IS IT TRUE December 15, 2014

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IS IT TRUE the Vanderburgh County Democrat Party seems to be healing itself rapidly under the hope that Indiana Representative Gail Riecken may enter the race for Mayor of Evansville?…with the family of former candidate Rick Davis firmly standing with a Riecken candidacy, the path to the Civic Center for Riecken is to capture only 4.1% of the democrats who defected to Lloyd Winnecke when the pinky shake deal of 2011 was sealed?…for those of you who have forgotten, the pinky shake deal was a loose pact taken by nearly every democrat office holder in Evansville to join Team Winnecke to keep Rick Davis from becoming Mayor after he trounced the old boy networks hand picked successor to machine Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel in the primary?…the keys to the corner office on the 3rd floor of the Civic Center may well be in the hands of politically connected 4th Ward City Councilwoman Connie Robinson?…had the 4th Ward voted heavily democrat in 2011 as they typically do, Rick Davis would have become Mayor?…the same is likely to be true in 2015?

IS IT TRUE while the democrats in Evansville are mending fences, the democrats in the United States Congress are fracturing in a style befitting a pinky shake coalition?…the issue that has split the congressional democrats has been the omnibus funding bill to keep the government open?…the President favored the compromised bill which does indeed have some objectionable features but was attacked by the left wing of the democrats including his ACA allies Nancy Pelosi and Harry Ried who have both come within a breath of calling him a traitor?…perhaps the most fiery rhetoric against the President and the bill has come from Senator Elizabeth Warren who seems to be in full presidential campaign mode herself?…the most liberal of legislators were joined by the tea party republicans in opposing this bill making for some very interesting bed partners?…we will know by the time this is published whether the moderates and the President prevailed or if the extremists of both parties tantrum worked in their favor?

IS IT TRUE there are those who are wondering which candidate that former Mayor turned Chancellor Jonathan Weinzapfel will support?…the answer to that question is neither, if he wishes to remain in his comfortable Chancellorship?…the Boards of Regents of Indiana’s public universities specifically prohibit Chancellors from engaging in partisan political activities so, the former Mayor will be essentially under a gag order with respect to the job he once occupied?

IS IT TRUE the other item of interest is just which candidate the unions will support?…the Indiana State Democrat Party will do what they have to including funding Democrat campaigns to keep unions from openly supporting a Republican?…the unions also owe Riecken a major political favor for fighting against “Right to Work”  laws?…like it or not the reality is that local unions do not have the votes to determine the next mayor of Evansville and will be neutered by outside political powers when it comes to vocal support of Mayor Winnecke?

IS IT TRUE there is a loud whisper campaign already playing itself out to try and intimidate Riecken from running?…the article in the CP about her effect on the race is another veiled attempt to discourage a Riecken candidacy?…the intensity with which the Winnecke supporters are trying to discourage Riecken is strong testimony to just how much they fear a candidate that can unify the local democrat party that former Mayor Weinzapfel’s minions decimated by their pinky shake politics?

IS IT TRUE that former short term Director of DMD turned real estate agent Phillip Hooper has asserted in an oped piece in the CP that Haynie’s Corner is thriving?…we think that Mr. Hooper needs to understand the meaning of the word thriving before making such a proclamation?…a neighborhood program to build 17 houses with federal money meant for business support for $230,000 each to sell them for $120,000 each does not constitute thriving?…selling an old Victorian house at a loss of $175,000 in government money does not constitute thriving?…when all of the improvements in any area are done by or incentivized by government money, the correct term for the economic state of what is going on is DEPENDENCE?…thriving areas do not need government handouts?…if the day ever comes that private investors are bidding against each other for the privilege to invest in Haynie’s Corner the word thrive may apply?…until then Haynie’s Corner and our old downtown are simply the target location for redistribution of wealth created elsewhere?…that is the very definition of DEPENDENCE?…to assert otherwise is simply misinformed?

IS IT TRUE the revelation that the state is not pleased with the meeting of five democrat members of the City Council who gathered to discuss “political strategy” that was negated by the Facebook posts of two council members validates the City Council Observer calling them out for violating the Brown Act the very next day?…while the CP may have filed a complaint after the fact, they never published a word about the meeting when it happened?…it is one thing to be 2 months late, it is quite another to attempt to take credit for outing an illegal meeting after the state has provided cover and during the week that a democrat might  announce a candidacy for Mayor?

IS IT TRUE that we encourage our readers to take a moment to honor and remember the University of Evansville basketball team that lost their lives in plane crash 37 years ago last Saturday?

Please take time and vote in todays  “Readers Poll”.

