Delco Legal Spending Out of Control — Delaware County (Pa.) Council, last night, Sept. 4, was taken to task for profligerate spending in matters legal.
Cynthia Sabatoni (phonetic) of Upper Providence said spending on outside legal fees grew from $402,000 in 2019 to $4.5 million this year. Further she noted that the solictior’s budget of $3.9 million is more than twice what it was in 2020.
“The county is enhancing the hiring of lawyers in the region,” she said.
Prison Issues
Kimberly Brown of Colwyn took issue with praise Council bestowed on Laura Williams, who is warden of the county’s George HIll Prison. Ms. Brown, a caseworker at the facility, says it was undeserved.
She later took issue with how the prison’s non-security staff doesn’t get the same holidays as other employees. Ms. Brown says the policy makes little sense because case managers can only work when courts are in session and courts are closed on those holidays.
She ripped Councilman Kevin M. Madden, who is council’s liaison to the prison.
“Madden you praise the prison; praise and praise but you don’t do nothing,” she said.
She said the prison is hemmoraging workers.
Facebook Censoring
Kathy from Haverford said County Council is putting misinformation on its Facebook page and preventing citizens from correcting it.
She noted that the ERIC voter registration system, used by Delco, fails at keeping the rolls clean, and the county fights public record requests.
She, too, ripped Madden regarding prison issues, which in her case were a plethora of lawsuits.
Kathy also wished wished to know how much Madden’s firm has invested in the Bluecrest sorters used in Delco’s elections.
Oaths And Sheriffs
Carris Kocher of Glen Mills said that the only oath taken by election workers is to do what the Board of Elections tells them and not uphold the Constitution.
The wording must be returned to how it onece was, she says.
She also says Delco is using the radical Partners for Justice orgnization as part of its public defenders program, and that county sheriffs have lost their ability to make arrests.
Councilman Richard R. Womack questioned her regarding the claim and said he would look into it.
Bruce of Glen Mills, part of a contingent of Quakers in attendance, praised Council for how they handle elections and said his religion doesn’t use oaths but affirmations.
He said the public should refrain from abusive comments.
Election Machine Ransomware
Barb Lewis of Radnor noted that the FBI had issued a warning about ransomware attacks on election machines and that other agencies noted malicious code cold be installed on the machines.
She called for a return to handcounting and paper ballots.
Parking Lot
Michael Straw of Media said the new county parking lot on Orange Street is unused after work hours. He noted that it would provide an excellent revenue sharing opportunity with Media Borough.
Citizens Find ‘Unlocatable’ Man In Eminent Domain Matter — Delaware County (Pa.) Council, last night, Sept. 4, unaimously passed the second reading of an ordinance expressing the intent to take via eminent domain a 200-square-foot parcel of land in Aston Township for the extension of the Chester Creek Trail.
The Council said the owner was unlocatable.
During public comment, Charlie Alexander of Marple said the owner was Robert Sutherland, 86, and that he found him on Facebook.
A woman said taxes are up-to-date and she couldn’t understand why Council couldn’t find him. She said the Aston Commissioners have been in contact with him.
Council responded by saying the ordinance was just part of the process and asked the citizens for the contact information.
It seems the process is predicated on laziness.
Citizens Find ‘Unlocatable’ Man In Eminent Domain Matter
Predicted Threat Of Illegals Coming True — Sharon Devaney of Ardmore, last night, Sept. 4, passionately told Delaware County (Pa.) Council that the concerns regrding illegals she has been expressing are coming true.
“I warned everyone this would happen 10 years ago,” she said.
She noted that despite council’s frequent denials, Delco is a sancutary county.
She described what happened to her apartment complex in Havertown as unassimilated immigrants moved in. It went from clean and pristine to dirty and scary, she said. Filth piled up and trash filled nearby Darby Creek. Children were left unattended and in danger.
Two male immigrants warned her to wear a hijab out of respect, and implied she should get rid of her dog as they don’t like animals.
Ms. Devaney was seriously injured in an accident in 2017 on Lawrence Road in Haverford Township. No charges were ever brought againt the illegal driving the strking car and she remains in the county today.
Concerns about illegals were raised by others.
Charlie Alexander of Marple read from the Declaration of Independence and said the county’s future and security are in jeopardy. He said drifters are breaking into and living in the former Don Guanella buildings on the county’s Delco Woods property.
Gary Ryder of Marple mentioned the armed Venezuelan illegals who took over an apartment complex in Aurora, Co. He demanded that the county begin complying with ICE and hence stop being a sanctuary.
Chris McGuckin (phonetic) a contractor from Newtown Square said that even the immigrants with whom he works want to know what is happening.
“I don’t want to worry about Venezuelan gangs in Delaware County,” he said.
