The LuLac Edition #4, 916, February 16th, 2023

LUZERNE COUNTY COUNCIL SPENDS $300,000 ON AN INCOMPLETE STUDY

The Luzerne County Council reported yesterday  that the Maryland firm they hired missed a few applicants. According to the Citizens’ Voice, Council reached that decision during a long discussion at Tuesday’s work session, after it decided not to vote on Rescue Plan funding grants during the earlier voting session.

Much of the discussion focused on how five funding applications got lost in the shuffle as council reviewed applications in November and December. A majority of council members said they did not see the applications in question via an online portal established by Booth Management Consulting, the county’s consultant on Rescue Plan funding applications.  Council members have expressed concerns about the list of 75 Rescue Plan applications that met a set scoring threshold since the list was released last week. Prior to that, council did not know which applications met the required score, since they scored applications individually and signed confidentiality forms vowing not to discuss applications with anyone.

Hold it, not to discuss it with anyone, really? These are public moneys. Are they going to just hand the money over to the applicants and say “go with God?” Or do the applicants have to file reports on what they re doing for the money. Will Council who lazily farmed this out do it again at another bite of $300,000 out of the tax payer’s monies?

The dumbest comment came from Lying crying Brian Thornton who said he wanted broader questions but then said, “The questions pigeon-holed me into a corner.”  I think he might have meant the questions were inflexible. Jesus, what an ass!

Councilman Tim McGinley said council should consider how it allocates about $60 million in Rescue Plan funding that had been earmarked for the 75 projects that met the scoring threshold.  Tim, THE MAJORITY CAN’T. The reason: THEY CAN’T GOVERN. A group of Council are more concerned about setting the county back to the stone age than have it progress.

I want to talk to the same numbskulls and idiots that made Dave Pedri and Romilda Crocomo’s lives miserable. These “tax payer watch dogs were so ignorant and rude and proclaimed the GOP majority as saving the county money.

The fact is this majority has spent recklessly on shit that they didn’t need to. Hope you’re happy with what you wrought. But you’ll deny you ever championed them  because, well you’re Trumpanzee, ingrate senior idiots. (Citizens' Voice, LuLac) 

 

PASSENGER RAILROADING IS BACK

The Citizens' Voice reported today that Reading & Northern Railroad, Pennsylvania's largest privately owned railroad, announced Tuesday that it will begin operating regular weekend passenger excursion train service from Pittston to Jim Thorpe on May 27.

Tickets for the excursions, which will start at a new train station at 718 N. Main St., Pittston, will go on sale at 9 a.m. March 1. More details about pricing and seating options will be announced in the future.

Reading & Northern boasted a quarter million train riders in the Jim Thorpe and Reading markets last year. Now, the growing company is focusing attention on the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre market.

Somewhere in that great engine house in the sky, these guys are smiling. My dad who is in the hat front right I know is approving. For years he and my uncle Paul "Philco" don't ya love that nickname??) Yonki worked out of Coxton Yards.  My father (and my grandfather before him) actually walked down Ormbsy Alley from their houses (Grandpa on Cliff, my dad on Dewitt) in The Junction and were at work in 5 minutes.

So, the Pittston news is ever so sweet.

 

4 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NIKKI HALEY

Haley (Photo: CNN)

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced for the 2024 GOP nomination. Here are 4 things you need to know about her.

1.       Haley was first elected to the governor’s mansion in South Carolina in 2010, beating out former state Sen. Vincent Sheheen (D) and making history as the first woman and first Indian American to be elected to the state’s highest office. She survived a rematch against Sheheen in 2014, winning a second term.

In 2010 she reinvigorated her campaign against Attorney General Henry McMaster and then-Rep. Gresham Barrett. But she received a boost to her campaign in May when Sarah Palin, running as Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) vice presidential candidate, endorsed Haley. She also notched help and endorsement the conservative Club for Growth.

2.       Haley, was born Nimrata Randhawa, often references her background as the daughter of Indian immigrants. Her parents, Raj Kaur Randhawa and Ajit Singh Randhawa, are from India’s northwest Punjab and emigrated to the United States, where her family opened what would become a successful gift and clothing business called Exotica International LLC, according to CNN.

3.       Haley served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration between 2017 and 2018. During her tenure, the U.S. decided to exit the U.N. Human Rights Council in June 2018. The country would later rejoin the council in 2021 under the Biden administration.

She alleged at the time that the council was “politicizing and scapegoating countries with positive human rights records” and described it as a “protector of human rights abusers and cesspool of political bias.” The United States’s move to exit the Iran nuclear deal also took place while Haley was serving in the Trump administration — a move that she’s supported since then.

