Pennsylvania GOP Leadership Turns to Robbing Funeral Home Burial Accounts

Personally speaking, I would forgive him. Then take off his shoes and socks and bathe his feet – though I wouldn’t necessarily get naked and wrap myself in a towel first. Then I would throw a barbecue for twelve of my closest friends so we could discuss end-of-life provisions and the importance of living wills. After that I might try walking about with a big old cross over one shoulder, which can be great for the quads but you got to remember to keep switching sides or you go all lopsided. Then a nice chat with Dad and a quick trip home. At which point I would most likely fast-forward so I could cast him down into the 7th circle of hell. Right next to Robt Novack and his new bff Eugene O’Neill, who are watching the playwright’s ten-play cycle (he had time to complete it in hell) Possessors Dispossessed (no I am not making up that title) performed by recently deceased Mormon missionaries on an endless loop (More Stately Mansions alone takes five hours to perform).

But this is just off the top of my head. Haven’t really given it much thought.

He explains the virtues of the free market system to the families he robbed. During the lecture, they are free to do as they please.

@Benedick: BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! God, I love you.

Send him to Iraq as a human bomb detector. At least he’ll be useful for a little while.

TJ/ I have two movie recommendations. Both lean towards the action side, but I think they’re both stimulating intellectually….

Transformers and GI Joe!

Just kidding. District 9 and The Hurt Locker.

I liked D9’s thinly disguised allegory of illegal aliens in SA using illegal real aliens. It does everything that Hollywood is losing sight of these days.

And the Hurt Locker. Oh wow. If you want to see/feel what a small piece of Iraq looks like and feel fear of every corner, window and garbage pile then this is it. I do not want to be an EOD tech who specializes in booby traps. I don’t think I have the nerves to do that.

I wonder what his issue was. My guess is he gambles, thats the number one reason people seem to do these things, or else, actually, this is probably the number one reason, his business was failing, and he was desperate. Local, family owned funeral homes have been falling in droves to the Wal Mart of the funeral business, Service Corporation of America, it buys them, but keeps the old family name on them. They are one of W’s best buddies, if anyone remembers funeralgate back in texas in 1999.

I had a friend, nicest guy in the world, a true democrat, too, he is in prison now, he was an attorney, he took real estate closing funds. He and his wife, the best friends of my ex-wife and I, were having trouble conceiving, they went through years of fertility and in vitro and all that, which costs the big bucks. When I split with my ex, I lost contact, next I heard of him, I saw the disbarment notice.

People whose lives are spiralling into bankruptcy I think go into a kind of psychosis.

One thing I know from many examples of it, when the prosecutors say they took $X dollars, the real number is 1/10th that amount. In most of these cases, the poor assholes are really “borrowing,”, they take the money from this week’s closing, then pay it back from next week’s closing, and on and on, and when it all falls apart, the only money that really lost, stolen, is the last one, because then there is no next one to repay that little unauthorized loan back from. But technically, they stole all the money, even though they paid 90% of it back.

If you are in politics, you know that after lawyers, funeral directors are the second most common profession. They know everyone in their community and tend to be community leaders and to get involved in politics.

Oh well.

@Promnight: This smacks of apologetics.

ADD: Maybe his issue was he’s a fucking crook?

@Promnight: It’s like my friend Becky, former secretary of state here, who was indicted for embezzlement, money laundering, tax evasion and shit (50 counts) for failing to account for expenditures of HAVA funds. I think she gave a sack of munnie to some hack with bad accounting practices and back dated a memo to try to fit his rates into the expenditures. I can see sloppy bookkeeping, but not actual corruption on her part.

I remember when she first started in politics. She said she was a friend’s sister and that was good enough for me. A mutual friend brought her to a tribal feast one day and she threw herself into serving food and helping out with my mom and the other ladies.

@JNOV: Apologetics? I do not think that word means what you think it means.

I did not say he was innocent, or that he should not be punished, he will be, his life is ruined, his family will suffer for his sin, too, though it is not their sin.

I reacted the way I do to most any instance of a person who has fallen into serious, life-destroying error, except for the most depraved criminals. I reacted the way I react to the plight of the incredibly large number of black criminals, who are mostly guilty of committing crimes, yet I can recognize that all crimes have a context, and all people have a history and are born into situations beyond their control, and have varying degrees of weakness and strength, virtue and sin, in their makeup.

I reacted to this story in the same way that I react to most any failing of any person, with mercy and hunility, basically the reaction I received from my father, who was wont to say, in such circusmtances, “the poor bastard,” which does not absolve the person, its just a humble recognition of the fact that people fuck up, that truly, there but for the luck of the draw I go, and by luck of the draw, I even mean the strength and ability to be honest and avoid temptation, even in the face of personal crisis and need and pschological state and illness, the luck I have had to somehow have the strength, morality, to avoid being tempted and drawn into such error.

Because I do happen to believe that some people are born to be tall, and some to be short, and you cannot blame them for being tall or short. And some are born strong, and some weak. And some born stupid, and some smart.

And some are born, with a combination of weakness, and a psychological makeup that makes them susceptible to denial, to feelings of self-pity that tends to allow them to rationalize their actions as justifiable even when they are wrong.

And then beyond the luck of the draw regarding one’s innate strengths and weaknesses, virtues and failures, there is the luck of what situations life throws at all of us, some are lucky, and never have their weaknesses tested, some strong people are unlucky enough to face situations which overcome their strength, some weak and flawed people are lucky enough never to encounter situations which allow their flaws to destroy them.

