IS IT TRUE March 13, 2014

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Mole #??

IS IT TRUE March 13, 2014

IS IT TRUE yesterday turned out to be the day that the Indiana State Board of Accounts sat down with local officials for the first discussion regarding the findings of the 2012 financial audit of the City of Evansville?…we were told that this exit review audit session only addressed the financial status of the 2012 city books? …our attempt to obtain detailed information concerning issues addressed in this audit was unsuccessful? …it looks like we just have to wait to get official findings of this long awaited state audit concerning the financial status of the 2012 city books until either the powers that be willfully let the sunshine in on the situation and let the public know how the city is being run or the SBOA posts the audit on their website?

IS IT TRUE that the next audit the State Board Of Accounts must provide to city officials is the 2012 financial activities of the Evansville Water and Sewer department?…we can’t wait to get an official copy of this report?…when we do our readers can expect to get a full breakdown of both audits?

IS IT TRUE that our article exposing the fact that lots of people and the USI team busses were ticketed by the City of Evansville’s Meter Maid Brigade during the Great Lakes Valley Conference basketball tournament last week has borne some fruit?…Vanderburgh County Commissioner Marsha Abell set the City County Observer the following message on how to remedy this situation with a touch of prior experience blended in.

“When I was city clerk we tried to allow free parking at different times and it never worked. The employees always took the good parking places and the visitors to our city still had no where to park. It might be a good idea to have a parking pass at the bottom of your ticket for any event at The Ford Center. The ticket holder could then put the ticket in their front or rear window and the parking police would know not to ticket that vehicle. Of course buses should be self explanatory and need no ticket but it would be a good way to identify the car of someone attending an event.”

IS IT TRUE that we like Commissioner Abell’s idea and would like to see it put into practice in a way that would work for both paper tickets and digital tickets?…the digital tickets with a parking pass would present a unique problem that we are sure that the right minds can come up with a solution?

IS IT TRUE the Glenwood Leadership Academy escaped by the skin of their teeth from being taken over by the State of Indiana for scoring an F for six consecutive years?…there is something about the wording of “failure” and “Leadership Academy” that just don’t go together?…one thing is for sure and the is the school formerly known as Glenwood Elementary is no “Leadership Academy”?…putting exalted names on failures for some reason does not keep them from continuing to fail as long as they keep doing the same things that caused the failures to happen in the first place?…in one report Glenwood was sort of given a pass because the neighborhood that it is in is poor financially?…to our knowledge there has never been a study that concluded that being poor is the same as being dumb?…such things are ludicrous?…what Glenwood like many of the failing schools in America has is a parenting problem?…until the powers that be recognize and acknowledge that fact the Fs will continue?…the children that attend Glenwood are fine children with all of the potential for success that any group of elementary children have?…the enemy of these children’s opportunity to live the American dream in reality is the irresponsible adults that sabotage their children’s future with poor life habits?

IS IT TRUE another Obamacare delay has taken effect, although you may not have heard as the media has not widely publicized the latest delay?…he administration has quietly announced that it was delaying through October 2016 the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate for millions of Americans who have lost their healthcare coverage?…there is even an unpublicized provision that allows people who are willing to state that they will experience economic hardship because of the pricing of the ACA plans to opt out and avoid any penalty?… today’s reality is you don’t have to buy insurance because there are all these escapes and your boss doesn’t have to buy insurance if he is a small, medium or large business?…the number of exceptions, exemptions, and escape clauses put into place by executive order by President Obama constitute a de facto repeal of the ACA?…the reason behind this is all an attempt to spare the Democrat candidates the same voter wrath that played out in yesterday’s special election in Florida where a well qualified Democrat in a congressional district that was won by President Obama twice was defeated by a thinly qualified Republican who overcame the stigma of having a divorce, a “child bride” girlfriend, and was in a car accident that killed someone just 10 years ago?…even staunch Republicans did not expect to win that seat?

IS IT TRUE the failures of the bill that was passed without reading it and executed about as poorly as possible after having been passed under fraudulent claims is looking like it may do as much damage to the Democrats as the Iraq war did to Republicans?…it would be interesting to see just how close the financial damages and even the human damages of a war and an abysmal law compare to one another in a few years?…many analysts are privately opining that the damages will be equivalent?

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68 COMMENTS

  1. Please allow time for us to obtain the best-of-the-best Spin Doctors.

    Hey, that would make a great name for a rock band !