4.       In the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, where a mob of pro-Trump supporters ransacked the Capitol to try to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results, Haley criticized the former president for his words that day and during other watershed moments while in office.

“He was wrong with his words in Charlottesville, and I told him so at the time. He was badly wrong with his words yesterday. And it wasn’t just his words. His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history,” Haley said in January 2021 during the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, according to Politico.

On number 4 watch Trump. If Trump doesn’t attack her and he wins the nomination look for him to name, her as his Vice President. Now being Trump’s veep can be no day at the beach but with his age and combustibility she may wind up as the first female President in the history of the  United States. (The Hill, LuLac)

REP. CARTWRIGHT ANNOUNCES $9.5 MILLION FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION IN FOUR NEPA COUNTIES

Congressman Matt Cartwright (Photo: LuLac archives)

U.S. Representative Matt Cartwright (PA-08) announced that the Agency for Community EmPOWERment of NEPA has received $9,527,902 from the Department of Health and Human Services for their Head Start programs in Lackawanna, Wayne, Pike and Susquehanna Counties. Head Start provides low income families and children with high-quality, comprehensive early childhood education to prepare them for a successful transition to elementary school.

“Success in elementary school and beyond starts with a quality pre-school education,” said Rep. Cartwright, a member of the House Appropriations Committee. “Thanks to organizations like the Agency for Community EmPOWERment, our youngest citizens have every opportunity to gain school-readiness skills and experiences regardless of their families’ income. That’s why I’ll continue to be a proud supporter of full funding for early childhood education.”

“I am proud of the work we’re doing through our Head Start programs to prepare children for their kindergarten education. But that’s not all we do. We also provide wraparound services to many of the 1,200 families enrolled in our program,” said Jim Wansacz, Executive Director of the Agency for Community EmPOWERment. “I am grateful for Congressman Cartwright’s continued support of early childhood education. Thanks to this funding and his advocacy in Washington, we’re able to provide these essential services to families who need them most.”

Head Start’s educational programs and services focus on early learning, health and family wellbeing, child growth and development to engage parents in their child’s education. Head Start and Early Head Start grant recipients provide services to more than 1 million children nationwide annually. These services are funded and overseen by the Office of Head Start (OHS) within the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

CASEY ANNOUNCES $8.5 MILLION FOR GUN VIOLENCE PREVENTION AND CRISIS INTERVENTION

FUNDING COMES FROM BIPARTISAN SAFER COMMUNITIES ACT FOR PA PROGRAMS TO COMBAT COMMUNITY GUN VIOLENCE AND ADDRESS BEHAVIORAL HEALTH AND CRISIS INTERVENTIONS

Senator Bob Casey (Photo: LuLac archives)

U.S. Senator Bob Casey  announced $8,548,557 in federal funding from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act for the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime & Delinquency to enhance behavioral health and crisis care programs and combat gun violence.

“When we passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, we fought to include community violence prevention initiatives to stop the scourge of gun violence plaguing communities across Pennsylvania,” said Senator Casey. “This funding will help the Commonwealth implement programs to more effectively respond to this crisis. It’s a strong step in our ever-urgent fight to end gun violence.”

The Justice Department announced today 49 awards to states, territories, and the District of Columbia as part of the Byrne State Crisis Intervention Program. This investment of over $231 million will fund state crisis intervention programs, and extreme risk protection order programs that work to keep guns out of the hands of those who pose a threat to themselves or others. This investment in community safety is authorized by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, historic legislation to address and reduce gun violence.

As a staunch supporter of the Extreme Risk Protection Order Act, Senator Casey has long worked to improve the systems to address behavioral health and crisis intervention. Additionally, his LEAD Initiative would connect people and police with the resources they need, identify more effective means to divert crisis situations, and better prepare law enforcement on how to respond to them.

 

THE SHAPIRO ADMINISTRATION CONTINUES TO CHAMPION ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY FOR PENNSYLVANIA WORKERS AND SMALL BUSINESSES

“THE GOVERNOR’S ACTION BRINGS HOPE, REMOVING A BARRIER FOR SKILLED PEOPLE WHO WERE SHUT OUT OF THRIVING WAGE JOBS BECAUSE THEY DID NOT HAVE A PARTICULAR DEGREE.”

Governor Josh Shapiro (Photo: LuLac archives)

 In his first three weeks in office, Governor Josh Shapiro took immediate steps to spur economic development for Pennsylvania workers and businesses. Editorial boards and columnists across the Commonwealth and country have applauded his focus on creating opportunity for Pennsylvania workers through Executive Orders prioritizing work experience and announcing that 92 percent of Commonwealth jobs are open to applicants without college degrees, establishing the Office of Transformation and Opportunity, and improving the Commonwealth’s licensing and permitting processes to become more customer-service oriented.

