO

PHILLY.COM: A mob of teens [NOT pictured, above] injured at least two people and robbed others during a brief rampage Friday night in Center City, police said. About 9:15 p.m., police started receiving 911 calls of a group of 20 to 40 teens assaulting people. Police found a man on the ground bleeding badly from the head at Walnut and Juniper Streets. He was transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.A street robbery was reported at 16th and Spruce Streets, police said. An iPhone was taken in that or another robbery. A man was assaulted at 15th and Sansom Streets, police said. MORE

INQUIRER: Four people, including an 11-year-old boy, who took part in a destructive romp through Center City Philadelphia on Friday night face charges of assault and conspiracy. The four were among a crowd of marauding youths who swarmed the sidewalk at Juniper and Walnut streets about 9:15 p.m. and pounced on a 33-year-old man, punching and kicking him. Police say the attack appeared to be random. Moments later, at 15th and Sanson, a mob descended on a 59-year-old man and kicked, punched and beat him. This attack, too, was random, police said. The beatings, which happened in plain view of people out for a stroll on a summer night or on their way to popular Center City restaurants, stunned passersby. MORE

PREVIOUISLY: AP TICKER Gets Medieval On Flash Mob Violence

Our top story tonight: Mob violence. No, not the Goodfellas/Sopranos kind of mob — I’m talking about flash mobs of violent black teenagers roaming the streets of Philadelphia looking for people to beat unmerciful — people whose only crime, best we can tell, was being white at the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is so not good. This is bad for Philadelphia — setting back years of revival and revitalization. This is bad for white people — justifying the worst instincts of the racist and the borderline racist. This is especially bad for black people, because if this keeps up, the hammer will come down — make no mistake — and it won’t be pretty. There will be curfews, there will be lockdowns, there will be police beatdowns. It’ll make Frank Rizzo and Atilla the Hun look like faggots.

To the people who did this, or have been involved in similar incidents around the city in the last year and a half, I beseech you to think this through. There are consequences for your actions, terrible consequences.

Not the least of which is you made the crypto-racist commenters at Philly.com sound like reasonable people — which is really saying something, because the commenters at Philly.com are hateful bottom-feeding trolls who look for every opportunity to demonize black people with offensive stereotypes. So congratulations on that.

Also, you made all the trigger-happy, paranoid Dirty Harry-wannabe types that refuse to leave the house without a concealed weapon seem like common sense people. Which really takes a lot of effort. So, again, fuck you for that.

But most hurtful of all is that your actions did to the legacy of Martin Luther King what a thousand cracker sheriff billy clubs, attack dogs and fire hoses could not. You shit on everything he lived and died for. And when you fuck with Martin Luther King — well, now you’re on the fightin’ side of me…

RELATED: A Small Army Of Assholes Beats Up Onion Editor

RELATED: The Onion Is All Fun And Games Until Somebody Gets Hurt And Then They Are Heartless Money-Grubbing Corporate Greedheads Just Like All The Rest

PREVIOUSLY: Flash Mobs All Fun & Games Until Someone Gets Hurt

PREVIOUSLY:  Everything You Know About Flash Mobs Is WRONG

PREVIOUSLY: JUDGE 2 PARENTS: Only You Can Prevent Flash Mobs

PREVIOUSLY:  QUIET RIOT: Flash Mob Takes South Street

PREVIOUSLY: CRACKDOWN: Cops Get Medieval On Flash Mob’s Ass

PREVIOUSLY: MOB RULES: Flash Mob Rampages At The Gallery

Deep inside Anders Breivik’s 1,400 page ‘manifesto’, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” in between all the raging Islamophobia, pathological nativism, and bomb-making instructions, the man who killed 77 innocent, unarmed people in cold blood, warns readers of the negative effect that gangsta rap lyrics have on society. In section 2.67 of the PDF version, Breivik includes a slightly bastardized version of John P McWhorter‘s 2003 anti-rap diatribe How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back, which singles out a few of the most sensational lines from  Schooly D’s proto-gangsta rap “PSK What Does It Mean?” to illustrate the toxicity of hip-hop:

