Betrayal
The young man who designed my blog, http://www.billybytes.com/blog/, Brian, has just modified it so that I can link to articles on my website, www.billybytes.com.
I am christening this new feature with a link to my website article titled, “Springtime Follies,” dated April 13, 2004.
The article, published during the Easter-Passover season, opens with this paragraph:
“Like Roman centurians on Calvary, rolling dice for the possession of Jesus’ robe, the Council members of Northampton County gamble over its tattered finances. This Thursday, April 15, 2004, Councll is scheduled once again to refinance the county’s illegal $111 million bond, after tabling this dangerously risky venture in each of its last two meetings - ignoring the pleadings of Blank, Rome, Comisky, and McCauley bond counsel Jeff Blumenthal, and responding instead to the warnings of opponent [sic] of the refinancing scheme.”
“The refinancing conincides with this spring’s 2004 Easton/Passover season, on the second anniversary of Northampton County Councilman Ron Angle’s crucifixion in the County’s Courtroom 1 for alleged anti-Semitic comments made on his Saturday morning WAEB-FM talk/call-in radio show.”
“Angle’s cricifixion was the pretext for remvoving his as chair of Council’s finance committee. He was seen by his fellow Council officials, including his five Republican cohorts, as a threat to the $111 million bond. Its issuer, the County’s General Purpose Authority (GPA), had already been exposed as violative of Pennsylvania’s Municipality Authorities Act of 1945 as amended and of the County’s Home Rule Charters.”
“From January 10, 2002, with formal written evidence submitted by the writer of this article to County Council exposing as unlawful the GPA and its bonds, until March 7, 2002, immediately following its sacrifice of Angle, Council, on the recommendation of its solicitor Brian Monahan, approved spurious amendments to the 1998 articles incorporating the GPA. Though Angle’s Judas Iscariots on Council failed to remove him from that body, they did succeed in stripping him of his positions as finance committee chair and Council vice-president.”
“These specious amendments came in the form an ordinance, drafted by County Council member Tim Merwarth, who succeeded Angle as finance committee chair, and Nick Sabatine, Council’s newly appointed chair of its economic development committee. Merwarth and Sabatine introduced their ordinance, at the behest of Council president J. Michael Dowd [sic] at Council’s meeting of February 21, 2002.”
“This was two days prior to Angle’s February 23 radio broadcast, chosen by his enemies including The Morning Call and The Express-Times [sic] as the Gethsemane Garden of his betrayal. Everyday thereafter, for 12 days, up to the crucifixion date of March 7, 2002, the presses rolled relentlessly, sealing Angle’s tomb.”
“Fortunately for Northampton County’s tzxpayers, however, Angle has been resurrected on Jolly Joe Timmer’s WGPA-AM talk/call-in radio show (8-10 AM, Mon,-Thurs., 1100 on the radio dial), on which he and callers like Ken Nagy of Forks Township have exposed the fiscal dangers of the $111 million bond’s refinancing.”
My independant campaign for Governor against incumbert Ed Rendell was terminated by my diagnosis of colon cancer and hospitalization over the Easter-Passover season of this year.
In fact, I celebrated both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Catholic with my roomate John, an Eastern Orthodox Catholic deacon.
At that time, the surgeions could not resection my colon because of other medical complications.
That surgery has finally been scheduled for this week, fortunately, but, unfortunately, I will be out of commission again for at least another several weeks recuperating.
Meanwhile, please read the articles on my website and on my blog.
And please, fight for the repeal of Act 71, “legalized” gambling, and its corollary, Act 72, the back-end referendum.
But do support Lower Mount Bethel Township’s 90/10 ordinance for preserving open space-farmland, reported on in today’s edition of The Express-Times.
Copyright © 2006-2008 Billy Givens
Billy Givens said,
September 19, 2006 @ 5:36 am
My blog posting yesterday, “Betrayal,” featired the scoundrel Tim Merwarth, among others, a former Forks Township supervisor, former Northampton County councilman, a former Forks Township farmer and owner of the former commercial retail outlet Upstream Farms, now a major subdivision, and still a major real estate speculator in his township.
Today’s first comment to that blog posting, from its author blog, website, and newsletter founder Billy Givens features, among others, Tim Merwarth’s spouse, Sandra Merwarth, better known as Sandy.
(At this point I am interrupting the comment and posting it as a test to ensure that the blog is up and operating properly. If it is, I shall resume my comment immediately.
