Comcast, Corbett, and the perfectly legal corruption we don't even notice anymore
You might have guessed that I'm talking about Comcast's No. 3 executive David L. Cohen, the former top aide to then-mayor Ed Rendell who has hosted megabucks fundraisers for Obama in his home. But just last February, Cohen surprised some by saying that he expected to support Republican Gov. Corbett and hosting an event that raised $200,000 for Corbett's stumbling campaign.
The other day, Corbett came back to help Cohen's cable giant announce that it was going to build a second skyscraper in Philadelphia, the tallest building between New York and Atlanta. (Full disclosure, the development firm on the project is led by one of the owners of this newspaper.) And to help Comcast -- which made more than $12 billion in profits its last full reporting year of 2012 -- get the job done, the governor came bearing gifts -- $30 million in construction grants and $4.5 million for job creation. A cynic might say that a $34.5 million return on a $200,000 investment in Corbett is a pretty good return.
I know, I know...it's complicated. Philadelphians love the prestige that comes with tall buildings (even one that looks like it's giving West Philly a one-fingered salute) , but more importantly we really, really need jobs, and Comcast is creating hundreds of them. If some of them go to the thousands of long-term unemployed Philadelphians who've been desperately seeking work for months if not years, then we should certainly thank Comcast for that. But in a state with so many needs, is corporate welfare for a $12-billion-a-year profit machine really our top funding priority?
A journalist friend who spent years investigating the mob once told me about wiseguys with a roll of hundreds of dollars in their pocket who would put wooden slugs in tollbooths. Why? Because they\ could.
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