Copped my pistols, jumped into the ride
Got at the bar, copped some flack
Copped some cheeba-cheeba, it wasn’t wack
Got to the place, and who did I see
A sucker-ass nigga tryin to sound like me
Put my pistol up against his head
I said, “Sucker-ass nigga, I should shoot you dead”

What is not included are the lines that come after, where Schooly decides to put down the gun and pick up the microphone:

A thought ran across my educated mind
Said, man, Schoolly D ain’t doin no time
Grabbed the microphone and I started to talk
Sucker-ass nigga, man, he started to walk

Which Schooly tries to point out in interviews with the City Paper and NBC PHILADLEPHIA. He plans to release a formal statement Monday morning, according to his publicist. If we were in his shoes we would say this: I am not interested in lectures about the negative effect of rap lyrics on society from mass murderers. Period. End of story.

[By KAL via THE ECONOMIST]
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” If Shakespeare was indeed correct—and I find no “earthly” reason to question his insight—you can expect to find those words displayed in bright neon lights above the graves of Boehner, Cantor & Ilk, followed by a blinking asterisk informing the faithful that there are empty coffins down below. Yeah, yeah, I know the matter has been pretty much ranted (me included) to death, but I thought I’d give it one last semi-comical college try before the conflagration ensues. Let’s start by listing some indisputable means by which the matter could be instantaneously resolved (not necessarily in order of importance):

   1) The Republican party leadership could be consigned to homelessness for a month.

   2) Threaten to increase Congressional work schedule to 150 days annually.

   3) All right side aisle sitters in Congress would agree to take a lie detector test.

   4) Prospective Social Security recipients would consent to not count birthdays between 65 and 80.

   5) Medicare recipients would acquiesce to no more than one doctor visit per terminal illness.

   6) The poor would just go away.

   7) All professional athletes would agree to a one-time 10% tithe to reduce the national debt.

   8) Most of the wealthiest among us would grow a conscience.

   9) Tina Fey would commit to a run for President.

Granted, these probably don’t cover all the viable solutions, but certainly even the most cynical among you would have to agree it’s a pretty good start. Hell, this whole business could be one of the greatest Greek tragedies of all time if it weren’t so damn serious. Folks, I’m beyond the “stage” of incomprehension. I’m passed that “which passeth all understanding.” I’ve expressed my bewilderment with almost every “act” I know short of committing a serious crime. And now, as you can surely tell, I’ve finally reached my “wits” end.

So, here’s my last missive to Boehner and the boys: Up to this point I’ve tried to look at the situation from a somewhat (albeit minutely so) detached perspective. You know, trying to give the other side the courtesy of at least one of my tinnitus tainted ears. But, I’ve got to tell you, that perspective changed drastically when I realized just how close we were getting to the third of the month. Now you fellas are starting to screw around with something very near and dear to my personal well being, my pocketbook. And, as you can no doubt imagine, I don’t like that one fucking bit. Neither does my landlord, and he’s a pretty conservative leaning guy. It may be just a snapshot of the overall picture out here in reality land, John, but you might want to take note. You’ve stepped over the party “line.” You’re starting to seriously piss off BOTH sides now. Even my neighbors (and they’re borderline Huns) are fed up with you. You’re becoming a pariah, John. Pretty soon you’ll be a man without a country.

ANOTHER EARTH (2011, directed by Mike Cahill, 90 minutes, U.S.)

BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Another Earth is an under-baked, overly-somber indie drama that attempts to enliven its paper-thin premise with an overlay of spiritual sci-fi. While both the drama and the fantastical elements are under-developed and poorly-executed, this independently-produced Sundance award winner has a deep well of earnestness that gives the film its own unique cock-eyed passion. Like the low-budget Christian-themed films that played the church circuit in the 70s and 80s, Another Earth‘s soggy storytelling may skirt believability yet it casts an odd spell because it believes so deeply in it’s own inspirational blather.

