Eagles sweep Lions to capture first Division I win
USI defeats Lindenwood, 3-0
EVANSVILLE, Ind. – University of Southern Indiana Volleyball (1-14, 1-3 OVC) snapped its 14-game winless streak Friday night at Screaming Eagles Arena after defeating Lindenwood University (3-9, 0-3 OVC), 3-0 (25-20, 25-17, 25-22). The Screaming Eagles earned their first NCAA Division I and Ohio Valley Conference victory in program history.
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USI kicked off the opening frame with a 9-0 run to lift the Eagles to a 25-20 win. The opening rally contained three service aces from sophomore outside/right side hitter Evie Duncan (Evansville, Indiana) to help put USI up by nine. Despite the Lions’ efforts to stop the Eagles’ surge, USI tallied four straight points off four Lindenwood attack errors to expand the lead to 13-1. The Lions did not give up and would go on a 5-0 run to cut the deficit to six. Lindenwood would score eight of the final 15 points but to no avail as USI took home the opening set. Neither side had much offensive success as the Eagles finished with eight kills and seven errors while the Lions tallied nine kills and eight errors.
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The Eagles stifled the Lions in the second set, earning a 25-17 victory and a 2-0 match lead. A kill from Duncan gave USI the first point of the set before Lindenwood scored the next three. Kills from Duncan and junior outside hitter Leah Anderson (Bloomington, Illinois) pushed the Eagles back into the lead, 4-3. Back-and-forth action between the two clubs ran up the score before USI went on a game-sealing 11-3 run to earn the win. The Eagles’ offense played their best in the second set, earning 13 kills and finishing with just one attack error. This was the first time this season that USI won back-to-back sets in a single match.
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Much like the first set, USI went on an early run to secure the third frame, 25-22. USI began the set with a 7-1 stint until Lindenwood tallied six of the next seven points to make it a one-point game. The Eagles made quick work to regain momentum, controlling a 6-1 run to extend their lead. However, the Lions did not give up, running the score to a 17-17 tie. Three kills from Anderson and a pair of kills from Duncan and sophomore outside/right side hitter Abby Bednar (Chagrin Falls, Ohio) gave the Eagles the push they needed to win the set and their first match.
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Duncan and Anderson did the heaviest lifting on offense, each earning double-doubles. Duncan’s stat line ended with 10 kills, 10 digs, and three aces while Anderson totaled 14 kills, 10 digs, and two aces. Junior outside/right side/setter Katherine Koch (Belleville, Illinois) earned a team-high 24 assists while freshman libero/defensive specialist Keira Moore (Newburgh, Indiana) totaled a match-high 14 digs. Anderson and sophomore middle hitter Paris Downing (Avon, Indiana) recorded a match-high four blocks each.Â
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USI ended the night with 33 kills, 28 assists, six aces, 54 digs, and eight blocks. Lindenwood finished with 32 kills, 28 assists, six aces, 49 digs, and four blocks.
Todd Rokita And Team Win $2.9 million Settlement In Medicaid Fraud Case
Todd Rokita And Team Win $2.9 Million Settlement In Medicaid Fraud Case
SEPTEMBER 29, 2022
Attorney General Todd Rokita today announced his office has recovered $2.9 million to settle allegations that a Northeast Indiana hospital network overbilled Indiana Medicaid between January 2017 and March 2021.
The overbilling resulted from the usage of improper revenue codes submitted to Medicaid for certain blood-clotting tests performed on patients at several hospital locations operated by Parkview Health System.
“All Medicaid providers have an obligation to ensure that they are seeking appropriate and justifiable payments from the Indiana program,†Attorney General Rokita said. “Whenever we have reason to believe the program is overbilled, we investigate — and then we work to recover any overcharges.â€
Attorney General Rokita thanked members of his Medicaid Fraud Control Unit for their work on this case — including Deputy Attorney General Jordan Stover and two investigators, John Mills and Bryan Katterhenry,
“We also appreciate Parkview’s cooperation in resolving this matter when it was brought to their attention,†Attorney General Rokita said.
On behalf of Hoosiers, Attorney General Rokita and his team have now recovered more than $429 million since he took office in January 2021. That sum represents the work of four divisions: Complex Litigation; Consumer Protection; Litigation; and the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit.
“Our team takes very seriously our responsibility to be wise and faithful stewards of the public trust,†Attorney General Rokita said. “Some recoveries are returned to the public treasury, and some are sent directly to everyday Hoosiers to whom money is owed. Our mission is to ensure justice is done.â€
Attached is the settlement agreement with Parkview Health System.
The Indiana Medicaid Fraud Control Unit receives 75 percent of its funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under a federal grant. The remaining 25 percent is funded by the State of Indiana.
