By ‘hook or by crook’ and against the stated wishes of almost 80% of the public, a $176 million plus convention center and a hotel were built in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania largely at the cost and risk of tax payers. It has necessitated large annual subsidies and resulted in serious collateral damages.  This is a series describing how all of this came about.

Lancaster County Pennsylvania is known for its rich farmland, a variety of industry, and major tourist attractions.  It has a long history of virtuous and transparent government and leadership by a responsible print news media owned and guided by the socially responsible Steinman family.

But Lancaster was not immune to the alteration of values during the late 1980’s,  1990’s and most of the first decade of the twenty-first century during which ‘social democracy’ – transparency, fair play, and respect for one another – became hostage to arrogance, greed, and abuses of the public trust by some members of the government, business and media establishments.

Fortunately there has been a nationwide awakening to traditional American values and a growing awareness of predatory elements.  Once again the Lancaster print media plays a constructive role through responsible reporting and restraint.

What follows is how  the altruistic desire to develop the former Watt & Shand Department Store site morphed into a betrayal of public trust that brought about the Lancaster County Convention Center and Marriott Hotel.   The project has caused irreparable damage due to a five percent tax on the countywide hotel industry, throttled downtown gentrification to the south, eliminated what otherwise could be a half a million dollars annually of needed real estate tax revenues, consumed funds for more worthy undertakings such as the expansion and renovation of the Lancaster Public Library, destroyed the careers of faithful elected officials, and was and continues to be at immense government expense and taxpayer risk.

The series was published in installments over three years and recently re-written for purposes of continuity and inclusiveness.  Although principally authored by Chris Hart-Nibbrig and edited by the undersigned, there were many contributors and fact checkers to whom we are most grateful.

We trust that the publication of this series both at NewsLanc.com and as a separate web site, and perhaps someday in a print edition, will serve as a deterrent to future media abuse and private sector exploitations and  will prove informative both to scholars and others interested in the history of the community.

Robert Edwin Field, Publisher    October 30, 2011   Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Policy discussions and governmental actions have a way of tip toeing  around the edges of problems.  We miss the obvious answers as we drown in timid proposals.

Three examples:

1) In “Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It”, Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig explains how Supreme Court rulings based upon its interpretation of First Amendment rights of free speech and enabled the richest 0.05% of the population to unduly determine the nations agenda to the detriment of the general population.  His remedy:  A Constitutional Convention to address campaign financing.  Either Congress or the States can initiate the process.  Other than a highly unlikely reversal of prior opinions by the Supreme Court, there is no other practical remedy.  We will write more on this when we have read the book.

Meanwhile, this is what the U. S. Constitution says on the matter:

“Article. V.

“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.”

2)  An Intelligence Journal editorial “Hope for student$” praises a minor effort by Obama Administration to reduce the cost of college loans to students.   This is the proverbial ‘drop in the bucket.’   What needs to be done is to rethink undergraduate education in view of the Internet Age.    The cost of a college student living away from home comes to almost $50,000 a year!  (We know.)  This could be cut from ½ to possibly 1/3 by having much of the four years spent at home taking courses by the Internet.

Sound farfetched?  This is what Harvard University Business School does with courses for established business executives, whereby they spend a term  on campus initially  and then gather together for a couple of weeks at a time during the program and otherwise study and converse via the Internet.  (And this becomes easier year by year as technology advances!)  Universities could educate three times the number of students without increasing their costs!  Graduates would not be burdened with heavy debt.  In fact, by studying at home, they may be able to find part time work to pay for their education.

John Sperling, founder of the Phoenix Academy, has launched a virtual Internet campus although students do gather together on occasions.

Certainly there can be a variety of approaches for different institutions with the purpose of reducing costs by more than half and educating twice or more of the number of qualified students.

3)  Still another example of tunnel vision is our ‘Jim Crow’ drug policy which is enriching the worst elements of our society and even undermining governments, Mexico being the closest case in point.  Instead of treating illegal drugs as a Criminal Justice problem, we should see it as a Public Health concern.   We should tax, regulate and control marijuana as we do the more dangerous tobacco and alcoholic beverages.   Hard drugs should be treated through prescription, much as we handle Buprenorphine which is  used to control heroin addiction.

HUFF POST: A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.

The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of “Climategate,” a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.

Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA…  (more)

USA TODAY:  ….Just how did we get into this mess and what’s our best path out of it? In prose that is intelligent yet accessible to non-experts, authors Menzie Chinn, professor of public affairs and economics at the University of Wisconsin, and Jeffry Frieden, professor of government at Harvard University, tackle these questions in their new book, Lost Decades: The Making of America’s Debt Crisis and the Long Recovery.

