Federal investigators on Wednesday sought help finding anyone who has been asked or required to provide money or anything else of value in order to obtain a job in a northeastern Pennsylvania public school.
The FBI made the request in what it said is a criminal investigation into the hiring of teachers and other school employees.
''We have heard allegations that it is a practice that may be going on in multiple areas, so we want to make sure that anybody who thinks that they have information that's related to this, that they should feel free to provide it to us,'' said FBI spokesman J.J. Klaver, a Philadelphia-based special agent.
The news release was issued one day after Wilkes-Barre Area School District Superintendent Jeffrey Namey testified before a federal grand jury in Scranton and a week after federal agents obtained records from the district and the Wilkes-Barre Area Career and Technical Center.
Job-Selling at Wilkes-Barre Schools?
There is no telling at this early stage whether there may yet be any substance to this story but considering the dismal history of near-systemic corruption among northeast Pennsylvania's politicians, county judges and other public figures, one can reasonably remain a bit nervous.
Yet, why should anyone be surprised?
Many more people up here (as in most media markets) get their local news from television rather than from newspapers.
Anyone familiar with the much-popular local TV news in the Wilkes-Barre-Scranton area will see little in the way of any investigative reporting, simply because its electronc media outlets employ few, if any, capable journalists.
In fact, local TV programing is, for the most part, simply "dumbed-down" - designed and packaged to appeal to the lowest level of intelligence in terms of a viewing audience.
The same region's print media, which still employs professional working journalists, manages to produce comprehensive investigative reporting...a task that would truly bewilder any of these local TV talking heads, whose main talent appears to be limited to reading off the day's winning lottery numbers.
Perhaps the only solution to ending this pathetic public apathy towards both corruption and many other ills in northeast Pennsylvania is for its people to switch off the boob tube and its programing tailored for idiots...and sit down and read a print newspaper or failing this, at least one published on-line.
Or they can allow themselves to slowly slip back into a mass coma.
Matt Thomas