    • Why doesn’t Able just tell the truth? And that is that if you have license plate you are considered to be operating in commerce which is the only thing they can regulate. Is going to a ball game operating in commerce? Not hardly.

  4. Here’s an excerpt from the Courier’s “Breaking News” story on the audit:

    “The state’s audit of Evansville’s 2011 financial records concluded that the city’s accounts were out of balance for the year. City officials attributed to those problems to a change in accounting software systems that occurred late in former Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel’s administration.”

    It’s bad when the SBOA runs up the white flag on an audit. Russ Lloyd has ten days to draft a response, and then the details of the audit will be released. Of course, it will be the Weinapfel administration’s fault and that new-fangled software will share in the blame.
    Maybe the CCO should start a pool on the amount of the disparity, and whether or not it is an overage or a shortage.

  5. So if you buy your ticket at the Ford Center’s box office, you would need to walk back to your vehicle to put the parking pass on your dashboard? Better than nothing, but there has to be a better way.

    • The funniest part about this is that I was able to get my hands on Mayor Vandeveer’s master plan this week. Do you know what the plan was proposing to build on the arena lot? Yup, a parking garage.

  6. Back to the most expensive, least efficient healthcare system in the world. Thanks a lot obstructionists and liars. Thanks a lot right wing supreme court for the citizens united decision allowing koch bros and company to buy the US govt.

    • This was not the fault of anyone but the bullshitter in chief and his loony goons Pelosi and Reid. They passed it without reading it and now the failures are branded to their asses forever. If the bullshitter in chief had the qualifications to actually manage something or even enough sense to hire someone who could then maybe ACA would have been popular. As it is we are as you say back to the second most expensive and second least efficient healthcare system in the world. ACA is or was the most expensive and least efficient. Obama managed to take a bad thing and make it worse through utter ineptness.

      • Oh please you’re still farting the lie about Dems not reading the bill. First of all congressmend and women shouldn’t be reading every line of any bill anymore than a CEO should monitor the work or every last worker in the company. Plenty of people read the bill. No not every last Dem read every last line of the ACA so let’s take a teaspon of truth and turn it a gallon of gospel.

        Yes and the founding fathers were perfect, the slaves were happy, Bobby Lee was a patriot, the south would have given up slavery, things were better when women knew their place, business owners of the shirtwaist factory couldn’t be bothered with fire escapes (THEY LITERALLY SAID IT WAS HURTING COMMERCE AND PROFITS) The great depression would have stopped if we had just waited long enough for the “Magik” free market, FDIC insurance and the SEC were going to bankrupt Wall St, Walgreens would have eventually open their counters, interracial marriage was the end of morality, and the US, after that it was the bill and birth control then it was the gays, DADT was the end of the military The EPA kills jobs, evolution is “just a theory” Global warming is a hoax, Obama is a socialist from Kenya, Deepwater Horizon would operate more efficiently if liberals would just let BP could just use seawater instead of packing mud and cement, Keystone pipeline will lower energy prices, and Piggy Zimmerman was getting his head bashed in on the concrete.

        Lie after lie after lie after lie nonstop.
        Now you have your own channel to propogate the lies 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year.

        You guys would make commie party propoganda boss blush with envy.

        • Got your revisionist hat on this morning don’t you. The Dems in Congress haven’t even claimed to have read that bill and guess what Einstein, Congress is not the equivalent of a CEO, they are more like the board of directors who are expected to read the documents before voting. I understand that the President is not on the hook for every word. Anything else about history you wish to revise before you piss that blue Kool-Aid down the toilet?

          That second paragraph is the work of a jaded paranoid delusional person. I suggest you lay off watching MSNBC and walk a block or two in the real world before sitting down to write again. You are sounding more like a snake handling evangelical with all that delusion than a thinking person. Please stop.

    • If the winners of the 2008 federal elections had stuck to their liberal guns rather than sell out to Big Pharma, the insurance monopolies, and Wall St. fund managers, then we would have the best universal, single payer health care system in the world.

      All it would’ve taken was doubling the Medicare withholding tax, and a huge set of Democrat balls – something that was and remains sorely missing in both the White House and Congress.

      And you righties don’t need to give me your “that’s socialism” baloney, because we are already there in many respects, and big business would embrace single payer Medicare for all their employees because it would be a bookkeeping breeze and relieve them of the burden of providing health insurance as a benefit.

