When ordinary people go before a judge in Philadelphia to be sentenced for their crimes, they typically get stern looks, hear condescending, pious remarks about how wrong their actions were, and often receive a sentence that sends them to jail to think about their terrible misdeeds. God forbid that you or I should get caught stealing two pairs of pantyhose, buying a tiny amount of a controlled substance, or punching someone who had hit them first. I've personally seen and heard jail sentences handed down for each of those awful crimes.
When former Traffic Court Judge Fotunato Perri, Sr. went before a Federal judge to receive his sentence on Friday, somehow things turned out differently. Perri got two years of probation for mail and wire fraud and conspiracy, to which he pled guilty in 2013. He fixed cases in the now-defunct Traffic Court in exchange for bribes.
For Perri, the outcome was quite fortunate. He was considered a real hammer during his many years on the court. He handing out harsh sentences for the terrible, fabric-of-society-rending evils people perpetrated with their cars. The black-robed hypocrite's own activities helped to undermine public confidence in the justice system and discredit the Traffic Court, which was disbanded by the state legislature in 2013.
The learned Federal court cited Perri's advanced age and declining health to justify his relatively light sentence. Courts have vast discretion in sentencing, so there's nothing technically wrong with a sentence of probation for him. People who have been slammed with a harsh sentence or seen a loved one locked up for a minor transgression, however, might well wonder why someone who helped ruin a whole governmental institution was treated more leniently. Perri apparently managed to hide his wrongdoing behind the trappings of his office for long enough to claim to be too old to face the consequences.
Judge Perri's case continues a special Philadelphia tradition. When the political class breaks the law, it is treated as a higher caste that does not have to face the law's harshest consequences, even though the public trust reposed in officials makes their wrongdoing far more damaging to society than that of ordinary criminals. The treatment of a host of other minor judges and state legislators from our region earlier this year kept up the same tradition: though guilty of corruption, they got plea bargains that let them stay out of jail and even keep their hefty pensions. Former state Senator Vince Fumo's house arrest after a short stint in jail in his corruption case was another well-known manifestation of this special caste's status.
As long as this continues, no one should be surprised that outsiders see Philadelphia as a corrupt city run by bad people.
Judge Perri's story also shows what Republicans would have to do to gain credibility in a city where they have none. Briefly, they would have to purge everyone like him from their ranks. That would take some doing. In a city where you need a college degree to become an administrative assistant or a firefighter, Perri got on fine for many years as a high-school dropout judge with a nasty courtroom demeanor on the strength of his political connections. He seemed unabashed by the contrast between his high office and his lack of talent or character. Plenty of Democratic office-holders in Philly are of course just the same, but the political status quo favors them. Nobody of Perri's ilk would ever inspire people to change their party allegiances.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Is Jim Kenney Gay?
Is he? This article does not answer that question conclusively. The answer wouldn't affect my vote, or the result of November's election. As the Democratic nominee for Mayor of Philadelphia, Kenney would win if he were jailed or committed to an institution; if Kenney disclosed that he was gay before Election Day, it would likely matter even less to the result.
On the other hand, we've lived for a long time in a society where the personal is political. Politicians' lives should not be hidden from public view, because with good reason, people don't trust politicians. If a politician maintains secret allegiances and personal contacts, voters cannot assess accurately to whom he might be beholden, or whether he might be favoring his friends in a way that abuses the public trust. This is especially true when the contacts at issue involve self-serving interest groups. A politician's silence about a fundamental aspect of his identity until after an election offends the notion that important aspects of a politician's life should not be shrouded from public view.
I heard a rumor about Kenney's sexual orientation, and tried to learn more about him on the Internet. I soon hit a roadblock. As I discuss below, Kenney has kept secret basic details of his family and personal life-- details of a kind that other politicians readily disclose. His friends at two local newspapers appear to be helping him to achieve this degree of secrecy. I couldn't find information that would let me conclude that what I heard was or wasn't true.
In my view, that is a problem. Why isn't such a basic fact about a candidate for an important office a matter of public knowledge?
