Clinton Secret Service Officer Addresses Springfield GOP

Clinton Secret Service Officer Addresses Springfield GOP — Everything you’ve heard about the Clintons is true.

Clinton Secret Service Officer Addresses Springfield GOP
Gary Byrne at the Springfield Township (Pa.) building.

That was the message best-selling author Gary Byrne brought to tonight’s (Sept. 21) meeting of the Springfield (Pa.) Republican Party.

Byrne who grew up in Ridley Park and attended Ridley High School is a resident of Springfield.

His book Crisis of Character concerns his time as a uniformed Secret Service officer in the Clinton White House.

“They lie about everything,” Byrne said. “Even when they don’t have too.” He said character assassination of opponents — political and otherwise — is their standard operating procedure.

Byrne was the officer stationed outside the Oval Office when Monica Lewinsky visited President Bill Clinton. He was the first member of the Secret Service to be subpoenaed to testify against a U.S. president. He noted that what got Clinton impeached wasn’t the sex but perjury and the suborning of Miss Lewinsky’s perjury. Clinton had sworn in an affidavit that he was never alone with her and pressured her to do the same.

Byrne knew otherwise.

Byrne said he knew his life would change when he was returning from a training assignment and listening to Howard Stern while speeding down the New Jersey turnpike. He heard Stern announce that Matt Drudge had revealed that matter of Miss Lewinsky’s blue dress. Byrne said he pulled over and threw up.

Byrne resisted testifying until ordered to do so by the Supreme Court Chief Justice.

Byrne also saw first hand matters that were reported in various place in the ’90s but dismissed  by old media. Yes, Mrs. Clinton berated an officer who was maintaining protocols at a Christmas party, namely himself. Yes, Hillary Clinton hit a  Secret Service officer in the back of the head with a Bible. Byrne watched it happen.

Byrne took questions from the audience. One man asked what he thought concerning the death of Vince Foster. Byrne said he had been acquainted with Foster and believed that he had committed suicide but much of what surrounded it was suspicious. He said there was carpet fibers on Foster’s clothes and no dust on his shoes as would be expected if he had walked into Fort Marcy Park to pull the trigger. He said there was an issue with the firing mechanism on the revolver Foster was said to have used. He said, however, that while strange, this would not make it impossible for that gun to have been the killing device.

He said one troubling matter relating to the incident concerned the treatment of his fellow officer Hank O’Neill. O’Neill was stationed outside Foster’s office after his death and testified that Margaret Williams, who was Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, removed two handfuls of folders from it.

O’Neill’s character was besmirched by the Clinton machine.

One woman asked Byrne if he feared for his life during testimony. He said yes, although in hindsight he’s not sure how realistic he was being. He said that during a trip to Arkansas with President George H.W. Bush in 1991, a deputy sheriff had quite seriously implied the Clintons were capable of anything.

And Byrne does not dismiss the infamous Clinton death list. He said the July 10 murder of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Conrad Rich had the earmarks of the type of assassination that he is trained to stop.

Byrne served with the Air Force Security Forces before joining the Secret Service and later was a federal air marshal.

He said he was talked into writing his book by friends.

He said had been a Carly Fiornia supporter but is now one-hundred percent behind Donald Trump and is expecting to become involved in his campaign.

Clinton Secret Service Officer Addresses Springfield GOP

 

 

Ukrainian Dinner Platter At Holy Myrrh-Bearers

Holy Myrrh-Bearers Church will offer a Ukrainian dinner platter after the 10 a.m. Sunday service, Sept. 25.

Cost is $12. Eat in or take out. On the menu are one stuffed cabbage, two pyrohy, kielbasi, halushki, coffee or tea and dessert.

For information call 610-544-1215 or  email HMBChurch@verizon.net.

Ukrainian dinner platterHoly Myrrh-Bearers, 900 Fairview Road, Swarthmore, Pa. 19081, is an Eastern-rite Catholic Church. Liturgies are 5 p.m. Saturdays in English and 10 a.m. Sundays in English/Ukrainian.

