IS IT TRUE June 12, 2012
IS IT TRUE
we are very pleased today to lead off with praise for some very positive change that has taken place with respect to the Evansville Utilities Board since Mayor Winnecke took office and shook up that board and its leadership?…the meeting place has been changed from the dungeon of the Civic Center to a large room on the third floor that accommodates around 50 people?…that agendas are now published on the Friday before meetings are held as opposed to a couple of hours before as had been the custom for at least 8 years?…the meetings of the Evansville Utilities Board are now recording just like the City Council meetings are and that the minutes are recorded verbatim?…that these changes are all designed to promote transparency which is a necessary condition for good public policy to prevail over self interest and crony capitalism?…the City County Observer would like to take this opportunity to thank Mayor Winnecke and the 5 members of the Evansville Utilities Board, including its President Jeff Hatfield, for making the decision to move this direction and having the courage to implement step one to achieving it?
IS IT TRUE we are somewhat confident to say that if this kind of transparency would have been in place during the Weinzapfel Administration that the Johnson Controls contract in its present form would not have had a snowball’s chance in hell of being approved?…programs and contracts that can stand up to honest review and informed scrutiny do not need to be done in dark dungeons out of the public eye by boards that are intentionally manipulated by timing, misinformation, and political pressure?
IS IT TRUE there are a couple of things from the past that have been on our minds for a few weeks and that today is a good day to bring them up?…we are wondering exactly what became of the audit of the City of Evansville Information Technology department?…late in 2011 Councilman John Friend and others were insisting on an audit of the IT department lead by Matt Arvay and that the cost of such an audit was estimated to be just over $100,000?…we hope that the money is in the budget as both City and County officials had said it would be and that the audit will be done on schedule?
IS IT TRUE we are also wondering what the heck is going on with the official default of Earthcare Energy?…the last time we heard anything there had not been any official default letter served upon Earthcare and they were countering Mayor Winnecke’s on camera assertions saying that they were in complete conformance with the contract?…we are also interested in hearing any news that may be out there with respect to the new RFP that is supposedly being crafted to attract a downtown convention hotel developer/operator?…these and other things seem to be in a quiet period which has historically been followed by a storm?
IS IT TRUE that it was reported yesterday that since 2007 the net worth of the average American family has fallen by 40%?…the period of time from 2007 until now is taking on an economic look as though history may look on this as equivalent to the Great Depression?…the NASDAQ stock index is still sputtering at only half of its peak which occurred in March of 2000?…most of the country is still in the midst of a housing contraction that has returned the prices realized for real transactions to values more associated with the 1990’s or even earlier?…that it has been well documented that federal government spending as a percent of total spending spiked by 35% to 27.3% of all spending in 2007 and has stayed there?…that incidentally the time when the federal government spent the least would be the mid 90’s under President Clinton when federal spending dropped to below 20%?…that all governments large and small should take notice of the inverse relationship between government spending as a percent of all spending and prosperity?…that these facts cannot be hidden or explained away as foreign countries with massive entitlement programs were collapsing during the 90’s too?
Decontrol before Johnson Control.
Post partially removed for personal attacks based on speculation
We have a boatload of serious problems. People are volunteering to vet city contracts, but the vetters are no better than the contracts being vetted.
Al Lindsey is not a drunk , the man made a bad decision and that was all ”. You on the other hand sound like a jack arse
At last nights city council meeting it was Al Lindsey who saw right through what ECHO Housing and their hired gun Krista Lockyear were doing, and if it were not for Al’s comments about the house never coming on the market, we might never have learned that the supposed not-for-profit ECHO paid $35,000. for a lot appraised by the Vanderburgh County Appraiser’s Office for $7,000.
That should have a chilling effect on anyone considering future donations going to ECHO.
Ethics people! Look it up in the dictionary if this is the first time you have ever seen the word.
Poor Conor O’Daniel, I thought his head was going to explode before he finally listened to “the better angels of his nature” an cast his vote against the rezoning. It could have just been theater though, as he knew full well that even without his vote the rezoning ordinance was going to be passed by the usual cast of characters.
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Anyway, the rich corporate donors now have something to poke Krista in the ribs about while they smile and write that next big check.
