IS IT TRUE September 21, 2013 “LAUGHING STOCK MY ARSE”

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Mole #3 Nostradamus of Local Politics
Mole #3 Nostradamus of Local Politics

IS IT TRUE September 21, 2013

IS IT TRUE the barrage of centrally orchestrated public relations actions to try to convince, cajole, threaten, and shame two members of the “Responsible SIX” members of the Evansville City Council to vote YES to some permutation of a hotel development agreement on Monday night is getting more and more desperate and off the charts of blarney?…the latest shot from the supporters is an editorial in the Courier and Press online edition titled “THE LAUGHING STOCK OF THE MIDWEST”, in which the editor of the CP asserts that the deliberations of the City Council that have spilled into the public arena are fodder for jokes from Peoria to Pennsylvania?…the Midwest is indeed full of towns that were at one time cities that in prosperous circles are indeed laughing stock?…the ultimate laughing stock is of course Detroit that has gone from being the innovation capital of the world to a bankrupted beggar city in a scant period of 60 years?…there are plenty of other Midwestern cities including Cleveland, Youngstown, Gary, St. Louis, and a host of others that would be pot calling the kettle black if they are actually pointing at Evansville with humor in their eyes over a renewed demand by the City Council to vet projects?

IS IT TRUE the Evansville of recent history does indeed have things in common with these laughing stock republics?…first and foremost is the misguided belief that temples to sports, entertainment palaces, and even publicly financed hotels are a solution to the loss of skilled jobs and a magic bullet that will bring education young professionals to town?…all of these bankrupted shrinking cities already did the things that Evansville has been doing in the last 5 or 10 years?…all have either flirted with or found themselves in bankruptcy?…to brand responsible diligence as “laughing stock” is the kind of thing that makes the one who asserts the “laughing stock” badge worthy of wearing the jesters cap and being branded a fool?

IS IT TRUE the barrage of idiocy started Thursday with County Commissioner Marsha Abell’s threat to shutter the Centre, the old Courthouse, and the Coliseum?…it was followed up Friday by a meeting of the union bosses that resulted in phone calls to the “Responsible SIX” threatening non-support or even support of opponents in future elections?…of course today was the Courier’s day to throw a plastic rock at the thinking offenders of the status quo?…we wonder who will get into the act on Sunday and Monday?…we may be able to expect Brando’s ghost to come to town and offer the “Responsible SIX” a deal they can’t refuse?…these kinds of antics are what really make a place slide into obscurity and join the other cities that borrowed themselves into impotence while failing to maintain critical infrastructure?

IS IT TRUE perhaps the most ridiculous thing in the article was the claim straight out of the Vietnam War protests that “THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING”?…having travelled the world extensively what this writer can assure you about the world is that it does not know Evansville from Banger, Maine?…Evansville has no reputation and no recognition outside of about a 300 mile radius of the bend in the river?…even in the western states of America Evansville is thought to be a Chicago suburb and is known for nothing?…contrary to the latest CHICKEN LITTLE claim “THE WHOLE WORLD IS NOT WATCHING”?

IS IT TRUE that things like falling for the Earthcare Energy scam, failing to balance the books for two years, being blindsided by Whirlpool’s departure, and having a series of stoplights on an expressway are things that cause a place to be a laughing stock?…carefully deliberating a public investment in a private business in a professional manner is something that can separate Evansville for the plethora of laughing stock cities already dying in the Midwest?

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42 COMMENTS

  1. The CP quotes Ken Newcomb who works with the Mayor’s wife as inventing that lauging stock claim. You talk about a laughing stock it is that guy. He has little man’s syndrome. He is a damn jerk too. Ask one of the many ladies he has squired over the years. They will give you the story on this little guy.

    • Oh, I know Ken rather well, business wise, that is. I don’t want to point this comment at Ken but, from my personal experiences, one of the very few industries with a worse reputation than used car salespeople are real estate sales people. I have had signed purchase agreements, money order ‘earnest money’ deposits etc. with the real estate company he is associated with as well as ERA, Janice Miller’s lovely company, and was held at bay for a couple months only to find out the realtor finally got a better offer than the one they had ACCEPTED from me and sold the homes to someone else!

      After having 6 “purchased” homes in a row go that way I washed my hands of dealing with our local real estate people. Especially with ERA, I’ve never seen such underhanded sales practices! Sure, I should have sued, but that would have taken months and what is a judge going to do then after people have been living in a house for months that I’d previously purchased? Throw them out? Not.

      Anyway, my whole point is that the “laughing stock” quote is from someone in an extremely shady industry and he certainly has a monetary interest in selling property for a hotel and possibly apartments. At least his “laughing stock” quote he pulled out isn’t literally robbing people of something they have already purchased. He’s just doing his best at a “doesn’t look like I’m selling” sales job. I can live with talk. It’s flat out lies that get to me.

