Listen:

It's a clean sweep.

Pennsylvanians, we can feel so proud.

On Capitol Hill, the General Assembly has four caucuses that in effect function as mini-political parties unto themselves. Each has its own agenda and quirks.

And now, with the indictment last week of former Republican House Speaker John Perzel, it’s a clean sweep. That makes at least one top leader from each of the four caucuses who has done the perp walk.

Tick off the roll call: Vince Fumo, powerhouse Democratic senator, convicted of multiple corruptions in federal court. Former Democratic House whip Mike Veon – indicted in the same Bonusgate scandal that’s now reached Perzel. And, you may have forgotten this one, but former Senate Republican leader Joe Loeper did a stint in federal prison as a tax cheat.

And, hey, I’m not even counting the convictions of various back benchers for things such as perjury and killing a homeless veteran in a hit and run.

Basically, the crime rate inside the state Capitol is pretty close to that in the so-called Badlands of North Philadelphia.

Let me hasten to add that Perzel and Veon have only been charged, not convicted. But the grand jury had laid out detailed cases that, between them, they appropriated millions of tax dollars to boost their parties' respective electoral fortunes.

Even if trial juries conclude that this electioneering on the public dime was not an actual crime, that wouldn’t be all that consoling.

The cases are built on a mound of emails and other records. What that suggests is that this kind of tax-funded politicking was a workaday norm around the state Capitol. When people think they’re doing something wrong, they don’t usually do it via e-mail.

Or perhaps they just thought no one from inside Harrisburg’s cozy little bipartisan culture of corruption would ever call them on it.

An irony lurks. Why did lawmakers indulge the taxpayer-funded shenanigans known as Bonusgate? In part, because they feared losing their perches of power in the 2006 elections. And why was that? Because of citizen disgust over the illegal pay raises the legislature had voted itself.

It apparently never occurred to these lawmakers that a better way to stay in office might be to truly embrace reform. Instead, they dug a deeper pit of corruption.

It’s time for another clean sweep in Harrisburg. The kind where voters throw the bums out.

At the start of every week, thousands of people buy SEPTA passes to get to work. Imagine their frustration and anger on Tuesday morning when they woke up to find zero buses, no running subways and useless passes in their hands. That's no way to build labor solidarity says WHYY's Chris Satullo in his weekly audio column Center Square.

Listen:

My dad was a union president.

In my home, growing up, we always looked for that union label on everything we bought. I spent many weekends at the basement ping-pong table, stuffing union flyers into envelopes.

In my adult life, I've been mostly on the management side of the divide. But I retain a fundamental respect for the right of unions to fight for the interests of workers.

That's why the dumb stunt pulled this week by SEPTA's transit union left me feeling more sad than mad.

Whatever sympathy the residents of this blue-collar city might have had for the transit workers was forfeited by their union's decision to go on strike in the dead of night Tuesday. The union gave no warning to the hundreds of thousands of workers who woke up to a nasty rush-hour surprise.

That morning, during my WaWa coffee stop workers behind the counter vigorously debated the union's move.

Now WaWa clerks are not exactly the overdogs of American capitalism. But most of the clerks at my WaWa didn't seem to be on the side of a union that had stuck it to working folks on a weekday.

One clerk offered wan support for the bus drivers: "They've been working without a contract since spring."

"Hey, I've working without a contract since I was born," another replied.

That's the heart of the problem. The lingering strength of an enfeebled union movement in America lies almost entirely in the public sector. And when public sector unions strike – when the garbage piles up, when the classrooms sit silent – its their fellow working stiffs that bear the brunt.

This situation doesn't exactly boost public support for unions. In the old days, if the auto workers struck a plant, it was the capitalist owner who had the most to lose. His customers could always walk across the street to buy from his competitor. That was the leverage.

Public unions seem heedless of the perils of using public inconvenience as leverage. They seem ever more divorced from the realities of private sector employment, where furloughs, pay cuts and higher co-pays have long been glum facts of life. In their rhetoric, they can seem like people who just got out of time machine set to 1997.

Government already gets a bad enough rap, much of it unfair. It doesn't need additional body blows from clueless, arrogant public unions.

For this chip off a union block, it's a sad sight to see.

Listen:

Sometimes, Philadelphia City Hall reminds me of a 2-year-old playing hide and seek.

This is toddler logic: if I sit in a corner, cover my eyes and scrunch down real small, nobody can see me.

Actually, we can see you. And what we see is pathetic.

What we see, in Year Two of what was supposed to be a reform era, are the same old petty corruptions.