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43 COMMENTS

  1. Is it true that as gasoline prices around here was in the $2.46-2.49 range this past weekend? The Louisville area, which normally has about the same price or a tic higher, was $2.26? Is it true this morning I received a text early this morning that a Thorton station over there was at $2.23?

        • 🙂 Evansville Transparency cracked us up with the “hotel Lego.” and that’s yellow brick wall , Ahahahaha!! That’s a good one, funny stuff.

          https://www.facebook.com/evansvilletransparency

          Yeah, merry Christmas to everybody, Evansville’s about to be served up what’s left of the tropical system climate migration sported to you fellows out the California. Your going to get more this week, as well. That’s kept us pretty busy recording the elemental balances lately. Hope you get some more High Sierra pack. That’s what will make or break the year rounds. In the mean time management systems similar to what some of your contacts are working with there is the answer. Overall climate migration is really storming around the planet, the north sea low pressure bomb really kicked the elements critical in the northern Atlantic, that in turn warms the Greenland regions glacial packs, melts more old ice ancient locked in’s and then increases sea water incursions by rundowns. Warming the oceans and changing the salinity balances. Right now its colder in Florida than the upper Midwest. The Ohio valley has high rivers in places and the heavy rain today is going to push that issue in some tributaries. Evansville is looking more stable in overall migration like our predictions called last year. What they need to be doing is setting up viable infrastructure to handle what does come for the expected affects on populations, and logistical balances for the next 50 years. This elemental climate change migration is pure recovered science facts. Its only going to increase in its voracity as time moves the planet forward.
          That’s getting pretty relative to that infrastructure mess that covers most of the city of Evansville Indiana. Those Combined sewer discharges have to stop, and not for just one selected section/ward either, its practically a city wide problem.
          So that in turn makes it a Ohio River valley problem as well. Indiana is riding the top of that pollution issue per discharge and runoff incursions. “Not so good.”
          We’ve being watching the actual point values per certain properties and sections there. You need work to keep them viable, as far as , union jobs go, with that alone there is enough to keep the trades and the halls in needed business for the next 20 years. Southwestern Indiana’s Roadway infrastructure really needs an hard logistical analysis completed with some “real forecast” values. Commerce logistics not a load of dying off conventioneer fluff. That hotel is going to end up like an old friend from there described once. Like bad undershorts, he called them…. Vendomes’s ……no ball room.

          http://www.weather.com/forecast/national/news/december-thaw-major-warming-trend

          • Liked the Evansville Transparency link and the Vendomes joke. WTF on the rest ? Just as in the Austin Powers movie, ” Who do you work for ? Who do you work for ?”.

          • Evansville Transparency lego hotel was GREAT !!!!! They even got the button on LW’s lapel, and managed to squeeze the Fraud Center into the scene. Bravo, Bravo, ET !

          • Brilliant satire, ET ! If you move your camera back just a shade more, you would see the S.S. Hypocrisy in dry dock for the winter, and Cap’n John toasting the hard-working Union lego men . . . dee-lightful.

        • Being presumptuous are we? FYI it’s used, but not always 100% successful! Having seen another one of your post in roughly the same time frame appears someone must had awoke grumpy this morning? I look forward someday we trade thoughts on a topic instead of the snide……….

    • ISIS, Ebola, EPA, etc. Flip over to Rush Limbaugh he’ll tell you all about it.

  2. Thank you for remembering the UE Basketball Team from 1977 . . . remains a sad day each December 13th for 37 years running.

  4. Is it true that the CCO and many of its commentators should check themselves into the state mental hospital if they believe that Gail Riecken is anything other than a stooge of the very worst elements of this foundering city?

    The same people moaning about the entirely predictable actions of liberal Republicrat mayor Winneckezapfel, who has faithfully implemented and continues to pursue his predecessor’s policies, now think that an actual former lieutenant of Jonathan Weinzippy’s gang is a solution? That the woman who spends her days complaining about the state not spending enough now thinks that the city is overspending? That the spineless representative from Champaign-Urbana is going to say “no” to the unions or any other big project the local contractors want?

    There is no doubt that this insider-of-insiders can assemble an impressively large Coalition of the Clueless. The mom’s-basement-dwellers, the town drunk, and the ignorant deadbeat busybody demographic are already on board. For once, chuckleheads, the laughter you hear in your head is real. It’s coming from the local oligarchy, as it sets up another Tweedledee vs. Tweedledum contest, after the great success of their last operation, the Tweedledee vs. Tweedledumb vs. Tweedledumber showdown in 2011.