  2. SUBJECT: Hotel Mudslinging has Gone Beyond the Pale

    Dear Council Members,

    As you might have seen, the VP and General Manager of 14 News has come out now calling earlier calls for vetting “politics at its worst”, even though eight of our nine Council Members voted for this vetting. We see this as a thinly veiled threat by this newsman that if you do not fall in line, he will leverage his TV station against your reelection campaigns. He is calling upon the public to email and call each of you, having fed them a yarn about this hotel’s beneficence. I sincerely hope you do not fall for this underhanded tactic.

    I hope this VP and General Manager isn’t pressuring his editorial staff in the same manner to adjust their reporting in accordance with his views.

    Everyone is entitled to his/her opinions. It is our hope 14 News will continue to voice both sides of this debate through Monday’s vote despite the additional pressure from its biased GM and VP.

    If you receive an influx of angry calls and letters, this is why:

    http://www.14news.com/story/23485136/taking-a-stand-politics-at-its-worst

    Thanks for your time. We hope those of you voting “no” hold fast to your votes and don’t cave to these political tactics.

    • Brad: Hey–the CCO and you are the leaders by far in mudslinging anyone or any organization or business that supports the convention hotel project. On the other hand, those who oppose the project are treated by the CCO and you like they are hero’s.

      Brad you are on the wrong side of this issue. The failure to pass this resolution will have big negative impact on are City.

      • When in doubt on anything I return to my core principles and work from there. My core principles told me the deal was immoral and unethical. Then I read Hunden and decided that even if I had no philosophical problem with subsidies I’d still oppose this project. Then I read all the articles people threw at me regarding the convention business overall and the similar experiences of other cities and saw the number of hotels that have been going bankrupt or required reinvestment, just like Hunden said. After all of that, I began to imagine what our alternatives might be to get the subsidy down to zero. I think CCO Editor Joe Wallace’s suggestion of gifting The Centre and the adjacent lot should be way we approach this. Any developer with a true belief in the potential of The Centre as a viable attraction should leap at that opportunity.

        The public at large is not behind this project, Wayne. Your support for it was both a mistake in judgment and a mistake politically. You have only succeeded here in dividing our Party and aligning us too closely with unions while alienating every fiscal conservative in the City.

        I’ll admit to mudslinging with you, which has been a mutual endeavor, but I stand behind every statement I’ve made and interview I’ve given on this subject. You can disagree all you like, but six Council Members are with me. That’s the important thing here.

        • IS IT TRUE that the General Manager of WFIE wrote a glowing endorsement for moving forward with the hotel project as is and really blasted the six council members who are against it?

          IS IT TRUE that there is a brand new top of the page banner ad for FC Tucker Realty that is as big as the 10 articles under it?…this all happens on a day when another FC Tucker realtor is quoted in the CP as calling Evansville a laughing stock for not grabbing their ankles and giving up a hotel package like the Mayor’s wife has demanded?

          IS IT TRUE it makes ya wonder how much money that big ole banner ad on the WFIE website cost FC Tucker?… the CP probably has one coming to them to for laying down on the job and cheering on Team Winnecke as they attempt to waste $37 Million?

          • Lucky one, that will probably be the final nail in the coffin for the joke that is the C & P.

          • Biased media is all to apparent in your area,Watching from afar Its simple to arrive at an conclusion of purpose for the timing and written content intention of some reported stories.
            It happens,some with drivers from advertisements sometimes with political preferences.
            Influence is bought sometimes,or forced through pride or deception,the human genome is weak that way.
            Having spent over 30 years providing test plans,engineering concepts and testing planned environment engineering concepts to standards.
            I will usually rely on hard scientific data generated by true combined Electrical/Digital mechanical test methods. The standard performance testing with control,done at lab standard conditions.
            Its how we innovate new things and improve old things. Once sampled at control points actually data shows what the design is in performance to meet or exceed test standards. Then its available to all parties involved. The concept innovation team, engineering product development team,the product compliance and safety team, the procurement team then the marketing and advertising team.
            The concepts become then proven or disapproved on the market by sales and service incident numbers.
            Then the truth in advertisement claim can be sustained by true charted performance without the biased human touch.
            I just wish at sometime someone could conceptualize an test plan for spending projected tax dollars before we actually place them on the market.
            Seems from what I see from your area. “Not so much.”

          • How many Square feet of space will be available close to your downtown access point on Walnut street? This can be projected if the newspaper there goes bust due to current nation wide consumer trending.
            Wonder what commercial real estate company will handle the details.
            Could be an real commerce growth location,if your downtown had some customer throughput traffic adjustments….

      • Wayne:

        Fred Kent has some thoughts on the hotel issue in today’s (Sunday-Sept.22) Courier&Press Community Comment section. Unlike you or I, Fred Kent co-owned and managed two new full service Holiday Inns in Evansville and Henderson for 18 years. I would encourage you to read his words.

