PureBunkum

The bad news for Wilkes-Barre City Mayor Tom Leighton is that the state Ethics Commission is investigating his routine practice of hiring his kids for summer jobs.  The good news for him is there are no formidable candidates running against him for re-election so none of this will likely matter.

Toward the bottom of The Times Leader’s Friday article, Leighton said he has never  hidden the fact that he hired his children and other relatives.  Yeah, he probably told his wife.

The fact of the matter is that only when he got caught this summer did his son, daughter and nephew resign.  Sorry, kids, there’s always next year.

Despite all the pay-to-play/it’s who you know revelations that became public recently, Leighton really insults our intelligence just as the Wilkes-Barre Area School District did when it said politics had nothing to do with the mayor’s son getting a teaching position there.  Just as Wyoming Valley West Superintendent Chuck Suppon did when he told the TL that his son was hired solely on merit and that he’s gotten tons of calls telling him how great a job sonny is doing.

At least someone out there refused to sit back and let Leighton get away with perpetuating what has always been a demoralizing experience for anyone applying for a teaching  or any kind of job in Luzerne County.  It IS who you know, so don’t try to convince us otherwise without some solid proof.

Leighton said he’s aware the Ethics Commission is delving into his kids getting summer positions with the city but that he has not received a letter from the Ethics Commission.

“I don’t think this will adversely affect my candidacy,” he said confidently, and he’s probably right.  “I think voters will look at my record and look at how the city has improved in the last seven-plus years since I’ve been mayor.”

Well, that’s kind of debatable.  Just ask any resident who lives outside of the downtown area.  Or anyone forced to dodge potholes on city streets.  Or anyone disenchanted with some of the seemingly shady deals that have surfaced, including the planned sale of the former Old River Road Bakery property to the mayor’s pal, city tower Leo Glodzik.

Don’t worry, Mayor Leighton, you more than likely will get your third term.  But don’t kid yourself that city residents believe that Wilkes-Barre is a politics-free zone and that the city is a great place to live and work.  It may be for some, but it’s not for all.

- Betty Roccograndi

If you saw in today’s Times Leader the grand townhome Barbara Conahan just purchased in Delray Beach, Florida for $643,000, you’d have to come to this conclusion.  The conniving Conahans pulled another fast one.

Michael Conahan is hoping to serve his 17 1/2-year prison sentence in Pensacola, FL, in what Forbes Magazine described as one of the 10 “cushiest”  federal prisons in the country.  Could that be the reason the missus hightailed it out of Hazleton to set up house in Florida?

The TL reported that it is unlikely that Conahan will be sent there because of the length of his sentence.  We can only hope.

Two questions here.

First, would U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik mind telling us why he personally recommended that this paragon of corruption be sent to a facility even remotely “cushy” so he could be near his family, which, until recently, we thought hailed from Hazleton?

Secondly, isn’t a cushy federal prison an oxymoron?

So while Mrs. Conahan is living like a queen in her 3,317 square feet townhouse with its “magnificent” views of the Intracoastal Waterway, her racketeering husband is hoping to be incarcerated in a Pensacola camp, “the second most desirable place to serve a federal sentence,” the TL learned.

That’s punishment?

The Citizens’ Voice broke this revolting story on Sunday, but The Times Leader did some hard digging in a follow-up and treated us to a photo of Barbara Conahan’s opulent new digs.

As there is no mortgage on the property, how is it that Mrs. Conahan was able to pay $643,000 in cash for her gated-community townhouse when she and Mrs. Mark Ciavarella defaulted on a loan for the swanky condo they co-owned in Jupiter, Florida?  The bank they stuck filed for foreclosure on June 28 and holds an $848,000 mortgage on it, the TL reported.

Maybe she saved up a few bucks from the time she opened a used car lot in Pompano Beach with convicted drug dealer Ron Belletiere.  Barbara Conahan sure gets around.

At his sentencing last week, Conahan was also ordered to pay $874,167 in restitution for his racketeering conviction.  Good move putting the Delray Beach townhome in his wife’s name,  just as he and Ciavarella, the other con artist judge, put the Jupiter condo, purchased, no doubt, with the millions they made in the Kids for Cash crimes, in their wives’ names.

