Because the governmental seat of Northampton County is Easton, Pennsylvania, lawyers a concentration of shyster infest the city like colonies of cockroaches.
Not a single on of these carriers of corrupting contagion every challened the constitutionality of municipal ordinance or policy enacted by any municipality, from the county on down the tiniest township of borough.
In my post of July 3, 2006, “A Scandal Bigger Even than the Walking Purchase of 1737″ I referred to a Morning Call Op-Ed piece in which authors Rena Steinzor and Reese Rushing claim that tax breaks to industry have stalled Superfund cleanups.
An article in today’s Morning Call by James F. Villaume - “EPA’s Superfund should follow Pennsylvania’s example” - rebuts their arguments.
The minutes of Bethlehem City Council’s meeting of July 20, 2004 have been restored to the Internet, following complaints of their removal (twice) by Easton, Pennsylvania blogger and website host Billy Givens.
Herewith posted in their entirety are the minutes.
“U.S. tests massive bomb - Designed for use in ‘psychological operations.
“From Barbara Starr, CNN Washington Bureau, Tuesday, March 11, 2003.
“WASHINGTON (CNN) — The U.S. Air Force Tuesday tested the biggest conventional bomb in the military’s arsenal, dropping the new 21,000-pound device on a test site at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, U.S. officials said.
Michigan Republican Peter Hoekstra chairs the House Intelligence Committee. he has been a staunch supported of President George W. Bush.
But now Hoekstra has begun to quesion whether the President is “aharing information on all of its intelligence operations” with him and other members
Conservatives and liberals alike are seeking more open government, as noted in the article titled, “On Right and Left, a Push for Government Opennes,” in today’s edition of The New York Times.
Please read article, “Industry tax breaks have stalled Superfund cleanups on the opinion page of today’s edition of The Morning Call.
The Billybytes publications have reported extensively on the federal Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), more commonly recognized as the Superfund Site statute.
The article “if you build it, they will come…and bring cars,” published in today’s edition of The Morning Call, leaves me no option but to press the fraud issues surrounding the development of the former Bethlehem Steel property in South Bethlehem.
The construction of Commerce Center Boulevard through the Saucon Tract to cul-de-sac and property of Majestic Realty at a cost of $13.1 million to Northampton County taxpayers is a fraud.
On a recent weekend getaway, my husband and I returned to one of the country’s most pristine, unpopulated, and I am thrilled to report, now protected coastlines - the eastern shore of Lake Michigan from Arcadia north to the towns of Elberta and Frankfort - approximately 30 miles of breathtakingly lovely shoreline that bumps up against 300 foot dunes populated by pine, larch, exotic dune flowers, seagulls, bald eagles, and the occasional crazed woodchuck.
We had spent many blissful days on these shores as feckless, reckless, unencumbered twenty-somethings. We’d been returning nearly every year since with our two boys, often with our sweet nieces, my father and occasionally my sisters and and their husbands allowing us all the pleasure of days filled with sun, sand, water, hikes, campfires, shooting stars, scary stories, good books, good food, and the occasional falling out which results from too much of a good thing.
On this weekend in June we were returning alone, our children now nearly grown and occupied elsewhere as is wont to happen. The car trip there was at first larky and upbeat and then, melancholy, as we drew closer to the shore and felt the loneliness of returning without our children and without the carefree, anything-can-happen feelings that we arrived with in our younger days.
With our older boy in college and the younger one on his way, and one of us 3 years without work (the result of the dying Michigan economy), we decided to economize and stay in a tourist cabin that we had passed many times and considered something of a curiosity. We checked in at the big house in front, retrieved our key and drove slowly between the two rows of cabins feeling like Lucy and Desi. Number 9, our cabin, had two rooms, just barely; but with ceiling fans in each room, a constant breeze off the dunes, a kitchenette, places to read inside and out, hardy flowers blooming around the door, we were content.
We arrived early enough on a Thursday evening to head out for a great Mexican dinner and then drive up, over, and down the dune to the Elberta pier to check out the sunset. At the foot of the dune, emboldened by several Margaritas, we decided to follow the sand lane that paralleled the beach and see if we could reach the site of many wild and crazy parties that we had had there as college kids. Making good progress in our Subaru Outback we were looking forward to some romantic moments in a secluded spot at sunset. Then the car stopped.
We spent a half-hour trying to dig the wheels out of the sugar sand that we had blithely driven into. We were hopelessly mired down, had no cell phone service, and we’d missed the sunset. It was getting dark when a jeep showed up and we hitched a ride back to town, waited two hours for AAA service, and finally got back to the cabin about midnight. We drank some cold beer, read for awhile, and took showers to wash off all the sand. We agreed without discussing it that we wouldn’t share the beach story with the kids.
The rest of the weekend was great–hiking, sun, sand, water, wonderful shore food, reading late at night, and reading early in the morning with good coffee. On our last night we got buzzed and saw the DaVinci Code in an old summer theater with a rippled old screen, retirees yelling at people to sit down, and kids running up and down the aisles.
It was a reassuring weekend. The next time won’t feel so melancholy.
Eileen Parker is a writer and water colorist. She lives outside Ann Arbor in an old house where she tends her large and beautiful garden.
As background and corroboration of the corruption that I am describing in Easton, Pennsylvani, please read the article describing the Congressional practice of “earmarking” in today’s edition of the New York Times.
The article compares “earmarking” to the corruption in third-world countries.