The Toll Of Hypocrisy

This was one of the most unintentionally funny editorials I’d ever read (and truly sad in a way also), and it appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Tuesday.

An Owner's View
Boycott Citgo and Chavez

By Bruce Toll

Americans have had reason to dislike their oil companies over the last year, with gasoline-price spikes contributing to record profits. For the most part, though, oil companies are both victim and beneficiary of world events beyond their control.

This is the kind of milquetoast commentary concerning oil companies as a whole that you'd expect from an owner of a car dealership, by the way.

However, the head of one oil company has chosen to let political objectives trump normal business concerns. Citgo is the national oil company of Venezuela, and that country's president, Hugo Chavez, has thrust himself into the middle of world events by practicing a particularly cynical form of politics throughout Latin America and the rest of the world.

I suppose Citgo hasn’t purchased any ads in one of Toll’s papers, though that consideration never affects its editorial content, does it now?

Yes, we all know what Chavez is, Bruce, but here’s something Chavez does because our political “leadership” doesn’t have the time, desire or intestinal fortitude, apparently, to do it themselves.

Chavez was in Iran this summer, standing shoulder to shoulder with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he denied both Israel's right to exist and the Holocaust itself. Chavez further embarrassed himself at the United Nations last month by referring to linguist Noam Chomsky as deceased and equating President Bush with "Satan" and the "devil." As a result, even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) called Chavez a "thug," and Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D., N.Y.) felt called upon to defend "our president."

The “even” before Nancy Pelosi is a subtle dig – yep, I picked up on that – and I can guarantee you that this is the ONLY context in which a Republican would defend Noam Chomsky.

As Americans, we know how to fight economic pressure with economic might of our own: Simply refuse to buy any Citgo products. We have no reason to support an oil company that does not have the best interests of Americans in mind.

I seemed to recall that, when Philadelphia Media Holdings took over the Inquirer, Toll and Bruce Tierney promised that they wouldn’t have a say in the news or editorial content of the Inquirer or the Daily News. I wonder how many of the paper’s employees were polled to find out whether or not they agreed with Toll before this was printed?

While Americans may have profound differences concerning the war, in this case even those who oppose the president's policies are unified in his defense. We can unify further by telling Citgo "NO!" We should not reward those who do not offer the proper respect to our country and to the office of the president of the United States.

Dear God (and I won't comment on the laughable "unified in his defense" remark because I have so much else to get to here).

I remember a day (long past, unfortunately) when honorable men and women taught me that we should be strong enough people within ourselves to withstand name calling (the whole “sticks and stones” thing). But I suppose that’s “so pre-9/11” of me.
Now, I guess the Repugs just want us to sing hosannas to Great White Father Dubya all day and marginalize (and if possible, humiliate) those who disagree (such as Smerky’s charming moment at the Roger Waters concert recently).

Well, I’m sure you know me well enough to realize that I wasn’t about to let this go without doing some digging, and I came across this amazing bit of reporting from Ellen Slack, a law school student at the University of Pennsylvania who criticized Toll Brothers, which is a donor to the university.

The response she received to her criticism motivated her to investigate Toll development projects, and what resulted was a four-part series on the company; Part One deals with the history of the Naval Square Development Site in West Philadelphia (an historic site Toll purchased to build luxury homes), Part Two deals with Toll’s escapades when pursuing development in the Dolington section of Bucks County (tied to a veterans cemetery…some months ago, Mikey stated that he would mediate and resolve the issue, but that was another “cotton candy” moment for him) as well as projects in Valley Forge and Fredericksburg, VA, Part Three deals with issues of sprawl and land use, and Part Four documents the environmental impact of Toll’s development projects.

To say that Toll is used to getting its way is an understatement (and as far as Bruce is concerned)…

An interesting factoid about Bruce that seems to have been swept under the carpet since the Inquirer purchase and his new-found prominence is the little matter of a $25,000 loan he made to former Congressman Jon Fox (of Montgomery County, PA) back in 1992. Exactly when in 1992 was never quite clear, and it was an issue because it might or might not have been during Fox's campaign.

Six years later, in 1998, there were no indications that the loan had been repaid or that there was any plan to do so. Fox was running for re-election and one of his opponents, Jonathan Newman, ran TV spots that accused Fox of lying about paying interest on the loan. Bruce Toll was unhappy about the controversy, so he phoned Newman's father (prominent plastic surgeon Julius “Dr. Nose” Newman) and complained. According to Toll himself (Inquirer, May 1, 1998), he said that his family was getting tired of reading about this in the paper. . . “they might think I did something wrong.”

A conservative group called the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) became involved in the controversy. (They were out to get Fox because he supported the Legal Services Corporation, and the NLPC doesn't think that poor people should have any publicly-funded legal services.) Digging deeper, the NLPC claimed that Fox promoted $10 million worth of public works on land near property owned by Toll Brothers and so benefited the developer at taxpayers' expense. The NLPC went on to document that Fox denied knowing about Toll's ownership of land near the proposed project (in the Lansdale PA Turnpike-exit vicinity), even though there had been news coverage of a visit, arranged by Toll employees, to the site by Fox.

The NLPC also cited another loan to Fox made in 1992: $10,000 from another campaign donor, Richard McBride. It appears that no one, including NLPC, ever realized that there have been connections between Richard McBride and Toll Brothers. Remember Dolington? (See Part 2 of Slack's series). This is most certainly the same Richard McBride who is the law partner of Edward Murphy, and their firm has been Toll's hired legal gun in the Dolington development battle! McBride has also worked for Toll on other projects recently. In any case, with this loan there were just questions about how Fox had or had not reported it, as well as the issue of the $1000 Federal Election Campaign Act contribution limit. The whole story more or less ended in June 1998 when the U.S. House Ethics Committee rejected, perhaps for procedural reasons, the NLCP's request for an investigation into the Toll-Fox loan.

Perhaps Bruce Toll learned a lesson about sketchy loans to politicians, but paying to play can be accomplished within the law and he seems to know how to do that. For instance, the St. Petersburg Times (FL) reported (May 23, 2005) the interesting timing of a letter sent by Republican U.S. Rep. E. Clay Shaw of Fort Lauderdale, urging the Army Corps of Engineers (permission required if wetlands involved) to allow a Toll Brothers condo project in Palm Beach . . just two days after company vice chairman Bruce Toll donated $2,000 for Shaw's re-election.

And there was also the matter of Toll selling off its shares of stock when it hit a 52-week high last year, though at the time of this story from last November, the stock had fallen 68 percent (by all appearances, a perfectly legal move).

Finally, there’s the matter of Toll’s political donations (I haven’t been able to find Ed Rendell on any list of benefactors yet, but if he’s out there, then he is the ONLY Democrat who has received any help from Toll Brothers).

Yeah, so I guess we should just kiss off ol’ Hugo Chavez and Citgo since that’s what Bruce Toll wants us to do. Maybe Bruce will make this a regular feature in the Inky’s editorial section then (a “Villain Of The Week?”).

And I guess that means that there won’t be any surprises in the newspaper’s electoral endorsements in a few weeks also.