Tom Corbett

HARRISBURG - Since West Philadelphia resident David Pride lost his job selling cable service 18 months ago, he hasn't exactly been loafing. He has attended job fairs and enrolled at Community College of Philadelphia, where he received an associate's degree as a paralegal. And he's fighting City Hall to get blighted buildings removed from his neighborhood. "I'm not sitting at home collecting checks," said Pride, whose unemployment insurance ran out last week. Ditto Larry McGee of Bucks County, who said he had sent out 150 resumés since being laid off from a plumbing-supply company in May 2009.

PENNSYLVANIA'S political culture tends to be somewhat behind the times. So it's not surprising to see that state Republicans have failed to learn the lesson of the recent resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Elected officials, particularly those responsible for overseeing law enforcement, shouldn't use government for partisan political purposes. Gonzales got into trouble for politicizing the Justice Department. He allegedly fired several U.S. attorneys who failed to prosecute enough Democratic elected officials.

TOM CORBETT should know better. The man who's Pennsylvania's attorney general and the GOP candidate for governor stirred outrage in early July when he suggested that many of the state's jobless citizens would rather collect unemployment benefits than go back to work. Corbett sensibly backtracked in the face of criticism - until last week, when he doubled down on the unemployed-Pennsylvanians-are-lazy theme. There are plenty of jobs available, he told reporters Tuesday at a Delaware County campaign stop: Just look at the classified ads in your local newspaper!

HARRISBURG - Gov.-elect Tom Corbett drew on top names in the state's Republican establishment as he began assembling his transition team Wednesday, saying they would help him shape his administration as well as draft a plan for reforming state government by his first week in office. Speaking to reporters at the Capitol, Corbett announced the front lines of the team, many of them people who worked as fund-raisers and strategists for his campaign. Some were also key players in the administration and campaigns of the last Republican elected governor, Tom Ridge.

YES, THE deficit is significant. Yes, spending needs to be addressed, and, yes, the word "tax" is evil, but you don't solve a fiscal problem with shortsighted policies, especially ones that exploit and destroy precious resources. Politicians have agendas and, sadly, the majority of those agendas have nothing to do with their constituents. This was clear when Tom Corbett (I refuse to address him with an honorable title) presented the state budget. Instead of wearing a suit adorned with a keystone lapel pin, he should've worn a wide-brimmed hat with a feather, a full-length fur coat and a ruby keystone medallion rimmed in diamonds because that's who I saw behind the podium: a pimp tricking out the commonwealth.

He was the very picture of power and authority as he stood at the dais, his unruffled, silvery hair shining in the TV lights. Behind him, on dark-blue drapes, hung an oval plaque with his name, Tom Corbett, and seal of his office as Pennsylvania attorney general. In announcing a lode of criminal charges yesterday against former House Speaker John M. Perzel and other Republicans, Corbett said he did not want to even discuss his political ambitions. "I'm not here to talk about the governor's race," he said.

Re the headline "Gov. Corbett's Nazi connection" : How irresponsible to put that on your front page when it had little or nothing to due with the governor. It amounts to nothing more than your own propaganda to discredit him. How about some articles linking your beloved President Obama to that terrorist Bill Ayers? I have a great headline for tomorrow's paper: "The Communist Manifesto and how Obama is following it to a 'T.' " Dion Carotenuto, Parkesburg, Pa.

At a minimum, I'd like to think that people running for Pennsylvania attorney general have a basic comprehension of the U.S. Constitution and of what is and is not part of the job description of the office. Based on some recent comments by Tom Corbett, the endorsed Republican candidate for attorney general, I'm starting to wonder. Corbett, who served 15 months as attorney general when former Gov. Tom Ridge appointed him to fill a vacancy, is now in a primary race against Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor.

NOW THAT we've learned that the Corbett administration is considering that applicants for food-stamp assistance undergo asset examinations and meet strict financial criteria to receive it, I suggest that the governor think of applying that standard to other recipients of state welfare. He could start with the corporations that benefitted from his generous tax break last year. Could they prove a need for it? How many jobs did their bonus create? Should those corporations be allowed to have no more than $2,000 in savings to get their welfare from the state?

With the federal health-care overhaul package not quite made final, Pennsylvania's attorney general is among a number of state officials around the country already vowing to try to block it in court. Tom Corbett, saying he planned to join Republican counterparts in 10 other states who are planning to sue, predicted the courts would find the legislation unconstitutional. He did not elaborate. Asked yesterday which portions of the bill the suit would challenge, Corbett's spokesman, Kevin Harley, said the particulars would be laid out when the suit is filed.

