Corruption in the Keystone State
Please refer to the www.billybyte.com website article titled “Council to Choose Interim Mayor,” written and published by its editor, Billy Givens, and dated April 29, 2003.
Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell appointed Easton Mayor Thomas F. Goldsmith to the Commonwealth’s Liquor Control Board (LCB) for one devious purpose and one purpose only: to let Goldsmith appoint his business administrator, Michael McFadden, as Easton’s interim mayor, a diabolical appointment that inspired the various Billy Bytes publications (newsletters and www.billybytes.com website to dub McFadden “Easton’s Interim Interregnum Mayor.”
Those publications and other sources, including the infamous Billy Bytes bullhorn, urged Governor Rendell not to appoint Goldsmith to the LCB, citing as the reason his membership in South Side Easton’s notorious Fleas Club that served plat d’jure to its luncheon clientele with cheap beer and booze and illegal gambling.
Opponents warned Rendell that the Goldsmith appointment would also be seen by many as racist- and sexist-inspired: The Fleas Club restricted its membership exclusively to the white male gender.
Opponents also feared that alcohol consumption, under-age drinking, and deaths from alcohol-related diseases and auto accidents would increase - which is the case - and that if casino gambling, which Rendell has long advocated, came to Pennsylvania, he would sow the seed of the wind that would reap the whirlwind of Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Las Vegas, Nevada crime and corruption that would blow in with it.
Tragically, the opponents fears have been realized - what with the casinos serving unlimited alcoholic drinks to gamblers, many of whom wear Huggies so that their addiction will not be disturbed by Nature’s call - with Rendell’s appointment of Timothy “Tad” Decker, the managing partner of the Cozy O’Connor law offices in Rendell’s Philadelphia, to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board (Cozen O’Connor represents the Delaware-Lenni Lenape Native Americans in the duplicitous manner that “Casino” Jack Abramoff “represented” America’s aboriginal people against the interests of Northampton County and corporations like Binney & Smith), and with Rendell’s appointment of former Bucks County state representative Joe Conti as executive director of the LCB, igniting a firestorm of controversy.
Mothers Againt Drunk Driving, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Gamblers Anonymous, where are you now that we need you?
Copyright © 2006-2008 Billy Givens
Billy Givens said,
January 25, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
Governor Rendell appointed Easton Mayor Tom Goldsmith to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) for the reasons already stated, but to let his interim interloper Mike McFadden take the fall for approving zoning applications and building permits for the expansion of the Northampton County
Government Center (courthouse, prison, and domestic relations building) and for the consequent continuing destruction of downtown Easton’s Dutchtown-Gallows Hill neighborhood, predominantly African-American and Hispanic, in which the encroachment is occurring - and “is” occurring because the county, of which Easton is the seat, has its eyes on the nine or so condominiums located in two buildings at the corner of Washington and 5th streets.
The Easton Boys’ Club, which owned the property between the two buildings and the county parking lot bordered by Washington, Union, and Lehigh streets has already deeded it to the county for its continuing expansion.
The county’s inexorable expansion continues because it never had the number of off-street parking spaces required by City of Easton zoning ordinances.
McFadden and the city’s zoning officer and director of planning and development, Robert O’Neil, falsified the zoning applications and construction permits submitted by Court Administrator Jim Onembo, director of public works Ed Boscola, spouse of Lehigh and Monroe counties’ State Representative Lisa Boscola, and Prison Warden Jim Smith.
The fraudulent documents were all then approved by the expansion’s arcitect, USA, located on the 7th floor of the Alpha Building directly above McFadden’s suite.
McFadden’s successor, Mayor Philip A. Mitman, perpetuated the fraud by approving Lafayette College’s application to demolish the Victorian-era building in the 200 block of N. 3rd Street after the razing had already begun.
As a candidate for Easton mayor and County Council District 2, which includes Easton, again the county’s seat, I demand that Mayor Mitman not hang around until January 2008 as a lame-duck chief executive, but that he resign now.
Northampton County’s fraudulent General Purpose Authority floated the illegal 2001 $111 million general-obligation bond (the taxpayers pony up for this debt), $67 million of which was wasted on the Government Center Expansion for political patronage (and, again, to destroy Dutchtown-Gallows Hill) to campaign contributors like Alvin H. Butz Inc.)
Burdened with engineering and construction-cost overruns, and desperate for cash, Northampton County then refinanced the $67 million collateralized debt of the $111 million issue with a dangerous “swaption,” a financial instrument described by financier Warren Buffett as a “weapon of Mass Destruction,” or WMD.
If in 2012, the call date, the interest rates on borrowed money are so high the county can’t meet the terms of the interest-rate swap, then the courthouse and the prison will belong to Merrill-Lynch, the investment firm that also underwrites the 2004 refinancing of the Bethlehem City Authority’s 1994 water-sewer debt.