The 12 Gripes Of Christmas

On the 12th Day of Christmas the county gave to me...

Home Rule Committee






Taxes, Taxes, Taxes
Soup Swillin Reilly
No Manger Scene
Closing of Moon Lake Park
Judge Ciavarella
Commissioner no one heard of
Greg Skrepenak
Corruption in the Courthouse
Reassessment Debacle
Greco and his TV's
And the bogus Levy Fee

Play this number tonight in the lottery 012. Its the 12th Day of Christmas, the 12th month of the year and the 12th Gripe of Christmas. It just so happens that there are 12 people that sit on the Home Rule form of government that "We the people" voted in this past November. Now as all of you know, I am all for "We the people", and we spoke loudly when it came to trying to fix county government. The big question is, are we really going to fix it? I hope so. However, lets recap how this all happened. Back in May, voters decided that we should put together a study commission to see if Home Rule would work in Luzerne County and then voted for its 11 members. Many of us thought, crap it has to work better than what we have now. Some of the elected members include current Kingston Mayor and anti-democrat Jim Haggerty. Slam dunk for the republicans since Haggerty was made the Chairman. Then you have Republican Vice Chairwoman Veronica Ciaruffoli along with 9 others. As of the writing of this Gripe, I have had a very difficult time finding the party affiliations of many of the members. I will hunt them down eventually and post them here to The Gripe. I have a real problem with two of the members names on their web site http://luzernegsc.org/members. Those names are officially written as Richard "Kick" Heffron and Bob "Whammer" Wanyo. Kick and Whammer, its like Rocky and Bullwinkle, Fred and Barney, Felix and Oscar Tom and Jerry and Ralph and Norton. This group of highly educated and business savy people quickly came to the conclusion that Home Rule would work in Luzerne County. This affirmitive paved the way for the question to be on the ballot.

Anyway, all of the Home Rule stuff was really fuzzy to most people as they debated to vote yes or no. I think their decision was easy in their minds...Yes! Yes even though 80% of the voters had no freakin' idea what it was all about. Again justifying my theory that "The Masses Are Idiots"! Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying they voted incorrectly, I'm saying that they voted for something they had no idea about. Home Rule Yes garnered about 10,000 more votes that Home Rule No. The thing that scares me about Home Rule is will we have 12 nimrods running the county instead of 3 lunkheads? Steve Urban Jungle has already postured for Home Rule by switching to the Dark Democratic side. Can the Republicans manipulate the system to finally get control of the county? Only time will tell. My best guess right now is that the system will be all screwed up if "We the people" don't vote intelligent candidates into the 11 positions. "We the people" of Luzerne County have a tendency to screw things up in a royal way and then bitch to high heaven about it. Hey, that's what The Right To Gripe is all about. I feel confident that I will have plenty of material for 2011.

The Right To Gripe would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous and Happy New Year. Just as a warning, The Gripe turns 1 year old this Sunday, December 26th.