Antietam Lake is Corruption in the Making

November 15, 2005 by Matt Heckman.

I could not help but read about the latest chapter in the Antietam Lake drama. Mike O’Pake has gathered state funding to add to the County offer. What nobody is reporting is how much this will burden the taxpayer in Berks County. Berks County is already overtaxed, and once again my point about the pick people’s back pocket policy is proven. It’s always the citizens that have to dig deep into their pockets to pay for something that will never generate any type of return economically. I mentioned in my previous post about how Reading continues to live in the past.

I want to bring up another example relating to the goggle works. There are a lot of people that want these goggle works type projects, and the first thing they want to do is raise your taxes to pay for it. Al Boscov is a prime example of this. Why don’t these people put their money where their mouth is? Do you see Al Boscov digging into his pockets to pay for these projects? Do you see Mike O’Pake digging into his own pocket to pay for these projects? Do you see Tom Mcmahon digging into his own pocket to pay for these projects? Do you see Ed Rendell digging into his pockets (and we know those pockets are very deep) to pay for these projects? The answer to all of these questions is no. If these people care about saving Antietam Lake that’s fine, but do we always have to pick the pockets of law abiding citizens that work their tail off only to see their net income shrink year after year? As long as we have this type of attitude with our local government then Berks County let alone the City of Reading will never generate a positive business climate.

The bottom line is we need to grow an economy in this county, and I would love to see the City of Reading prosper, but these type of things will never get us there. For once can these people leave our back pockets alone? If the people I just mentioned truly want to save Antietam Lake then they should make in what we call an investment. The people I mentioned combined have the capital to easily invest into a project like this, but sadly when it comes to their own money they don’t step up to the plate. They would rather take the money from people like you and me.

This is called Pork Barrel Spending. Does anybody know where that term came from? It started during the civil war to prevent the slaves from turning against their masters they would feed them barrels of pork to keep them happy. Every time we hear the term Pork Barrel we as citizens should be insulted that we are considered the equivalent of slaves to our elected officials.

If these people truly believe that saving Antietam Lake is a worthy, and noble goal, then they need to step up to the plate, and lead by example before they dare pick the pockets of the tax payer again.

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