Remember Conahan bragging that he was “judgment proof?”  Was his wife’s purchase of the Delray Beach townhouse further proof of that?  At least his wife allowed him to stay there up until August, according to The Times Leader.

U.S. Attorney Peter J. Smith declined comment on Barbara Conahan’s latest spending spree.  Why, we wonder?  One would think he’d have something to say about that.

So unless Mrs. Conahan won the lottery, we’d have to assume she and her corrupt husband duped the system once again.  After all, he did make a killing from Kids for Cash and then boasted he’s judgment proof.

Good luck to the government collecting that $874,167 in restitution.

- Betty Roccograndi

One of Luzerne County’s most despicable elected officials will be sentenced on Friday.

Michael Conahan, a judge who dined regularly with a reputed mobster, who set a record for having his rulings overturned for abuse of discretion, who was soft on drug dealers and was declared an unindicted co-conspirator in a drug case years ago, who concocted a reprehensible scheme to enrich himself on the backs of taxpayers and minors, will at long last be put away.

How was such a man ever retained for a second 10-year term as judge and then appointed as president judge?

If there is any justice, U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik will sentence Conahan to the max.  He is a swindler, who stained his profession, made a mockery of the justice system, harmed taxpayers and flat out lied about his concern for the juveniles who appeared in the Luzerne County’s juvenile court system.

Conahan single-handedly closed the county center arguing that it was uninhabitable.  The state didn’t think so, but then again, the state didn’t stand to rake in millions of dollars if a new, privately-owned center was built.  It remains a mystery why no one challenged this ruling.

When Conahan didn’t want the public to see the state’s critical  audit of PA Child Care, he sealed a lawsuit the company filed against the state auditors and former county controller, the late Steve Flood.

This black-robed money grubber cheated on his taxes and  retired early so he could withdraw hundreds of thousands of dollars from his pension fund before anyone got wind of his crimes.  Only he didn’t retire.  He gorged himself at the public trough some more, staying on as a senior judge.

Kosik won’t release any letters sent to him on Conahan’s behalf.  Who cares about those letters?  They shouldn’t matter one way or the other.  Who cares that Conahan offered financial help to his lawyer when he was sick?  Who cares if he watched the neighbor’s dog?  Who cares if he cut an in-law’s grass without being asked.  That lawyer, neighbor  and relative may be indebted to Conahan.  Luzerne County citizens and taxpayers certainly are not.

Throw the book at this common criminal, Judge Kosik.

- Betty Roccograndi

They cannot put this man in prison.  He’s a god.

Local officials are tripping over themselves praising Robert Mericle for possibly saving tens of thousands of lives.  Did you know he single-handedly held back the raging flood waters from swallowing Forty Fort and Duryea? 

Let’s start the discussion by giving Mericle and his company credit for which they are most deserving.  Mericle not only had the equipment and the manpower to pitch in before and after a near catastrophe, but he also volunteered both.

Now let’s take a step back.  Mericle is very savvy, and as we have learned recently, he does nothing for nothing.  A $1 million donation to a juvenile court judge who helped him land a multi-million dollar deal to build two juvenile detention centers. A $5,000 bribe disguised as a campaign contribution to a Jenkins Township official to help him get far more than that in permit fee reductions.  Some tens of thousands of dollars to fix up a state senator’s property in exchange for millions in taxpayer dollars for his latest industrial park.

It’s safe to say that Robert Mericle always comes out ahead.

Mericle told Jim Brozena, executive director of Luzerne County’s flood protection authority, that being able to help out has been the finest time for his company.

Maybe so, but there’s no denying that it also provided an enormous opportunity for damage control when he needed it most, considering he faces a prison term for his involvement in the Kids for Cash conspiracy.

And you sure can’t buy the kind of favorable publicity Mericle received, especially when Vice-President Joe Biden, witnessing Mericle’s workers, said his company was appropriately named. Biden gets a pass from us because there was no way he could know he was canonizing a key player in one of Luzerne County’s most reprehensible criminal corruption cases.

So where we can understand the gratitude of some local officials when Mericle’s crews rode into town to help with the clean-up, we found it a little nauseating to hear this man portrayed as some kind of saint.