    • Obama has made a step in the RIGHT direction. The history of the democrat party is one of short sighted plans that fail. When real history was taught in school we learned that the democrat party was basically dead in 1928, but Roosevelt managed to form a coalition of the communist,socialist and labor parties. That coalition still exist and that explains the failure of obamacare.

    • Same old BS. Either blame G.W. or the Koch Brothers. The Koch Brothers rank 59th in political contributions between 1989-2014.

      https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php

      http://washingtonexaminer.com/it-turns-out-the-evil-koch-bros.-are-only-the-59th-biggest-donors-in-american-politics.-can-you-guess-who-is-number-one/article/2544025

      ACA was passed without anyone knowing the guidelines.Even Pelosi said it must be passed to find out what was in the bill. And, the Republican Chief Justice was the deciding vote in the Supreme Court(and actually ruled as a tax) What ever happened to admitting to a mistake and making things right? Can’t do that; everything is someone elses fault. Wise up.

  7. Just finished my taxes. Going to pay a higher percentage of my income in fed tax than Mittens Romney. Go ‘murica!

    • How about dollars dude. I bet Romney paid more taxes this year than you will in your entire life. What did he get for that money. The same freedoms and services that you got. He just had to pay more. Try that pricing scheme in the real world and see how long you stay in business. Welcome to McDonald’s Mr. Romney that happy meal will be $4,000 but Ghost gets one for $4. Can you not see the senseless nature of such a thing?

      Murica being lazy added to the failure of ACA by sitting on the damn couch when all they had to do was sign up for health insurance. Last I heard 10% of the uninsured who are eligible have actually taken the initiative to do so. I bet if there was a signing bonus of beer and cigarettes the lazy bums would have lined up around the block.

        • Those that are math-impaired will never understand the difference…..
          They can only compare amounts, like children. Adults, well, smart adults who can do math, understand the inherent inequality in making the working poor pay a higher percent of their income than the rich man who rolls out of bed to his inheritance every day.

          • Smart ones also know the percentage of income taxes paid to the Treasury by the wealthy that “just rollout of bed” to pay for those that for a couple of generations have been rolling out of bed into subsidized housing and whatever other mandatory social spending program. We got alot more people people rolling out of bed after going on six years of Obama judging from our labor participation rate.

            The US has they highest corporate income taxes in the OECD..all of the President middle class tax breaks have expired for the most part..we have an insane tax on earnings repatriated from overseas that limits growth..and our federal energy policy taxes every single citizen with craphouse rat crazy fuel and energy prices whichh in turn drive up the price of food because we burn our corn..and what do they do in the Senate.. bah bah about global warming like a bunch of sheep!! I hope we learn Mandarin real fast.

          • The ethanol mandate, signed into law by Bush. Middle class cut extension pushed by Democrats, crushed by Republicans.

          • Ghost

            The 2008 ethanol bill (aka the 2008 Farm Bill) was vetoed by Bush; this bill was passed by a Democratic controled House and Senate. Obama doubled down and is trying to run around the expiration of ethanol subsidies by offering the ethanol producers a new package of subsidies for transfer pumps for blended fuel. Head I win tails you lose.

            What tax breaks for the middle class did the Republicans stop Obama from doing during his first two years with a fully controled Dem congress; he was too busy pushing his now neutered ACA bill? What cuts have been blocked since the Republicans took the house?

          • “US has the highest corporate taxes” wrong. Maybe before the 500 loopholes they can exploit. The high tax rate for the wealthy here is a myth.

          • Ghost

            Which OECD country has a higher rate than the US? Just because you say it doesn’t make it true.

          • A little internet exploring shows that taxes that associates with business are at one of the all time low in “U.S” since mid 1910’s.

            Living and receiving service in “this” country where your taxes are paid is what counts. Using two- bit country tax rates is just a diversion. One would hope that if it offends individuals to pay U.S. taxes, and gloat over another country taxes should “move” to that two-bit country!

          • Armstrong

            We don’t live I’m 1910 and try to limit investment to just the US..my original post alluded to the excessive tax on the distribution of earnings back to the parent from foreign subsidiaries of US based companies. This is a tax that limits growth and keep earnings from flowing back to the US. Add this to the highest tax rate in OECD on corporations and nothing will improve. Corporation taxes are just passed on to the consumer; you will pay for it one way or another.

