Please refer to today’s The New York Times article by the Associated Press filed at 7:13 a.m. ET titled “WTO Powers Fail to Revive Trade Talks.”

The AP reports that “negotiators [meeting in the Swiss Alps] for talks on the liberalization of global trade through tariff reductions” failed once again in the first resumption of such talks since those held in the Qatar capital of Devas five years ago.

“Negotiators are trying to forge the blueprint of an accord before July, when President Bush’s authority to make trade bills that can be sent to Congress for a simple yes-or-no vote expires.

“Without the so-called ‘fast track’ authority, it would be much harder for any treaty to gain Congressional approval in the U.S., the world’s largest trading nation.”

As the Billy Bytes blog reported in last night’s post, the effort of the so-called “Lehigh Valley” to create a free-trade zone on the 1600-1800 acres of the former Bethlehem Steel Corporation represents a crucial element in the Bush administration’s effort to get the treaty in place before his term of office expires.

Last evening’s Billy Bytes post also quotes from yesterday’s The Express-Times article by reporter Anthony Salomone titled “Accolades flow for LVEDC.”

The post failed to quote, however, this paragraph from Salamone’s article: “Joe Hoeffel, a deputy secretary with Pennsylvania Community and Economic Development, said LVEDC is helping the state fare well against global competition.”

Hoeffel, a former Pennsylvania congressman, had planned a campaign against sitting U.S. Senator Rick Santorum, but talked out of it by Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell.

“Fast Eddie” wanted to run Pennsylvania State Auditor Bob Casey Jr. in last May’s primary instead in order to blunt Santorum’s pro-life stance since Casey is also pro-life.

Hoeffel sacrificed his political aspirations and that of the Commonwealth’s pro-choice voters by leaving them no choice on the issue.

Hoeffel, addressing the audience in Bethlehem’s Zoellner Arts Center for the “Lehigh Valley’s” artsy-fartsy set, cited two examples of economic development: the “work Lehigh [University] is doing with a Norwegian company to make a computer microchip with an application that includes homeland security [italics added].

It was a tariff disagreement between the U.S. and Japan over computer microchips together with the S&L scandals and the corruption of Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky in dealing junk bonds and interest-rate swaps (”swaptions”) between contracting parties and counter-parties that brought on the economic recession of 1987, the year Billy Bytes publications’ editor and his family moved to Easton, Pennsylvania, from Blairstown, New Jersey.

The editor has lived to see Milken and Boesky replaced by the likes of Blank, Rome, Comisky, and McCauley, Merrill Lynch, Structured Finance, Cozy O’Connor, Maurice “Mossie” Murphy, Elmer Hainel. Concord Financial Management, etc., etc. ad nauseum, and the fraudulent Northampton County Generall Purpose Authority (GPA) and its illegal $111 million bond floated in 2001 for the Government Center Expansion that has bankrupted the county’s finances and destroyed the county seat of Easton’s African-American and Hispanic Dutchtown-Gallows Hill neighborhood.

Today’s The Express-Times reports that Easton Mayor Philip Mitman appointed GPA coordinator John Kingsley to the Easton Parking Authority to help push through the Riverwalk project of Arcadia Properties and its partner Lafayette College in the Delaware River and Bushkill Creek corridor between 13th St. and Larry Holmes.

The economic development projects attributed by Salamone to homeland security is a reference to the Department of Homeland Security of the same Michael Chertoff who with his deputy Brown presided over the Katrina disaster in New Orleans - and, also under Chertoff since Brown has since been forced from office, the disastrous floods of 2005 and 2006 that still cripple the economy of Northampton County and its seat Easton.

The Zoellner Arts Center has also hosted seminars led by 15th Congressional District Representative Charlie Dent, touting Homeland Security projects, and to Barry Gosin and Jeff Gural, principals in the BethWorks project with its proposed Las Vegas Sands Casino, whose majority stock holders are Sheldon Adelson and Carl Icahn.

Leader of the “artsy-fartsy” crowd in Easton is NYC impresario Theodore Kheel, whose illegal, money-laundered campaign contribution to International Brotherhood of Teamster’s Union President Ron Carey, fending off a challenge from James Hoffa, was one of the six union election violations that led the U.S. Labor Department to hold a new election - an election that on the second go-round Hoffa won.

As Iraqi War protesters gather today in Easton’s Centre Square and in Washington, D.C., West Virginia’s U.S. Senators Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller voice concerns that President Bush is preparing to invade Iran.

And today’s lead editorial in The Morning Call fears that Bush is prolonging the war in a desperate bid to salvage his legacy.

The concern of Billy Bytes is that as Bush’s pursuit of the war continues to deteriorate, he will declare martial.

This concern is fueled by his support by the active military and the failure of an irresolute Congress to move toward impeachment.