Update on the Poconos Sweatshop Scandal

This is not a sweatshop. It's where the sweatshop owner lives.

As reported here last week, the arrest of 81 allegedly illegal aliens in a raid by federal immigration agents at a plant in the heart of the Poconos tourist region of Northeastern Pennsylvania has led to revelations that as many as 30 other area companies are now under investigation for doing the same thing and politicians share much of the blame.

In new developments:

* The sole Monroe County commissioner who voted against approving a tax-free $3.7 million federal bond issue for Iridium Industries, the company that was raided, said she warned the two other commissioners of the presence of illegals based on a telepone call from a girlfriend who worked at the plant and said the situation there was an open secret.

* The Pocono Record, which has aggressively covered the unfolding scandal, reported that Iridium owner Eli Sassouni lives in a mansion in exclusive Kings Point, New York, one of the wealthiest communities in the country.

* Some of the illegals busted in the Iridium raid had a very high-profile landlord: Horace Cole, the president of a local public school board, who rented the properties to them through a second-party who appears to be a procurer for the illegals and paid their rent to Cole.

Robert Nothstein, one of the two county commissioners who voted to approve the bond issue, continues to be the scandal's leading excuse-maker and apologist.

Nothstein, a cynical operator without peer in local politics, harrumped that:

"I don't believe the government runs on the basis of what a girlfriend tells a leader. Frankly, Suzanne has done this in other cases, gone in forgetting about the chain of command. It totally unravels the management functions in other departments."

Ah yes, the good old chain of command. Then there's the Poconos' tarnished image. Whatcha gonna do about that, Bob?