To: The Elk Lake School Board Members

I am one of the taxpayers of both the township and the school district that is being negatively affected by either your actions or lack of actions, regarding the pipeline to the Waldenberger Well Site.

I have been in contact with several of your members during the past several months and had been reassured that there would be a resolution to the construction delays to this pipeline.

At first, I was told that there were safety concerns by the school board regarding this pipeline. I am all in favor of protecting our children and agree that safety concerns should be addressed, however, it is my understanding that the board has been unwilling to meet with representatives of the Williams Company to discuss these “safety” concerns. I also have to mention that I find it interesting, at the very least, that you have such great safety concerns with an underground pipeline, while you continue to operate gas wells at this very location with no safety concerns. Are you saying that the “safety concerns” only apply to the pipeline and not the wells which you are receiving royalty payments for?

I have spoken to representatives of the Williams Company and they say that they are more than willing to address these concerns and wonder why there hasn't been more of an effort put forth to resolve this matter.

At your last meeting you announced that you have hired a law firm to handle the issues with the Williams Pipeline Company. Are the members of the board aware that the law firm retained is also representing a member of the school board in a private matter dealing with the Williams Pipeline Company? To me, this seems like it could be a conflict of interest. I have also heard that this “member” of the school board has been a driving force in the actions of the school board regarding this entire matter. Again, one might construe this to be another conflict of interest.

On behalf of all of the taxpayers of the Elk Lake School District and those that are being adversely affected by your actions, I am requesting that you take immediate action to resolve your issues and allow the construction of the pipeline to proceed; it has now been almost six months since you signed an agreement with the Williams Pipeline Company.

Sincerely,

Leo Davidovich

Susquehanna, Pa.

It was the heady day of hegemony. Iraq fell before the U.S. Army like wheat before a scythe. The dictators of Egypt, Libya, Syria, were our paid employees. Soviet Russia folded in 1989 and China had all it could do to keep its 1.3 billion people under one flag.

All we lacked was Iran. But she, too, in time would succumb. Perhaps a grassroots rebellion. We fueled one before and we could do it again.

The year was 2003. The United States of American stood astride the world. It was the first time in all of human history that one nation dominated the entire planet. No other nation or even combination of nations could match its military clout or economic power. Our sphere of influence was the globe.

A monument commensurate with our unique status was needed. It would be the U.S. Embassy in Iraq; a patch of Americona planted in the heartland of the Mideast's oilfields. An embassy that would make all others seem like dollars stores.

The embassy, completed in 2009, is a $750 million American ziggurat befitting our vision of a U.S.-controlled Mideast. The diplomatic digs came with a $6 billion annual operating cost.

A bureaucratic metropolis located in Baghdad, it is a capital within a capital. The mammoth 104-acre mission is isolated from the city by a 10-feet high, reinforced concrete wall with guard towers. Paradoxically, it is designed to be completely independent from the nation with which it is supposed to have diplomatic relations.

It generates its own electricity, has a water purification plant, waste treatment facility, and a fire department.

Once inside its blast-proof enclosure, one has no reason to leave. Its residents are housed in six, three-story brick apartment complexes all with bullet-proof glass windows. There are schools, restaurants, a PX more like a food court, a shopping mall with a marble floor, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a full-court basketball count, a couple of tennis courts, and a first-class gym.

Of course, it's all fully air conditioned against the sweltering 120-degree summer heat.

To get an idea of how out-of-scale the U.S. Embassy is it helps to compare it with Turkey's, Iraq's largest trading partner. Turkey's embassy employs 55 people; our embassy employs 16,000.

It's also out-of-place. Leaving the compound, one is struck by the contrast. Baghdad's water purification and waste treatment plants were destroyed in the bombing. It gets an undependable three hours of electricity a day, trash collection is sporadic, unemployment and poverty desperately high.

The reason, rather rationale, to build such an wildly over-the-top embassy was “to nurture a postwar Iraq on its shaky path to democracy and establish normal relation between two countries.”

But a funny thing happened on our way to the American Imperium. As soon as we got there things fell apart.

Iraq's religious factions renewed their centuries-old feud. Hosni Mubarak, the titular ruler of Egypt, suffered a stroke in jail and is clinically dead. The CIA's surrogate head of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, was shot dead. And the president of Syria and erstwhile friend, Bashar al-Assad, is hanging onto power with the help of China, Russia, and Iran.

Afghanistan is a box that we are squeezing our way out of. And Iran is moving into the power vacuum we are leaving behind.

And that glorious vestige of Empire America, the Iraq embassy? It's a ghost town. Its 16,000 residents slashed by half.

Of the 505 military bases in Iraq, four remain; and of the peak 170,000 troops, 6,000 are left.

There's something else that we left behind: the lives of 4,484 servicemen and 100,000 wounded, 30,000 of whom are crippled and maimed. And, trillions of dollars sown to the wind during the ten-year war and occupation.

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA