Please refer to the article, “Is tax-exempt LVH sharing enough of its wealth?,” by reporters Tim Darragh and Ann Wlazelek, published in yesterday’s and today’s editions of The Morning Call.

This is only the latest of a series of articles published by The Call on the subject of Lehigh and Northampton counties’ non-profit hospitals, involving retired Lehigh County Judge Robert Young as regards the Lehigh County non-profits and should involve the former non-profit Easton Hospital, now a for-profit facility owned by the Community Health Services Corporation of Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The contractor complied, of course, because the demolition represented money in his pocket.

Thus when he demolition’s opponents arrived in court at 9:00 AM, the fraternity house, a stone structure, lay in a mountain of rubble.

Thus Lafayette College had accompished what it teaches its pre-law students - the same curriculum that’s used at Franklin and Marshall, Dickenson, the universities of Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh, and other PA law and pre-law institutions of higher learning is; namely, how to make a legal issue “moot,” the art of the “done deal,” and how, with the cooperation of the local mainstream media, to make any issue appear as the “fait accompli,” even when it isn’t.

Incidentally, Lafayette College, and Lehigh University, are two of those institutions exempted from property taxes by the 1965 amendment to PA’s Constitution of 1873.

This is why in creating the Billy Bytes blog, I created the category called “Constitution of 1873.” I am hoping that readers will read the postings on my blog and lobby their Pa House representative and senator to support the Jefferson Reform Initative and revise PA’s Constitution of 1783.”

The next judge on the scene in Northampton County regarding the tax status of Easton Hospital was the county’s President Judge himself, Robert Freedberg.

He officiated over the transition of Easton Hospital from a non-profit, tax-exempt institution to a for-profit, none-tax-exempt one, required to pay taxes to Wilson Borough, Wilson Borough Area School District, and Northampton County.

In any event, it was President Judge Freedberg who, with an attorney from PA’s Attorney General Mike Fisher’s office sitting in the courtroom like a knot on a log saying nothing except to concur with Judge Freedberg’s every argument, decided which and how much of the hospital’s assets would go the Community Health Services and how much to the Weller Health and Wellness Foundation - and, we now learn, Weller’s partner, the Dorothy Ridger Poole Foundation.

This preliminary work by Freedberg, the PAAG, and the Weller and Poole foundations was preparatory to the creation of former Northampton Councilwoman and U.S. Senator Rich Santorum aide and current Northampton County Court Services and Special Projects Administrator Marty T. Northampton County-wide health department, fleshed out on the bones of the Bethlehem City Health Department.

Ensslin’s “special project” could even be fleshed out to include Lehigh County, through the creation of a yet another bi-county authority, like LANTA or the LVIAA, the “shadow government” quasi-governmental entity favoredd by Northampton County Executive John Stoffa, but fortunately opposed - at least so far - by Northampton County Council.

Unfortunately, Stoffa has the support of the so-called Lehigh Valley’s state legislative delegation. It sponsored a piece of special legislation for which PA is notorious creating a “pilot” Lehigh Valley authority, including four boroughs in Lehigh and Northampton counties each and administered by another “shadow government,” the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce (GLVCC) and funded by a $90,000 taxpayer grant, shared equally by the two counties.

This rudimentary health department purports to have been created by an “inter-governmental agreement” between Lehigh and Northampton County

When Pennsylvnia Superior Court Judge Robert Simpson was still on the Northampton Court of Common Pleas, when Easton Hospital still had non-profit status, he issued a ruling striking down that exemption and required that the hospital pay its host community, Wilson Borough, borough, Wilson Area School Distict, and Northampton County property taxes.

In fewer than 24 hours, Simpson reversed himself on that ruling and restored the hospital’s non-profit status, in an astonishing flip-flop indicating that he had been gotten to by the powers that be of Easton, Northampton County, and the so-called Lehigh Valley.

Simpson was the Northampton County judge who placed me under a half-million-dollar performance bond that effectively ended my Easton Zoning Hearing Board appeal against Lafayette College’s demolition of two residential properties bordered by Cattell, Hart, and Marquis streets and Clinton Terrace for a parking lot for the Louis B. Farinon Student Center.

The center itself required demolition of a fraternity house on the college quad. When opponents of thd demolition appealed, and had a court date set for 9:00 AM, Lafayette College notified the demolition contractor in Skippack, PA, and instructed him to arrive early for the demolition.