There is a tendancy among some people to think that New York Republicans are somehow better than Republicans elsewhere, but that certainly isn’t the case when it comes to blatant political corruption.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority runs the New York Subway, the Metro North Railway, the Staten Island Railroad, and the Long Island Railroad. The board is appointed by the Governor and the Mayor, both Republicans.

The MTA is getting famous for corrupt bidding processes. When they recently offered property in Manhattan for sale, they chose the bid of the New York Jets, even though there were two higher bidders.

Now, it has been announced that the MTA has chosen to sell its Brooklyn railyard property to Brooklyn arch-enemy Bruce Ratner at less than half of the appraised market value, and the appraisal was done by the MTA. The land will be part of a massive arena/real estate project that will destroy much of the Prospect Heights neighborhood and will get an additional taxpayer subsidy thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, who never met a corporate welfare project he didn’t like.

It gets worse. An arbitrator ruled that the MTA must stop with its extremely dangerous conductorless trains on the L line because the dangerous trains violate the MTA’s contract with the transit union. What does the MTA do? They are simply ingoring the ruling. The MTA is desperate to cut jobs so they can give away more money to GOP corporate cronies. Safety just doesn’t matter to them.

The corruption at the MTA, whose board is appointed entirely by a Republican governor and a Republican mayor is typical of the corruption that permeates the GOP. Whether it is Dick Cheney and Halliburton, Tom DeLay’s campaign dealings, Duke Cunnhingham’s ethics problems, or the Diebold ballot “discrepancies,” the GOP’s lack of ethics is utterly amazing. For a party that moralizes at queers, women, and non-Christians with glee, the Republican Party needs to learn some real moral values.