Newcomer Brit Marling is the soulful Rhoda, a high school student who plans to study astronomy but whose life is thrown off-course when she crashes her car into a family while driving drunk. She goes to jail for four years, and when she is released she seeks out John (William Mapother), the professor and composer who lost his wife and child in the accident. She becomes John’s housekeeper, unbeknownst to him that she’s the one responsible for his family’s demise. She is consumed with guilt, he is consumed with loss and as a romance between them blossoms, the weight of Rhoda’s secret looms.

Oh, I should mention that another planet has appeared in the sky! It’s earth’s double and when our government makes contact it appears that there are dopplegängers of all of us up there. And Rhoda has entered an essay contest (!?!) to be amongst the first to rocket up and explore the planet! Will she win the contest? Will John find out that she responsible for his family’s death? Will Rhoda appear in another scene, looking longingly at the giant planet hanging in the sky? The answer is inescapably, “Yes!”

Another Earth‘s script, by its star Marling and director Mike Cahill never puts enough flesh on its characters bones to bring them to life. Rhoda’s character is “guilt” and John’s is “loss” and the two are motivated by these singular emotions in every scene, claustrophobically defined by their situations. The actors both lack seasoning and their slow coming together reeks of acting class exercises. This threadbare drama would have never made it into theaters if it wasn’t for the sci-fi promise of that planet hanging in sky, and after every generic plot twist director Cahill will cutaway to the planet in order to give the situation some gravity. Metaphorically, I suppose the other planet represents the idea of second chances but the script does little to develop such an idea. The sci-fi element is barely developed until the film’s final moments, when it unveils a meaningless and predictable “gotcha” that neither raises our pulse nor gives us much to chew on for the ride home.

Yet it is the way that the performers throw themselves into their one-dimensional characters that reminded me of religious zealots, resolutely sticking to their improbable gospel and in love with their own conviction. This quality gives Another Earth an impressive, undeniable verve, although their faith in the material is ultimately misplaced. Another Earth exists to convince you of its profundity but before heading out to the stars, the filmmakers should have better mastered their craft here at home.

But if you still want to leave Earth, this Sunday Exhumed Films is presenting all five the film from the original Planet of the Apes series in a one day-long program at the I-House. Well, I hope I’m not spoiling anything by saying that the astronaut Taylor (Charlton Heston) hasn’t left earth at all, he has instead traveled to a future earth ruled by intelligent apes (a completely different situation then then what is currently going on here in Washington). The original 1968 film set a template for the way blockbusters are franchised today, producing five films over five years, leading to a TV series, a cartoon and assorted action figures, ephemera and now two reboots. While the first film was a pretty extravagant affair, Twentieth Century Fox studios wasted no time skimping on its following chapters, as well as assigning B-list directors. Still, they each provide their own interest, gathering much of their charm from the game simian performance of Roddy McDowell as Cornelius (and later his son, Caesar.) Onward from the original, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) features a mutant cult that worship nuclear warheads, Escape From the Planet of the Apes (1971) propels Cornelius and his wife Zira (A Streetcar Named Desire‘s Kim Hunter) into the swinging 1970s (nice pantsuit, Zira), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) is a subversive slave revolt drama set mainly in a high-rise (a plot most-closely connected to the forthcoming James Franco vehicle Rise of the Planet of the Apes) and Battle For the Planet of the Apes (1973) is a bit of an afterthought, a western where Pacifistic Caesar must pick up the gun to defend against mutants and the warrior gorilla Aldo (Claude Akins). Talk about escape? Sunday you’ll can lose yourself in a world without CGI as you try to untangle the film’s shifting metaphors on race, war, and justice, as they reach across time, space, and species.

