Apparently the rule in Delaware is that if you are a Democratic governor it is fair game for a special prosecutor to point out that your campaign violated the law in accepting "pay to play" donations, or for the Attorney General to point out that your administration violated the law in convening a secret charter school working group, or for the Sierra Club, Common Cause, and other members of the public to point out that you are running several agencies (DNREC and DPH come to mind) with "secret" AG opinions, or for the Associate Secretary Education to admit that after four years of Race to the Top the government is not quite sure how much Federal money it has spent (but that it still wants a fifth year to spend the rest).
Yep, you can point out all of this in Delaware, but there is one thing you can't do ...
You can't hold anybody in the Democratic Party (most especially the Governor) accountable for any of this.
Special Prosecutor Veasey declines to bring charges. Attorney General Biden says it was illegal, but he's not going to do anything about it. So it goes.
Why?
Well, part of it is because corruption, cronyism, and corporatism is the order of the day in today's Delaware Democratic Party.
Part of it is because almost all the moderates left the Delaware GOP (which is so devoid of ideas that its current state website lacks both a platform and a legislative agenda).
Thus part of it is the current registration gap of about 130,000 more Ds than Rs in the state.
But part of it is simply because we put up with it.
Delaware has always been about "who you know" rather than "what you know," about "the Delaware Way" rather than "the rule of law."
People have become fatalistic because--deep down--they know that the Republicans don't want to get into office to change any of that; they want to get into office because they aren't collecting their own "fair share" of pay-to-play corruption.
It's past time to hold Democrats accountable, from our Congressional delegation, to our Governor, to our Attorney General, to our Commissioner of Insurance Companies, to our State Treasurer, to our Secretary of Education.
But there's one thing you shouldn't hold: your breath.
1 comment:
Well said. That is appalling. And the entire notion of secret (non publicly disclosed) AG opinions smacks non democratic governments. There is no public accountability in it whatsoever.
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