Life Chain is Sunday, October 2
On Sunday afternoon, October 2, Right to Life of Southwest Indiana will host the annual Life Chain. Life Chain is a silent prayer vigil to protect life and oppose abortion. The Life Chain supporters will gather at Brinker’s Jewelers parking lot at the corner of Green River and the Lloyd Expressway for free refreshments and to pick up signs beginning at 1 p.m. The silent prayer vigil is from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. All those who support Life are invited to stand on Green River Road sidewalks beginning at the Lloyd Expressway and going south to Lincoln Avenue.
This is the 35th year of public witness on behalf of rejected Preborn Children; and Life Chain will fill the sidewalks in over 1,500 cities and towns in the U.S. and Canada. It is an opportunity for people to unite in prayer and to stand up for the rights of the unborn. They will stand in honor of the more than 63 million children whose lives have been lost to abortion in our country since 1973. Every year young moms report choosing life for their unborn children over abortion after reading the signs and seeing the people praying at the Life Chain.
According to Mary Ellen Van Dyke, Executive Director of Right to Life of Southwest Indiana, “Supporters of unborn babies and their moms will stand together respectfully and prayerfully to honor the sanctity of life. This year with all the attacks against the sanctity of human life, conscience and religious freedom, many prayers are needed.â€
Supporters of Life will hold signs that say:
- ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN
- JESUS FORGIVES AND HEALS
- ADOPTION: THE LOVING OPTION
- LORD, FORGIVE US AND OUR NATION
- ABORTION HURTS WOMEN
- PRAY TO END ABORTION
- LIFE—THE FIRST INALIENABLE RIGHT
- DEFUND PLANNED PARENTHOOD
The Life Chain follows a strict Code of Conduct, is peaceful, and family members, young and old are invited to attend. Everyone who believes in the protection of unborn children and their mothers is welcome to participate.
Right to Life of Southwest Indiana with 50,000 supporters protects life. We exist to protect the right to life of innocent human life from fertilization to natural death.
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OP-ED: Sheriff Candidate Lieutenant Noah Robinson Offers His Thoughts On The Election
This nearly two-year journey that I embarked on in January of 2021 has been nothing short of an adventure. Working as a full-time sheriff’s deputy while also campaigning 40 hours a week has been the challenge of a lifetime, both for me and my family. I am proud of what we have accomplished, the team we have assembled, the consensus we have built, and the work we have done.
- Train dozens of new recruits to become effective sheriff’s deputies
- Modernize our public records web portal
- Add accountability to our Use of Force policy
- Draft dozens of Operating Guidelines
- Streamline our traffic citation system
- Create the first-ever Sheriff’s Office Bicycle Patrol
- Enhance the resources provided to crime victims
- Deepen ties with our Neighborhood Associations
- Improve the safety and security of our public schools, parochial schools, and the University of Southern Indiana
- Design a radio system program for the Sheriff’s Office and Evansville Police Department that promotes communication between all public safety agencies within our County
- Obtain Over A Million Dollars In Grant Funding
- Improve School Safety by increasing the number of specially trained School Resource Deputies present in our county’s public and parochial schools.
- Mentor children and identify students who are having difficulty in order to prevent kids from becoming criminals.
- Advocate for school safety through environmental design and embracing a safety culture.
- Re-imagine the way we patrol our community by assigning deputies to individual neighborhoods and business districts.
- Encourage residents to form neighborhood watches and homeowner associations, and then partner with those neighborhoods.
- Prevent, detect, and solve the crime by forming relationships with the residents we serve.
- Assign additional staff to our local federal task forces and go after violent criminals and those who fuel the violence by supplying stolen or illegally purchased firearms.
- Fight for an expanded jail that fully implements an aggressive substance abuse and mental health treatment program.
- Conduct vocational job training and life skills development in the jail in order to prevent younger criminals from becoming career criminals
- Serve delinquent child support warrants, holding negligent parents responsible and preventing youth from falling into a cycle of poverty and criminality.
- Target drug dealers who poison our community with fentanyl, heroin, and methamphetamine.
- Arrest drunk drivers who selfishly place our families in danger.
- Ensure our deputies and confinement officers are trained in the most effective law enforcement techniques and procedures, better equipping them to do their jobs.
- Hire only the best and most qualified individuals while improving diversity by recruiting from historically underserved populations.
- Promote trust and transparency by ending the practice of investigating our own in-custody deaths.
OP-ED: Conspiracy Theories Aren’t As Scary As The Truth
Freedom, IN – For nearly 30 years through think tank articles, newspaper columns and blogs, and well-before I started organizing protests and running for public office, I’ve been writing about the problems that had already been dividing and threatening this nation’s future. And I’d been proposing solutions, ones that had already been amply proven a hundred years before I was born, to work better than anything else humans have ever tried.