When challenged, Gov. Christie sometimes yells like a Marine gunnery sergeant, calling reporters, citizens, and opponents alike stupid. Judging by his stratospheric poll ratings, voters love that shtick. He's "Jersey Strong. " And how often did former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell say something outrageous, such as opining in 2006 that many old people love casinos because they "lead very gray lives"? After a brief flare, the outrage faded, as it always did; it was just Ed being Ed. Last week, Gov. Corbett mentioned in a radio interview that he had heard some employers say they have trouble finding workers who can pass a drug test - and for that moment of candor, he caught three days of hell, both from Democrats running to replace him in 2014 and from media commentators.

HARRISBURG - In the heat of the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, Republican candidate Tom Corbett stirred controversy, and fodder for Democrats, by saying many jobless people "are just going to sit there" and not seek work until their unemployment benefits ran out. Now, midway through his first term and positioning himself to run for a second, Gov. Corbett is taking renewed heat for quoting employers as saying they "can't find anybody that ... has...

DUDE! IT LOOKS like Pennsylvania is going to need to have an intervention . . . because we have a governor with a severe case of denial. Last week, we learned that Pennsylvania lost more people from its labor force than any time in the past 30 years, and that it ranked 49th in job growth (ahead of only Wyoming) in March. On Monday, Corbett made his regular appearance on a radio show and gave his usual riff on net private-sector job gains since early 2011 (a world where those 20,000 public-school teachers and employees laid off in the face of Corbett budget cuts magically don't exist.)

HARRISBURG, Pa. - A third state agency is pointing to potential legal problems in Gov. Tom Corbett's stalled plan to hire a British company to manage the $3.5 billion Pennsylvania Lottery. The chief counsel of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board wrote in a letter last month that the proposed contract documents are ambiguous and do not say clearly what kinds of new gambling Camelot Global Services would be allowed to operate. As a result, it is impossible to say whether it infringes on state casino gambling laws, the gaming board's top lawyer, Douglas Sherman, wrote in his seven-page letter.

HARRISBURG - Call it the Big Sell. In the hours leading up to what is widely expected to be a historic vote Thursday on whether to privatize alcohol sales in Pennsylvania, activity has intensified behind the scenes as much has it has on the House floor. Lobbying in the hallways. Phone calls from the governor. A frantic numbers game - are the votes there? Whose mind needs changing, whose arm needs twisting just a bit harder? Such a frenzy of lobbying hasn't been seen in the Capitol on a single issue - other than the annual budget - since Gov. Ed Rendell's days.

HARRISBURG - Call it the Big Sell. In the hours leading up to what is widely expected to be a historic vote Thursday on whether to privatize alcohol sales in Pennsylvania, activity has intensified behind the scenes as much has it has on the House floor. Lobbying in the hallways. Phone calls from the governor. A frantic numbers game - are the votes there? Whose mind needs changing, whose arm needs twisting just a bit harder? Such a frenzy of lobbying hasn't been seen in the Capitol on a single issue - other than the annual budget - since Gov. Ed Rendell's days.

THERE'S IRONY HERE. Tom Corbett, who ascended to the governorship on the wings of law and justice, faces the prospect of law-and-justice issues clipping his re-election odds. At least a half dozen legal snarls set to unfold in coming months can put the guv on the wrong side of stuff with real political impact. And when I say "wrong side," I don't mean legally. I mean, excuse the word, optically - what it looks like and how it plays as he seeks a second term. The issues are Corbett-generated.

IT WAS THE hottest ticket in town when the Pittsburgh Penguins dropped the puck for hockey's outdoor Winter Classic at Pittsburgh's Heinz Field on New Year's Day 2011. And Tom Corbett was among the spectators. But the incoming governor didn't pay a dime for his seat at the game, or for a Winter Classic brunch - together worth $472, according to state records. Instead, the tab was picked up by lobbyist Robert Kennedy, vice president for governmental affairs at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ used to be known as "Sen. Scarf. " This was during her days in the state Senate, where she served 14 years, and - as you likely figured out - almost always wore a scarf. These days, during her fifth term in Congress, she's wearing something else: a change of heart for a chance to make history. In November, even December, Schwartz seemed certain that she wouldn't challenge Tom Corbett for governor. Now she seems certain that she will. "It is my intention," she tells me, to give up her House seat and take on T.C. Why the change?

Few are more steeped in Pennsylvania party politics than Democratic power broker David L. Cohen. The Comcast executive vice president has long been known as the go-to fund-raiser for Democratic candidates. He is credited as the chief strategist behind former Gov. Ed Rendell's successful political career, and President Obama in 2011 described him as a "great friend. " Now, just as the 2014 governor's race is beginning to heat up, Cohen says he will likely back Republican Gov. Corbett's reelection campaign.