The big local news last week was that Robert Wiesner – former county Water Authority official and husband
of former County Executive Maggie Brooks – pleaded guilty to a felony charge
related to a bid-rigging scandal. The big national news is the continuing
strength of “outsider” candidates for president.
You don’t have to look hard to see a thread connecting them.
While the national election campaign is unearthing dreadful fear and ethnic
hatred, many Americans are fed up with politics and government for good reason.
The details of Wiesner’s case
weren’t a shock; we’d been reading about the bid rigging for eons. What was a
shock – to me, at least – was that the state attorney general’s office got a
confession. Corruption in government – and in big corporations – happens so
often, and the perpetrators wriggle out of the consequences so often, that many
of us expect nothing better.
Other than having his name tarnished, Wiesner
isn’t losing much. The AG is out after bigger fish, and getting the lower ranks
to sing is the way you do it. Wiesner will pay a
$5000 fine, give up a $3000 discount on a home security system, and if he stays
out of trouble for three years, that’s it. He’ll get his state pension, of
course. Meantime, his wife – until recently the top county official and leader
of the county’s Republican Party – walked into a newly created position as a
Transit Authority vice president.
Sweet.
If the Wiesner-Brooks story upsets
us, we should remember that the bid rigging, which took place on Brooks’ watch,
had been highly publicized. As had such scandals as Robutrad,
in which county contract workers did private work – including for relatives of
county officials – while taxpayers were paying them. There was also the Brooks-appointed
airport director who had to resign over his lavish “businesses expenses,”
including nearly $17,000 on cigars.
The community just shrugged its shoulders, electing Brooks
to a third term in 2011 and, when she was termed out, dutifully electing the
person Brooks’ party had been grooming to succeed her.
I know: the vast majority of public servants are honorable,
overworked people, right? The corrupters are just a few bad apples. But among
the folks making the corruption headlines recently were the (Republican) majority
leader of the State Senate and the (Democratic) Assembly speaker – who had had
enough support from their colleagues to hold power for years.
The public isn’t helpless; we could vote these folks out of
office. But most of us don’t show up at the polls. In the recent Monroe County
election, when the county executive’s position was on the ballot, voter turnout
was 29 percent.
Maybe most of us are just too lazy to vote. Or maybe we
don’t think what we do matters. Or maybe we’re so disillusioned by what we see
that we don’t care any more, that we’ve lost faith in the people we elect and in
government.
It’s probably a bit of all those, of course. But special interests with lots of money haven’t lost faith, and
they know that what they do matters.
If we care about the future of this community, and this
country, we need to stop shrugging off these scandals. And maybe some of us have.
Maybe we’re ready to push back against the corruption, in government, in big
business, in money’s control of politics. Maybe, at least in part, that’s what
the surprising support for “outsider” candidates like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz,
and Bernie Sanders is showing.
We can write off the Trump, Cruz, and Sanders supporters as
stupid or unrealistic. But that’s an insultingly shallow assessment. These voters
know that something’s really, really wrong. And they want to put a stop to it,
not through extortion, influence peddling, bid rigging, vote buying, or other
forms of corruption, but by exercising a fundamental, democratic right.
What about the rest of us?
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This article appears in Feb 3-9, 2016.
Oh yah,….you are so very much on the mark. Oh my, did I just find myself in agreement with Mary Anna Towler?!
That is precisely why those candidates are where they are. I will not go into which may serve this country best because I don’t want to wander away from this general agreement with Mary. But I will say this,…it takes a lot for the voting public to get mad and they are, mad as hell. The Democrats and Republicans still don’t get it or would rather not believe it. They are stunned.
On the NYS level, they don’t get it either, but are to date, still carrying on as usual. It actually sickens me when one of them is asked about the corruption at the state level and they begin their pious verbal dance. You wish for a moment of their time or throat, which they wisely avoid at all cost.
For now,….onward!
Scandal? SCANDAL?? I think you have missed a few these past 7 years in Washington. And you waste space on THIS stuff.
And BTW, what is this about calling your readers stupid? How about instead, comment about the sorry state of our educational system? Here we have Bernie Sanders, with 84% of the millennial support, advocating for FREE college education. For what? By the time the “free” college is paid for all the companies will be out of business. These kids got ripped off. They are dumber now after getting an “education” Good Work
Before any more cheap shots are taken at our current administration – remarkably scandal free – let us pause to recall:
“The air around Ground Zero is just fine!”
