Armstrong: Allentown's Frankenstein Monster

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Scott Armstrong 

When I posted a Scott Armstrong essay is September, there were numerous complaints like this - "And here is the challenge to Bernie: Stop publish nonsense like this from Scott Armstrong if he cannot produce a commentary with some substance. Just refuse to publish it." So I will respond to this challenge by publishing another Scott Armstrong essay. His last epistle, by the way, generated 83 comments, good and bad.

This one's about Allentown, and I pretty much agree with him.

For years now Allentown’s Democratic voters have chosen party allegiance over common sense at the ballot box. In 2005 they promoted to mayor a key player in a failed administration and since, have repeatedly elected and re-elected proven incompetents to city council. Meanwhile, they voted out of office every Republican-- including by all accounts, Allentown’s best city council person in memory, Tom Burke--and failed to support well qualified and capable Allentownians for city positions just because of party affiliation. Their straight party voting has produced a city controlled by a party machine under the thumb of a Democratic mayor and his Democratic cohorts on council. Every city bureau, agency, commission, and board is also populated by Democratic team players; all stand ready to receive and act on orders from the top. For good measure, the local press and media dominated as well by Democrats, routinely reports favorably on all this. This is how Allentown works, or more precisely, doesn’t work for the greater good. The latest example of this is the mayor’s plan to sell the city’s water works to pay off poorly thought out public sector pension obligations. This plan is so bad a few current and former Democratic elected officials are aghast. In a desperate attempt to stop the sale they are sounding the alarm and expecting a result. The monster they had a hand in creating is running amuck, bent on the fiscal destruction of the city, and despite their plea, the public pays no heed. After all, why should the citizenry be aroused? Aren’t the good guys in charge? Weren’t all the threats to the city removed when the Republican Tom Burke was thrown out of office?

The old adage of “you reap what you sow” is coming home to roost. Allentown’s Democratic voters and Democratic civic leaders have all had a hand in creating the monster that is the Pawlowski Administration. Presently, the wiser ones, aroused, are shocked by the destruction it/he is leveling on the city. How unfortunate it is for them to comprehend that their campaign to vilify those who could have stopped the monster was all too successful. Their call to action now falls on deaf ears.