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Everybody on the council needs to go. Flush the toilet and start over. Get rid of Winnecke too.
One of the MAJOR reasons that the budget and government spending spiked so high is thru the HONESTY of the Obama Administration of actually putting the cost of two wars we were lied to about under GWB. If GWB would not have hidden the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan (war costs that we should have NEVER had to pay if GWB had not lied about the so-called “WMD” that were NEVER found). Obama had the cost of war added to the budget (where it should have always been reported) instead of being “off the books” under GWB and VP DICK. And it is not the money that bothers me that DWB and DICK lied about, it is the senseless cost of American lives that have been lost due to GWB lying to the American People.
The War on Terror drove military spending to a new record of $671 billion in FY 2007. Despite declines in revenue, defense spending increased throughout the recession to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
FY 2007 – $961 billion
FY 2008 – $782 billion
FY 2009 – $663 billion
FY 2010 – $895 billion
FY 2011 – $881 billion
So what happened when GWB, DICK, and Karl Rove got their hands on the American checkbook
I double-dog DARE the editor of this blog to take the budgets for the years listed above and remove the military costs Obama truthfully added to the federal budget and come back and use the “shady” budget reporting GWB did, and I am darn sure that the so-called.
Bush took over with a 1/4 BILLION surplus that he pi$$ed away by cooking the books
GWB went took a two year surplus and promptly bankrupt America and pulled the wool over the eyes of people. Obama promised (and did as he said) by putting thr war cost in the budgrt
FY 2000 – $236 billion surplus
FY 2001 – $128 billion surplus.
FY 2002 – $158 billion.
FY 2003 – $378 billion.
FY 2004 – $413 billion.
FY 2005 – $318 billion.
FY 2006 – $248 billion.
FY 2007 – $161 billion.
FY 2008 – $458 billion.
FY 2009 – $1.413 trillion.
FY 2010 – $1.293 trillion.
FY 2011 – $1.299 trillion.
FY 2012 – $1.327 trillion.
FY 2013 – $901 billion.
Per one REPUBLICAN Senator “The Pentagon recently reported that it now spends roughly $8.4 billion PER MONTH waging the war in Iraq, while the additional cost of our engagement in Afghanistan brings the monthly total to a staggering $10 billion PER MONTH. Since 2001, Congress has spent more than $500 billion on specific appropriations for Iraq. THIS SUM IS NOT REFLECTED IN OFFICIAL BUDGET AND DEFICIT FIGURES. Congress has funded the war by passing a series of so-called “supplemental” spending bills, which are passed outside of the normal appropriations process and thus deemed off-budget.”
Do you people have no humanity or compassion? We have people starving, being abused, having no shelter, cannot find decent hygenic clothes, and (most of all) cannot recieve preventative or even life savimg medical treatment. We are soending BILLIONS on two stone-age lands over 10,000 miles away, while here in the US children cry out in pain and terro for being humry and/or homeless.
I donate regularly to local charity groups that I am confident uses the money for outreach, not “administrative costs”.
Obama’s 2012 budget? Would you be referring to the one that was voted down 414-0? Not a single vote? Keep in mind there hasn’t been a budget passed in what, three years? He’s not cookin’ the books, he can’t even get the books out of the ‘marinate’ stage. If you want to play with big numbers, go drag out your ‘deficit’ playset and start stacking.
You bring up some valid points about the war spending being a central factor in our problems, and this is something the Republican Party does not want to ever talk about cutting, however, you cannot lay blame for Obama’s massive spending increases entirely on Bush and his administration’s lies. Obama told the American people in 2008 that if we weren’t out of Iraq by the time he took office, it would be the first thing he did. We STILL have bases the size of the Vatican manned by expensive mercenaries.
His use of drone attacks in places like Pakistan, Yemen, and of course Libya have been disastrous to our relations to those countries, have killed thousands of innocent civilians, and have laid bare the promise he made of getting us out of these wars and changing directions on the foreign policy front. He hasn’t ended a single conflict, and has expanded the wars under his watch.
If you really want to be honest with yourself, you need to start attaching blame where it’s deserved, not just where it’s convenient for you and your political affiliations.
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