Ukrainian dinner platter

PennDOT Killing Pennsylvania Turnpike

PennDOT Killing Pennsylvania Turnpike

By Lowman S. Henry

The Pennsylvania Turnpike is America’s first superhighway. It also has become one of the most expensive roads in the country to travel. If you are in a passenger car driving the entire length of the turnpike from the Delaware River Bridge in the east to Gateway in the west it will cost you $42.30 if you pay cash, $30.32 if you have an E-Z Pass.PennDOT Killing Pennsylvania Turnpike

Traversing the Pennsylvania Turnpike gets more expensive for truck traffic, significantly more expensive. That same east-west trip for the heaviest and largest of trucks costs $1,634.35. As if that isn’t bad enough, recent annual fare hikes are projected to continue into the foreseeable future.

Pennsylvania is known as the Keystone state and for good reason. Geographically we are centrally located for both north-south and east-west traffic destined for some of the nation’s most populous cities. For decades the turnpike has been a key traffic route, but now both freight haulers and passenger cars are seeking out other routes – such as Interstate 81 that, while a bit out of the way for some, charge no tolls.

These facts have not escaped the attention of state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale who recently sounded alarm bells over the turnpike’s fragile fiscal situation. In his audit of turnpike practices DePasquale said: “The plan for the turnpike’s financial future relies on projection calling for a 215 percent increase in toll revenue between 2015 and 2035 and a 44 percent increase in traffic volume through 2044. However, traffic volume has remained relatively flat over the last decade.”

These two projections are inherently contradictory as basic economics dictates that consumers use less of a product as prices rise – especially if prices rise at a much faster rate than the income of the purchaser. Thus, we can expect the past decade’s “relatively flat” traffic volumes to either remain so, or perhaps even decline as such significant toll hikes continue to be implemented.

It would be easy to blame mismanagement and the turnpike commissions’ often criticized hiring and contracting practices for these annual rate hikes. But, in this case the problem has been caused by the state legislature, not by turnpike administration. Act 44 of 2007 requires the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to make payments of $450 million per year to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). PennDOT which spends the money on highway maintenance and on subsidizing mass transit operations. Since the passage of Act 44, $5.2 billion in fare revenue has been diverted from turnpike operations to PennDOT.

Act 44 was passed with the unrealistic expectation that Interstate 80 would be converted to a toll road operated by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. That revenue would offset the mandated subsidy to PennDOT. State officials appealed to both the Bush and Obama administrations for approval of the scheme, but were rejected. As a result the turnpike has been saddled with making annual payments to PennDOT and no source to fund those transfers except annual fare hikes.

The legislative mandate is also having another impact: the turnpike is reducing planned spending on maintenance, improvements and expansion.

An ambitious rebuilding plan that includes expansion of the turnpike to six lanes in many areas has already been reduced by $1 billion over the next ten years. DePasquale pointed out the folly of the situation stating: “You can’t cut back on construction and increase traffic 44 percent, especially while jacking up the toll rates.”

The subsidies to PennDOT are scheduled to end in 2022, but by then the turnpike’s financial situation will dire. Worse, legislators will then have to determine how to fund the insatiable appetite for subsidies required by the state’s money-losing mass transit systems.

This problem should have been addressed two years ago when the legislature passed and Governor Tom Corbett signed into law a defacto 30-cent per gallon increase in gasoline taxes. That would have been the time to end “haphazard funding gimmicks” such as Act 44 and placed both the Pennsylvania Turnpike and PennDOT on solid financial footing.

It didn’t happen then. But it needs to happen now before, as Auditor General DePasquale concluded, the system collapses “and leaves the turnpike and people who rely on public transit systems across the state in a world of hurt.”

(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail address is lhenry@lincolninstitute.org.)

PennDOT Killing Pennsylvania Turnpike