To celebrate Black History Month, Governor Shapiro visited the Museum of the American Revolution’s Black Founders Exhibit and Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis shared what it means to him to make history as Pennsylvania’s first Black Lieutenant Governor.

Finally, Governor Shapiro doubled down on his confidence in the Philadelphia Eagles winning Super Bowl LVII versus the Kansas City Chiefs in friendly bets with Missouri Governor Mike Parson and Kansas Governor Laura Kelly, sharing the best Pennsylvania has to offer by betting an assortment of food from Pennsylvania small businesses.

Read what people are saying about The Shapiro – Davis Administration.

WGAL: Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis says his swearing-in marked major progress

Austin Davis went from Allegheny County lawmaker to Pennsylvania’s first Black and youngest lieutenant governor.

As part of our Project Community Black History Month series, News 8 talked to Davis about how he feels about taking on this role.

Davis said last month’s swearing-in ceremony marked major progress in Pennsylvania.

“It was extremely humbling to see all the folks and to really recognize and think about all of the folks who have paved the way for a moment like that so that one day Austin Davis or someone like me could stand at the rostrum and preside over the Senate,” he said.

PennLive [OPINION]: Gov. Shapiro has opened doors for thousands of workers without college degrees

In his first executive order since taking office, Governor Josh Shapiro removed a requirement of a four-year college degree for 92% of all state government jobs. The decision affects 65,000 commonwealth government jobs, including about 550 currently open on the state’s job website. The new governor’s move is aligned with national hiring trends in the private and government sectors.

Shapiro has garnered praise from national media outlets and sparked a conversation that is long overdue about the return on investment of higher education. For starters, student debt still looms as a national crisis. More than 43 million Americans owe a combined $1.75 trillion in federal and private student costs. Two generations of employees, millennial and Gen Z, worry that they will never be able to afford a home or retire due to crushing student debt levels. […]

The governor’s action brings hope, removing a barrier for skilled people who were shut out of thriving wage jobs because they did not have a particular degree. According to the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey covering the five-year period ending in 2021, a majority of Pennsylvanians (67%) age 25 and older have no college degree or only an associate degree. They can now benefit from a change in focus to skills-specific requirements.

Pennsylvania Capital-Star [OPINION]: Experience is education. Pa. is right to recognize it and elevate it

On his first day in office last month, newly elected Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order that seemed pretty straightforward: he removed the requirement of a 4-year degree for the vast majority of state government jobs. […]

Equally important is the elevation of experience. Shapiro’s first executive order showcases the trend of recognizing experience as education. An entirely new pool of potential employees of all of ages and backgrounds, who were formally bound together by one common trait, the lack of a 4-year degree, are now eligible to bring their valuable experiences to work for state government.

Experience is education. Intelligence, competency, and merit are free to those who earn them. These characteristics are rarely earned exclusively through the right combination of textbooks and test scores, and our state is better off having recognized that.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [EDITORIAL]: A bureaucratic reform could transform Pa. government

It’s governmental malpractice that the state of Pennsylvania does not have a comprehensive list of permits and licenses, along with an official schedule for how long issuing decisions will take. Gov. Josh Shapiro’s executive order requiring the creation of such a schedule will be — if truly enforced — one of the most important economic development moves the state government could make. […]

Mr. Shapiro claims, and we join anyone who’s ever dealt with the state bureaucracy in agreeing, that licensing and permitting efficiency can be increased without sacrificing safety or attention to detail. Pennsylvania’s unusually slow and unpredictable processes aren’t the result of unusually careful scrutiny. They’re the result of decades of built-up bad habits and a lack of accountability. …]

This executive order is a clear signal that the old way of doing business with, and within, state government is being seriously challenged. It helps shift state government from a posture of imperiousness, which forced residents and businesses to work with it on its own terms, to a posture of service. It won’t happen overnight, but it should have happened a long time ago.

The New York Times [OPINION]: Something Very Important for Democrats Just Happened in Pennsylvania

I believe as fervently as anyone in the value of a four-year college degree not just as a path to professional opportunity but also as preparation for informed, thoughtful citizenship. I’ve written extensively about that, and I wouldn’t take back a word.

But I also believe that this particular credential has become too divisive an emblem in our culture wars, too bold a fault line. For that reason among others, I’m impressed and excited by what Josh Shapiro, the newly installed Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, just did.