Exhumed Films Wants You To ‘Go Ape!” “Planet of the Apes” Marathon is happening at The International House (3701 Chestnut St., Philly) Sunday July 31^st at 11:00am

FRESH AIR

Melissa Febos’ new memoir, Whip Smart, details the four years she spent working as a dominatrix. Febos enacted fantasy sequences, spanked grown men and verbally humiliated them for $75 an hour in a dungeon located somewhere in midtown Manhattan. Febos, who writes that she got started in sex work to pay for a drug habit, tells Terry Gross that working in a dungeon felt like “being in a womb.” “Pretty much all of the dungeons were outfitted with some sort of coat rack-related thing that had all sorts of floggers, riding crops,” she says. “We had giant coils of rope in our utility closet — like thousands of feet that we would just cut off when you needed it. There were gas masks and cages and a big hanging Inquisition-style cage in the red room. And there were mirrors along all of the walls, and they were really vast — and with all of the walls and the ceilings painted, it had a very specific effect.” That effect, says Febos, was creating a fantasy world for her clients — and for herself. “In the beginning, it did feel pretty powerful to act out those roles, but after a little while it wasn’t my fantasy in most cases,” she says. “In a lot of ways, [enacting the scenarios] felt more humiliating to me than it did to them.” Febos currently teaches writing at SUNY Purchase College and the Gotham Writers’ Workshop. She received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.

***

A chance to win two tix to see Death Cab For Cutie at The Mann next Friday, look for it Monday on a Phawker near you!

THINK PROGRESS: In his manifesto, Breivik cites an assortment of right-wing figures, but a troubling theme is evident in the 1,500 page document. Breivik was directly influenced by the same cadre of American anti-Muslim activists that have gained a powerful following in the contemporary conservative movement in recent years. Many of the leading Islamophobes who inspired Breivik have also been responsible for a rising tide of hate campaigns, from the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” hysteria to a disturbing trend of demonstrations against Muslim Americans across the country:

– Breivik cites neoconservative Islamophobe Frank Gaffney on opposition to Turkey joining the EU, and reprints a post from Gaffney’s think tank, the Center for Security Policy: Gaffney, a former Reagan official, is a regular on Fox News, a writer for the Washington Times op-ed page, a sought-after speaker at major conservative conferences, and a ubiquitous talking head on talk radio. His think tank created a website to orchestrate protests against the the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” in Manhattan. When he is not arguing that President Obama is a secret agent of the Muslim Brotherhood or claiming that radical Muslims have infiltrated the top levels of American government, he is calling for people who practice Islam to be prosecuted under sedition laws.

– Breivik cites blogger Pamella Geller several times in his manifesto, reprints articles praising her: Geller, the writer behind the popular anti-Muslim blog Atlas Shrugs, has been perhaps the most proactive anti-Muslim activist, given the fact she was the first to smear the planned Park51 community center as a “victory mosque” and was involved in demonstrations against the construction before most of the media gained an interest. As Geller travels the country promoting her belief that Muslims are an inherent threat to American society, she has been connected to protests against mosques in California, Tennessee, and other states.

– Breivik posts a 45-minute interview with Brigitte Gabriel, a leading organizer of grassroots anti-Muslim activism: Gabriel is the author of several popular anti-Muslim books, is the founder of ACT! For America, a group Gabriel created to engineer a permanent activism base for efforts to scapegoat Muslim Americans. Her group has collaborated with Tea Party groups, pushed bans on Sharia law in states, and mobilized a vicious hate rally in Orange County earlier this year. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Gabriel confessed that she regularly advises Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Peter King (R-NY).

– Breivik extensively quotes Robert Spencer, a leading anti-Muslim writer sponsored by David Horowitz: Spencer’s blog Jihad Watch, along with Geller’s site (Spencer and Geller created the group “Stop Islamization of America” to distribute action alerts), have driven anti-Muslim memes in the news for years. Sponsored by David Horowitz’s think tank, Jihad Watch has led efforts to purge the Republican Party of Muslim Americans and is a constant purveyor of strange anti-Muslim claims, like one recently that former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) had secretly converted to Islam. Despite his links to Holocaust deniers and other unsavory individuals, Spencer provides punditry for Fox News, National Review, and other top conservative media organs. ThinkProgress has found his books sold at CPAC, the College Republican conference, and events for Young Americans for Freedom.

