Mark B. Cohen Saves Philadelphia!

Everyone’s favorite state rep:

Just as the battle lines are hardening, newly compiled figures on wage tax revenue growth threaten to end the battle over the mayor’s proposed cuts by giving the mayor a good reason to delay them. [...]

That is not the most optimistic way to make the projections. The city is collecting wage taxes at the rate of $125,141,400 a month. Assuming that monthly pace continues, the the city will wind up $342,978,000 AHEAD of its total revenue projection of $1,158,586.

We’re totally set with the extra $300 mil in revenue or so.

(Sorry, been busy with story reporting and research! I know, I’m surprised, too. Hopefully I’ll be back to a regular schedule later this week.)

Rep. Cohen Really Wants $2600

That Phillyblog thread about Mark B. Cohen petered out at 4 pages, but that doesn’t mean netizens elsewhere haven’t picked up the slack. Hell, even reporters just reporting facts (gasp!) have sort of gotten in on the game.

Check out this Philly.com post from Mario Cattabiani:

Don’t bother asking State Rep. Mark Cohen whether he, like each and every one of the other House Democratic leaders, is giving back his cost-of-living-adjustment that kicked in Monday.

He’s not saying. In fact, the Philadelphia Democrat might just walk away if you pursue it.

That’s what I found out yesterday.

After top Democratic leaders in the House announced late Tuesday that they were foregoing the 2.8 percent COLA, I stopped by Cohen’s Capitol office. He’s been in leadership since 1990, and currently served as Caucus Chairman.

He wasn’t there, so I left a message. No response.

I tried calling. Still no response.

Nothing too wild so far. Just a typical story about a typical hard-to-find Congressman, who doesn’t answer your question unless you go to a messageboard and ask him.

Yesterday, in the basement of the Capitol, I ran into Cohen and told him I had reached out twice, unsuccessfully.

“I respect your right to make phone calls,” he told me. I then asked if he was going to give back the COLA. He turned from me, without answering, and walked away.

This is great. Just walked away! Clearly, he’s taking the cost-of-living increase, unlike each and every one of his colleagues. Perhaps he needs the money, you say. Yes, let’s continue on:

He is now making $94,949 — $2,600 of which comes courtesy of the annual COLA.

A source told me that when House Democratic leaders were deciding early this week whether to give the money back, Cohen argued against the move.

Yes, that’s right, all this for a measly $2,600, which to be honest doesn’t even look all that attractive to myself, a professional blogger. Then again, we bloggers do light our nightly soothing aromatherapy candles with $100 bills.

Update: There’s a Phillyblog thread about this.

State Rep. Cohen mum on whether he will return his raise [Commonwealth Confidential]

Phillyblog Continues Great Internet Tradition Of Harassing Mark Cohen

How will politicians interact with the public in the future? If Mark B. Cohen’s recent post on Phillyblog (at 5:56 a.m.!) about library closings is any indication, it will not be cordial:

Today, the City Council of Philadelphia will consider a resolution pushed by Friends of the Free Library to keep the libraries threatened with closure open for six months to give the city time to fully review their value and other options.

In today’s Inquirer, columnist Daniel Rubin, in an article entitled, “Operator, Where’s the Nearest Library?” agrees with me that the cost of library shutdowns is about the same as the cost of 311 services–even assuming that the city does not get the $4 million to $8 customized software package that I believe is necessary over time to adequately run this system.

Actually, I fixed and put the link in the text, he left it out. Please, people, while you’re here, heed this writing suggestion: entitled isn’t horribly wrong, but just use titled; it sounds so much better. On a side note, the book Common Errors in English Usage calls its usage “pretentious.” Fitting?

Anyway, here is the first reply:

Does your house count as a library, with all the taxpayer funds you spent on mountains of books? How much of the public money you’ve squandered on personal expenses could have been used to improve public libraries and other services?

Don’t start pontificating that we should cut much needed projects like 311 when YOU are like a pig at the public trough, inappropriately spending OUR money on YOUR personal expenses.

And the second!

Good lord. We get it. You love libraries and children. Give it a rest.

And it even gets kinda funny!

“Operator, where’s the nearest library?” is a phrase you should start using to find out where you can borrow books and not buy them with the public’s money. You are shameless.

And it goes on and on about the book thing until Cohen himself replies in a post titled “And The Angels Sing”

Thanks to the above posters for so concisely documenting the kind of abuse that keeps almost all elected officials and the vast majority of civic leaders from posting on Phillyblog.

I hope your ugly cyberbullying gives you the satisfaction that you are looking for and adds meaning to your life.

I hope you will feel great joy every time someone who needs it cannot get library services.

Perhaps some day you will come to recognize that we are all living in this city together with people of different generations, races, and social classes, and denying people who need it library services hardly makes this a better place to live for any one at all.

I don’t need to tell you this is an incredible reply. But I would like to point out: Phillyblog posters, this is your finest hour. For example, the next post was a fucking image macro!!

Clearly outgunned here, Cohen does not retreat, God bless him. After someone says the posters on Phillyblog are Cohen’s “bosses,” he absolutely loses it:

You are not my bosses. And all my legislative actions have been fully in accordance with the law and all applicable ethical standards. I represent my constituency, which none of you live in, and most of you have never lived in. None of you have views that are at all representative of the people of my district, for whom you seem to have the greatest contempt, perhaps because they do meet your standards of financial success, perhaps because all of them do not have the same skin color that I do.

Anyone who tries to run a business, or a non-profit organization, or a governmental agency, and treats his or her employees with the kind of consistent calumny that you insist on demonstrating year after year is hardly likely to be successful by any measurement. A “boss” who hates his or her employees, who vilifies them publicly at every opportunity, is hardly likely to get worthwhile results or to get very far professionally.

But an employee who whines on messageboards about his boss is likely to get fired. (Zing!) Then comes the third paragraph of his post, which might top the brilliance of his previous best quote (”All over the country, people live longer lives because of me.”):

One of the great glories of this country is that each American, regardless of wealth, regardless of social class, regardless of race, has equal rights. I am one of those working on a daily basis to make those rights meaningful, and perhaps some day some of this totally excessive and counterproductive anger will dissipate enough to allow one or more of you to join me in these efforts.

You hear that? Mark B. Cohen is being harassed on Phillyblog because people are racist and classist! At the risk of inspiring another rogue commenter: And here I thought they were just scared of his penis.

The thread goes on for two more pages (for now) and discusses the City Institute library on Rittenhouse and Cohen calls the library closings “class warfare against people of moderate means.” No, dummy, that’s the drug war.

All in all, the whole blog post is really a brilliant piece of literature. In future years, I expect this thread to be compulsory reading in freshman English classes. It’s at that level.

Operator, Where’s The Nearest Library? [Phillyblog]