        ___

      • Wayne, I realize that you are the chairman of the local democrat party, but even liberals like you need to at some time deal with facts and reality rather than feelings. It is typical of you liberals to cry “your on the wrong side of history” when the can not make the numbers walk.

        History from building the civic center, walkway, to the arena has been one failed idea necessitating another failed idea, each with a higher price tag, and each with the hollow claim that this project will revitalize down town.

        So just quit it and go apply for a job with Earth Care. I heard they were the up and coming real thing that would change our history. As for me, I am standing with Brad and that means you have moved me much closer to being a libertarian.

  3. What truly is in serious danger of becoming a laughing stock is the Common Council of Evansville, Indiana!

    Over the past several weeks, I’ve talked to many rank and file members of local trade unions, as well as a couple of their business agents. To a person, they all are fired up and ticked off at the council members for threatening to scuttle the opportunity to create immediately needed jobs and future opportunities for skilled labor in this town.

    In the past two days, all I hear from the same trade union folks is they cannot believe the extent to which members of council now have gone to come up with a rotten red herring excuse, this vacuous idea about the convention hotel endangering the potential location downtown of the IU medical center.

    It reminds me of the Republican House Caucus’s red herring attachment of Obamacare defunding to the absolutely critical bill to raise the debt ceiling and not default. Has Tea Party politics come home to roost in a Democrat-dominated city council?

    The sad truth about the city council seems to be they first are jealous about Mayor Winnecke’s open channels of communication and growing popularity with local union leaders and their rank and file. Secondly, the council members are threatened by Mayor Winnecke’s popularity with what the Democrat council members falsely perceive as their proprietary voter base. They had better remember Russell Lloyd, Sr.’s similar popularity in the same regards.

    You know what’s next if they don’t.

      • Were you referring to me? I hardly ever visit your site and when I do, I make myself known to be here. I have no need to ever hide behind a pseudonym. There is not a person in Evansville that can threaten, touch, or influence my life. I am a man of principle that always speaks the truth as I see it. I don’t hide behind a keyboard. I’m front and center.

    • The unions have enough work coming with the sewer project to stay busy for a long long time. They are so weak in numbers they can’t swing any local election. All they have is the money they take from working people that they use to buy politicians and that is all they are slinging around.

      Why can’t the unions do what is right for the city instead of just themselves. Cowtowing to the unions is what Detroit and the other midwestern ghost towns did. All hail to the six council members who have the courage to put these selfish thugs into their place. If you wanna join the laughing stock group, do what makes the unions happy and you will be laughed at too.

    • ok the first 6 words of your paragraph are correct, after that everything you spewed is such bs. the last paragraph is especially entertaining. jealous of open channels? you meant to say backroom deals right?

    • Why should the people of Evansville give away $37.5 Million to give a few hundred union members a job for 18 months? There are far more equally deserving people looking for work that will not see a penny of this money. What about them? Would these unions give $37.5M to be partners with HCW in this hotel? [sarcasm on] It would give the members work and then the tremendous profits from this can’t lose venture could pour right back into the union’s pocket. [sarcasm off]

  4. — The Taxpayers revolt and seek to deny these Elitists what they want? How dare these dolts deny giving their hard-earned dollars to a private company! Send in the ERBC Clowns,and throw a temper tantrum, Yeah, that’s the ticket! What’s next? sending in the thugs to approach the Council with an “offer they can’t refuse”? Disgusting!!

    • Are you honked because you are not wealthy? Being wealthy does not make one an Elitists

      • Personally, My assets are the result of working hard, and I was able to retired at 52. Your right Money doesn’t define an Elitist.
        Now 70, I’ve been around the block a few times, and I know an elitist when I encounter one.

        It’s the “superior” elitist attitude, driving a smug demand to spend, or in this case, give away, other people’s hard-earned money that ticks me off.

        By the way it will be the ordinary citizen, and their children’s children, that get to pay the $800 million to meet the Government mandate to stop Evansville from crapping in the river.
        For that ordinary citizen,a gift to a private hotel developer, is WAY DOWN, on the list of priorities.

        • I’m just an ordinary shlub working to support my family and rent a little property from the government (since we can’t actually buy property) and I have to agree with your comment that keeping our poody poo out of the river and homes should take precedent over spending tens of millions of our tax money as a gift to a hotel developer.

          You can say that I’m somewhat simple minded, but there are a whole lot more of us kinda people than those elitists. Since I do know about building things, I can relate our city to a building. Our foundation would be our sewer, water, utility and road network. Our foundation isn’t completely broken by any means, but it is crumbling a bit for sure. If we add more to it before addressing the crumbling parts I just don’t see how that can be good for the simple masses who are like me.