Today's depressing case in point: the city's Board of Revision of Taxes.

Philadelphia has a real estate tax, which supports vital services such as schools. The BRT's job is to set the property valuations against which this tax is calculated.

In much of Philly, any resemblance between these assessed values and a house's actual market value is purely accidental. You could get a fairer set of valuations if you hired rhesus monkeys to throw darts at a wall.

The BRT is a classic Philly cesspool of incompetence. Philly homeowners have long known.

BRT tried to fix its mess through a big revaluation project. But the agency botched that redo so badly that the city's budget director says work is worthless. Clearly, the BRT needs to be blown up.

Mayor Nutter agrees; so do some on Council. They're working on an overhaul that would do some sensible things. But one thing Council members show little taste for is curing the BRT's screaming patronage problem. Eighty of its employees are paid by the school district, a gambit to evade Civil Service and permits the workers to do overt political work. In other words, the BRT is hack heaven.

Some Council members balk at cutting out the patronage jobs. Why? Because those BRT workers are their loyal election foot soldiers. Council members wax eloquent about the hacks" "volunteer" service to democracy. Yep, volunteer – unless you count the light-duty BRT jobs they get as compensation.

Council is like the toddler in the corner, fooling no one.

We can see you, people. So can the rest of the state, which already views any Philadelphia plea for help with a jaundiced eye.

Yes we can see you. And what we see is the same old, same old.

Listen:

Listen:

The billboard I glimpsed along I-95 the other day pushed a now-typical message of anxiety.

"I was closer to retirement at 40 than I am at 50."

What did the ad suggest doing about that? Talk to an investment company that calls itself "Chuck."

Well, Chuck, here's my impertinent question:

Who decreed that the point of life is to retire while you still have 20 perfectly useful years left in you?

The message has been flogged for decades by companies that want to sell you investments. Many Americans seem to have bought in. If they can’t stop working at leas by age 62, they feel like they’ve failed – or been cheated.

Is it just me, or this a really stupid life goal?

Sure, I wish my 401 (K) were more robust. But I refuse to be dismayed by the growing evidence that I'll need to work well into my 60s. Fact is, I’ve always planned to, the Good Lord willing.

I flatly reject the notion that retiring in your late 50s or early 60s equals winning at the game of life.

That goal is the vestige of a bygone era when life expectancies were 10 years shorter, and a majority of Americans earned their daily bread by doing punishing manual labor.

Now, most of us earn our keep in cubicles, at jobs where experience and, yes, wisdom provide added value. And the evidence is plentiful: The longer we do meaningful work, the healthier, happier and less burdensome to our children we will be.

And the better we’ll serve the nation. Frankly, society nudged the Greatest Generation to join the land of sansabelt pants, mid-morning tee times and early-bird buffets. Why? Because the huge baby boom was clamoring for jobs. But now the demographics have reversed. Boomers are hitting “retirement age” at a time when subsidizing their leisure will crush the federal budget.

So make Uncle Sam smile. He needs you to keep working.

Here's what I say to that billboard:

Thrift is a fine virtue, but this retirement obsession turns it into something perverse. Why should I forego enriching life experiences now, when I’m healthy and surrounded by those I love, on the off chance that I might be able to do them when I’m 80?

To a guy whose dad died at 53, that sounds like a really, really bad bet.

Listen:

Nicole Regalbuoto is pretty torqued off. With good reason.

The day care center she runs in Philadelphia has been pushed to the brink by the clownish state budget fiasco in Harrisburg, which has dried up her state subsidies.

Regalbuoto told WHYY last week that she can't wait for next year's election, so she can work to throw those bum-lawmakers out of their jobs.

But here's the depressing thing. The same factors that make Harrisburg lawmakers so stone-headed also make them hard to fire for bad behavior.

Let me offer at least one upbeat observation. Every once in a while, voters do rise up and punish scoundrel lawmakers. In 2006, driven by the furor over legislative pay raises, 55 General Assembly seats did turn over – about 1 in 8.

But irony is a bear. That turnover turns out to be one of the key factors fueling this year's budget fiasco. Why? Let's have a look at another bad Harrisburg habit, gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is the dark art of drawing squiggly boundaries for political districts. These zigzag lines make little sense in terms of geography, but make all kinds of sense if the goal is eternal job security for the pols who draw the lines.

Pennsylvania's is so highly gerrymandered that very few, maybe 20, of the 419 Harrisburg seats up for grabs in next year's general election will involve meaningful competition. The Philadelphia district where x lives is unlikely to be one of them. So righteous citizen rage over the budget mess will find few outlets on next year's ballot.