– Breivik linked ten times to video clips for the movie Obsession, a documentary created by a secretive group called the Clarion Fund: In 2008, a mysterious organization called the Clarion Fund mailed the documentary Obsession to 28 million households in swing states leading up to the election. The movie argues that Muslims are waging a war against America, and will stop at nothing to destroy western civilization. Clarion has subsequently produced more films, which are distributed and publicized widely by Geller, Gabriel, Spencer and other leading anti-Muslim activists. The group is chaired by a number of prominent Islamophobes, including Gaffney and Daniel Pipes. MORE

Coming soon to a Phawker near you.

WASHINGTON POST: At the factory here owned by New Balance, the last major athletic shoe brand to manufacture footwear in the United States, even workers on the shop floor recognize that in purely economic terms, the operation doesn’t make sense. The company could make far more money if, like Nike and Adidas, it shifted virtually all of these jobs to low-wage countries. So employees try working each shift to make it up. Conversations on the shop floor are sparse at best, and the tasks at each work station have been stripped of waste and precisely timed. Workers cut leather for a pair of shoes in 88 seconds, handle precise stitching in 37 seconds and glue soles to uppers even faster. “The company already could make more money by going overseas, and they know it,” said Scott Boulette, 35, a burly team leader who has his son’s name tattooed in Gothic letters down his left forearm. “So we hustle.” Now, however, comes what may be an insurmountable challenge. The Obama administration is negotiating a free-trade agreement with Vietnam and seven other countries, and it is unclear whether the plant can stand up to a flood of shoes from that country, already one of the leading exporters of footwear to the United States. “We are deeply concerned by the inclusion of Vietnam in a potential free-trade agreement,” said Rob DeMartini, president and chief executive of New Balance. The workers’ predicament highlights the difficulty facing the Obama administration as it seeks free-trade agreements as a potential remedy for U.S. unemployment, now at 9.2 percent. MORE

If true, the last eight years, or at least 2004–20008 would be null and void, triggering a complete meltdown in all three branches of government:  legislative (every law signed by POTUS, null and void), executive (every executive order issued by POTUS null and void) and judicial (every supreme court appointment by POTUS and ensuing decision null and void) — chaos that would upend the game in unexpected and radical ways. Which may explain why this story is getting no traction: nobody at the higher levels of the corporate media seems willing to be the one who takes down the house of cards. Nonetheless…

CROOKS & LIARS: Evidence has emerged that supports the allegation that Ohio’s vote data made an unscheduled detour through Chatanooga, TN and during that stop, was doctored to make sure George W. Bush won Ohio and the election. MORE

GIZMODO: SmarTech was hired by Ohio to provide a failsafe voting server for the rare occasion a network problem occurred. This isn’t unusual. All properly managed networked systems have a backup in case of failure. But in Ohio, there was no significant failure and voting data was unexpectedly switched over to SmarTech late in the voting process. This sudden shift coincides with an increase in votes favorable to Bush. Hmm, is there a mackerel in the room because something smells fishy. IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore has studied newly released network maps and believes the SmarTech server was not a backup, but a man in the middle server that had the ability to input and alter voting data on the fly. Spoonamore is convinced the election was stolen,

“The computer system and SmarTech had the correct placement, connectivity, and computer experts necessary to change the election in any manner desired by the controllers of the SmarTech computers.”

To make things even more intriguing, SmarTech was owned by Michael Connell who mysteriously died in a 2008 single-engine plane crash shortly after being served a subpoena in this case. His full testimony will never be heard. MORE

[Click to enlarge]

FREE PRESS.ORG: A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio’s 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush. The filing also includes the revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio’s vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush’s unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a suspicious small plane crash.

