Northampton Area Community College’s South Bethlehem campus has received a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce, as reported in yesteday’s edition of The Express-Times.

The grant’s ostensible purpose is to create a workforce development center, according to Bethlehem’s inept and corrupt Mayor John Callahan and equally venal U.S Congressman Charlie Dent (R-15).

Both officials were present, of course, at the photo-op of U.S. Department of Commerce assistant secretary Benjamin Erulkar presenting the $1.2 million check to community college president Arthur Scott.

Despite the grant’s ostensible purpose, it was in reality. the lastest fly attracted by the 1600 toxic acres that were once the site of Bethlehem Steel.

These acres are now one of Pennsylvania’s and the nation’s major Superfund Sites, a Love Canal if you will, that instead of being remediated under the federal Comprehensive Environmental Compensation and Liability Act, CERCLA, is slotted instead for a cosmetic cleanup under Pennsylvania’s Brownfield Avisory Team, BAT, a collection of elected politicians like Callahan and Dent and their appointed bureacrats like NCC’s South Side campus Dean Paul Pierpoint.

This blog or a related Billy Bytes publication has already introduced its readers to Dean Paul Pierpoint, but please allow the editor to refresh memories.

In June 2005, Pierpoint showed up for a meeting at the Harkers Hollow Country Club in Harmony Township, Warren County, New Jersey, according to an article titled “Panel Preaches Regional Economic Callaboration,” reported by Anthony Salamone in the June 21, 2005, edition of The Express-Times.

Here’s what Salamone reported the son-of-a-bitch Pierpoint as saying:  “It takes bullies to change people’s mindsets.”

Pierpoint made this remark as one of four panelists who participated Tuesday evening in ‘Uniting a Region,” a meeting organized by the law firm of Florio and Perrucci and The Express-Times (italics added).

Salamone’s article had prefaced Pierpoint’s remark by writing, “Warren County needs a knockout punch to reach a point where at least the southern end can become a viable economic-development partner with the Lehigh Valley (italics added).

Salamone continues: “Pierpoint noted the schools former president, Robert Kopecek, stressed for years that a strong employee base would offset closings at Bethlehem Steel, Ingersoll-Rand and other major employers.”

Salamone continues, now quoting Pierpoint: “We breath economic work force development as central to our mission.”

Marta Boulos Gabriel, vice president of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Easton council, said during the chamber’s 13 mergers [through a series of power plays] over the years, the region’s largest chamber has found that “local control is important, and we given them that.”

Right! Gabriel, and her boss Tony Iannelli, gave that control to Easton Council President J. Michael Dowd, desperate for work after his double-whammy loss of jobs as executive vice president of Easton Children’s Home and as president of Northampton County Council.

The panelists, who also included Kerry Wrobetl, president of Lehigh Valley Industrial Parks Inc., seemed to agree that local can run in harmony with regionalism.

How, Kerry?  They’re antithetical.  You had better be prepared to explain by what agreement two counties in two states except through a corrupt authority like the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission

Florio (former NJ Governor Jim Florio) noted at the meeting instances of bi-state regional cooperation, including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, conveniently omitting the DRJTBC.

Despite Florio’s omission, “People” at the meeting according to Salamone’s acount, “mentioned LVEDC [Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation] and the Delaware River joint Toll Bridge Commission as catalysts in establishing a regional group that would incorporate Warren County’s interests.

The LVEDC and the DRJTBC have already served the interests of Northampton County, its seat Easton, Arcadia Properties, and Lafayette College.

The DRJTBC, on whose board of directors Lafayette College’s dean of Students served, has floated a $40 million bond to be retired by interstate tollpayers, for the development of a new urban area called Bushkill Village in the Delaware River and Bushkill Creek floodplain.

“I think we’re on the verge of undergoing a major change as far as commerce, economic development and transportation,” said former Phillipburg, New Jersey, mayor, and DRJTBC chairman Philip Mugavero.

“The average person thinks it’s about time the leaders of the community get together and start thinking more globally and trying to come up with ideas to improve the region.

Right, Phil - by overthrowing the Constitution of the United States, a lesson you learned well from the bloodless coup of 2000.

You and your cohorts who met that June evening in Harkers Hollow have been illegally commingling private and public funds through the creation of “public-private partnerships’ and failing to accounty to voters and taxpayers how where you spend our money.

Under our Consitutional system of government, officials who spend public money have to give an accounting.  You and your cohorts are going to give an accoun, or you’re going to prison, and you’ll probably end up going to prison anyway.

Northampton County’s pious executive John Stoffa was also at yesterday’s ceremony with Dent and Callahan.

One of the best services rendered to the citizens of Northampton County was the rejection by its governing body, county council, of Stoffa’s ill-advised nominaion of Marta Boulos Gabriel as county administrator.