My suspicion is that Kenney thinks he can do more for his friends by keeping the details of his personal life, whatever they are, private. Kenney has been a strident proponent of special city ordinances and executive policies favoring sexual orientation minority groups and seeking to attract people in those groups to Philadelphia, including rules touching on taxation, discrimination, education, housing, senior citizens, the allocation of cash and City resources to community organizations, and tourism. Money and power flow from these policy choices, making the identity of the decision maker a potentially significant matter.
Kenney began his career as an aide to State Senator Vince Fumo. After becoming top aide to Fumo, who later went to prison for his official misdeeds, Kenney won election to City Council in 1991 with the support of a recently formed political action committee, the Pride of Philadelphia Election Committee. That group, founded by Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal, sought to replace Councilman Fran Rafferty, who did not support gay causes. They backed Kenney, whose Irish name and Catholic background would play well with the same ethnic voters who backed Rafferty. (As State Representative Brian Sims told a Kenney fundraiser held at a Center City gay bar in March, Kenney's value to LGBT political causes stems from his background seeming "so traditionally Philadelphian" to most voters.) Presumably, something about the relatively unknown Kenney convinced Segal's group in 1991 that it could safely put its money behind him.
Last week, Kenney decided to involve himself in a controversy over the firing of a teacher at a private Catholic school in Montgomery County. The issue had nothing to do with Philadelphia mayoral politics or City policies. But Kenney nevertheless inserted himself into it, as might be expected of a politician who had received a lot of money from LGBT groups over the years and identifies closely with them. Kenney's opponents in the Democratic primary could hardly be considered antagonists of sexual-orientation minority groups. It would have been unsurprising if Kenney shared the support of these groups with other Democratic candidates. For some reason, though, Kenney appears to have won their backing with little dissent. It's unclear why. Those groups would no doubt be happy if Kenney were to follow in the footsteps of one of his prominent supporters, Representative Sims, and declare that he is gay after he is elected. The head of one LGBT organization that initially withheld backing from Kenney justified his position on the ground that, as the Inquirer reported, there were "many firsts" for progressive voters to consider during the Democratic primary, including the possibility of electing the first Hispanic mayor, or the first woman mayor. He implied that Kenney was one of several possible "firsts"-- suggesting that he and other LGBT fundraisers know something about Kenney's personal life that most people don't.
In explaining his advocacy of LGBT causes, Kenney has stated that he regards those less strident supportive of those causes as "overly religious" or "intolerant." Using words that insinuate his low opinion of a group of people who probably voted for him in large numbers, Kenney has said that his views on gay rights had to evolve because he began as "a white Irish Catholic guy from South Philly." Evidently, Kenney thought people in that demographic were retrograde in their views, and too inattentive to recognize what he was saying about them. He felt he can score political points by disparaging them, and that he'd get many of their votes regardless of what he says simply because of his Irish last name on the ballot.
Kenney seems to have the same opinion of Catholics generally. His comments last week about the recent firing of the Montgomery County teacher included a condemnation of leaders of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as "cowardly men," and an assertion that the firing was motivated by "discrimination and hate." I wouldn't have fired that teacher, either. But I doubt seriously that her firing was the result of "discrimination and hate." Instead, as Kenney no doubt knows, Catholic schools' codes of conduct for faculty members don't let faculty be involved in same-sex civil marriages. Kenney evidently thinks that his years as top aide to a corrupt politician and then as a member of that illustrious and profoundly moral deliberative body, the Philadelphia City Council, has prepared him to tell the Church that its interpretation of scripture is wrong, and to personally guide the faithful down the true path. If Kenney thinks the Church's teachings on the subject misinterpret the Bible and reflect mere discrimination and hate, he should say so directly and explain himself.
A recent article cataloged some of Kenney's frequent attacks on the Catholic Church, which sound a little strange coming from a politician who also advertises his Catholic roots and his attendance of an all-boys Catholic high school. Based on my experience on college campuses, I find that some sexual orientation minority groups wrongly to regard the Church as a hate group. In voicing their anti-Catholic sentiments individually and through their organizations, they sound an awful lot like bigots themselves. Kenney's airing of views on the recent firing and on the Church generally are no doubt welcome to such people. But if his religious convictions were ever sincere, his years of vilification of the Church may point to a broader change in his identity.
