Open Borders, Open Wounds, and the Hemorrhaging of National Sovereignty
Please refer to today’s The Express-Times article by reporter Anthony Salamone titled “Accolades flow for LVEDC” and subtitled “Annual meeting attracts 350. Agency has been criticized for not being open about operations.”
The number of attendees, 350, may impress, but the LVEDC is, in fact, an oligarchy, a government made up of only a few persons, compared to the lawfully constituted governments of Northampton and Lehigh counties duly elected by and with the consent of the voters of those jurisdictions.
The LVEDC is, inf act, racked by scandals, resignations and dismissals of staff, and the misapprorpriation on commingly of private and public funds.
The LVEDC is dangerous. Colluding with the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, it is creating a free-trade zone patterned after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and CAFTA (Central American Free Trade Agreement) and is helping former Lafayette College President Arthur J. Rothkopf, now general counsel to and a vice-president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Department of Commerce organize an extra-legal Northampton Agreement in secret, sans the debate and approval accorded NAFTA and CAFTA by the Congress of the United States - another giant step toward the dissolution of United States sovereignty.
This dangerous progression explains why the administration of President George W. Bush countenances the open border between the United States and Mexico that has led to the current epidemic of illegal immigration.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is on official record as supporting the North American Agreement.
Billy Bytes urges its readers in the 15th Congressional District to contact representative Charles Dent and Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senators Arlen Specter and Robert Casey Jr. for their positions regarding the North American Agreement.
Copyright © 2006-2008 Billy Givens
Billy Givens said,
January 26, 2007 @ 10:38 pm
Writes Salamone: “Episcopo [Robert, the newly elected chairman of the LVEDC] noted the group plans to work on several areas during 2007, including public transportation, revitalization of more so-called “brownfields” sites and working with various pro-training agencies to help Latinos assimilated themselves economically in the region.”
In fact, the LVEDC supports the widening of Route 22, not rail, and relies on Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell’s so-called “Brownfield Action Team,” or “BAT,” for the detoxification of the Commonwealth’s polluted sites - e.g., the 1600-1800 acres of the former Bethlehem Steel Corporation and the Thomas Iron Works site of Hellertown Borough, also on the ecologically sensitive Lehigh River - and not on CERCLA, the rigorous federal Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act mandating the requirements for remediating polluted industrial sites.