Even sociopaths, hell, we hate them because they are apparently lacking in some basic elements of a normal person’s pyschological makeup, or else they encounter traumas that permanently warp their psyche, in any event, a person who for whatever reason lacks a conscience, well, thats like a person who lacks a leg, I cannot really morally blame the legless man for not being able to run. I don’t hate my cat for torturing birds to death. its a cat.

So I tend to react with sorrow and yes, sympathy, for the worst, even. Even W, at times, he is a fucked up dude. Born into a sick subculture and fed its values from birth. Stupid, weak and flawed, psychologically abused by his sociopathic mother and asshole father, I am sure.

My heart says “the poor bastard,” even though I still want to see him drawn and quartered.

@Promnight: The gambling thing is powerful. I worked with a guy at my old Legal Services program who was a hard-working, dedicated lawyer, but had a real jones for gambling. He wound up stealing mid-six figures from our program, got caught, sent to federal prison, disbarred. Had a wife and two small kids at the time. When he was arrested, he had a bag with $50K cash in it and was on his way to Vegas. His theory, just as you say, was that he would make it all back and then stop.

@Promnight: I meant apologetics in the sense that you’re trying to square a circle through some form of explanation or empathy that doesn’t make sense. But I guess I’m kind of stupid like that.

@Dodgerblue: Uh huh, but he was still a crook.

ha haha hahahahahahahahahahahhaahaha!!!

i saw this FCS! JNOV. this is our backyard. we drove through glenolden down the blue route to that favorite school we went to.
good old philly, pennsyltucky, it never disappoints the crazy watchers.

@Promnight: My empathy runs in inverse proportion to the socioeconomic standing of the culprit. In this case, I’ll be happy to pee on his grave.

prommie, why give him the benefit of the doubt so fast?
people do fucked up things sometimes just because they’re assholes. how does this fit in with all your metaphors of, yes, apology. that’s what i hear you say too. ‘SLPAIN!!
“you can’t really blame him..” huh? why not?!?

@baked: Because Prom identifies with him in some way.

Stealing from the bereaved or those pre-planning their funerals is bad fucking juju. I don’t care if they are addicted to comic books, and pulling the race card, Promnight, was pretty shitty. A thief is a thief is a thief. Stealing baby food, okay. Bilking the families of the dead and the dying — shitty. Planning to make good on said embezzled funds — irrelevant.

@baked: Yeah, it’s right around the corner from me.

By the by: C&L is linking to this post. Champagne corks will be flying.

@Benedick: /looks up and waves

@JNOV: Incredibly bad juju.

And here is how this crime plays out for the families, –

http://thestory.org/archive/?b_start:int=14 –

scroll down to The Forest Hill Fiasco. Absolutely heartbreaking.

@Benedick: A “Concern Troll” (Mike’s words) at C&L doesn’t like Chainsaw’s approach:

If blogs are the new media we are all screwed. Blogs are just as guilty of sensationalizing, spining and distorting the “news” as the mainstream media is.

Case in Point:

Mayor Bathurst is one person. A mayor in Pennsylvania. A Republican. He stole more than $78,000 that was being held in escrow from his own business, a funeral home. These are the facts.

Yet, the Stinque blog ran this headline: Pennsylvania GOP leadership turns to robbing funeral home burial accounts. Nice spin… a little truth + a little innuendo = FOX NEWS. WOW… With quality spin like that they probably can get a full time position at one of the mainstream media corporations.

Don’t get me wrong, there are PLENTY of things that republicans have done wrong and they should be held accountable. But that doesn’t make it right to blame them for things that have nothing to do with.

The misdeads of one man are the fault of that man (and any who supported him). If he happens to belong to some group, that group is not to blame, unless that group participated.

You’d think this would be common sense?

Come to think of it, the MSM still offers health bennies.

@nojo: Inability to get satire and lack of familiarity with the literary device “hyperbole” is yet another indication of the decline of culture, or what’s left of it.

@Mistress Cynica: Especially for a website called “Stinque”, whose logo plays off Harper’s.

And which uses “Die! Die you fucking monster!” as a kicker.

Perhaps we should add “We Subvert. You Decide.” as a slogan. Maybe Rupert will adopt us as a side project.

But really: I’d love to be used as a national whipping post for the decline of standards. We should all plant “I Hate Stinque” comments everywhere we can.

@Mistress Cynica: I like to think of it more as litotes.

@nojo: It does??? Plus. You got it. “If there is one thing I detest more than the cheese filled underwear of Davis Brooks it is the juvenile innuendo of a noxious site which labors under the moniker Stinque. Is this why we entrap and cage millions upon millions of helpless hamsters? Just so that unemployed PHDs can feel as if their lives are not quite the shitpile they so obviously are?”

That kind of thing?

@nojo: FlyingChainSaw must die!

@Benedick: Verrrrry nice.

@FlyingChainSaw: Nevahhhh! But this Bathhurst guy should be in front of a death panel pronto.

@cassandra_said: Yeah.

@Benedick: Yes. Yes, I think that’ll do. You and The Talented Mr. Sumatra have the hang of it.

@JNOV: And thanks for the effort, but no need to defend or explain us over there. You cannot fight virulent earnestness. You can only mock it.

@nojo: I do what I like.

@Benedick:

You are a brilliant, brilliant man. You just made my day, darling. Thank you.