Gerrymandering also triggers a quirk that worsened the budget mess. Given how most districts are stacked against the opposing party, the only way an incumbent can lose is a primary challenge from within his party. And such challenges tend to come from the fiery partisan fringe. That's mostly what happened in 2006.

As a result, this year's budget was pawed over by a lot of newbies who hail from the GOP's angry, anti-government wing – the folks who think taxes are Satan's handiwork.

These firebreathers aren't really equipped to respond to a Great Recession moment when the crying need is for more government activism and spending to wake up a sleepy economy. Hence, impasse.

So, yes, after this pathetic display in Harrisburg, let's throw some of the bums out. But this worthwhile task can be far trickier than populist rage imagines.

Listen:

Just call me Mr. Clinch.

Wednesday, the Phillies won a third straight National League East crown. And I was there, in section 325. As I was for the game back in 2007 when the Phils clinched their firs division title in 14 years, setting off champagne-soaked delirium.

AND in 2008, when the breathless ninth inning of the clinching game ended in a volcanic release of white-towel waving.

Having seen all three, I must admit Wednesday’s clincher had less drama. The moment came across as satisfying but expected, not an ecstasy-inducing gift from the gods.

The game still ended on an unforgettable note. It wasn’t about hits or runs, but about two men, and two things you don’t see that much in pro sports: character and loyalty.

The last pitch was thrown by Brad Lidge, the pitcher whose on-his-knees exultation at the end of last year’s World Series is a freeze-frame forever etched into this city’s memory.

Lidge is the Phillies’ closer, the specialist assigned to protect precious leads at game’s end. Last year, Lidge was simply perfect. This year, he’s been… lousy.

But as a human being, Lidge has been world class.

In a world where pampered athletes seek to cover their failures by cursing out referees, throwing teammates under the bus, or sullenly ducking the media, Brad Lidge stands out as an island of class and accountability.

After every game he lost this year – and Lord there’ve been a few – Lidge stood in front of his locker, took responsibility, answered every question, and clung to his mantra, “Next time, I’ll do better.”

If you don’t want a guy like that to succeed, you have no soul. Even Philadelphia’s notoriously brutal fans have, mostly, stuck with Lidge. The cheers he got Wednesday were spine-tingling.

And why was he out there on the mound, called upon to record the historic out? That speaks to the loyalty of another man, Charlie Manuel, the Phils’ manager.

Closers who don’t close give managers ulcers, and eventually get them fired. But when it comes to loyalty, Manuel makes your golden retriever look like Benedict Arnold.

He made sure Lidge got that ovation, to show his guy that – despite all his troubles – the manager had his back.

It was a beautiful thing to behold.

And it leads to this prediction: This fall, Brad Lidge gets the last out of the World Series. Again.

Listen:

You take an 11-week extension on your term paper, and all you come up with is this?

Harrisburg, you flunk.

When news hit last weekend that the state’s political leaders had finally reached a budget deal – the one that had been due on June 30 – the first reaction was relief.

Until, that is, details of the deal oozed out.

They were so ridiculous, it seemed Pennsylvanians were caught inside a Stephen Colbert spoof.

This budget deal is one of the dumbest  bits of business since democracy first got cranking back in ancient Greece.

Gov. Rendell – operating in the realm of reality, although with unhelpful sarcasm – long ago gave Senate Republicans a menu of possible tax increases

It took all summer for those inveterate taxophobes to admit that the state had to find some new revenue source.

One Rendell idea was to tax cigars and smokeless tobacco – chew, snuss and all that yucky stuff. That one nose-dived. The General Assembly, you see, is a den of cigar aficionados. Really. And a lot of voters in rural Pennsylvania like the feel of a pinch between the cheek and gums.

Out of the array of items now exempted from state sales tax, what else did the legislature choose to tax? Lawyers' fees perhaps? Surely you jest.

No, they whacked theaters, zoos, museums and the other cultural nonprofits that bring spirit and soul, diversity and diversion to communities.

What about for profit entertainments, like sports?

Well, no. Apparently, the Sultans of the Susquehanna wouldn’t be caught dead at the ballet, but the ballgame – they do go there.

So brilliant. At this moment, even cultural titans such as the Philadelphia Orchestra face yawning deficits. Meanwhile, three of the state's pro teams won championships last year. They sell out as regularly as you eat breakfast. Do you really think one of those guys with their faces painted green, are going to stop going to games because of a sales tax? Please.

