Lehigh Valley Somebody

Sunday, August 9, 2009

THE UGLY TRUTH ABOUT BERNARD V. O'HARE III, PART #1

At his once popular blog, Lehigh Valley Ramblings, Bernie O'Hare (left) usually makes light of his unchangeable status as a disgraced ex-lawyer who is barred from practicing law.

He was a "booze hound," O'Hare claims, and he "made some mistakes," but "that was a long time ago." And O'Hare's dismissive and cute self-deprecations always seem to satisfy and amuse the "regulars" at his blog. If not, O'Hare deletes his interrogator's comments and questions until he or she goes away. And if they persist, O'Hare will then publicly attribute offensive comments to the "high-jacking troll," to discredit and marginalize the person, while not providing any proof that the offensive comments were in fact posted by the accused. Frequently, the wordings of the offensive "anonymous" comments have a distinctly O'Hare-ish familiarity to them. But they work. The questioning "troll" usually gives up and goes away. And Ramblings "regulars" always seem to be okay w/ these O'Hare tactics too.

Some of O'Hare's most loyal "regulars" include well-known elected officials in Northampton and Lehigh counties who dish insider political (and personal) information (and dirt) w/ O'Hare, which O'Hare then cooperatively spins and twists in their favor (and against their political opponents) at his blog in return for their access.

A once-proud local news institution, The Morning Call "newspaper," launched its "Valley Blogosphere" venture only after soliciting recommendations and blessings from O'Hare who refers to himself as the "Pope" of our local blogosphere. The Express-Times courted O'Hare too with a "blogging alliance" offer of their own, but the ET was rebuffed by O'Hare in favor of the higher circulation Morning Call. Quite the popular and in-demand guy, this Bernard V. O'Hare, III.

Curiously, "booze" isn't mentioned anywhere in the 22 pages Lehigh Valley Somebody obtained recently from the Pittsburgh office of the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania [No. 512 Disciplinary Docket No. 2 Disciplinary Board No. 25 DB 84 Attorney Registration 28024], dated January 9, 1986.

The 22 pages Mrs. Dottie and I have examined carefully w/ our legal counsel spell out exactly what O'Hare did and why O'Hare is barred from practicing law.

What's contained in these 22 pages is shocking. But even more shocking is that at the time of his PA Supreme Court Disciplinary Board investigation, O'Hare was involved in another evil intent activity that was arguably far worse than the shocking episode the PA Supreme Court suspended O'Hare's law license for.

Not surprisingly, O'Hare has never applied for reinstatement as a lawyer because he knows they'll never reinstate him. For openers, he'd have to address the arguably far worse 2nd offense. Also, there's a condition on his reinstatement that O'Hare would likely have great difficulty fulfilling:

Reinstatement to be conditioned on the submission of a medical report indicating that Respondent [O'Hare] is emotionally and physically capable of resuming the responsibilities of his profession-- i.e., O'Hare would have to prove he isn't still nutz and extremely dangerous to clients.

Readers, we want you to know the ugly truth about Bernard V. O'Hare III too, because as you will see, O'Hare has never been rehabilitated; O'Hare has never changed his ways; and O'Hare's "ways" still involve a course of evil intent activity that is characterized by, in the conclusions of the PA Supreme Court:

dishonesty, fraud, deceit, misrepresentation, unauthorized activity, forgery, cover-up, conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice, illegal conduct, and moral turpitude.

HAPPIER TIMES

Bernard V. O'Hare III was a 3rd generation "hot-shot" lawyer blessed with the silver spoon advantage of starting his career working at his father's law firm, as his father had done before him.

O'Hare's college classmates at Moravian '74 chose him to give the student address and he graduated in the top 10% of his class at Dickinson Law School where his successful and distinguished late father also graduated. Bernard O'Hare Jr. was a 1-term District Attorney of Northampton County and WWII buddies with Kurt Vonnegut.

Shortly before his disgrace and suspension in 1986, and while working as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Scranton, O'Hare III was prosecuting Columbian drug dealers in the Poconos and busting child pornographers. For real. So if O'Hare was a "booze hound" back then as he claims (and which we doubt), the booze certainly wasn't affecting his ability to prosecute bad guys.