Kenney's campaign website makes no mention of his family after his graduation from college. During the Democratic primary-- the real mayoral race in Philadelphia-- Kenney's campaign made an unusual statement that should have led reporters to inquire a bit further into his personal life. In January 2015, when he resigned from Council to run for Mayor, Kenney took the unusual step of having his spokeswoman tell the Philadelphia Daily News that he had been separated for years from his wife. The spokeswoman explained that "[t]here's nothing scandalous here, it's just what works for them," without elaborating on the circumstances behind their estrangement. "He's a very straightforward guy," his spokeswoman added, with or without intended irony.
Kenney had run for Council several times without going public about his relationship with his family. Evidently, he hoped to defuse speculation about his personal life before the typically closer scrutiny of the mayoral campaign fell upon him. The Philadelphia Daily News, to which Kenney's campaign revealed this information, was keen to cooperate, "By getting his personal life out of the way early," Daily News gossip-column writer Molly Eichel explained, "Kenney essentially makes it a nonissue." As far as Philadelphia's main news-gathering institutions were concerned, Eichel's statement has seemed more like a policy than a casual observation. Neither the Daily News nor its sister paper, the Inquirer, have had any more to say about Kenney's family or personal life since then. As to Kenney's family, Eichel was told that they "are private people." Like media used to a half-century ago, local media appear to have uncritically accepted that this was the last word on the subject. No one has since endeavored to inquire about Kenney's family, what precipitated his separation from his wife, or what the nature of his personal life has been since their separation.
The Inquirer's and Daily News's editors and staff clearly favored Kenney in the primary. Articles that were not on the Opinion page of the paper often contained editorial comments about Kenney's suitability for mayoral office. When the Inquirer's publisher insisted that the editors endorse Kenney's primary opponent Anthony Williams, the editors drew the endorsement as "narrowly" as possible, then leaked to other media the fact that they personally preferred Kenney. If Kenney decided he wanted to hide something about his personal life, it's likely that he would find willing collaborators at both papers.
That is wrong. Public figures shouldn't be allowed to keep secret important parts of their lives. It's a price they owe to society for raising them to prominence. Politicians who are to be invested with political power and charged with the public trust have the least claim to privacy, because their personal associations are the likely source of corrupt influence. A mayor's personal relationships, no matter what their nature, should not be obscured from the public so that no one can tell whether his conduct abuses the public trust.
I wouldn't vote for or against a candidate based on the position he took on LGBT issues. Whether I ultimately vote for Kenney depends whether I can get over his Fumo connections (he was still benefiting from Fumo's dubious money as a Councilman while Fumo was engaging in activities that sent him to jail) and other issues I have with him. He certainly doesn't need my support to win. While the City's calcified politics hurt it badly, and many of its Democratic Party leaders seem smug, uninspiring, untalented, and even unworthy of office, I also have serious doubts that the city's Republican Party as it exists now can be trusted with power. I shudder to think what would happen if people like the Republican bottom-feeders at the Parking Authority were instead charged with running the whole City.
However, I dislike politicians who keep secrets about themselves and their personal associations and relationships, hiding things from voters that need to be public knowledge if the democratic process is to function effectively. We are talking about Jim Kenney in 2015, not John Kennedy in 1960. Kenney should disclose considerably more about his personal life and his relationship with his family, including his sexual orientation. It wouldn't be difficult for Kenney to definitively answer basic questions about these matters, questions which politicians typically answer readily, and which the media has behaved irresponsibly in failing to ask. Given the overwhelming odds in his favor in November, I think he would join the ranks of "cowardly men" if he kept mum on these subjects through Election Day. More importantly, if he keeps quiet, he will fail to fulfill his responsibility to voters making a democratic choice-- even if their choice is, sadly, an extremely limited one. For the process to work, the public must know.
On the other hand, we've lived for a long time in a society where the personal is political. Politicians' lives should not be hidden from public view, because with good reason, people don't trust politicians. If a politician maintains secret allegiances and personal contacts, voters cannot assess accurately to whom he might be beholden, or whether he might be favoring his friends in a way that abuses the public trust. This is especially true when the contacts at issue involve self-serving interest groups. A politician's silence about a fundamental aspect of his identity until after an election offends the notion that important aspects of a politician's life should not be shrouded from public view.