In Lost Decades, we learn how the financial crisis was spawned by years of artificially low interest rates, buttressed by massive lending from abroad, which encouraged an unprecedented spree of debt-financed consumption. We learn how lawmakers disarmed the financial regulators, allowing the proliferation of highly complex, unsupervised and interconnected financial instruments, which enabled firms to increase profits by taking on riskier assets. We learn how some of those firms failed when one highly dubious assumption — that housing prices would continue their unabated rise — proved false.

We also learn — despite the multitude of systemic forces that nearly led us to financial Armageddon — that the crisis was not inevitable. Though it is impossible to exonerate the big financial players whose actions brought the economy to the brink, ultimately those firms and the bankers they employed, say the authors, were playing with the cards the government had dealt them through measures that enabled a foreign borrowing binge and encouraged the taking of inordinate financial risks…   (more)

From USA TODAY:

…In China, still the world leader at 1.34 billion people, Li Bin, director of China’s State Population and Family Planning Commission, told state news agency Xinhua on Sunday the government will maintain its current, strict policies on family size. In recent days, Xinhua has run articles congratulating China for preventing 400 million births over the past three decades, delaying humanity’s 7 billion milestone by five years, and aiding China’s transformation into the world’s second-largest economy.

India, at 1.21 billion, is expected to exceed China’s population by 2030. Their expanding middle classes have fewer children, but both suffer from gender imbalances because families often abort female fetuses.

Their methods to control population reflect different societies and political systems…

Click here to read the full article.

FINANCIAL TIMES:  Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, wants the European Union to take the global lead in introducing a financial transaction tax to curb speculative trading, along with tougher regulation of big banks and the “shadow” banking sector, such as hedge funds.

If the UK blocked agreement on such a tax in the full EU, he said in an interview with the Financial Times, the eurozone should press ahead on its own.

He also called for big steps towards a “fiscal union” in the 17-member monetary union to underpin the stability of their common currency…  (more)

ALJAZEERA:  The Arab League has handed Syrian officials a plan for ending seven months of increasingly violent unrest against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

The Arab League committee put its plan, involving talks in Cairo between the Syrian authorities and their opponents, to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moualem and Bouthaina Shaaban, a political adviser to Assad, on Sunday in Qatar.

The League had previously set a two-week deadline for the start of such talks, which expired on Sunday. The committee said it hoped for a Syrian response to its plan by Monday…   (more)

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER:  He was Pennsylvania’s powerhouse of pork. U.S. Rep. John Murtha, the Democratic titan from Johnstown who represented the 12th district for four decades before his death last year, was legendary for securing oodles of federal cash for his district.

Now it seems Murtha’s pork may well have been more tainted than anyone knew. The D.C. -based newspaper Roll Call has a fascinating look at the revelations recently made known through Murtha’s FBI file.

Turns out the agency was investigating evidence that lobbyists close to Murtha were involved in a scheme to funnel earmarks to sham companies and nonprofits to benefit the lawmaker’s friends and former staffers…  (more)

NEW YORK TIMES:   … It may seem unlikely that middle-class Indians would crave change. They mostly live in rapidly growing cities and can afford cars, appliances and other conveniences that remain beyond the reach of most Indians. Theirs is the fastest growing demographic group in the country, and their buying power is expected to triple in the next 15 years, making India one of the most important consumer markets in the world.

But buying power is not political power, at least not yet in India. The wealthier India has become, the more politically disillusioned many of the beneficiaries have grown — an Indian paradox. The middle class has vast economic clout yet often remains politically marginalized in a huge democracy where the rural masses still dominate the outcome of elections and the tycoon class has the ear of politicians.

Elsewhere in Asia, emerging middle classes once helped topple authoritarian governments in South Korea and Taiwan, as rising incomes brought demands for greater democratic rights — an equation still simmering in China. But India had democracy before it had vast wealth, and the dissatisfaction of the middle class here has focused on the failings of the country’s democratic institutions… (more)

 EDITOR:  We perceive India as the indispensable ally for Western Europe and North America to offset the rapidly growing  economic and military power and  sphere of influence of China.    Middle class pressure to reduce corruption combined with better pay  to government employees  is pivotal to India achieving its full potential.

Interesting that the Sunday News would run a front-page above-the-fold fluff piece in support of Charlie Smithgall ON THE SAME DAY as the deadline for running political letters. It seems a bit too convenient that NO ONE will have a chance to respond.

Perhaps the publisher still owes Smithgall a few favors?