Take that, Mr. Steffens: We are content no more
Published in the Daily New, Mon, Nov. 14, 2005 THE BIGGEST loser in Tuesday’s election wasn’t on the ballot. It was Lincoln Steffens, the muckraker who coined the phrase “corrupt but content” to describe Philadelphia politics. We can now retire the phrase. We may be corrupt, but the election returns show that we are not content anymore. When almost 87 percent of the voters support a proposal that takes a step toward cleaning up politics, you know we’re not content with politics as usual. (Ballot proposals generally win with about 70 percent of the vote. And the ethics question won a higher percentage of the vote than popular DA Lynne Abraham who ran against an seriously underfunded opponent.) When an election without a single race whose outcome was in doubt draws not the expected 9 percent but 14 percent of the voters, you know people want things to change. And when… Continue reading