“”He has done great things,” gushed Jenkins Township Supervisor Joe Zelonis, who actually called Mericle, who’s a convicted felon, “our guardian angel.”  Yes, Mericle was charged with only failing to report a crime and not with more serious ones, including money laundering, even though he was a willing participant in disguising the cash that made its way to and from Florida into the bank accounts of racketeer judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan.

“Without his unselfish offering, we shudder to think what may have occurred if the levee system gave out in those areas of Forty Fort,” Swoyersville Mayor Vincent Dennis and council President Ron Alunni said in a joint statement praising Mericle for helping to avert the unthinkable.

Unselfish offering? We’ll see.

Mericle would likely have gotten one nice tax deduction for donating his crew and equipment.  But he may get paid too.  Brozena plans to ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reimburse Mericle, The Times Leader reported.  He also said he plans to contact Mericle to compile his costs.  That’s really nice of Brozena to look out for Robert Mericle.  Will he be meeting with FEMA on Mericle’s behalf on county time?

We don’t believe that  Robert Mericle needs any help looking out for himself.  Yes, he is certainly to be commended for everything he did.  But considering he has received millions and millions of taxpayers’ money for his personal projects and millions more in tax forgiveness for his KOZ zones, shouldn’t he be expected to kick back a little?

“All of our contributions to the flood relief effort have been completely voluntary,” Mericle Construction said in a statement, which the newspaper published.  “We have no intention to seek reimbursement and never did.”

Okay, good enough.  But should any of that come into  play when he’s eventually sentenced?

Maybe Mericle didn’t have to think twice before offering his ample resources in the flood relief effort.  But he also apparently didn’t think twice before paying off  elected officials to steer millions and millions of taxpayers’ dollars his way.  Unfortunately for him he was exposed when one of those deals included two judges.

Let’s face it.  When a Robert Mericle or an elected official floods the area with money or services, it’s easy to lose sight of their wrongdoings, no matter how serious.

And if we continue to do that, the vicious cycle of corruption will be allowed to continue.

- Betty Roccograndi

I called my sister a drama queen.

She called about the impending flood, to say that all the schools were being closed and that this was going to be awful, just awful.

“You’re really a drama queen,” I said.  That was after I got in my little dig about it being bad enough that teachers live for snow days, and now they’re getting rain days off too?

In my own defense, I would have been aware of the looming doom, too,  if I hadn’t been indulging in one of life’s little pleasures, watching Rizzoli and Isles, today’s Cagney & Lacey, and not the weather channel, like she was.

Anyway, Thursday was quite a day.  I went to Wegman’s to pick up a few things and never saw anything like this in my life.  The packed parking lot did provide a clue.  So did the last two shopping carts left in the entranceway.  Inside, people were filling their carts like there was no tomorrow.  One lady’s was piled with what looked like 50 jugs of bottled water.

The checkout lines were only for those with the patience of Job.  But it was fun swapping stories with fellow Jobs in line.  One Hanover Township teacher said she never, never runs to the store to get milk when a snow storm is predicted.  I told her I laugh at those silly people.

But there we both were, getting why they do that.

Then because everyone was told to get out of Wilkes-Barre, I left work after hearing on the radio that the Pierce Street bridge and the Cross Valley Expressway were backed up to Wilkes-Barre Blvd.  A 10-minute drive home took almost an hour.

Vehicles were crawling.  It seemed like the end of the world was coming and everyone was making his escape.  Having nothing better to do, I called an out-of-state friend on my cell phone, feeling totally secure that there were no Wilkes-Barre cops around to pull me over and hand me a fine.

As I approached merging traffic, I wondered whether anyone would let me squeeze into his lane.  Sure enough he did.  Some miserable people won’t extend that courtesy on a normal day.

So I arrived home on the very hill I curse at in the winter, but which on Thursday provided a haven from disaster.

Sitting at my computer, gathering my thoughts, I wondered, like everyone else, whether the Susquehanna River would actually unleash its wrath as it did almost 40 years ago.

As for the drama queen.  Let’s just say that she wasn’t totally right.

- Betty Roccograndi