PA Business Leaders Sell Out Orie In Supreme Court Race
BY CHRIS FREIND
If there’s one word to describe the Pennsylvania business community, it’s consistent, as in consistently pathetic.
The state’s business leaders — and that description is a stretch— once again dropped the political ball and, in all likelihood, will be the biggest losers after next month’s state Supreme Court election —
one of the most important in decades. With the court deadlocked 3-3, the winner will shape the court’s direction for years to come. Republican Joan Orie Melvin and Democrat Jack Panella, both judges on the Superior Court, are duking it out.
Panella has outraised Orie Melvin by a wide margin, thanks to huge financial support from labor unions and trial lawyers. While Orie Melvin is certainly still a viable candidate, it’s no secret that whoever touts the largest warchest has a distinct advantage.
Why the large gap between the two? Enter the business community, or, more accurately, lack thereof.
Pennsylvania’s business leaders, for the most part, have sat on their hands, preferring the view from the sidelines, as is virtually always the case.
While Orie Melvin struggles to keep pace, Panella enjoys the nonstop support of the archenemies of business. Why?
Because when it comes to politics, the business community is lazy, incompetent, and clueless. That is a broad stroke, to be sure, for there are executives who innately understand what’s at stake (check out those in Luzerne County in northeastern PA) but courageous and politically savvy business folk are definitely the exception.
Pennsylvania business leaders make many excuses for their failures, but most common among their inane babble is that they “just want to run their companies, and don’t have time for politics.”
Two points:
1)That’s a cop-out. Make time. Organized labor and the trial lawyers do.
2)Business is governed by politics. Period. Every aspect of business is conducted in accordance with the political environment: regulations, health care, liability, taxes, etc. The list never ends.
What part of this can’t these guys understand?
Let’s make this simple.
If one candidate is strongly backed by labor and lawyers, then a business leader should support the other person, financially and otherwise. And no, it’s not beneath you to host a coffee klatch, put up a yard sign, form a political action committee, or, God forbid, stuff an envelope. Those “pedestrian” things win elections.
But despite business’ complete disregard for the political process, they are always the first to complain when something doesn’t go their way.
Which, this being Pennsylvania – home of the worst business climate in the nation – is an everyday occurrence.
Newsflash: if you bang your head against a wall nine times, you will get the same result on the tenth try.
But this incomprehensible behavior should come as no surprise.
The Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, chaired by David Cohen, one of Ed Rendell’s biggest fundraisers and closest advisers, actually thought the recent 100 per cent increase in the Philadelphia sales tax was a good thing. So much for the Chamber’s stated goal of sensible tax policy.
Where was the business community when the Fair Share Act came up for a vote not long ago (a bill that would have limited a defendant’s liability to only his share of responsibility)? Nonexistent, because they naively believed Gov. Rendell’s campaign pledge that he would sign it. Instead, he vetoed it.
Unlike business leaders, the trial lawyers didn’t need a proctologist to find their head. And guess what? They won.
We own the second highest corporate net income tax in the country. Onerous and often unnecessary regulations placed on our companies by unaccountable bureaucrats with no real-world experience stifle job growth, innovation and productivity. And instead of being phased out, our capital stock and franchise tax has found new life.
But where is the outcry regarding the state’s ever increasing taxes, which, by the way, result in companies and jobs fleeing Pennsylvania in droves? Nowhere to be heard.
And there is barely a whimper at the prospect of taxing to death those companies drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale, a blossoming industry which, if not destroyed by our politicians, will create thousands upon thousands of good-paying, long-term jobs.
The manufacturing economy is little more than a distant memory, and our hostile legal climate has increased the cost of doing business in Pennsylvania to the point that we are virtually dead last in America for job creation.
The message should be absolutely clear — elected officials will act only when these issues become ones they cannot escape, whether at debates between candidates as they run for re-election, at meetings with community leaders in their districts, visiting a coffee shop, or giving a speech to a service club.
But that won’t happen unless the attitude of business changes. And since attitude reflects leadership, don’t hold your breath.
So if Mr. Panella happens to win, watch for the business community to emerge yelling and screaming after the court upholds its first ludicrous jackpot jury award or company-killing regulation.
And when they do, I have a message for those hypocrites: Look in the mirror, and don’t let the door hit you in the derrière as you fade into oblivion.
Chris Freind, author of “Freindly Fire,” is an independent columnist and investigative reporter whose readers hail from six continents, thirty countries, and all fifty states. He can be reached at CF@FreindlyFireZone.com
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