    Why not just re-name the city “Detroit-on-the-Ohio” and stop the whole pretense?

  5. In regard to the Dem meeting/caucus, wouldn’t it been interesting if someone would have recorded it.

  6. On the Op-ed from Mr. Hooper, that may be the most ridiculous piece of writing ever to appear in the C&P. I know that is a far stretch, but so is Hooper’s declaration that Haynie’s Corner is thriving because of the 17 houses built in the area. Crime and drug trade is thriving in the area, just as it has for the past fifty years. Other than that, we have the Maybelle-Montrose project that I predict will define the term “Taxpayer Money Pit” even better than the Victorian House giveaway project has. The only business on Haynie’s Corner that I know of that isn’t subsidized is the bodega-like “convenience store” on the corner of Adams and SE Second. The government dependent developers in the area would like nothing better than to make it disappear, I’m sure. Go figure!

    • It was difficult to read. It went from mawkish to flat out sloppy slushy. Mr. Tanner continued to blaze away.
      ‘… the IU medical school opportunity came, and Mayor Winnecke’s leadership won the day. ‘

  7. If healing means returning to the same Democrat machine, then Gail is the miracle cure. Meet the new boss…

  8. I enjoyed this article and am sure to enjoy the many more to come over the incoming campaign season. Everybody has an opinion, only some are logical.

  9. The telling clue regarding how “independent” Gail Riecken acts and is willing to lead will be when the local casino goes land-based instead of boat-based and a proper location for LST 325 becomes available. If she’s willing to support moving the LST from it’s current absurd location which benefits her family financially with a sugar-teat deal to a proper location along the downtown riverfront then maybe she’ll be able to provide the real leadership this City needs. If she falls into the “family finance first” mode then she’ll be nothing more than another in a long line of recent City leaders only interested in protecting their own vested interests and friends and family.

    If she runs for Mayor I suspect this will be a major campaign issue.

  10. This just in! As reported by the C&P. Another headlining band is set to perform at the Ford Center! Yep, it’s packing them in and paying for itself!
    That world famous, relevant band Styx will be playing at the Ford Center on Feburary 15, 2015! They’ll be playing all of their 40 year old songs!

    Anyone want to lay odds on how long before this is canceled due to “health issues” or “tour conflict” issues (read: lack of ticket sales for an over-the-hill band)?

    • Only a Blue Collar Man would attend this concert, or perhaps a Renegade. Will they charge Pieces of Eight for admission ? This band needs to Come Sail Away with their Lady, Lorelei. Before you know it, they will go techno-pop, only the Robotos will be allowed to sing.

      Where is Aerosmith or Rush when we truly need them ?? Ahh, built the venue too small, and in wrong location and with wrong financing mechanism.

      • And it is across the street from the Ford Center so I hope they open the show with “Welcome to the Grand Illusion” and end it with a tribute to our best and brightest by playing “I’m Sailing Away”.

        • Judas Priest did some creative marketing for their concert. They sold tickets on Groupon for $30, which was about half price. They only sold a few hundred at the bargain price, but if anyone really wants to go, they should check Groupon for a deal.

          • I am actually going to see Styx at an Indian owned casino in Rancho Mirage on January 24th. The last time I saw them was at Roberts Stadium. I get comped on most shows on the reservation so price is not an issue for me. I am looking forward to seeing them again.

      • Hopefully they will be hanging those “huge speakers” up in that roof superstructure!
        Was that not the reason we were not getting these great acts at the other place?

    • Back in the day we used to see Styx and Foghat at Meskers Amp. ,,,every August

      • Those were the good old days! A ticket only cost you “three hours work” at min wage!
        Now it is in the “arm and a leg” price range! Was it not a ticket for a concert, the same price for a album/cassette/ 8 track tape?

  11. Does anybody know if Steve Schaeffer’s divorce went through on Friday? Will he still be vice president of the Indiana Focus on the Family? I don’t figure that James Dodson likes divorces.

    • Divorce is A OK with the family values party. They just cherry pick what they hate (gays.)

      • Actually Ghost, Jesup covered both those issues in Matthew 19

        “3 Some Pharisees came to Jesus, testing Him and asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?”
        4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning MADE THEM MALE AND FEMALE,
        5and said, ‘FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH ‘?
        6″So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
        7 They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to GIVE HER A CERTIFICATE OF DIVORCE AND SEND her AWAY?”
        8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.”

        But I don’t expect you to understand what you hate.

        • Ghost was talking about the Republican party, not “Jessup”. There is a difference in the two, but we don’t expect you to understand the difference in the party you follow and the savior you claim.

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