The LuLac Edition #3205, May 7th, 2016

LULAC AT 10

We have been so busy we missed our 10th anniversary this week. LuLac is now ten years old. Our first edition was May 6, 2006. We appreciate our readers, our posters and our affiliated media friends.
LuLac started on a lunch hour of mine when I started to investigate blogging at the urging of Mrs. LuLac who thought it could help promote my books at the time. Politics was not even on the radar.
But what we wrote about and covered in the last ten years is something that couldn’t be ignored. Politics in Luzerne and Lackawanna County is a continuing soap opera. Sadly the stories remain the same, only the faces change.
We’re here because we have a commitment to give opinions and try to make sense of all of this.
10 years have brought us countless readers, I think we hit the million mark a year ago as well as awards and recognition. All that is appreciated.
But our aim is to always be interesting, fair, opinionated, accurate and to have fun. Plus as always we give a nod to pop culture and those politicos that have come before us.
With Providence and determination….on to year 11.

BROMO BECOMES CARNAK THE MAGNIFICENT

Remember the segment on the Johnny Carson program where the talk show host played the predictor of grand things?
Well if you look at the final two candidates selected by the search committee, you can see that Council member Edd Brominski may not have been far off the mark when he predicted that Solicitor Dave Pedri will be the new Luzerne County Manager. Brominski shared his thoughts with Council Chair Linda McClosky Houck, in a letter citing post election conversations he had heard less than 7 months ago. This was dated April 14, 2016.
The selection of the county manager is already made, his name is David Pedri. If his name is not one of the three names presented, I am sure that the council will ask for more names until his name is presented. If he is one of the three named candidates, council will go through the motions of interviewing all three, even with the possibility that there may be out of the area interviewees to be brought in , at county expenses, yet still name Pedri in the final step.

The other candidate is businessman Jeff Beck who by all accounts has been impressive. But my sources tell me he’s been told, “Not gonna happen”.
The good news is that the search committee did not narrow it down to one of their business or social service cronies. The not so good news for reformers and county council critics is that for some the presumptive appointment of Pedri smacks of old time county politics.
Personally the search committee could have done much worse. If Pedri gets the gig at least he will know the levers of control and continue the county's repair of reputation.
But for others there will always be questions about transparency.
As for me with the Powerball sweepstakes getting bigger I might call Brominski and get his predictions.
Meanwhile Bromo might have the extra bucks to buy me one given the fact that he won’t be out of any paychecks. Here’s what else he wrote:
I am so confident that the choice is made to name Pedri as manager that I commit to the following: I will publicly apologize for being wrong, and I will donate four consecutive county pay amounts for being a councilman to charities and do so at a public meeting each time.
Save your apology breath Edd. As you predicted. Not needed.

LUZERNE COUNTY CHILDREN AND YOUTH:

OBLA DI, OBLA DA, LIFE GOES ON….

So the front page of the Citizen’s Voice, in a story written by Bill Wellock tells us that the Luzerne County Children and Youth Agency is still under a Provisional license if you will. The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services kept the status at, well, status quo. You’ll remember that last year the Department acted after there was an investigation which happened because of a death in 2015. A death of a child.
So what have the brain trusts down there done to get themselves out of the hole? Apparently, not much. The Human Services Department pulled 15 files and found that 13 of them were found wanting. C&YS, the pride of the Lu did not follow assessment and management processes required by the state.
Okay clue me in here.
You get a template if you will to come back from a bad review. There are set guidelines and procedures in place and you don’t follow them? You have more than 90% of files pulled in error? I mean is there a remedial reading coach we can get down there?
Plus get this. There was missed paperwork and case notes on safety and risk assessments. You don’t document something like that? Then there were missing items on proof of rights of notification against perpetrators, ie those people willing to hurt people in the care of the agency.
Wow.
I know this is a tough job.
I know that you see sickening things that will turn your stomach.
I know you see dirt bags that in my opinion should have mandatory vasectomies and their tubes tied.
I know there are scumbags that will try to game the system and yell, “I love my kids, I love my kids” all the time ignoring them, hurting them or killing them.
I know these pieces of crap upset the “normal” lives of their children playing “The Parent Card” when kids are placed in humane, loving and caring foster homes.
I know it is a tough job.
But at a starting rate at $31,000 grand a year, surely what we get out of those $16.00 an hour caseworkers is not very productive. If performance is measured by metrics, then this group of people fail again and again. How many have worked overtime to get those files in order?
The powers that be tell us it is a tough job and not many people can handle it.
Well then maybe it is time for the County to privatize it, keep the good people who have files up to date and get the relatives of the political cronies OUT.
This provisional review is like some teacher giving you coaching before the test and you go out and do the same thing over and over. 13 out of 15.
Normal. Nowhere else but in Luzerne County.
Life goes on…except for those kids in danger. (Partial Source: Citizen's Voice).

ROMNEY STILL MY PICK

Mitt Romney....not done yet. (Photo: CNN)

A few posters have said I might as well call it and say I’m wrong about Mitt Romney being the next President. Especially now with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton being the presumptive nominees.
But watch out for this. I predict an element of the GOP will high jack The Libertarian ballot which is on fifty states. They will nominate Mitt Romney as President and with a little pressure Gary Johnson as Veep. It will either split the vote three ways and de-legitimize Trump who may come in third.
Or throw the thing in the House of Representatives. If it stays in the GOP corner, Romney becomes President. Not crazy at all.