“Weapons of mass destruction”
“Reconstituted nuclear program!”
“Healthy Forests Act”
“Clear Skies Act”
“We do not wiretap!”
“We do not torture”
“Heck of a job, Brownie!”
And a few hundred others. By the way, what on Earth does Bernie Sanders have to do with the Monroe County Republican Party scandals?
From the dislikes I received from my opinion;
Apparently there are no scandals
There is no corruption
Democrats and Republicans are doing an outstanding job
The future of this community is in fine hands
Politicians at the national level, state level and local level are honest, ethical and have our interest over the party’s interest all day long
Etc. etc.
Sometimes I wonder about those that read, think and then act.
Last but not least, most of are not to lazy to vote,…the choices just suck.
Ms. Towler is right; this is a real scandal. A felony charge for the spouse of the highest-ranking area public official – and no prison?! Would any of us be so lucky? There are real scandals – like this one, and nationally the outrage that is Flint, Michigan (“despicable” does not even begin to cover that) – and there are fake scandals. Real grownups know the difference.
I’m afraid to ask,….what in your mind might be considered a “fake scandal”?
I think it goes deeper than scandals. I think it is about (Dis)Honesty in society, in general. Who cares?
There is a doc film called (Dis)Honesty and here is a trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFbTcy6bnQ…
I have been trying get it shown at the Little Theatre, or somewhere else. Perhaps, City News can help to push it. Here is the web page:
http://www.theDishonestyProject.com
I also tried to contact WXXI Radio, Evan Dawson about interviewing Prof. Dan Ariely, the author of the (Dis)Honesty project.
Hello, City News? Can you help?
========================
A splendid example of a fake scandal, and sadly, one that besmirches the memory of good people and has needlessly cost us taxpayers untold millions of dollars: Benghazi.
We should let Trump take the rein. Or Bernie Sanders. Even Cruz would be better than Hillary.
Dissatisfaction with government has increased in proportion to how much money has been sucked from the middle class. Trump wants to spend all his time at the White House fixing this mess. Hillary Clinton prefers Air Force One. It’s more appropriate for the Queen of the World. I wouldn’t vote for Hillary in a million years.
Benghazi a fake scandal? If you want the facts, view 13 hours. It is not easy to watch, it is not entertainment, it’s not Hollywood, it is real. It is also an account from the “boots on the ground”. It came from those that actually lived it, were there to fight the fight, feel the pain and realized the political mismanagement. It is a stunning account of the absolute lack of, absence of, leadership. Hillary owns that. She was at the top. She wore the stripes and when you wear those stripes you have the authority and you take the responsibility for the successes and failures. She not only shirked the responsibility, she tried to cover it up. She was like the cat in the litter box, looking in one direction and covering up the excrement. “What difference does it make”, keeps ringing in my ears. Commander in Chief? You have to be kidding. We CAN do better, we MUST do better.
I apply the ABC rule to current politics, Anyone But Hillary.
Semper Fi.
PS There were three Marines involved in the 13 hours and I will take a fellow Marines account and word over a politician at any level, anytime of the day.
Benghazi was Hillary’s 3am phone call that she so proudly boasted last time around and failed this time around. But it’s worse than that. It’s the coverup. It’s the lying. It’s the arrogance of blowing it off as if those 4 lives meant nothing. Just goes to show you, Hillary’s political aspirations are more important to her than the people she seeks to represent. Makes you wonder. Why does she want to represent us anyway? She doesn’t care one bit about the common man.
This just in, to update Ms. Towler’s original post: yet another guilty plea.
When nine (count ‘em!) Republican Congressional investigations can’t give you the answer you crave, go . . . make a movie. Hire a filmmaker who proclaimed (this is a direct quote): “I make movies for teenage boys.”
Anyone who thinks He, Trump, or Tail Gunner Ted (the most loathed human in Congress – by his own party) wouldn’t be a complete disaster in the White House must have been in a coma from 2001-09.
If you take into consideration the lies, missteps, sidesteps, verbal dances and any other negativity that you could think of that pertains to Hillary Clinton and,….should she get elected, can bamboozle the Chinese, North Koreans, Russians the same way she does us,….we’ll be OK. I do believe that those countries are not going to fall for her line of pure bull.
Consider this,…If I could guarantee her a victory in November if she would spend the night with me,…she would be on her way right now with a bottle of wine to set the mood. She wants this so incredibly bad,…she will do or say just about,…no will actually do anything to get elected.
Her ego makes the universe look like a marble.