  5. The thinking 6 have proven their worth, I pray they don’t buckle to the threats. Could this deal stink worse than Earthcare? That is the only way the Japanese would notice. If this defeat keeps some of the shysters from panhandleing here…. Way to go city council.

    • Oneme: If anybody overseas noticed anything about Evansville In,its where we are on the list for EPA mandates CSO to the basin and the applied solutions of that to show some same positives in environmental adjustments to global climate change. Notice the “global” in the statement.
      Other countries are seeking solutions to the problem as well.
      Some are tied to the oceans and projected sea level rise a little more than your local area.
      If you do find an application that works with design to reduce impacts of CSO cost effectively I would say “that might grab their attention a bit.”
      I just read an article on Rotterdam’s/Netherlands port expansion,they have several centuries of trade experience and they are investing billions in sea level rise projections to remain in the forefront of port effectiveness.
      They are actually building for it…..”looking forward”.

  6. Just read the article in the Courier that was written by Tom Langhorne. Its obvious that he is the laughing stock of the Midwest and not city council if he really believes what he wrote.

    Thank God we have a second paper called CCO so we can read the real truth about the back room political deals going on in the Mayors office and County Commissioner Marsha Abell offices.

    Oh, did you also read that the Courier shall be charging .34 cents per day to subscribe to their on line paper starting this Tuesday? This means if you want to read the Courier on line it shall cost you $120 a year. Looks like this rag shall be losing future readership starting this Tuesday!

    • The C&P’s death spiral has been obvious for a long time time now. Scripps’ decision to hire as its editor a 4th-rate hack of a sportswriter whose journalistic talents were stretched beyond their miserable limits in covering high school sports was a clear sign that they were throwing in the towel on the C&P. The recent demand that home subscribers pay for a minimum of 6 months in advance is good evidence that their remaining advertising base does not trust them and is forcing them to provide evidence that they can continue operating as a real newspaper.

      Of course, they stopped practicing real journalism long ago, so when the C&P folds eventually, it will be no loss.

      • What is your definition of fair journalism?
        Do you believe the CCO practices fair journalism?

        • Umm, Wayne…where did I say anything about “fair” journalism? I did not.

          Your reading skills make you the typical kind of C&P reader/apologist that Scripps had in mind when they selected Toothless Timmy to preside over their paper’s demise into a kind of seriously downscale “Evansville Living” aimed at the illiterati and the increasingly mangy myrmidons of the local oligarchy.

          Now, cheer up, Wayne. I for one will continue my print subscription to the C&P so that I can laugh at the awfulness of its writing and editing, along, of course, with its slavish adherence to the oligarchy’s project of the day, whether it be Vandigov, dog parks, ball fields, empty convention hotels, or The John’s successor (which will mysteriously be built on a distressed piece of property which even more mysteriously will have been flipped several times in the preceding year by relatives of prominent Democrat politicians).

  7. Hello to city-county observer,glad to be here, where free speech lives on, like our founding fathers intended !!

  8. Lets see who are connected with Tucker Realty. Marsha Abell, the Mayor wife, Missy Mosby, Ken Newcomb and one of the owners is President of the Chamber all work for Tucker.

    Starting today I’m asking my many friends to boycott Tucker Realty. I’m tired of the way they are trying to dictate public policy based on their political values. The day of power politic will be over If you join me in this economic boycott of Tucker Reality we can hurt
    their future income stream. They certainly don’t mind hurting my pocket book by pushing unneeded public projects for the city of Evansville.

      • Everytime I get my paycheck and everytime I and my family or friends go out for dinner or a drink in Evansville. Get real Wayne!

        • Whether the hotel is built or not,the amount of taxes you pay will not go up or down if the hotel is built.

          If you think differently–how is it going to specifically effect you?

          • The math on this deal just stinks when we are unable to meet the payments on this giant giveaway where do you think the difference will come from? Tax increases of course!

  9. Everything has risk. If done right, I believe it will be successful and really help our City take a big step forward.

    • How many times do we the taxpayers have to pay for the folly of our local leaders and cronies!!!! Name me one of the past few projects that have not turned out to be losers! Wayne once again get real. It took turncoat democrats to get Winnecke elected and you wonder why the support faded and even vanished. Sleep with dogs and you just might get fleas!

  10. Yeah, i saw the over-fed arsebag on 14 last night, i have a question for him, if he’s so concerned about whats going on in Evansville why does WFIE do most of it’s reporting on things that happen in KY ? I used to think highly of that station, today —- not so much.

  11. I think the tax payers money would be better suited for something other than this hotel. What are people going to be rushing to Evansville to see? The Ice Men? they are ok but come on. Maybe the casino? No they have there own hotel. let’s see then…Wouldn’t we be better off in what we need. infrastructure, municipality’s, etc….

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