Great idea, Harrisburg: Slam struggling community theaters, but give Jeff Lurie a pass.

And so, in the category of cluelessness in a budget crisis … (SOUND OF ENVELOPE RIPPING OPEN)  the Emmy goes to – the General Assembly of Pennsylvania.

Listen:

Here’s the thing: You never know when or how your 15 minutes of fame are going to arrive.

It might spring upon you from behind the camouflage of a very ordinary day. Just ask Steve Monforto. For this South Jersey guy, last Tuesday seemed an ordinary day.

After work, Monforto slipped on his red Phillies T-shirt and cap, and took his wife and two kids to a Phillies game.

In the bottom of the fifth, the Phils’ scruffy manchild, Jayson Werth, sent a pop-up arcing towards Monforto’s seat behind home plate. The kind of moment every red-blooded American yearns for, a chance at a foul ball.

Monforto was ready. He made a slick grab leaning over the railing. The sellout crowd gave him a nice cheer. Turns out, that moment wasn’t the one that mattered. The foul ball only tested Monforto’s reflexes. What happened next, the moment that jumped out from behind the bushes, tested his character. Tested it for the world to see.

Monforto handed the ball triumphantly to his 3-year-old daughter, Emily, in her pink Phillies cap. And Emily promptly tossed it back onto the field.
You wait a lifetime for such a trophy, and your kid chucks it away. What would you do?

Well, what Monforto did next is now a YouTube sensation, a national feel-good story. After a moment of open-mouthed shocked, he gave his little girl a smile only a loving father could, and hugged her close Steve Monforto passed this pop quiz on character, summa cum laude. In a world where far too many parents neglect, strike and demean their children, he hugged his.

Suddenly, every network news show wanted to talk to him. Women posting on Twitter that they wanted to have his babies. It could have gone differently. After Emily’s toss, some people might have scowled, yelled or pouted. But when a televised test of character zoomed in on him one cool September night, Steve Monforto was ready.

May we all be so ready when our 15 minutes pounces.

Let me end with one tip for the Phillies, which for a change has nothing to do with Brad Lidge. Make sure you’ve got a home game scheduled for next Fathers Day. And have Steve Monforto throw out the first pitch.

As reported in a recent commentary, my daughter got hitched last weekend.

Since, many have asked me how my celebratory rumba with the bride went – the traditional wedding dance that had had me paralyzed with dread.

Listen:

I have a report on how that went, but first some other highlights.

We had some very dedicated wedding guests. A groomsman called my new son-in-law Nick the day before the wedding to report that his pregnant wife was dilated and thus unable to come.

So imagine our surprise at the church the next afternoon when Jay and his wife strolled up to the communion rail, then proceeded to the Downtown Club to party away.

They returned home to Maryland later that night; labor began after midnight and we had photos of the new baby on our cell phones at the day-after picnic on Sunday.

A college friend of Sara's was heading up I-95 from Baltimore when a runaway tire slammed through her windshield, totaling her car. She dusted off the glass, rented a car and made it to the church on time.

Nick and his groomsmen, a gang he’s been hanging with since middle school, made quite an impression with their exuberant endurance. One guest, having observed them in action, commented, "They are a Judd Apatow movie come to life."

The best men, Nick's brothers, had one main duty: getting the beer and champagne onto the trolley that took the wedding party from the church to the reception. Somehow – I'm not laying blame here, people – the suds got locked in someone’s car trunk, with no key. On the suddenly dry trolley, fingers began poking at I-Phones. The nearest source of a six-pack was located, a Hoagie Heaven on a scuffling section of Hunting Park Avenue.

Puzzled onlookers watched as a bride in glowing white, bridesmaids in purple and groomsmen looking like penguins piled out of the trolley. Entering the joint, they shoved dollar bills through the bulletproof glass, receiving in return some Budweiser tall boys and cries of "Welcome to the 'hood, honey."

Anyway, the wedding dance.

Sar and I actually fit in one dance lesson before. Call our instructor, Bob Martin, the miracle worker, because the wonders Annie Sullivan achieved with Helen Keller were hardly more difficult than his work teaching a box step to a klutz like me.

But here’s the great thing… once I looked into Sara’s glistening, blissful eyes, and the strains of the James Taylor tune began, for me there were no really other eyes in the room to worry about.

Maybe we didn’t survive the dance as well as kind people told us afterward, but I found I didn’t care. The dance I’d so feared turned into my favorite memory of a most memorable day.