I heard a rumor about Kenney's sexual orientation, and tried to learn more about him on the Internet. I soon hit a roadblock. As I discuss below, Kenney has kept secret basic details of his family and personal life-- details of a kind that other politicians readily disclose. His friends at two local newspapers appear to be helping him to achieve this degree of secrecy. I couldn't find information that would let me conclude that what I heard was or wasn't true.
In my view, that is a problem. Why isn't such a basic fact about a candidate for an important office a matter of public knowledge?
My suspicion is that Kenney thinks he can do more for his friends by keeping the details of his personal life, whatever they are, private. Kenney has been a strident proponent of special city ordinances and executive policies favoring sexual orientation minority groups and seeking to attract people in those groups to Philadelphia, including rules touching on taxation, discrimination, education, housing, senior citizens, the allocation of cash and City resources to community organizations, and tourism. Money and power flow from these policy choices, making the identity of the decision maker a potentially significant matter.
Kenney began his career as an aide to State Senator Vince Fumo. After becoming top aide to Fumo, who later went to prison for his official misdeeds, Kenney won election to City Council in 1991 with the support of a recently formed political action committee, the Pride of Philadelphia Election Committee. That group, founded by Philadelphia Gay News publisher Mark Segal, sought to replace Councilman Fran Rafferty, who did not support gay causes. They backed Kenney, whose Irish name and Catholic background would play well with the same ethnic voters who backed Rafferty. (As State Representative Brian Sims told a Kenney fundraiser held at a Center City gay bar in March, Kenney's value to LGBT political causes stems from his background seeming "so traditionally Philadelphian" to most voters.) Presumably, something about the relatively unknown Kenney convinced Segal's group in 1991 that it could safely put its money behind him.
Last week, Kenney decided to involve himself in a controversy over the firing of a teacher at a private Catholic school in Montgomery County. The issue had nothing to do with Philadelphia mayoral politics or City policies. But Kenney nevertheless inserted himself into it, as might be expected of a politician who had received a lot of money from LGBT groups over the years and identifies closely with them. Kenney's opponents in the Democratic primary could hardly be considered antagonists of sexual-orientation minority groups. It would have been unsurprising if Kenney shared the support of these groups with other Democratic candidates. For some reason, though, Kenney appears to have won their backing with little dissent. It's unclear why. Those groups would no doubt be happy if Kenney were to follow in the footsteps of one of his prominent supporters, Representative Sims, and declare that he is gay after he is elected. The head of one LGBT organization that initially withheld backing from Kenney justified his position on the ground that, as the Inquirer reported, there were "many firsts" for progressive voters to consider during the Democratic primary, including the possibility of electing the first Hispanic mayor, or the first woman mayor. He implied that Kenney was one of several possible "firsts"-- suggesting that he and other LGBT fundraisers know something about Kenney's personal life that most people don't.
In explaining his advocacy of LGBT causes, Kenney has stated that he regards those less strident supportive of those causes as "overly religious" or "intolerant." Using words that insinuate his low opinion of a group of people who probably voted for him in large numbers, Kenney has said that his views on gay rights had to evolve because he began as "a white Irish Catholic guy from South Philly." Evidently, Kenney thought people in that demographic were retrograde in their views, and too inattentive to recognize what he was saying about them. He felt he can score political points by disparaging them, and that he'd get many of their votes regardless of what he says simply because of his Irish last name on the ballot.
Kenney seems to have the same opinion of Catholics generally. His comments last week about the recent firing of the Montgomery County teacher included a condemnation of leaders of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as "cowardly men," and an assertion that the firing was motivated by "discrimination and hate." I wouldn't have fired that teacher, either. But I doubt seriously that her firing was the result of "discrimination and hate." Instead, as Kenney no doubt knows, Catholic schools' codes of conduct for faculty members don't let faculty be involved in same-sex civil marriages. Kenney evidently thinks that his years as top aide to a corrupt politician and then as a member of that illustrious and profoundly moral deliberative body, the Philadelphia City Council, has prepared him to tell the Church that its interpretation of scripture is wrong, and to personally guide the faithful down the true path. If Kenney thinks the Church's teachings on the subject misinterpret the Bible and reflect mere discrimination and hate, he should say so directly and explain himself.