On Jan. 18, his first full day in office, Shapiro signed an executive order that dispensed with the requirement of a four-year college degree for 92 percent of positions in state government, meaning roughly 65,000 jobs. His action rightly recognized that such a degree is no guarantee of competence, no exclusive proof of intelligence and often less relevant than work and life experiences that have nothing to do with lecture halls. […]

I’m liking Shapiro. I’m liking him a lot. I like his perceptiveness and his acumen. I like that when he was Pennsylvania’s attorney general, he went after child sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in the state, although he had to know that, as a Jewish public official who’s forthright about his devotion to his religion, he’d get a special kind of antisemitic pushback. […]

Bucks County Courier Times: Levittown pretzel shop tied up in PA Gov. Shapiro’s Super Bowl bet with Kansas counterpart

In a twist of fate, a Levittown pretzel proprietor is now tied up in a Super Bowl bet between Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly.

On Thursday, Shapiro announced a bet with Kelly that includes a pretzels from the Philly Style Hand-Twisted Soft Pretzel Bakery of Levittown.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem because we all know the Birds are going to win,” said Jim Rossi, who co-owns the pretzel shop on Woodbourne Road in Middletown.

 

 

MEDIA MATTERS 

 

RAQUEL WELCH DIES 

When I was a kid growing up in Pittston, in my teen years I got this huge wall to ceiling poster of Raquel Welch and put in the spare room my parents and sainted sister let me use as a den. I bought it at Wayne's in Edwardsville for $2 bucks. On sale.

And yes you could see it from the street. 

 

WALN TV 

BOLD GOLD COMMUNITY FORUM 

This week's guest is Richard Suraci, Director of Public relations for Kost Tire.  He will discuss the "Kost for Cops" program.  You 'll hear the program Sunday at 6 on 94.3 The Talker; 6:30 on 1400 am The Mothership and 7:30 am on 105 The River.

 

BOBBY V’S DOO WOP SUNDAY NIGHT SOCK HOP 

 

1954

Our 1954 logo

1954 transfer of Crimea: The Soviet Politburo of the Soviet Union orders the transfer of the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian: and also known as Soviet Ukraine, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. In the anthem of the Ukrainian SSR, it was referred to simply as Ukraine. Under the Soviet one-party model, the Ukrainian SSR was governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union through its republican branch: the Communist Party of Ukraine………….The first iterations of the Ukrainian SSR were established during the Russian Revolution, particularly after the Bolshevik Revolution. The outbreak of the Ukrainian–Soviet War in the former Russian Empire saw the Bolsheviks defeat the independent Ukrainian People's Republic, after which they founded the Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets as a republic of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in December 1917; it was later succeeded by the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1918, also under the Russian SFSR. Simultaneously with the Russian Civil War, the Ukrainian War of Independence was being fought among the different Ukrainian republics founded by Ukrainian nationalists, Ukrainian anarchists, and Ukrainian Bolsheviks—with either help or opposition from neighbouring states. As a Soviet quasi-state, the newly-established Ukrainian SSR became a founding member of the United Nations alongside the Byelorussian SSR, in spite of the fact that they were legally represented by the All-Union in foreign affairs. In 1922, it was one of four Soviet republics (with the Russian SFSR, the Byelorussian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR) that signed the Treaty on the Creation of the Soviet Union. Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Ukrainian SSR emerged as the present-day independent state of Ukraine, although the Soviet constitution remained in use throughout the country until the adoption of the Ukrainian constitution in June 1996. When Stalin died on 5 March 1953 the collective leadership of Khrushchev, Georgy Malenkov, Vyacheslav Molotov and Lavrentiy Beria took power and a period of de-Stalinization began.[31] Change came as early as 1953, when officials were allowed to criticise Stalin's policy of russification. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) openly criticised Stalin's russification policies in a meeting in June 1953. On 4 June 1953, Aleksey Kirichenko succeeded Leonid Melnikov as First Secretary of the CPU; this was significant since Kyrychenko was the first ethnic Ukrainian to lead the CPU since the 1920s. The policy of de-Stalinization took two main features, that of centralisation and decentralisation from the centre. In February 1954 the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) transferred Crimea to Ukraine from the Russians; even if only 22 percent of the Crimean population were ethnic Ukrainian. "The Ukraine" used to be the usual form in English,despite Ukrainian not having a definite article. Since the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, this form has become less common in the English-speaking world, and style-guides warn against its use in professional writing. According to U.S. ambassador William Taylor, "The Ukraine" now implies disregard for the country's sovereignty. The Ukrainian position is that the usage of "'The Ukraine' is incorrect both grammatically and politically."…on February 18^th actor John Travolta was born, on February 19^th Golfer Sam Snead played golf with President Eisenhower, also on that day LuLac Political Letter founder David Yonki was born and this week in 1954 the number one song in LuLac land and America was Andy Griffith’s “What It was…..Was Football”.