Additionally, the filing contains the contract signed between then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell and Connell’s company, GovTech Solutions. Also included that contract a graphic architectural map of the Secretary of State’s election night server layout system. Cliff Arnebeck, lead attorney in the King Lincoln case, exchanged emails with IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore. Arnebeck asked Spoonamore whether or not SmarTech had the capability to “input data” and thus alter the results of Ohio’s 2004 election. Spoonamore responded: “Yes. They would have had data input capacities. The system might have been set up to log which source generated the data but probably did not.”

Spoonamore explained that “they [SmarTech] have full access and could change things when and if they want.”

Arnebeck specifically asked “Could this be done using whatever bypass techniques Connell developed for the web hosting function.” Spoonamore replied “Yes.”

Spoonamore concluded from the architectural maps of the Ohio 2004 election reporting system that, “SmarTech was a man in the middle. In my opinion they were not designed as a mirror, they were designed specifically to be a man in the middle.” A “man in the middle” is a deliberate computer hacking setup, which allows a third party to sit in between computer transmissions and illegally alter the data. A mirror site, by contrast, is designed as a backup site in case the main computer configuration fails. Spoonamore claims that he confronted then-Secretary of State Blackwell at a secretary of state IT conference in Boston where he was giving a seminar in data security. “Blackwell freaked and refused to speak to me when I confronted him about it long before I met you,” he wrote to Arnebeck.

Read the email correspondence here [pdf].

On December 14, 2007, then-Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who replaced Blackwell, released her evaluation and validation of election-related equipment, standards and testing (Everest study) which found that touchscreen voting machines were vulnerable to hacking with relative ease. Until now, the architectural maps and contracts from the Ohio 2004 election were never made public, which may indicate that the entire system was designed for fraud. In a previous sworn affidavit to the court, Spoonamore declared: “The SmarTech system was set up precisely as a King Pin computer used in criminal acts against banking or credit card processes and had the needed level of access to both county tabulators and Secretary of State computers to allow whoever was running SmarTech computers to decide the output of the county tabulators under its control.”

Spoonamore also swore that “…the architecture further confirms how this election was stolen. The computer system and SmarTech had the correct placement, connectivity, and computer experts necessary to change the election in any manner desired by the controllers of the SmarTech computers.” Project Censored named the outsourcing of Ohio’s 2004 election votes to SmarTech in Chattanooga, Tennessee to a company owned by Republican partisans as one of the most censored stories in the world.

In the Connell deposition, plaintiffs’ attorneys questioned Connell regarding gwb43, a website that was live on election night operating out of the White House and tied directly into SmarTech’s server stacks in Chattanooga, Tennessee which contained Ohio’s 2004 presidential election results. The transfer of the vote count to SmarTech in Chattanooga, Tennessee remains a mystery. This would have only happened if there was a complete failure of the Ohio computer election system. Connell swore under oath that, “To the best of my knowledge, it was not a fail-over case scenario – or it was not a failover situation.”

Bob Magnan, a state IT specialist for the secretary of state during the 2004 election, agreed that there was no failover scenario. Magnan said he was unexpectedly sent home at 9 p.m. on election night and private contractors ran the system for Blackwell. The architectural maps, contracts, and Spoonamore emails, along with the history of Connell’s partisan activities, shed new light on how easy it was to hack the 2004 Ohio presidential election. MORE

Download the Plaintiffs’ Brief here [zip]

PHILADELPHIA MEDIA NETWORK: PMN announced today that it entered into an agreement with Tower Investments, Inc., owned by Bart Blatstein, to sell the building that is home to PMN headquarters at 400 North Broad Street, in addition to the sale of an adjacent parking garage and lot. The purchase price is not being disclosed. PMN is exploring options with respect to their future space, including the possibility of remaining at the 400 North Broad Street location or identifying new space in the region. “As Philadelphia Media Network continues its successful digital transformation, the efficient utilization of our assets will be our highest priority in the development and distribution of all PMN products. Since PMN is presently utilizing less than half of the space in our present location, the sale of our historic building to a premier, local developer is an important step in allowing PMN to become better positioned to meet the demands of a changing media landscape,” said Greg Osberg, Chief Executive Officer and Publisher.

