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.