Disappointed but not shocked by Shamefully Poor Lehigh county Candidate Recruiting

Well much to my schagrin it seems my predictions of inability to find candidate for local offices has already started. I thought this would be something that would happen 1 or 2 cycles down the road not this year. But it seems that this has already happened. ref post Jan 29th


There is no candidate for the 4th seat up for election on Alburtis boro council, only one candidate for 3 seats up for election on Cooperburg boro council. No candidate for 2 year Audtor Upper Saucon twp; 4 year Auditor term in Heidelberg twp or Lower Mac twp; the 6 year auditor term in Lower Milford,Lowhill twp,Washington twp and worst of all no candidate at all for the 5th ward commissioners seat in Salisbury twp.


And Shameful as the total recruiting was Failure of recruiting on the Democratic side outside the city of Allentown and Bethlehem and 2 or 3 other places, was worse. We Fielded no Candidate of any kind in South Whitehall twp, Macungie boro, Lower Milford, Lowhill,Lynn, Upper Milford, Upper Saucon. Beyond this we only fielded min numbers [one candidate or one office] of candidates in Coopersburg, Emmaus,Slatington boros and Lower mac, Heidelberg, N. Whitehall,Salisbury,Upper Mac, Weisenberg and Washington twp. We couldn't even field a candidate for D.A., or at least get one that would bother to follow thru with running.


This is shameful disgusting and shows how much work the party has to do outside the cities. The lack of vision and last min requests for people to run do nothing to fill this gap. It's too late if you begging for candidates to run for these offices at the Feb meeting.Looking at all these empty positions for seat we could have picked up at least 4 local legislative seats with no effort. But this is why the republicans control somewhere between 65 and 70% of the local seats because we don't even bother trying as I said in my post Just winning the County commissioner seats is not good enough about the party's lack of vision .

Rank Hypocrisy

It seems that the right wing extremists in the Republican party only seem to care about the troops. So long as they are carrying out their grand plan, but once they come home they don't seem to give a damn and even to some extent when they are in the field .


I was completely shock by the vicious and down right nasty response I got to my post Va System Complete mess. I usually get 5 or 10 a day emails a few of which are really nasty emails a day.After,I posted this on Feb 19th I got a few emails related to it, the first week it was up, mostly positive. Suddenly, the beginning of last week in what seems to be part of a hit campaign to kill the story on Walter reed I started getting a flood of nasty email.


I was accused of being a liar nothing shocking there, but then I was accused of treason,helping al-quaeda, and pretty much every other slanderous line you could think of in these email.I'm jaw droppingly shocked that, this would illicit this type of venom, I've posted a lot more inflammatory things, than this.


It seems that this truth is a greater threat to their image and plans than anything else. That is probably, why most of the extreme right wing media is glossing this over and treating it as a second rate story. The Right-wing extremist and the Bush adm seem to care more about the image of supporting the troops than actually doing it. From sending in the troops in poorly prepared so badly that their families had to buy them body armor, to the troops running out of bullets to allow the Va to fall apart. The right wing extremists see the troops as cannon-fodder and tool for propaganda and only do things when they are embarrassed by the media.


If the media had not reported what was happening at Walter Reed nothing would have been done and there would have been a continued cover up. In fact the Bush adm has had the army ordering troops not to speak to the media anymore, so nothing else is uncovered. The same type of cover up is true about the body armor and the bullets and everything else. The simple fact is the Bush adm knows about these problems and simply doesn't care, and their horde of right wing supports obviously don't either.


I'm personally sick of listening to these people meme the talking points of support the troops when they don't. The troops will do what they are told to do if they were ordered into hell they would probably go. It is the job of the Government to decide the mission congress and the President. Then send them in equipped to do it and take care of them when they get home in the manner befitting their sacrifice if they are injured. Not sent into a rotting rat infest hell hole. It is also the job of the government to decide when a war is unwinable or the course of action is wrong and change it or stop it, but simply throwing more troops in and using them as a propaganda tool is not supporting the troops.


You will never hear an American solider admit in front of a camera how bad things are,to the media. They are there they don't see the larger picture or if it is winnable they simply do what they are order to do. They don't think about what is next or it's working they look on the bright side of it, because it's the only way they can keep going.

Pennsylvania Primary 2008

The Pennsylvania State Senate is now starting to finally take action on a report release in may of 2005 moving forward. I talked about this in a post from Dec 06 on this subject. It's seems that the state legislature is now talking about moving the primary up to Feb 5th 2008.