PREVIOUSLY: The Future Of Newspaper Journalism Is ‘Location, Location, Location’

BY ALEX POTTER Philadelphians for Ethical Leadership, a non-profit group headed by Ben Mannes, a former Washington, D.C. police officer who now lives in Port Richmond, held a meeting last night at the Central Library they called “A Citywide Forum on Public Integrity” hoping “to give citizens a better understanding on what behavior constitutes public corruption, what the contributing factors to public corruption are, who investigate the different types of public integrity issues, and how best to report it.”

A panel of two men with pedigrees in rooting out corruption at various levels of government was present to discuss ways to report and correct public malaise. Pat Blessington, the Senior Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania for fourteen years, was appointed as Chief of Special Investigations by Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams in June, and is leading a newly formed Corruption Prosecution Task Force. “It’s the public,” said Blessington after he was introduced by Mannes, “which pushes the prosecution, it’s the public which witnesses the corruption, it’s the public which talks to the newspapers and it’s the public which sits on juries.”

John Roberts is the supervisor of the FBI’s Philadelphia Public Corruption Squad, which works “hand and glove” with the United States Attorney’s office. Roberts’ squad is comprised of members of the Philadelphia Police Department and the new Corruption Prosecution Task Force, which Roberts said, “was specifically set up to address allegations of corruption within the city police department.” He also mentioned that until Commissioner Ramsey came to power, the FBI had no interaction with the Philadelphia PD’s internal affairs department. With the formation of the Task Force, Roberts said the FBI now has the unprecedented screening ability to “hand pick” local cases that require federal investigation.

It was Roberts’ team that planted the bug in Mayor John Street’s office with the aid of the U.S. Attorney’s office in October 2003, which was mysteriously discovered just days before his re-election. Robert’s ordered the affidavits for the wire-tapping and testified before the grand jury during the trial following the Philadelphia police’s discovery of the listening device. When asked how the bug had been discovered — something that has never been revealed — Roberts demurred, citing “strict secrecy laws” and “regulations are imposed on us” in cases involving wire-tapping. The fact that the race between Street and Sam Katz at the time was so tight and heated added to the necessity of that secrecy. The Street campaign was able to spin the bugging as a case of the Bush Administration using the Justice Department to swing the election for the Republicans, and the discovery of the bug was believed by many to have boosted Street’s chances after he won by a margin that widened significantly despite the controversy.

The resounding theme of the forum was that exposure of corruption at the state and local levels is primarily the responsibility of grassroots movements. Mr. Blessington said that rooting out corruption is easier at the federal level because federal judges are appointed to watch out for just those kinds of cases. In cities, civilian watchdog groups are “invaluable,” he said, because they inform the media, who can then catch the attention of public officials.

Many citizens in attendance expressed frustration at having to endure tax hikes while simultaneously watching government officials, such as former Director of Housing Authority Carl Green, embezzle and waste their tax dollars with impunity. Former assistant district attorney and current candidate for city council Michael Untermeyer passionately expressed outrage about the collective shrug of complacency that has accompanied the scandals surrounding Greene and Superintendent of Schools Arlene Ackerman. Mr. Blessington responded by saying that “a culture of corruption has been fostered” in Philadelphia and reiterated that controversies like the ones Untermeyer is concerned about need time and discretion to be investigated. The common answer Mr. Blessington and Mr. Roberts both provided for similar emotionally-charged questions asked by other attendees was that, unfortunately, “incompetence and ignorance” and wasting money “are not crimes.”

Mr. Mannes ended the forum by saying “wasting government money is an issue. We have enough of it here.” He told the crowd, “It’s on you folks to get out there and start putting your eyes and ears open. A lot of us are angry and tired of people stealing our money in an acceptable format because it hasn’t crossed the criminal line. It’s just ethical at that point.” Mr. Mannes then encouraged the crowd to sign a petition to amend the Home Rule Charter, which would give the Corruption Prosecution Task Force some leeway. For more information, go HERE. Contact information for corruption busters in the 215 after the jump.

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