But there was "another O'Hare" back then, as there is today also-- an O'Hare who was persecuting good guys w/ evil intent.

This other O'Hare, the one w/ the "serious emotional problem," as described by O'Hare's own lawyer in the PA Supreme Court's Report, was purposefully sabotaging civil litigation involving grieving, tragedy-stricken families. For real.

And while it appears that O'Hare wasn't sabotaging these families for the money (no proof of financial gain on O'Hare's part was ever established), the evil intent activity O'Hare was engaging in was the purposeful screwing of grieving families out of civil settlement monies they were entitled to, and highly deserving of:

nineteen million, eighty-five thousand dollars ($19,085,000.00) to be exact.

In a nutshell, Bernard V. O'Hare III was purposefully further devastating already traumatized and suffering families, by kicking them, real hard, when they were down.

If this doesn't put O'Hare's sadistic Troll Parade blog and his public threats to sabotage Sheena Villa's civil litigation into an eye-opening sharper focus for you, well, we're sure nothing will, and you might as well stop reading right now.

But if you'd like to learn more about the real Bernie O'Hare, the one we've had figured out for over a year now, do keep reading.

Read: Part II: George Usry

Friday, August 7, 2009

Kathleen Parrish Responds

Lehigh County's "Right To Know" Officer Kathleen Parrish got back to me recently on our excellent question regarding Debbie Garlicki's new job in DA Jim Martin's office.

Here's what Kathleen had to say ...

Aug. 3, 2009

Dear Mr. Villa:

Receipt is acknowledged of your letter dated July 20, 2009 and received on July 29, 2009. This is not a request for a record - it is a question.

The Right-To-Know Law requires that requests be for existing records and does not require a public agency to provide just information. 65 P.S. sec. 67.705. Also, a request "should identify or describe the records sought with sufficient specificity to enable the agency to ascertain which records are being requested." 65 P.S. sec. 67.703.

Bill Villa interjects: Readers, Kathleen Parrish could have stopped right there and sent me on my way and she would have been in total compliance w/ Right-To-Know. But Kathleen went farther and volunteered this additional information and I sincerely appreciate that, thank you Kathleen, please continue ...

That having been said, the District Attorney requested another Executive Aide position during the budget process in July 2008. It was approved by the administration and included in the budget submitted to the Commissioners in August 2008. The budget was passed in October 2008. The Executive Aide position was funded as of Jan. 1, 2009 and filled in February 2009.

In accordance with the state's Right-To-Know Law, you have the right to appeal this determination to the state Office of Open Records. The appeal must be made within 15 days of receiving this letter. You can submit an appeal using the appeals form found on http://openrecords.state.pa.us.

Thank you,

Kathleen Parrish

Right-To-Know Officer

Lehigh County

Readers, surely there's no need to appeal Kathleen Parrish's gracious response. Thank you again, Kathleen.

However, we do have another excellent question.

But first, let's re-cap what we now know ...

* Debbie Garlicki lost her longtime job as a Morning Call "newspaper" courthouse beat reporter in the first wave of layoffs there on July 25, 2008, "Black Friday."

* "the District Attorney requested another Executive Aide position during the budget process in July 2008" (i.e., the exact same month, July 2008, when Debbie Garlicki knew that her possible job termination was looming, coincidentally)

* In the additional information she volunteered, Kathleen Parrish did indeed answer our first excellent question regarding whether Debbie Garlicki's position in DA Jim Martin's office existed prior to Garlicki's permanent layoff from The Morning Call "newspaper." It didn't, although at least one other similar position may have existed-- Parrish said that Martin requested "another" Executive Aide position in July 2008. Another position specifically for Debbie Garlicki, possibly?

And this brings us to our next excellent question that I have emailed Kathleen Parrish today and it goes like this:

Hi Kathleen, please send me all records (document copies are fine) that depict the advertisements used to announce the open position of Executive Aide in DA Jim Martin's office that was filled by Debbie Garlicki in February 2009. This would include any/all newspaper classified or display ads, postings on the Lehigh County web site, email announcements of the job opening, flyers that may have been hung in-house at the DA's office or Courthouse, etc. Also, please send me all records that indicate how many people applied for the position that was ultimately awarded to Debbie Garlicki in Feb. '09.

Thank you again for your consideration, Kathleen.

