Congressman Paul Kanjorski announces the prospect of 1,000 jobs coming to the area and Hazelton Mayor Lou ("beware of the great brown horde") Barletta immediately announces that he is opposed to the project.
Article link HERE.
Apparently Barletta wants to protect the pristine former mine land or something like that, and he believes that a "military style training camp" would be disruptive. Now this facility would be run the by U.S. State Department, not the Marine Corps, but I suspect that Barletta would be opposed to Christmas if it could somehow be proven to be a Kanjorski idea (which makes no sense at all, because Christmas, in and of itself, doesn't involve sending public money to the Kanjorski family, but so I digress...). Regardless, while I'm not entirely convinced that this project will happen here, if it does it would be a great, great thing for the region.
I also think this is yet another example of how Barletta is a one-trick pony: he sounds good when he is busy trying to scare the bejesus out of a certain audience worried about illegal immigration, but he falls flat when he talks about just about everything else, including his tenure as Hazelton's mayor.
After reading the story of Kanjorski's announcement yesterday on NEPArtisan I was skeptical about the project's prospects and worried that it might make the Congressman look bad if it didn't happen. Well Barletta just solved that problem. By immediately coming out against 1,000 jobs (in an area with unemployment in the 9.5% range and layoffs & outsourcing coming right and left) Barletta has just negated any advantage he could garner if this project doesn't come to fruition. People are now going to be debating why Barletta is opposed to this, not whether Kanjorski is engaged in wishful thinking. If this whole thing was Ed Mitchell's idea, then I have to hand to to the guy, as it's a stroke of genius.
This brings to mind a certain scene in a favorite movie...
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