        • I would be okay with a flat percentage for all and taxing capital gains and dividends the same way we tax income. I even agree that Romney may use more services than you but his other taxes like property taxes, sales taxes, and BMV fees may make up for that. I was just making a point and using the happy meal as an example. Flat percentage is the only workable solution that can even sound fair. I have read the number would be between 15% and 20% and I am fine with that.

          • I’ve never gotten a dime of any type of assistance, period. You and your assumptions.

          • Weren’t you Reagan’s original Welfare
            Queen model? Get a job, quit sponging off us. I’m tired of carrying you, troll.

        • Thank BHO for 2% that he allowed to expire and did not reinstate. Wait a minute; that must be the Koch Bros fault……….

      • It takes a lot more govt services to protect Romney’s riches than poor schmuck me. Bad analogy.

  8. Here’s an idea. Park in a legal spot. Problem solved. Weinzapfel said there would be plenty of parking spaces, right. So it must be true. Hahahahaha. Seriously though. If someone was actually in the City Clerk’s office managing their employees this wouldn’t have happened. No need to add more inconvenience and expense to an already stupid situation. All it takes is not-so-common common sense not to ticket busses providing transportation to the performers in the arena. Oh. And a City Clerk who showed up to work once in a while. (Although the rumor is the office runs better without her – so I’m torn).

    • I’m not a Weinzapfel fan but I dont get your sarcasm on that one. There is indeed plenty of parking for the FC.

      • Depends on what you count as parking. What range is a fair range and are public and private considered? Personally, I don’t see why anyone would fool with parking anywhere other than the back 40.

        But think about this, the farthest parking stalls at Roberts, those being the ones next to Hartke Pool on one side and the EVSC fields on the other, were closer to Roberts than the first stall in the back 40 is to Ford Fieldhouse.

        Now don’t get me wrong, I’m completely fine with there being no parking downtown. The LAST thing we need is to jam a thousand cars in an area that needs to be walkable. That actually hurts business not helps it. Not to mention, eliminating parking is one of the best ways to eliminate this obesity stigma. But the city just makes a bigger fool out of themselves with this myth that there’s great parking downtown.

        • The very furthest spot in the back 40 is about a 5 minute walk from the door. I have no problem with it. Going to events in big cities is much worse and you generally are going to pay $20 to park.

          • Yea but this isn’t a big city. This is a city where you’re only allowed one arena, no light rail or any rail of any kind (and don’t get me started on METS), and you don’t have to fight traffic in a thriving downtown. We have none of that. This is auto only town that wants to plow over land on the east and west sides and downtown only knows them when they are desperate. They want to get in and get out.

            Rarely do I change my opinion but when the 2001 Downtown Master Plan called for building the arena in the back 40 I thought it was a bad idea. And when a council member started lobbying for it I thought he was out of his mind.

            But the more I look at it, the more it seems logical that placing it with a new hotel wedged in between the McCurdy and a fair amount of parking stalls may have not been a bad idea. Too late now but I’m starting to see where they were coming from.

          • Evansville is not a big city. Parking on the back 40 and a 5 minute walk is nothing for me unless it’s raining. A 5 minute walk is not going to work for our more fragile population. Typical liberal thought process, it’s all about me.

          • I didn’t say Evansville was a big city. Reading comprehension struggles?

    • Where do you get your information from LewisRules? The Clek has been in her office until the recent birth of her first child who by the way is only a month old now. She is allowed maternity leave just like others. As for her staff they are well versed with the City Codes regarding parking rules and are capable of working together to see they are enforced. As for USI why didn’t they park in the Ford Center lot? Or make arrangements with the Board of Public Safety to get a permit that would allow them to park longer than allowed on a normal business day? And by the way they were vans not tour buses. If people would just use common sense when parking this would not be an issue. Just my opinion!

    • Yep, but feeding hungry kids is such a travesty. Dveatch is probably sucking the corporate welfare tit while complaining about food stamps.

      • Talking about hungry kids is a white liberal version of playing the race card when their hand is a loser.

        • Yep, better to let the little leeches starve than dare bring it up, right? Just like its better to ignore racism than risk playing the dreaded race card.

        • 9 Million children live in food insecure homes, many families live in neighboorhoods where fresh fruits and vegetables are nearly non-existent.

          This is not the way to relieve your cognitive dissonance.

          • So SNAP isn’t working? The only answer for a poor child with incompetent parents is foster care. A child in a food insecure home and I’ll admit there are millions of them will always be in an insecure situation with their current care givers. When a family of 5 is entitled to around $1500.00 a month through SNAP what’s the problem? Being hungry is not the same as starving. Starving children in this country is one of the great liberal lies.