Mia de John (phonetic) of Springfield said the county and media — namely The Philadelphia Inquirer — are blantantly gaslighting the public.
Council initially accused those expressing concerns as being conspiraccy theorists but are now calling them racists, she said.
Ms. de John also ridiculed the claims that illegals won’t vote in the November election.
“Why should we assume they can’t vote illegally if they are here illegally?” she said.
Tevin Dix of Drexel Hill noted the aggressiveness of the Venezulean gangs also citing how they instigated violence in Chicago.
“God forbid they come here and start hurting people,” he said.
Dix also rejected the council’s claims that Delco’s elections are secure.
“Our elections are not safe,” he said. “This is not conspiracy theory. This is truth.”
He demanded that county director of elections Jim Allen be arrested.
Councilwoman Elaine Paul Schaefer defended the “immigrant communty” when time came for her remarks. She ignored shouts from the crowd to include “legal” in the immigrants she was choosing to defend.
Maybe Elaine thinks she would look good in a hijab.
Delco Councilwoman Elaine Schaefer if she doesn’t find the courage to defend the values she claims to have.
DNA Testing For Dogs At Proposed Aston Apartment Complex
By Joseph B Dychala
Aston Township held an informal meeting yesterday, Sept. 3, to unveil plans for the Star Hill tract on Route 452 near Mount Alverno Road. The meeting was heavily attended with standing room only. Several, but not all, commissioners were present.
Nancy Bowden, 5th Ward Commissioner, opened the event and opined she would like to have a calm and peaceful meeting. Once public comments were opened to the audience that was not the case.
Representing the developer, Fernmoor Homes, were Jeffrey Fernbach, president, and Carol Gebhart, director of sales. Based in Jackson, N.J. the developers have been in business since 2009. Both Aston and Fernmoor had their engineers in attendance and did most of the speaking.
The initial presentation, received by an unusually quiet audience, erupted into shouts and jeers during the public comment period. Questions asked involved the meeting itself. Why was the meeting scheduled on the night of the first day of school for the Penn Delco District dominated the discussion. Who planned for this day and why? Why was such little notice given to residents? What caused the initial letter of notice from Aug. 19 to many of the Fifth Ward residents to be delayed until after Aug. 26?
Township assistant manager Kelly Pippen responded the meeting was planned informally without a vote and was important to have the meeting after Labor Day when presumably more people could attend. She noted the error in sending notices citing a “software blip” causing incorrect zip codes on some of the letters. When pressed for details she responded they were working with the software vendor, BDS, to determine the cause of the error. She took full responsibility for not proofreading the envelopes before mailing them. No reason was given why the meeting was not rescheduled when many residents received less than a week’s notice due to the software error. One participant retorted how rescheduling the meeting for a week or two later would not affect a project that was planned for over a decade and wasn’t slated to start for several months.
The project includes a single entrance into the proposed development of approximately 80 one-bedroom and 50 two-bedroom apartments with just under 250 parking stalls across four buildings. Building Three will host a gymnasium, kitchen area, bar and common room. The remaining buildings will only have a common room. All access to the buildings will be via electronic key fob. There will be no new traffic light but a left turn lane on southbound Pennell Road for access is proposed. A bollard fence will be installed and evergreen trees planted along Old Pennell Road for privacy. All potential residents of the apartments will be required to pass a criminal background check.
Discussions for rezoning the property, previously owned by Joe Grace, began in 2012 and were finalized and approved in 2018. Fernmoor Group acquired the property in 2022. The buildings will be three stories high, down from four in the initial proposal with a reduction in the total number of apartments. Construction is expected to begin within the next six months and take up to two years to complete.
Other questions involved if pets are allowed and how that may impact surrounding neighbors with dog waste. Carol Gebhart stated all pets will be DNA tested. If something isn’t cleaned up it will easily be able to determine the guilty party who will be fined accordingly. An audience member shouted, “why not install cameras on every corner like in China” in a sarcastic tone. Another participant mentioned this pet DNA in a follow up question and Mrs Gebhart stated she was offended. Her position was they came to meet the community as a courtesy and would not be mocked. Several shouts of “those were your own words” and similar sentiments followed.
In addition to the usual questions such as stormwater management, attaching to the public sewer system and traffic congestion concerns one audience member asked what effect cutting down large swaths of trees will have on the area citing the rise in average daily temperatures observed since the former Mercury Gun Club was turned into a warehouse facility. Acres of old growth native trees were removed. It was suggested “Heatwave Adam” is just the beginning if we continue to lose more trees. Another participant lamented that Penn’s Woods are simply gone. Finally several residents questioned if blasting would be required as the area historically has needed blasting to clear the large expanse of solid rock formations. Many residents on Old Pennell Road and Brakel Lane complained of cracks in their homes from when the nearby quarry restarted and anticipated more problems.
