Republican Bill Brackbill was elected Northampton County executive in 1993, and a year later Republican Congressman from Erie Tom ridge was elected Pennsylvania’s Governor, in 1994, the same year Ridge’s friend George W. Bush was elected Governor of Texas.

Our country has not been the same since. Governor Bush succeeded in acquiring the Texas Rangers’ stadium in Arlington, Texas, my son’s adopted hometown, with taxpayers picking up the tab.
Governor Bush’s defeat of Governor Ann Richards and his business and political prowess caught the eye of former Republican Secretary of State George Shulz of the Bechtel Corporation who persuaded Governor Bush to run for President in 2000.

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Please read the article by reporter Courney Lomax, “War over park’s fate a lenghty history of battles,” publiished in today’s edition of The Express-Times.

For some inexplicable reason, or reasons, my link to The Monring Call article in my last post post, “Northampton County and Seat Easton’s Carbuncle of Corrosive Corruption,” doesn’t work.

Sorry about that.

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Since the controversial Presidential election of 2000, Northampton County, Pennsylvania’s issuance of the controversial $111 million bond in 2001, and President George W. Bush’s appointment of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge to the office of Homeland Security, the Billy Bytes publications have written extensively about the intimate relationship between Pennsylvania and Northampton County and the county’s bond counsel, Blank Rome.

Given the task of forming the Department of Homeland Security, the brainchild not of President Bush but of Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, Ridge handpicked his chief-of-staff of many years, first as Congressman from the Erie, Pennsylvania area, and then as Governor, Mark Holman, to help create the new Department.

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The New Jersey Highlands Act, in the news again in today’s New Jersey edition of The Express-Times, in an article titled “Highlands avocates call for halt to building,” underscores articles appearing recently in that newspaper, The Morning Call, and The Newark Star-Ledger and reported on at length by Billy Bytes.

The Highlands Act is attempting to protect the Musconetcong River, the border between Warren and Hunterdon counties, and two other Highland rivers, presumably the Pequest and Paulinskill, the latter of which I helped preserve through creation of the Paulinskill Valley Trail, the abandoned former Blairstown Railroad and New York, Susquehanna, and Western railbed that parallels the Paulinskill River.

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Last August when Bethlehem City Council in a split-decision vote of 4-3 put casino gambling in the Moravian Christmas City on temporary life support, Councilwoman Jean Belinsi delivered her hand-wringing, hair-pulling rational of why she cast her vote for life support: Without casino gambling, Bethlehem could not repay $150 million it owes the federal government for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds the city received for low- to moderate-income projects such as housing but spent instead on “economic development” in tax exemptions and other subsidies to developers like Joe Posh and Louis Pektor.

Most of these corporate welfare handouts came in the form of tax increment financing, or TIF, that diverted tax revenue from the city’s coffers and into the pockets of the developers.

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For reasons I can’t fathom, the link to the article, “Condos get approvals in Easton,” did not work. So I’ll try again to link to this article published in today’s edition of The Morning Call.

Here’s what I think happened, though I still don’t understand why: Shortly after writing the “Corrosive Carbuncle of Corruption” post, I read, on-line and for the first time, the article titled “Agony of New Orleans, Through Spike Lee’s Eyes,” published in today’s edition of The New York Times.

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The Easton, Pennsylvania, planning comission. still caught up in condo-mania, stubbornly persists in proceeding with even more condos in downtown Easton in the already-glutted condo market, as reported in today’s edition of The Morning Call.

The corrupt planning commission has thumbed its nose once again at Easton’s own zoning ordinances related to flood plains, Northampton County’s Comprehensive Plan, Lehigh Valley Planning Commission (LVIP) flood-plain restrictions, and the flood-plain requirments of the Federal Emergency Managment Agency (FEMA).

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Please refer to the article, “Easton groups consider cooperation on Main Street,” published in the July 27, 2006, edition of The Morning Call.

Download this article and see for yourself the evidence of what my blue-blooded neighbors on silk-stocking College Hill are doing to me and all the other voters and taxpayers, not only in Northampton County and its seat Easton, but also in Lehigh County and even Warren and Hunterdon counties and beyond.

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