Yesterday, on the steps of the Montgomery County Court House health care advocates from Health Care for America Now, the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, Pennsylvania Communities Organizing for Change and Penn Action calling on Attorney General Tom Corbett to resign his office.
Montgomery County Times-Herald coverage of the action, including video footage, can be found here.
We took this action because Corbett has politicized an office that should be entirely above politics.
He’s done that is many ways. What most concerns us, of course, is the frivolous lawsuit he has filed challenging the constitutionality of the new health care reform legislation. This lawsuit is so far outside of the mainstream of legal thought that it is either a total waste of our taxpayer dollars or perhaps the most dangerous lawsuit filed in America this year. For, if by some chance the Supreme Court were to accept the argument of the suit, not only would the new health care reform legislation be declared unconstitutional but Social Security and Medicare might be next.
Not only is the lawsuit wrong in itself, Corbett’s filing it is clearly an attempt to use his office for political purposes, the very thing he has charged members of the General Assembly with doing. Corbett’s campaign staff has admitted that they had been planning to file their suit against the healthcare reform legislation even before he had read the bill, sending out a fundraising mailing in February saying that he is “leading the fight” against “government-run socialized medicine.”
Corbett has twice refused to provide documents about his office’s political activity in response to Open Records Requests made by Keystone Progress. But emails that came from a similar request to the Attorney General of Wisconsin, show that attorneys in Corbett’s office were in contact with Republican State Leadership Committee and other national Republican political organizations as they were planning to file the lawsuit.
Corbett has also used his office to subpoena Twitter to reveal the identities of two of his critics. He has been widely criticized for this outrageous violation of the First Amendment, to the point where the (Harrisburg) Patriot-News has joined us in calling for his resignation.
And serious questions have been raised about the appearance of selective prosecution of legislators who may have used their legislative staff and offices to run political campaigns. Corbett has pursued the prosecution of mostly Democrats in what has become known as the “Bonusgate Scandal.” Recently, it has been reported that Corbett’s office did not investigate allegations against Republican State Senator Jane Orie. The Allegheny County District Attorney filed charges when Corbett failed to act.
Corbett has every right to take his right wing views about the role of the federal government in health care and Social Security into the electoral arena to see whether the voters of Pennsylvania agree with them. He has no right to use his political office to further that campaign or intimidate those who disagree with him. That’s why we called on him to resign yesterday.
Drop your participation in a lawsuit against the health care reform law recently enacted in Washington and then resign from office. You’re only doing it for your own political gain. Spend your own money.