A recent article cataloged some of Kenney's frequent attacks on the Catholic Church, which sound a little strange coming from a politician who also advertises his Catholic roots and his attendance of an all-boys Catholic high school. Based on my experience on college campuses, I find that some sexual orientation minority groups wrongly to regard the Church as a hate group. In voicing their anti-Catholic sentiments individually and through their organizations, they sound an awful lot like bigots themselves. Kenney's airing of views on the recent firing and on the Church generally are no doubt welcome to such people. But if his religious convictions were ever sincere, his years of vilification of the Church may point to a broader change in his identity.
Kenney's campaign website makes no mention of his family after his graduation from college. During the Democratic primary-- the real mayoral race in Philadelphia-- Kenney's campaign made an unusual statement that should have led reporters to inquire a bit further into his personal life. In January 2015, when he resigned from Council to run for Mayor, Kenney took the unusual step of having his spokeswoman tell the Philadelphia Daily News that he had been separated for years from his wife. The spokeswoman explained that "[t]here's nothing scandalous here, it's just what works for them," without elaborating on the circumstances behind their estrangement. "He's a very straightforward guy," his spokeswoman added, with or without intended irony.
Kenney had run for Council several times without going public about his relationship with his family. Evidently, he hoped to defuse speculation about his personal life before the typically closer scrutiny of the mayoral campaign fell upon him. The Philadelphia Daily News, to which Kenney's campaign revealed this information, was keen to cooperate, "By getting his personal life out of the way early," Daily News gossip-column writer Molly Eichel explained, "Kenney essentially makes it a nonissue." As far as Philadelphia's main news-gathering institutions were concerned, Eichel's statement has seemed more like a policy than a casual observation. Neither the Daily News nor its sister paper, the Inquirer, have had any more to say about Kenney's family or personal life since then. As to Kenney's family, Eichel was told that they "are private people." Like media used to a half-century ago, local media appear to have uncritically accepted that this was the last word on the subject. No one has since endeavored to inquire about Kenney's family, what precipitated his separation from his wife, or what the nature of his personal life has been since their separation.
The Inquirer's and Daily News's editors and staff clearly favored Kenney in the primary. Articles that were not on the Opinion page of the paper often contained editorial comments about Kenney's suitability for mayoral office. When the Inquirer's publisher insisted that the editors endorse Kenney's primary opponent Anthony Williams, the editors drew the endorsement as "narrowly" as possible, then leaked to other media the fact that they personally preferred Kenney. If Kenney decided he wanted to hide something about his personal life, it's likely that he would find willing collaborators at both papers.
That is wrong. Public figures shouldn't be allowed to keep secret important parts of their lives. It's a price they owe to society for raising them to prominence. Politicians who are to be invested with political power and charged with the public trust have the least claim to privacy, because their personal associations are the likely source of corrupt influence. A mayor's personal relationships, no matter what their nature, should not be obscured from the public so that no one can tell whether his conduct abuses the public trust.
I wouldn't vote for or against a candidate based on the position he took on LGBT issues. Whether I ultimately vote for Kenney depends whether I can get over his Fumo connections (he was still benefiting from Fumo's dubious money as a Councilman while Fumo was engaging in activities that sent him to jail) and other issues I have with him. He certainly doesn't need my support to win. While the City's calcified politics hurt it badly, and many of its Democratic Party leaders seem smug, uninspiring, untalented, and even unworthy of office, I also have serious doubts that the city's Republican Party as it exists now can be trusted with power. I shudder to think what would happen if people like the Republican bottom-feeders at the Parking Authority were instead charged with running the whole City.
However, I dislike politicians who keep secrets about themselves and their personal associations and relationships, hiding things from voters that need to be public knowledge if the democratic process is to function effectively. We are talking about Jim Kenney in 2015, not John Kennedy in 1960. Kenney should disclose considerably more about his personal life and his relationship with his family, including his sexual orientation. It wouldn't be difficult for Kenney to definitively answer basic questions about these matters, questions which politicians typically answer readily, and which the media has behaved irresponsibly in failing to ask. Given the overwhelming odds in his favor in November, I think he would join the ranks of "cowardly men" if he kept mum on these subjects through Election Day. More importantly, if he keeps quiet, he will fail to fulfill his responsibility to voters making a democratic choice-- even if their choice is, sadly, an extremely limited one. For the process to work, the public must know.
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