corruption

A test of the new Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, his secretary of transportation Barry Schoch and new executives at the Pennsylvania Turnpike will be the little hamlet of Breezewood PA in Bedford County PA.  Are they serious about the convenience of motorists and reform of the Turnpike, or will they perpetuate one of its most blatantly corrupt political rackets?

One of the old giants of American physics Harold (Hal) Lewis, professor at Princeton, Berkeley, Bell Labs, and Uni Cal Santa Barbara has finally resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) after protracted efforts to get them to appoint a panel to reconsider alarmist pronouncements on global warming. He says the premier professional associations of American physicists has been corrupted by government grants and zealotry.

The Illinois Tollway is due to get a permanent Inspector-General to investigate wrongdoing at the state toll authority. The law signed lasts week by Governor Quinn follows allegations by the Feds that ex-Governor Blagojevich used his influence at the Tollway to extort money from contractors.

Ironically the Tollway IG will be appointed by the Governor, who gets to appoint the Tollway board.  The IG will be appointed for a 5 year term.

US congressman Glenn `GT’ Thompson, (Republican, Howard, 5th District PA) is asking Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett to investigate claims in former financial manager Ralph Bailets’ lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC).

A former finance manager Ralph M Bailets has lodged a lawsuit in Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg Pennsylvania accusing Turnpike Commission chiefs of serious wrongdoing. He says he was fired for his efforts to resist corrupt procurement practices and waste at the Turnpike Commission.

- by Jerry Werner and Peter Samuel   Regular road construction conjures up images of brawny asphalt paving contractors getting together at a hamburger joint to agree whose turn it is to put in the "low" bid for local state highway work, and discussing which official needs to be "helped" in order to ensure that "that new bastard" - not "one of us" - is kept off the list of "qualified contractors."

The large US Department of Justice prosecution that put the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's longtime state senate patron Vincent Fumo into jail for four and a half years for 137 counts of thievery and corruption was run by Patrick Meehan, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Turnpike employees have received an email ordering them to retain a wide range of documents because of multiple corruption investigations. The email called a Revised Mandatory Preservation Order gives an indication of the scope of the FBI and state's attorney's probes - a legal "roadmap."

The specific projects listed for document preservation:

We were accused of "irresponsible journalism" Thursday morning for the report (see http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/4418) we'd run of the FBI raid at the Pennsylvania Turnpike HQ Thursday and Friday Oct 23 - 24 in pursuit of a corruption investigation.

Of course our report inconvenienced both parties. Both went into flat denial mode. It never happened. The FBI weren't there. There was no corruption investigation. We should retract the story immediately.

Pretty much the same line from the Pike and the FBI.

Bob Dietz, 55 of Lancaster PA, construction supervisor for a Turnpike widening project near Valley Forge says we can quote him as saying the FBI were at the Turnpike's head offices in Harrisburg Thursday afternoon and that they went away with computers and other materials.