Unfortunately, they seem to be talking about have the primary on Feb 5th for the President then having another one at the normal time for everything else. I'm all for having an earlier primary but I personally think it's a waste of money to have two primaries in one Year. I realize people are complaining about how early the signature collection will be but we shouldn't be wasting money on two primaries. The state have better thing it can waste the money on (j/K).

Opps got distracted

I forgot to mention that there are only 7 days left to file your petitions,Yesterday. The 300-500 point drop on the DJIA sort of distracted me yesterday. Well now you have 6 day left tick tick tick

Do Transit solutions in Pennsylvania take too long? continued

Continuing from my prior post another reason, that appropriate solutions to traffic and transit problem are not done in a time manor or at all is the interference of Business and the local Municipality.


There have been several examples, of this in the Valley, the most resent one being the "222/100 Bypass". It is quite clear that the 222/100 bypass was intended to a true bypass in the vein of the Kutztown and Reading 222 bypasses, that had a 55 mph speed limit and limited access entrances.


What seems to have happened is both Business interests in the twps and the Municipalities themselves had a hissy fit. They were afraid this would take business away from them so they set up all types of road blocks. Until, we ended up with this blvd model road that will do nothing to relieve traffic and in 5 years will probably be just as congests at 222.


Businesses will build along this "bypass" will draw even more traffic to the area that weren't simply trying to use it as a way to bypass 222 or 100, and the road will end up looking like Rt 30 in York county, which was intended to be a bypass of the old rt 30 (PA 462) but became just as congested, because they allowed all types of malls to build up along it if we aren't careful it could end up being a second Whitehall type shopping area. Speaking of Whitehall further back the reason Rt 22 isn't any bigger is because of the Business interest. That more or less have made it impossible to widen the Highway. That unwisely built right along it and have been fighting screaming and yelling to keep the state from claiming eminent domain on their land to expand the highway for the past 20 years. Now we have a slow moving parking lot several hour of the day instead of a highway.


Then we have the special interest groups the pro-mass transit groups, the pro-existing mass transit groups and the pro-highway groups. You get the project approved then the existing mass transit starts whining for money. Such as several times, mass transit has been stalled, in the Lehigh Valley, and in most of the rest of the state because Septa keeps reaching the edge of insolvency. They start whining and the state ends up shifting all the funds from everywhere else in the state to save it. If a doesn't happen then what happens is the Mass-Transit group and the Pro-Highway expansion group fights with each other and nothing happens. Which is more or less what is happening now, in the valley, and by the time it's all sorted out we will have an even worse problem then was attempting to be solved, originally.

Do Transit solutions in Pennsylvania take too long?

The Valentine's day storm, that shut down I-78 may have shown poor planing, on Penn dot's part, but also shows another Failing in Pennsylvania. The amount of time it takes, to get both road, and other Transit projects, from the drawing board, to initial construction to final completion.


It took 30 years + to finish, the Pa portion of I-78 and, by the time, it was opened in 1989, I-78 was not the relief originally intended. In the 1950's, 1960's and even 1970's the finished product would have fit the intention of the planers, but by 1989 although not a complete failure at relieving some of the traffic from 222 and 22 it gave much less relief, than envisioned by the planners in the 1950's. Within the first 10 year of I-78 opening it had became clear, that the 4 lanes were too small for the usage. The roadway also lacks any sort of emergency exit gates between long stretches between exits, something that may have helped eliveate some the problems on Valentines day.


These problem are not simply limited to I-78 these type of problems are also happen on I-83 and I-81 in York and Cumberland counties. Where one minor accident can trap people on these road ways, in between exits for hours, at a time. An example of, this is an accident near Baltimore can tie traffic up going south all the way up to the northern Part of York county. As, well an accident in Cumberland county can tie traffic up all the way down to the southern part of York county.


The problem is essentially that these 4-lane Highways are being asked to handle the traffic of a 8 lane highway. This is understandable in the case of I-83 which was built in the 1960's . It was quite clear by the time, that the building, on the final length of I-78 was started in the 1980's. That the roadway needed to be larger ,than the 4 lanes that were plan, on most of it but by that time the old plans seem to have been set in stone, and the future was simply ignored. Therefore we have the mess today and I-78 is simply heading towards being another rte-22 and I-83.


I will continue this thought in another post later on this subject related to special interests and transit projects