The slimy lowlife politicians slithering around the halls of the State capital in Harrisburg wouldn’t know integrity if it fell on their fucking heads. Pennsylvania politicians and government bureaucrats are nothing by snakes screwing the citizens of the state by lining their pockets with bribes in the putrid cesspool of PA politics. They proved their integrity this week by screwing the people again. The ultra-liberal Democrat governor and the traitorous pussified Republican legislature “compromised” after 5 months of budget impasse to raise our sales tax by 21% to the second highest in the nation at 7.25%. Only the communist state of California has a higher rate at 7.5%.
Politicians never cut wasteful spending. They never cut a program. They never cut a subsidy. They just treat us like milking cows to be sucked dry. This massive increase in sales taxes hurts the middle class and poor far worse than the rich. But it gets the slimy politicians more money to waste on our horrific public schools and the pensions of the government drone teachers.
The last governor wanted to privatize the state owned liquor stores. It would have raised over $1 billion, but the union government drones blocked this perfectly good idea. Why get rid of an antiquated, bloated, inefficient, expensive, union controlled system, that keeps liquor prices 30% higher than nearby states, when you can raise taxes on the very same people who have to pay 30% too much for their booze?
Both parties suck. The politicians are scum. There is no integrity in government at all. That is why I will never vote again.
Click here to see how your state ranks for integrity?
Pennsylvania gets F grade in 2015 State Integrity Investigation
An entrenched culture of malfeasance
New bronze plaques adorn four of the portraits in the halls of the state Capitol in Harrisburg, in a collection that honors Pennsylvania’s legislative leaders from Benjamin Franklin’s time to the present.
The images of three former House speakers and a former Senate president pro tempore now bear engraved plates memorializing the dates of both their tenures and their corruption convictions.
The dubious decorations, added by order of last-year’s legislative leaders, are the closest Keystone State lawmakers have come to calling out the most recent spate of wrongdoing among their own.
The lawmakers, three of whom were snared in bipartisan schemes to use taxpayer funds for political campaigns, were among 40 members or top aides of the Pennsylvania Legislature who have been found guilty or pleaded guilty to public corruption charges in the past four decades, by informal count of G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College. “Not one has ever been censured or reprimanded by an ethics committee of their chamber,” said Madonna. “I want you to think about that. They don’t have to worry about their own colleagues doing an independent investigation.”
The lack of legislative or executive accountability and the absence of effective ethics entities, as well as weak laws and lackluster oversight of lobbying, political finance, and elections, have combined to give Pennsylvania an F in the 2015 State Integrity Investigation, conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and Global Integrity. Pennsylvania’s numerical score of 58 placed it tied for 44th among the 50 states.
If snakes came with pockets, 99% of government really would be reptilians.
CA gets the second highest grade. What horseshit.
Woo Hoo, D+ for good old Massachusetts. Of course we have only convicted three out of our last four speakers of the house of federal crimes, the current one was only named as an un-indighted co-conspirator. We must have studied hahda (harder) than the Penn state.
Bob.
Admin, you need to do an article on Allentown and the NIZ (Neighborhood Improvement Zone), I haven’t lived in A-Town for over 40 years, but I have heard from relatives.
Here’s how it goes: Allentown is a shit hole. When manufacturing collapsed (Bethlehem Steel, AT&T, Mack Trucks, Structural Steel, etc) there was no more economy. Property values went down. Neegrows and Puerto Rican’s and othe SPICS invaded the Lehigh Valley. They flooded the row homes that made up center city Allentown – I’d say – 200 square blocks of now filth, squalor, and crime.
So PA came up with the idea of the NIZ. Here’s the deal – all taxes (PA taxes) generated in this zone go to the developers who financed the buildings! The state of PA loses tax dollars, and the NIZ transfers them to the developers. The mayor of Allentown, and a dozen others are being investigated by the FBI. There’s other side deals also. Sounds like a scandal that will go down in history.
It would be worth a more informative article.
Highest score is a C
Illinois got a D+ – now with the corruption capital of the U.S. being Chicago, why didn’t they get an F-?
CA gets a C-; bullsheet; not possible with the scum they have had in CONgress for decades
Admin,
I graduated from Lehigh decades ago. Pennsylvania was fucked up even in the 1970s when I was a student, so I got the hell out after I graduated.
According to the news article I saw, the PA property tax rebate is going away too. The casino tax money currently used to fund property tax rebates will be diverted to public pensions. Woohoo!!!
