Walter Griffith or: Accountability for the Unaccountable

First off, I’d like to thank everyone at General Hospital who dealt with Wifey in such a professional, compassionate and kind way.

The overnight folks staffing the emergency room, the people who transported her from room to room to room, from test to test and the uber pros on the cardio floor who made what was frightening to the core as comfortable and comforting as humanly possible.

Some on the left/wrong side of the argument in Washington, D.C. say our health care system needs to be reinvented. I say they are too insulated from reality to possibly know what they are bloviating on and on and on about.

We pay our steep premiums. We had us an unwanted and unexpected emergency. And we are both supremely pleased with the professional health care with which we were provided.

Thumbs up, man.

Big time!

Next up, Walter Griffith or: Accountability for the Unaccountable.

Since we reside in Corruption County, I find it beyond comprehension that those who copped a plea to corruption charges served, at best, 21 months, while the only elected county official who was tirelessly working to expose corruption faces a possible jail sentence of 21 years.

You can’t record an executive session?

Well, that’s because the folks comprising the executive session don’t want any retrievable official records lying around after they vote in secret to screw the taxpayers of this godforsaken county.

You can’t record a phone call when you’re interviewing someone directly involved with the confounding and disturbing disappearance of six million taxpayer-provided dollars?

That’s the result of purposely aged and archaic laws ripped right out of a banana republic somewhere, a place where the unaccountable will be forever unaccountable.

I grabbed the following from the Times Leader…

Another county official, who declined to comment with attribution, pondered Griffith’s role reversal Friday, saying: “Walter was always going after the headlines. Now he’s the headline. How does he like it?”

The sentiment of one management-level employee: “We’re all sick of being under Walter’s veil of suspicion when we didn’t do anything wrong.”

Trust me, these are the vapid words of people who do not want to be held accountable. I did my management stint, and I was good at it. Or as the big guy put it so succinctly, “Trust, but verify.” Management 101!

Another cut from that same Times Leader story…

Both candidates seeking the Democratic county controller nomination in Tuesday’s primary — Michelle Bednar and Stephen A. Urban — criticized Griffith, who is running against Karen Ceppa-Hirko for the Republican nomination.

“This is another sad day for Luzerne County, another black eye in a long line of disservice to our residents,” Bednar said in a statement. “This culture has to change, and this can only occur through the election of qualified, new candidates.”

Urban said the law forbids recording people without their consent or knowledge. A controller elected to hold others accountable also must be accountable himself, he said.

“He violated the public trust. His integrity is out the window. He said he knew it was wrong to record people and claimed he didn’t do it, but he did,” Urban said.

“I think he owes it to the people to bow out of the election.”

This culture has to change?

Seriously?

Excuse me, but Walter is the only elected county official who has been working to expose the deeply-embedded culture of corruption in this long-denuded county. He may have been wholly oblivious to Pennsylvania’s myriad of laws that make it virtually impossible to ensnare corrupt elected officials, but his heart and his intent were both in the right place.

I don’t need some smart-sounding newcomer. I don’t want the guy who smiled and glad-handed his way throughout the rampant, out-of-control and financially-debilitating decade of corruption. And I’m not at all interested in the well-connected Stevie Nicks look-alike.

Come Tuesday morning, legal warts and all, I’m voting for Walter Griffith, the only man who dared to bring accountability to the unaccountable.

Sez me,

Markie in Parsons