The LuLac Edition #4,149, October 17th, 2019

SCRANTON MAYOR’S RACE DEBATE

Here is a recap via You Tube of the debate the other evening at the Scranton Mayoral forum. This election is for the 2 year stint that will finish out former Mayor Bill Courtright’s term.

CANDIDATE’S NIGHT AT MT. ZION

From left to right, Councilman Tony Brooks, District B, Bill Barrett District D, Democratic candidate for District B Mark Shaffer, School Board candidate Terry Schiowitz, your blog editor, School Board candidates Beth Ann Owens Harris, Reverend Shawn Walker, Jim Atherton and Jody Busch. (Photo: Dr. Rhonda Rabbitt)

The NAACP Wilkes-Barre branch had its Meet the Candidates night at Mount Zion Baptist Church Thursday evening. I was very proud to serve as the moderator. School Board candidates who came to answer questions were Write In candidate Jody Busch, James Atherton, Reverend Shawn Walker, Beth Ann Owens Harris and Terry Schiowitz.

City Council candidates who came were those in contested races. Councilman Bill Barrett from District D was there. The hottest race in the city is between incumbent Tony Brooks and Mark Shafer in District B.

Ron Felton, President of the NAACP thanked the audience for coming. The entire 90 minute forum will be seen on Service Electric TV Channel #2 on Sunday night. We hope to get this up on You Tube and put up the link. Check back for it in future editions of LuLac.

Audience questions dominated the program. We thank those in attendance for posing great questions.

DEBATE RECAP

Another Democratic Presidential debate was held and once more Pod Cast producer Ron Williams got Chris Langlois, Dr. David Sosar and yours truly to chat about it. Here’s the link: https://eyewitnessnewspodcast.simplecast.fm/forty

SENATOR BOB CASEY GOES ON OFFENSE OVER HEALTHCARE, GUNS, TURKEY, AND IMPEACHMENT

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — U.S. Senator Bob Casey is usually pretty mellow, but not when he talks about some immediate issues facing the nation, especially health care.
“The Republican position, the official position, is to wipe out Medicaid expansion,” Casey told KDKA Political Editor Jon Delano. “So they are basically saying, they’re kind of giving the middle finger to about 750,000 people in our state who have insurance only because of Medicaid expansion.”
Casey’s talking about the Trump Administration’s effort, through the courts and other actions, to wipe out the Affordable Care Act.
“Take away all those protections, including pre-existing conditions,” Senator Casey said.
Casey worries Trump and the Republicans are succeeding.
“Census Bureau tells us 1.9 million fewer Americans have health insurance than when President Trump started, so the sabotage of the system, unfortunately, has worked,” he stated.
On gun reform, Casey criticizes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for not allowing a vote on House-passed bills on background checks and so-called “red flag” laws.
“If we do nothing, if we take no action, if we don’t even debate it in the United States Senate, we are surrendering to a problem,” Casey said.
Casey says the President’s green light to Turkey to kill America’s Kurdish allies endangers American security
“Now we have the possibility that ISIS will be reconstituted. That’s the real problem, that ISIS now could have a second act, in a sense.”
Delano: Are you worried about that?
Casey: Very worried about it.
On impeachment, Casey has criticized the President for withholding military aid to Ukraine and then asking them to dig up political dirt on an American opponent.
“The evidence there is as clear as day that the President abused his power,” Casey said. “I think it was a textbook case of abuse of power.”
But the senator insists he will await the evidence in a Senate trial before voting to remove Trump from office.

MEDIA MATTERS

WALN TV

BOLD GOLD COMMUNITY FORUM

This week's guest will be Ron Felton President of the NAACP Wilkes Barre branch #2306 and Branch historian Constance Wynn.
Tune in Sunday morning at 6 on 94.3 The Talker; 6:30 on 1400-The Game, NEPA's Fox .Sports Radio and 106.7 fm; and at 7:30 on 105 The River.

ECTV LIVE

ECTV Live host David DeCosmo welcomes Justin Behrens rom the Keystone Mission to the program during the week of October 21st. Justin will share the special needs of the area's homeless population as the cold weather comes.

ECTV Live is seen 3 times daily on Comcast channel 19 and is shared on the electric city television YouTube page or viewing on your laptop or tablet.

BUDDY RUMCHEK

Want to hear some great parodies on the news? Tune in to WILK Radio at 6:20 and 8:20 AM on Mondays. As Ralph Cramden used to say, “It’s a laugh riot!”

BOBBY V’S DOO WOP SOCK HOP

SUNDAY NIGHTS!

1969

Our 1969 logo.

The New York Mets defeated the Baltimore Orioles in Game 5 of the World Series, 5 to 3, to complete one of the most memorable upsets in baseball history……

Fourteen black members of the undefeated University of Wyoming Cowboys football team were kicked off the squad by head coach Lloyd Eaton when they came to talk to him at his office while wearing black armbands. The players had come in to talk to the coach at his Laramie, Wyoming office, about wearing the armbands as a protest during the next day's game against the all-white and all-Mormon Brigham Young University (BYU) team. Accounts of what happened next differ, but all 14 (including five starters), were barred from playing again during the argument that followed. A lawsuit by the players against Coach Eaton and the University would later be dismissed. As for the Wyoming Cowboys, they beat BYU the next day without the 14 players, and another team the following week, they would lose their final four games. Eaton would quit at the end of the 1970 season after the Cowboys finished at 1-9-0. Two of the players, Tony McGee and Joe Williams, would go on to careers in the NFL….Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, painted in the spring of 1600 by Milanese artist Michelangelo Amerighi da Caravaggio, was stolen from the Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo. Worth an estimated $20,000,000 now, the painting has never been recovered in the almost 50 years since its disappearance……..Robert H. Finch, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, announced a ban (effective January 1, 1970) on the use by food and beverage makers of the artificial sweetener sodium cyclamate, more commonly referred to as "cyclamates". After meeting with Finch, a representative of the 12 leading American soft drink manufacturers announced that the makers of sugar-free colas and other beverages would "immediately suspend production of low calorie soft drinks" containing cyclamates (which were more costly than saccharin) and that the companies would "turn their efforts to developing or reformulating other products... so that low calorie products can again be offered for consumption to those people who wish to make that choice." The drinks already bottled or canned could still be shipped to local distributors and retail outlets for the remainder of the year…..The agreement to create the Caribbean Development Bank was signed in Kingston, Jamaica, by representatives of 16 nations, along with the United Kingdom and Canada. The agreement entered into force three months later, on January 26, after 15 of the 18 nations had ratified the pact……The fourth largest automaker in the United States, American Motors Corporation (AMC), announced its acquisition of the Kaiser Jeep Corporation, which had only manufactured the Jeep military and consumer vehicles since discontinuing its line of Kaiser-Frazer automobiles in 1963. The buyout, capitalized at $10 million in cash, $10 million in promissory notes due in 1974, and 5.5 million shares of AMC stock, brought an end to the Kaiser Company's 24-year existence…..and fifty years ago this week the number one song in LuLac land and America was “Ruby Don’t Take Your Love To Town” by Kenny Rogers.
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