Contrary to today’s Express-Times and its article captioned “Majestic ready to move on its development,” Majestic Realty of California is not ready to move at all.

The reason for this is the item directly below the caption: “Lawsuit causes delay in plans for 450 acres sold five years ago.”

The linked article was precipitated by the Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, planning commission meeting of October 16, 2007, and reported in the next day’s editions of the Express-Times and the Morning Call.

The Express-Times doesn’t refer to me, who attended the meeting, but the Morning Call article does: “But as part one of the meeting drew to a close [a scheduled city council meeting forced the commission from city hall to the public library next door], Easton resident Billy Givens wasn’t happy with the idea and began to disrupt the meeting, claiming that the commission and the developers [Sands BethWorks Now LLC, developers of a proposed slot machine gambling casino adjacent to the Majestic Realty site] would have to answer to the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] because the project lies in a flood plain.”

In fact, the proposed Sands BethWorks casino and the Majestic Realty both lie in the 100-year flood plain of the Lehigh River - dating from the 1955 Hurricane Diana.

In addition, both projects are integrally tied to traffic improvements to Route 378, a state thoroughfare under the jurisdiction of PennDOT. This route traverses a national historic district requiring federal approval under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1982, the federal statute that spared the demolition of the Grand Central train station in New York City’s Manhattan.

Moreover, neither Sands BethWorks LLC nor Majestic Realty - nor any other proposed development of the 1800-acre former Bethlehem Steel Corporation tract - has received a Highway Occupancy Permit (HOP) from PennDOT.

In addition, the former Steel property is a heavily contaminated Superfund site. It requires remediation under the federal CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act) statute.

This legislation was signed into law by President George W. Bush. To celebrate and commemorate this legislation, he appeared in 2002 in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, on the grounds of a former Superfund site, on which a shopping center had been built.

The entire redevelopment of the former Bethlehem Steel property is a fraud, the public exposure of which began when on January 3, 2005, I attended a meeting of the Northampton County Council, that governing body’s first ever meeting held in the historic Jacob Bachmann Tavern in Easton, the county’s seat.

I went to the meeting to ask Council to hold public hearings on the proposed Sands BethWorks LLC.  Council in a majority vote honored my request.

As I recall, the only dissenting vote came from Bethlehem’s representative Ann McHale. Because the proposed casino was in her district, Council President J. Michael Dowd assigned her the responsibility of scheduling the first public hearing.

Ms. McHale, who opposed the hearings, dragged her feet in scheduling the hearing until June 28, 2005, in Foy Hall of Moravian College, in the city of Bethlehem.

The turnout was overwhelming opposed to the casino.

Ms. McHale, County Executive Glenn Reibman, Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan, Bethlehem City Council President J. Michael Schweder, and other officials opposed to the county council-led hearings then scheduled their own public hearings, the first of which was held the first business day following the Fourth of July holiday.

Thus the city of Bethlehem hijacked the county council public hearings, another one of which was never held.

Beginning the snowy evening of January 3, 2005, I began exposing one of the biggest frauds and conspiracies in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania since the infamous Walking Purchase of 1737 and the legislative Ripper Act of 1901.

This amazing saga is fully documented in the www.billybytes.com/blog/, which my loving family and a young man named Brian created while I was lying in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, receiving treatment for colon cancer.

The very day after my discharge, while awaiting surgery, I attended a huge anti-casino rally in Philadelphia sponsored by No Casino PA.

One of the organizers of this rally was Meredith Warner, a new resident to Philadelphia’s neighborhood called Fishtown, another proposed casino site.

Meredith and my older daughter Sarah Parker-Givens were room-mates at Temple University’s Tyler School of Arts in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.

After graduation, my Sarah worked as a photographer with a colleague who knew Brian, a web-site designer who created my www.billybytes.com/blog/ that enables me to warn readers of the Sands BethWorks LLC conspiracy and fraud.

One of my greatest fears as I lay in the VA hospital in Wilkes-Barre, the site of another casino with possible ties to organized crime, was that I might die before my blog could be created.

In February 2006 I had publicly announced my candidacy to run as an independent candidate against incumbent Democratic Governor Edward “Fast Eddie” Rendell, the ringleader in bringing legalized gambling to Pennsylvania.

Less than two months later, I was diagnosed with colon cancer and forced to terminate my campaign.

Though I would clearly have been an underdog candidate, and that succeeding would be a Herculean task, I had confidence that with the help of the Internet - I already had a www.billybytes.com Website up and running - I could collect the number of signatures required to get my name on the ballot.

I knew for certain that I already had enough facts, already documented on my Website, to prove the Sands BethWorks LLC project a conspiracy and a fraud.

I had written innumerable articles about the scheme’s Commerce Center Boulevard traversing the Sands BethWorks LLC property.

The entrance to this boulevard intersected Route 412, a state highway, and terminated in a cul-de-sac at the Majestic Realty property, about a mile west of its origin.

The boulevard was funded by $13.1 million dollars from a Northampton County-General Purpose Authority general-obligation bond, floated in 2001.

This bond, like the Sands BethWorks LLC, is a fraud, through a conspiracy that, again, is well-documented on the www.billybytes.com Website.