When you get a chance, you might want to take a good long look at the Pennsylvania inheritance tax. If you outlive your wife and want to leave money to your kids, well, the state will take a cut of that too.
I feel for you. You are going to be taxed into economic oblivion.
Admin, I am shocked, just shocked. Meanwhile I keep getting threatening letters from the Philadelphia treasury department. Is there any treasure at the treasury department or just a boatload of vindictive assholes looking to drain my pockets or otherwise harass me? I moved away from that cesspool of violence and decay 7 years ago. I sold my condo 3 years ago.
Leave me alone!
The American empire, and the multicultural hellhole it has created around the world will die at some point. I can’t wait.
The Evil Empire State has an official sales tax rate of 4%. But the counties cash in and the lowest rate for any county is 7%. The 5 counties of NYC pay 8.88%. In my county I pay 8%.NY really sucks. The property taxes are hell, too.
“But it’s for the children”
Fuck ashley harrell. Some vapid 25 year old libero-troll who has decided every state but mexifornia gets graded D or F. Pennsylvania? No sweat, just move to china where all your jobs moved to. Cause life in a state without a productive economy is always going to suck
It reaches into every layer, everywhere.
Don’t confuse malfeasance with incompetence. The corrupt take advantage of the incompetent by not exposing their incompetence in exchange for not exposing their incompetence. Remember the Clinton Doctrine, “What ever you can get away with”.
Administrator… though occasionally pissed off at you, Stucky, and other TBPers enough to stay away a bit, I keep reading the site’s posts and comments. They’re irresistable. And always I return to “submit comments.”
Your bold face remarks put TBP among the top sites on the internet. All your quips are good but your best posts and comments are about The 30 Blocks, Mayor Nutter and his policies, and Keystone State politicians and their outrages. Deep feeling about PA politics, a tart tongue, and a skillful pen leads to some of your best writing.
7 percent
The 7 percent state sales tax rate in Tennessee, combined with an average 2.45 percent local sales tax rate across the state, boosts the Volunteer State’s sales tax rate to the highest among the 50 states with an average tax levy on purchases of 9.45 percent.Feb 14, 2012
Here in the triage tax zone of suburban Cleveland, the pols have now resorted to what I term “age warfare”. To keep the bloated, dying inner ring suburbs afloat and to maintain their gold plated pensions and benefits, they are now teeing up income and property taxes that essentially hit only the working folks (i.e. those that work and aren’t in the FSA). Too boot, my buburb just passed another city income tax hike levy that they “desperately” needed by exempting all retirees who make up a substantial if not majority of the population. In fact they bussed them to the polls to vote yes for the passage. You literally cannot make this stuff up. So many cities and burgs are dying on the vine in the North due to the crippling taxes. I once heard in the long run, the South won the Civil War, and you know what, from a tax stand point they did. My home in Cleveland which is just run of the mill has property taxes of $7,000, while a similarly valued home that my company owns in Raleigh , NC has taxes of $1,800/year. Go figure.
The methodology is total bullshit. They ranked Illinois the same as Iowa, and both of them ahead of Minnesota and Indiana, and far ahead of Michigan. There is no way in hell that Illinois has better government integrity than Michigan and Indiana, much less Minnesota. Total and utter bullshit. The rankings look like a set-up to favor the most liberal and Dem-controlled states.
Admin, get your ass to Iowa. I’ll provide a reference, if you need it – but you wouldn’t, since you are a movie star, after Generation Zero, anyway.
The kids are out of the house now, right? It’s time to turn a new page and take up biking. I’ll hook you up.
Pirate Jo
Only one kid has flown the coop. One in college and one still in high school. Iowa is too cold. I like warm.
Admin-
I must disagree about your comment about not voting. The problem is that you confuse good and efficient government as the purpose of voting. Wrong. I realized that voting is the equivalent of the old – real old- TV show “Queen for a day”. In the show’ after hearing very sad stories, the host will let the audience vote via clapping and the highest contestant would usually win their washer. Voting is the same thing, we take normal net worth individuals and put them on the path to wealth.
VegasBob- I’ve lived in Pa for thirty years, there was a property tax rebate from legalizing gambling? Must have missed that on my tax bills which only seem to have gone up. On another note I can feel admins pain. We had a majority repub legislature and a Repub govenor for four years and they didn’t do dick. Now we have a dem governor with the same legislative majority and they are all crying Wolf.