Have a nice weekend.

Best Regards,

Bill Villa

Kathleen Parrish Responds

Lehigh County's "Right To Know" Officer Kathleen Parrish got back to me recently on our excellent question regarding Debbie Garlicki's new job in DA Jim Martin's office.

Here's what Kathleen had to say ...

Aug. 3, 2009

Dear Mr. Villa:

Receipt is acknowledged of your letter dated July 20, 2009 and received on July 29, 2009. This is not a request for a record - it is a question.

Thank you,

Kathleen Parrish

Right-To-Know Officer

Lehigh County

Readers, surely there's no need to appeal Kathleen Parrish's gracious response. Thank you again, Kathleen.

However, we do have another excellent question.

But first, let's re-cap what we now know ...

* Debbie Garlicki lost her longtime job as a Morning Call "newspaper" courthouse beat reporter in the first wave of layoffs there on July 25, 2008, "Black Friday."

And this brings us to our next excellent question that I have emailed Kathleen Parrish today and it goes like this:

Thank you again for your consideration, Kathleen.

Have a nice weekend.

Best Regards,

Bill Villa

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Racist Opposition To Allentown Playground

Dour buttinsky Mike Molovinsky is a resident of the tony Allentown PA suburb of South Whitehall Township.

He doesn't live, or vote, in Allentown.

But trust fund slacker Mike Molovinsky is accustomed to getting his own way, dammit.

And Mikey does not want a proposed new Destination Playground [Watch Video!] at Allentown's Cedar Beach Park.

It's okay to put it "in their 'hood, but not ours," is the verbatim gist of all the tightly Molovinsky-moderated "discussion" on this hot topic at Mike Molovinsky's Morning Call newspaper-affiliated and awarded hate blog, Molovinsky on Allentown.

FYI, Mike Molovinsky ran very unsuccessfully for Mayor of Allentown in 2005 when he suffered a humiliating (and some say life-changing) 59% to 3% pummeling by popular Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski. Adding belly-laugh (3%!) insult to injury, out-of-office and discredited former Mayor Bill Heydt got 38% of the vote.

Back in 2005, hardly anybody (3%) was paying any attention to Mike Molovinsky and so the coded racism that dominated Molovinsky's Campaign Platform went mostly unnoticed.

Readers, we encourage you to pay close attention to Molovinsky's Campaign Platform now-- because it reveals Molovinsky's elitist and racist disdain for the poor while providing some context for Molovinsky's konstantly kvetching "sore loser" vendetta against compassionate and humanitarian Allentown Mayor, Ed Pawlowski.

Molovinsky's platform starts w/ a misspelled, fear-mongering acronym, "Save Our Sity," and then 10 of its 18 sentences are blatantly elitist and racist. Allow us to "translate" its main points for you and put Mike's already telegraph-obvious agenda in the spotlight ...

"We must recover from being the victim of Political Correctness." Translation: "My political inspiration, the late Allentown City Council woman Emma Tropiano had it right: WE MUST QUIT BEING SHY ABOUT BLAMING ALLENTOWN'S PROBLEMS ON THE HISPANICS."

"We can no longer tolerate being a poverty magnet ... We will no longer strive to win the national HUD award for making low-income homeowners. We will no longer strive to be the third largest city in Pa., necessitating a high rise prison." Translation: "Poor people are criminals; most hispanics are poor; do the math."

"Our current social programs are morally commendable, but unfair to the taxpayer. Social agencies should receive our gratitude, not our taxes." Translation: "Poor people don't pay any of the taxes "we" pay, so screw 'em."

"Public safety will mean police patrolmen, not multiple assistant chiefs attending national conferences." Translation: "We already know who and where the trouble-makers are (Emma told us), so let's stop "studying solutions" and start crackin' heads."

Readers, the Mike Molovinsky-led opposition to Allentown's proposed Destination Playground is obstructionist and racist mob-rule mentality nonsense.

It's akin to the loony racist "birthers" who recently forged a Kenyan birth certificate for President Obama and the RepubliCON opposition to anything Obama wants to accomplish for the American people, like healthcare reform, and having a wise latina on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Isn't it curious how quickly some white men in Congress and the Lehigh Valley can see "reverse racism" against white people, but fail to notice or call out explicit racism and hatred against Latinos, African-Americans, Muslims, and other minorities-- which you can step in daily at local online "Klan Rallies" like The Morning Call Forum, Scott Armstrong's white-hooded Allentown Commentator chat room, and Molovinsky on Allentown.

