‘year Of Bible’ Sparking Dispute

Prothonotary calls budget bogus, harmful to county
Words cannot

Time for county heads to face the fiscal music
While the impetus for writing this letter came from the recent letter by District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis (printed in Monday&rsquo;s edition), the content is meant for all department and union heads in Luzerne County.
 I understand that being faced with a reduced budget can cause angst, anger and the reflexive response that you are being asked to do the impossible. But here is a simple fact: The party is over. There is no more money.
 The unions were given a chance to freeze wages and/or accept limited furloughs, and the answer was no. We have read about prison guards getting up to 71 days of paid time off, forcing the warden to work others on overtime. By the way, folks, 71 days is equal to more than 14 weeks off from work; or stated otherwise, it is more than 3.5 months away from the job, which is more than one month enjoyed by some European nations. That is a ludicrous benefit and should be rescinded.
 The judiciary, the public defender and perhaps the DA&rsquo;s Office had waved the &ldquo;we will sue you if we don&rsquo;t get our way&rdquo; threat. Whom do you plan to sue? The citizens, the council, the manager and/or me?
 Enough is enough. I want to thank the members of the new council who are willing to hold the line.
 I want to welcome incoming county manager Mr. Robert Lawton to Luzerne County and implore him to stand fast against this business-as-usual attitude in the courthouse. I am expecting you to run this county like every successful business is run &ndash; with strict adherence to a budget and the available cash flow.
Yes, Ms. Salavantis, you must tighten your belt, just like every other family and household in this country. You decided to run for DA, now you must find a way to manage your office with the budget given to you.
 There is a saying I use for describing a good leader: Lead from the front. So, break out the midnight oil &ndash; or better yet, LED lights &ndash; and show your staff how it is done.

David Pekala

Rice Township
Diesel should cost less than regular gasoline
The price of diesel fuel is absolutely outrageous.
 The high price doesn&rsquo;t make any sense. The price of goods should be reflected in the amount of money it takes to create or obtain them. The amount of money to create diesel fuel is substantially less than that of regular gasoline. 
Yet the national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is $3.66, whereas the average for a gallon of diesel fuel is $3.86.
 Diesel fuel should be more cost-friendly because it requires less refining. In addition, diesel fuel burns much more efficiently than regular gasoline.
 In our area, diesel fuel remains about 45 cents higher than gasoline.

Briley V. Marchetti

Wapwallopen
A heavenly meeting between writer, coach
I read with great nostalgic interest the 1998 exclusive interview of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, done by The Times Leader&rsquo;s late sports writer and columnist Jerry Kellar (Jan. 23). It was a well-written and informative piece &ndash; the meeting of two people at the tops of their professions.
I would, however, really like to read the interview done on Jan. 22, 2012, when Kellar met JoePa just inside the gates of heaven, with a sharp pencil, plenty of notepaper and nothing but time. Wouldn&rsquo;t that be the greatest &ldquo;scoop&rdquo; of all?
God bless the Paterno family and give them comfort in this time of heartbreaking loss.

Bonnie Fowler Chocallo

Wyoming
Criticism of stimulus is Republican rubbish
Anyone who caught Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels&rsquo; response to President Obama&rsquo;s State of the Union address might wonder if he actually had heard what the president said. Americans just want employment and hope. President Obama offers both, but Republicans in Congress are blocking him.
Gov. Daniels said he is concerned about &ldquo;unaffordable&rdquo; national debt. He observed that, &ldquo;No nation ... can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.&rdquo; But he is wrong.
Private capital is not being used today to drive an American economic recovery, although there&rsquo;s plenty of capital around. It&rsquo;s just that the wealthy are either sitting on their money or investing abroad.
 So President Obama did what President Roosevelt had done during the Great Depression; he borrowed money to stimulate activity in the private sector. It worked 70 years ago; it is working now. The main problem with Obama&rsquo;s stimulus package is that it was not nearly bold enough. If he had borrowed and spent more, we&rsquo;d be so much farther along the road to recovery today. He gets this now. Just look at the ambitious American Jobs Act he proposed last fall.
Of course, the congressional Republicans know it, too. And they don&rsquo;t want to fix things. They only want to make President Obama look bad in an election year, so the voters will replace him with a Republican. They actually are counting on the public to overlook their obstructionism and blame the president for a sluggish economy. Do they really think we&rsquo;re that stupid?
Unaffordable debt? Nonsense! As a percentage of the gross domestic product, our national debt was much bigger at the end of World War II than it is today. But it didn&rsquo;t keep postwar Americans from seeing the biggest rise in incomes and living standards in our nation&rsquo;s history. And we can do it again!

John Hudanish

Carbondale
Voters have responsibility to send politicians home
The Founders of our country, such as Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin, knew that not all good people are good all the time and that even well-meaning people make bad decisions.
 A politician is someone who once elected begins to run for the next term while still holding office. Politicians are the bane of our country.
 All 536 leaders of the United States (Congress and the president) have contributed to our current malaise. We have no choice but to send them home, with few exceptions, in 2012 and start over. The Constitution permits us to start over every six years, but do we have the guts?
The forces of selfishness and greed play out in today&rsquo;s political landscape, and in many ways our national leaders have lost their respect for the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Just because corrupt politicians have given up on these documents to serve their own ends, does not mean we should believe they are right.
Citizens have responsibilities also, and we have not been doing our job well or it could not have gotten this bad. We cannot permit ourselves to be duped into corruption by politicians offering us gratuities, jobs for our kids or best seats in a public amphitheater. Moreover, we should not attempt to make an honest politician corrupt by asking for favors.
 We must resist jumping the line in front of our neighbors and taking &ldquo;a little something&rdquo; from corrupt politicians, as these corrupt politicians have become corrupt by doing favors for favored people.

Brian W. Kelly 

Wilkes-Barre
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Time for county heads to face the fiscal music While the impetu