Billy Givens said,
September 19, 2006 @ 6:13 am
Good. The comment posted.
Sandy Merwarth, a leader of the Bushkill Creek Conservancy, is a partner of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvnia, Northampton County, its seat the City of Easton, the City of Easton Redevelopment Authority, 136th legislative district representative Robert Freeman, the Greater Easton Area Development Corporation, Arcadia Properties, Lafayette College, the Lafayette-Ambassador Bank, and other interested parties in the development of a commercial, residential, recreational venture known as Bushkill Village contemplated for construction in the floodplain of the Delaware River and Bushkill Creek and on the steep slopes of the Lafayette College campus descending steeply to that floodplain and creating horrendous stormwater runoff that rushes directly into these streams and their floodplain irrevocably altering and degrading the ecologically sensitive waterways and floodplain.
The Easton Redevelopment Authority, acting as its partners agent and on their behalf and its own, has threatened to “take” through eminent domain the properties of 33 private-property owners in the Bushkill Creek Corridor between the Delaware River on Larry Holmes Drive and 13th Street.
The Redevelopment Authority’s Executive Director Barbara Kowitz and the City of Easton’s former Director of Planning and Economic Development Miriam Huertas warned these 33 property owners by letters on official City of Easton letterhead dated February 10, 2005.
This date is crucial because on June 23, 2005, when the U.S. Supreme Court under its new chief justice John Roberts ruled in a split decision in favor of the City of New Londong, Connecticut, in the taking of private property for “economic development” (Kelo vs. New London), the City of Easton and its Redevelopment Authority were already at least four months into the “taking” of 33 privately owned properties in the Bushkill Creek-Delaware River corridor, where all of the partners in the corridor venture have invested millions of dollars, including taxpayer dollars at every level of government, from local to the federal.
Readers may read more about the corridor in the current issue of The Elucidator, now available in outlets like the College Hill Wawa.
The venture, the most bizarre since the Walking Purchase scam of 1737, and involving the Simon Silk Mill and Moon property at the intersection of 13th Street and Bushkill Drive, in already in the mill and far downstream in its development, no puns intended.
Because this bold, brazen, and bizarre venture was already well under way at least four months before the landmark and controversial June 23, 2005, U.S. Supreme Court Kelo vs. New London decision, the Pennsylvania legislature could not follow the lead of at least 25 other states in introducting legislation designed to curb the Court’s decision.
That’s because the government of Pennsylvania and, indeed, the federal government, are implicated with local governments of at least two jurisdictions, in this taxpayer ripoff and abuse of governmental authority.
Billy Givens said,
September 19, 2006 @ 10:47 pm
The coalition of conservatives and other environmentalists that I’ve longed for here in Pennsylvania, one that I enjoyed when I was a New Jersey resident, is beginning to coalesce.
That coalition served me well when I lived in Blairstown Township, Warren County, and was indispensibe in the quest to convert the abandoned Blairstown Railroad-New York, Susquehana, and Western Railroad to a passive recreational state park - the latest addition to the Garden State’s park system.
Fighting the late senior state senator from Phillipsburg, Wayne Dumont, state representative Chuck Haytaian from Hackettstown, and representative Robert Littel from Newton, Sussex County to obtain the railbed from its owner, the City of Newark, pitted me and my fellow environmentalists against formidable odds.
But through persistence, we prevailed, but not until after I had moved to Easton and an environment hostile to conservation.
That is starting to change now, what with the opposition of conservationists in places like Lower Mount Bethel Township whose residents alarmed at last about runaway development are espousing the sensible, and practicable, 90:10 open space preservation plan.
Many of the LMB properties being overdeveloped lie on or near the Delaware River and its many tributaries. A major impetus for saving the abandoned railbed was that it runs parallel to the Paulinskill River, from its headwaters in Sussex County, to its estuary in Columbia, Knowltown Township, Warren County, New Jersey.
Though flooding of the Paulinkill was not a major problem, except in Blairstown Village where floodwaters would inundate septic systems, we were concerned with such issues as preserving the quality of the river’s aquatic life.
Similarly, here in Northampton and Lehigh counties, we are determined to protect the Delaware and Lehigh rivers and their tributaries like Bushkill Creek and Frye Run, and in these two counties flooding is a major and sometimes economically catastrophic occurrence.
A new urban village here in Easton in the Bushkill Creek corridor is not something that we need.
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