Rafael L. Oriel, Jr
29 Mar 2007

 

Mr. Pontaoe, do you really want to fight for the truth and to fight also for those who cannot fight for themselves like you claim in your previous post? For you to fight for the truth, you can start by making the necessary corrections in your previous post.

1) Bethlehem, PA is not a little Moravian town like you want us to believe. It is a city in the Lehigh Valley region of eastern Pennsylvania.

2) Contrary to what you said, it’s not a dying town and when Bethlehem Steel folded in 1995 it did not bring down everything with it. It is not a dying town but a city that prospered, not just survived, but thrived. The Bethlehem Steel plant closed for good in 1998 not 1995 like you said but the end of steel was a rebirth of Bethlehem City to become one of the “Top 100 Places to Live” according to Time Warner financial magazine, Money. If you consider Bethlehem City as a ghetto, where will that put Chicago where you are currently residing which did not even make it to the top 100 places to live. Bethlehem City has two thriving downtowns where most cities are lucky to have one. The population is growing where most cities have seen a steady decline. Investment in the city tops $1.6 billion while many counties have less. If you belittled too much a city that is considered the 88th best city to live in United States, how much more to a city like Dagupan.

3) Asian is not really .03% of the population of Bethlehem but 2.22%.

4) It is not true that 20% of the population is below poverty level like you said but 15.0% of the population was below the poverty line. The poverty threshold, or poverty line, is the minimum level of income deemed necessary to achieve an adequate standard of living. It does not mean though that all of them are in welfare or on handouts like you want us to believe. In comparison, 19.6% of Chicago’s population are below poverty line. Based on your logic and figures, does that mean that 19.6% of 4.5 million are on welfare in Chicago?

5) You said that Chicago’s population is 4.5 million. According to the internet, the population of Chicago as of 2005 is 2,873,518. It is interesting to note that murders in the City of Chicago peaked first in 1974, with 970 murders when the city’s population was over three million resulting in a murder rate of around 29 per 100,000, and again in 1992, with 943 murders when the city had fewer than three million people, resulting in a murder rate of 34 per 100,000. Following 1992, the murder count slowly decreased to 705 by 1999; by this time, it had the most murders of any big city in the U.S. sister cities of Bethlehem are Murska Sobota, Slovenia, Tondabayashi, Japan and Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany.

I wonder if there is any possibility for Dagupan City becoming the fourth sister city of Bethlehem?

Godspeed to all.

Eduardo Pontaoe
29 Mar 2007

 

Fernando P. Estrada M.D. FACS,

Well, thanks for the invite. Your gesture as a gentleman is highly appreciated.

Let me address where you are coming from. You’re in that little Moravian town Bethlehem, PA with an insignificant clinic along the muddy banks of the Monocacy Creek. It’s a dying town with population…exactly according to 2000 census…71, 329…where the demographics is pathetic: Whites 81.85%, Blacks 3.64%, Asian .03% Hispanics 18.23%. That’s the set-up where 20% of the population is below poverty level.

There’s a lot of people on welfare, on handouts where you practice medicine, doc. Your practice is like a vulture picking on the carcass of a dead horse. When Bethlehem Steel folded in 1995 it brought down everything with it. The town’s only newspaper Globe Times ceased publication in 1991 and replaced by the Morning Call of Allentown and the Express Time of Easton. What makes Bethlehem alive is Lehigh University, its anchor.

The hospital you proudly proclaimed St. Luke’s Hospital Health Network listed you… as a general surgeon not a vascular surgeon… you claimed you are. If the network has your facts right, you could not be in two places at the same time.

To make it straight, in Chicago I haven’t seen a surgeon with two specialties as done in residency especially in surgery. Where did you do residency doc, Jamaica? You also bragged the hospital have 450 beds. It does not make sense. With a meager population of 71,329 where will you get enough patients to load up the hospital unless everybody is dying or sick?

For your info, St Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago has only 450 beds with Chicago’s population of 4.5 million. I am sorry doc to say this; you’re lying thru your teeth.

Now, we go to Velasco. The Sunday Punch dictum, “No man is to be reverenced more than the truth”. I fight for the truth and fight also for those who cannot fight for themselves. If you could not understand the simplicity of it, you better take a dip at the Monocacy Creek to clear up your mind. The least you did that blow this thing over the top, was your hubris in sending that letter to Velasco gambling that posters like me at the Forum will just roll over and play dead.

It was gigantic mistake, you tasted your own medicine that nobody did to you before. You haven’t seen anything yet. Every time, somebody like you post in the Forum, its open season. I cannot allow your kind to run rough shod on anybody.

 Was I ticked off or felt jealousy on your added acronym FACS? Hell, no! To me, it’s just an embellishment. You can do that to your friend Velasco who lives in the Philippines. I live in Chicago, doc, you hit that hard on your head not like you deep in the Hillbilly Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania.

And if I am looking for a doctor I won’t even bother to call you. Thanks but no thanks. I have doctors here with PhDs in medicine who never wasted time adding that self-serving FACS to their names. These doctors, most of them, teach at Rush University or Northwestern University School of Medicine. They don’t practice in the ghetto.

Leopoldo A. Cabrera, md faap
29 Mar 2007

 

Oscar, you made the right decision to run for governorship. Of all the candidates, you are most qualified to lead Pangasinan to the next upheaval. The Cabrera clan of Mangaldan and their followers will be supporting you candidacy. My late brother Rolly will be happy to see you as governor of Pangasinan.

I remain,
Doctor LEO

Van S. de Leon
29 Mar 2007

 

Dear Mayor Braganza,

I read in a Sunday Punch article that one can adopt an island in Hundred Island. I would like to adopt one. Enlighten me how to go about this. Thank you so much. What is your over all long term plan/vision about the Hundred Island?

Thank you, sir.