On a related subject, we are saddened that Allentown City Council Vice President (for now) and Cedar Crest College "ethics" professor Michael Donovan (allegedly an educator? and a "liberal?") would ally so closely w/ Mike Molovinsky at his blog and give such unwarranted attention and approval to Molovinsky and his handful of loony, racist foot-dragger supporters who are against Equal Opportunity for all the children of Allentown, while deleting and muzzling a dozen legitimate comments of dissent at his ironically titled blog, "Inclusion."

Allentown, let's build that Destination Playground ASAP and Move Forward Together (well, most of us anyway).

Update: The Shameful "Ethics" of Michael Donovan

Racist Opposition To Allentown Playground

Dour buttinsky Mike Molovinsky is a resident of the tony Allentown PA suburb of South Whitehall Township.

He doesn't live, or vote, in Allentown.

But trust fund slacker Mike Molovinsky is accustomed to getting his own way, dammit.

And Mikey does not want a proposed new Destination Playground [Watch Video!] at Allentown's Cedar Beach Park.

Back in 2005, hardly anybody (3%) was paying any attention to Mike Molovinsky and so the coded racism that dominated Molovinsky's Campaign Platform went mostly unnoticed.

Readers, the Mike Molovinsky-led opposition to Allentown's proposed Destination Playground is obstructionist and racist mob-rule mentality nonsense.

Allentown, let's build that Destination Playground ASAP and Move Forward Together (well, most of us anyway).

Update: The Shameful "Ethics" of Michael Donovan

Friday, July 31, 2009

ASD Faces Big Challenges

Four years ago a group of business and community leaders in Allentown formed "Education 2010!" The group hired and paid a consulting firm in Denver to prepare a local "costing out study" for the Allentown School District. The reason for the study was to ensure equitable funding and a better education for ASD students, which in turn could result in a stronger regional economy, and a better quality of life for all residents.

The results of the study are quite surprising. Here's a link ...

According to the study, these are some of the challenges that the ASD faces:

- ASD has almost 3 times as many poor students as the next highest district (Northern Lehigh)

- ASD has more than 5 times as many English learners as the next highest district (Whitehall)

-Compared to half of the other districts in the county, ASD has seven times as many poor students and fifteen times as many English language learners.

The study reports that Allentown has the lowest property value per student, less than half of what most other districts in Lehigh County have, but Allentown's tax rate is higher than both county and state averages. And the huge revenue gap between the ASD and other districts will keep increasing as more families move to Parkland and East Penn. Hopefully that trend will change, and in the future more families will choose to live in the city.

I have seen the gross inequity between the ASD and other local districts. This is unfair and unjust because the ASD child who is born into poverty deserves the same quality education as the suburban child who lives in the McMansion in the Macungies.

Why should the quality of a child's education be hinged upon local property values? It's wrong to deny a child born into poverty the necessary resources for a quality education.

In the 2008-2009 budget, Governor Rendell introduced a new school funding formula to distribute funds based on the actual number of students in a district, factoring in the number of students living in poverty, English learners, and special needs. So Allentown would be getting more state funding this coming school year. But now because of the current budget crisis, those funds are at risk of being cut. This is really bad news for the ASD because if programs are cut, the needs of students will not be met.

What would help to improve this dire situation? Allentown's taxes are already too high.

The ASD would certainly benefit from more community involvement and help from business leaders, but that's not enough.

We believe that school district consolidation into a county district is worth looking into. Of course, there would be people who would complain that their hard earned tax money shoudn't be used to help some poor inner city kid who can't speak English. Not everyone wants to "share the wealth." And considering today's current divisive political atmosphere, overt racism in the media, and the classism and racism in our society, it doesn't look like people are willing to come together on important issues like education and health care. The Republicans are more concerned about stopping President Obama than listening to the American people.

But why not share the wealth, since a child who has a quality education is more likely to go on to college, help improve the economy, and benefit society as a whole. It's a good return on your investment. And what could be more important than our children?