          • @ pov:

            Where are all those foster homes going to come from and how are we going to pay for the foster care?

          • Patience is a virtue LKB.

            Since your comment shut down this forum for almost 2 hours, it shows people are struggling to respond with your one sentence.

            I had a doctor friend who didn’t have any patients and he went bankrupt.

            Pretty tough sentence you bestowed.

            It evidently hit it’s mark.

          • @LKB, So your solution is to kill them by abortion before they have a life become hungry.

            Why is it that you can find the money for food stamps but think we can not find it for perhaps a better solution like foster care?

    • Interesting read!

      Interesting how much money has been spend by our local governments to create jobs, do the high bidding to companies that are just moving their business around for that government gravy, all those gauge, ect appointed groups that circumstance the local councils on spending to corporations whims, all those meeting rooms that seem to be needed/attached in everything that gets built, cost of putting sky boxes in for corporations at the Ford center, ect.

      Just something to think about!

    • We have a 3.4. Trillion federal budget of which 56% is spent on entitlement spending which is comprised of all kinds of welfare programs that never collect as much as they payout..it depends how you count..the question is how many programs would have if not for the efforts of those corporations.

  10. pov says:

    March 13, 2014 at 7:01 pm

    So SNAP isn’t working? The only answer for a poor child with incompetent parents is foster care. A child in a food insecure home and I’ll admit there are millions of them will always be in an insecure situation with their current care givers. When a family of 5 is entitled to around $1500.00 a month through SNAP what’s the problem? Being hungry is not the same as starving. Starving children in this country is one of the great liberal lies.

    =====================================================

    Ridiculous absurd uninformed, misinformed comment.

    http://mazon.org/2012/07/03/snap-challenge-eating-on-a-food-stamp-budget/

    http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3744#part2

    Snap offers $2.90/meal max most get $1.48 meal and your party just cut that amount.

    Your $1500/month for 5 is either a lie or you just made it up or you “heard about it”. They would get $435/month maximum less if their income is more.

    • Pov’s “solution” for hungry children is ridiculous. He obviously has no idea of what foster care costs, and that those foster children automatically qualify for SNAP and Medicaid, in addition to the “per diem” paid to the foster parents for housing, clothing, utilities, etc.
      Even with all of that being furnished, being in a foster home is absolutely no guarantee that the children will be treated better than they would be with their families. I saw far too many people who chose to become foster parents for the “extra income” during my years working for DPW, both here and in Marion County.

    • Pov says: ” Being hungry is not the same as starving. Starving children in this country is one of the great liberal lies.”

      The SNAP program lets many poor children go hungry, but keeps them from starving. The truth is that hungry children can’t learn as well, and discomfort that comes with being hungry can lead to behavior problems. If a country like this can’t keep its children from being hungry, I suppose we deserve the perceived anger of the god that the superstitious among us pray to.
      The irony of the solution that “pov” and the other right-wing “lovers of liberty” is flabbergasting. They decide we should take away the children of parents who can’t feed their children. How easily they overlook the parental neglect committed by those who don’t receive any sort of governmental aid. I’m betting the liberty-lovers don’t want to interfere in those homes. If this country isn’t “great” enough to help parents – whatever their circumstances – do a better job of caring for their children, then we are bound for third-world status, and we deserve it.
      There is SO much we need to do for struggling parents, whether it is offering help with addiction problems, basic education and literacy, or “parenting training.” Of course, the Righteous Right will start screaming that we can’t afford all of that. The reality is that we can’t afford to NOT help those who need it. The vast majority of parents want to do what is best for their children, but we have so many who are so overwhelmed with the tasks before them that they need a “helping hand” to get a start.

    • Speaking of crickets, how often does the “think of the children” chorus personally help the food insecure?

      • Excellent question, ‘strong! It appears that “positive progress” is becoming the “catch-phrase” of the Winnecke administration. We could use a lot of it!

    • What a priceless quote! Financing isn’t something you can get in a decade or two would have been more truthful. These people are so desperate for good news that they are creating it.

      “I think the City and McCurdy Development LLC are on the same page in wanting to get this done,” said Shawn Sullivan, the attorney representing McCurdy Development LLC. “Financing isn’t anything you can get in a week or two. We’re pursuing this with all due diligence. More than the city, we want to get this project up and going.”

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