The developers explained they would be both owner and operator of the apartment complex and hire all management for both leasing and property maintenance. Questions asking if the property would eventually be sold and turned into Section 8 housing followed. One question posed was will this be a “Fifteen Minute City.” This caught the developers off guard who stated they did not know what that meant. The resourceful Fernbach, however, looked it up on the internet and replied there are no plans to have any commercial buildings or businesses as part of the development.
The most asked question was how can this project proceed when all the studies — water runoff, geological, wetlands remediation, traffic patterns and calming, sewage removal and other issues — were completed years ago before many other new developments nearby and the pipeline that runs parallel to Pennel Road existed. Township solicitor Michael Maddren essentially said It is what it is and it’s going to happen. He said developers have rights in Pennsylvania.
Makes one wonder if taxpayers and residents still have a right to how their own communities are developed in 21st Century America.
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: The Ten Commandments have lost their validity…Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish like circumcision. Adolf Hitler
Charlie Alexander’s Story About Delco Child Services Corruption — We’ve been carrying stories about how the agencies in Delaware County, Pa. tasked with protecting children actually are about protecting the connected, and the power protecting the connected provides.
Here’s Charlie Alexander’s story about how a child’s abuser escaped justice while those who brought it to the authorities’ attention were punished.
Note, this occurred more than a decade ago when the Republicans were running things.
BLS Admits Jobs Overstated, Gives Phony Boost to Bidenomics
By Joe Guzzardi
The Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered an unpleasant Labor Day surprise earlier this year when it confirmed that it overstated the jobs created total from March 2023 to March 2024 by at least 818,000. The gross miscalculation, the largest in 15 years, makes President Joe Biden look foolish. Biden frequently but falsely proclaims that the U.S. has the world’s strongest economy, that he has created 15 million jobs, 800,000 manufacturing jobs which, he insists, proves that Bidenomics is a rip-roaring success. The adjustment brings the total employment growth for the 12-month period, not including farm jobs, from 2.9 million to about 2.1 million, knocking average monthly growth during that time from about 242,000 to about 174,000. To determine the new estimates, the government relied on the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), which tracks employment and wages that employers report and covers more than 95% of all U.S. jobs.
BLS and its dozens of economists inflating the aggregate jobs total by 818,000 is an error akin to a field goal specialist lining up for a five-yard boot but kicking the football fifty yards to the right of the goal post. Economists that work on the monthly reports have one job—to accurately count and report the number of jobs created. But if the numbers crunchers’ assignment was to purposefully put the most positive spin on the data to deceive Americans, specifically likely voters, and to give the Biden administration cooked reports to boast about, then everything becomes clear. BLS’ reports are a valuable information source that voters and analysts use to gauge the economy’s health. If they are patently dishonest, then Americans are right to question what other official documents are also purposely fabricated. Even Fed Chairman Jay Powell is suspicious. In June, when the government reported May’s unlikely job creation total of 272,000, Powell said, “they may be a bit overstated.”
Skeptics but realists at Zero Hedge noted that beginning during the summer of 2022, BLS, in its determination to show job growth regardless of the quality of those jobs, started to tinker with the labor market’s make up. ZH found that month-to-month gains were going to low-paid, part-time workers while the number of full-time workers declined or remained flat. Detailed data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services suggests that non-farm payroll growth to date for FY24—which started 1 October 2023—comes from illegal aliens who have received an Employment Authorization Documents, EADs, granted via parole.
The usual pro-growth suspects shrugged off this year’s downward adjustment. Yardeni Research founder and Yale University Ph.D. Ed Yardeni wrote that, “We’re not sweating this report.” Yardeni called the revision “old news” because it tracked employment data from months ago. Goldman Sachs economist Ronnie Walker labeled the revision “erroneous” and “misleading” because it excludes many of the jobs that illegal immigrants hold, a group that he noted contributes significantly to job growth. Walker understated illegal immigrants’ participation in the labor market. Since about 2019, native-born Americans have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained three million jobs. That is more than a significant contribution, the words Walker used. Instead, it’s a complete displacement of American workers.
Goldman Sachs advocates for more immigration and more non-immigrant visas like the H-1B visa, even if higher immigration levels deny U.S. workers an opportunity to get jobs in a tight economy. A Partnership for Public Service poll sampling of U.S. adults this spring found just 23% trust the government, compared to 35% in 2022. The results show more Americans consider the federal government to be incompetent, and just 15% believe it to be transparent. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is both incompetent and non-transparent.
Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit quote puzzle: Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, Ephesians 2:19