Now, unfortunately, amid massive transgenerational theft, corruption, manipulative promises and domestic militarization that must have our nation’s founders shouting at us from the hereafter, the once brilliant flame of liberty has been replaced by gaslighting and pre-Hammurabi authoritarianism. Our government is both a Big Lie, and our most ominous and existential threat. We don’t have much time to set this right before global conflagration and catastrophe.
There’s no need to detail the lies, the conspiracy facts or the obvious energy, economic, social and moral problems that We The People now suffer. What’s important is to understand that we got here because fewer and fewer among us dare to speak truth to power, far too many are paid to lie, and over 90% of us, both voters, and those who delegate their choice to others, have been voting for this monstrous mess.
Any democratic process at all, whether political, business or at home, depends upon good information. Bad or missing information dooms the process to bad outcomes. And our increasingly secret, yet intrusively snooping government has not only paid or otherwise induced people to lie for generations, even well-before and since Operation Mockingbird and Facebook, but has also become a puppet show distracting us from the fact that the people in elected office are not the people running our government.
Most of our citizens have known for some time that our government is corrupt. But how could we know the extent of the corruption, or what to do about it, unless we have more exposure to well-documented yet nearly forbidden information from alternative sources like Epoch Times or foreign media? Political debates are a thing of the past. Most “investigative journalism†has become only a litany of partisan buzzwords and cherry-picked quotes.
So it’s both understandable, and our collective shame, that in electoral politics there is no advantage to being right, and clearly no disadvantage to being wrong. The consequences of that are only now starting to unfold.
But a bigger shame is that our monolithic information, entertainment, education and political systems have so effectively pitted us against each other, that we think we have bigger problems.
We have the power to fix this, of course. But we have to both want to, and vote that way.
Aye, there’s the rub
https://horning4congress.com/
Liberty or Bust!
Andy Horning
Freedom, Indiana
Individual Income Tax Rates to Rise in Five Indiana Counties Effective Oct. 1
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Effective Oct. 1, 2022, five Indiana county income tax rates will increase, according to the Indiana Department of Revenue (DOR).
Local income tax rates are determined by county officials and provided to DOR for review regarding compliance with Indiana law.
Below are the five counties impacted along with their new tax rates:
- Boone County:Â 0.017Â (increased from 0.015)
- Johnson County:Â 0.014Â (increased from 0.012)
- Knox County:Â 0.017Â (increased from 0.012)
- LaPorte County:Â 0.0145Â (increased from 0.0095)
- Monroe County:Â 0.02035Â (increased from 0.01345)
These tax rates affect businesses with employees who live or work in any of these counties and have income tax withholdings.
- For Indiana residents on Jan. 1, 2022, county tax rates for individuals are based on the employee’s Indiana county of residence on that date.
- For individuals who are not Indiana residents on Jan. 1, 2022, county tax rates are based on the individual’s county of principal business or employment on Jan. 1.
In addition to the rate changes, Departmental Notice #1 has been updated to provide withholding instructions for the newly adopted child exemption.
Current rates for all Indiana counties are available on DOR’s website at dor.in.gov in Departmental Notice #1. To view the complete list, click on “Legal Resourcesâ€, then “Tax Libraryâ€, followed by “Departmental Noticesâ€.
Enjoy fall fun and Halloween events
A cornucopia of fall fun and Halloween events are happening at DNR properties throughout October.
Campsite decorating, pumpkin decorating, costume contests and a variety of other events. You can come for one activity, stay for a day, or spend the entire weekend at most events.
For details regarding a fall or Halloween event near you, or one that’s well worth a road trip, visit the DNR Calendar at calendar.dnr.IN.gov.
Vanderburgh County Could Be Headed Toward Mounting Economic Hardship
Vanderburgh County Could Be Headed Toward Mounting Economic Hardship
By Karen Reising
Democratic Candidate For Vanderburgh County Council, District 1
Speaking at the Economic Club of Indiana, David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly & Co., added his voice to the number of researchers, labor officials, and educators who have been warning Indiana politicians for years of a looming crisis: Residents could face mounting economic hardship due to a mass departure of employers and the failure to compete with other states to attract new business.
Large employers like Eli Lilly are being repelled by Indiana’s lack of educational attainment, inadequate workforce training, and low wages. These companies depend on our government to provide educational opportunities and quality of life amenities to recruit and retain employees.
A state or local government that won’t prioritize these investments dooms itself to a downward spiral—a complex chain of events that drags the area’s economy down to new lows.
Here locally, the Vanderburgh County Council’s record on such critical funding has too often been inadequate. Responsible for taxing, budgeting, and spending, the County Council is the ultimate decision-maker regarding fiscal affairs; it sets the priorities for the allocation of county funds. So when the County Commissioners propose such initiatives as improving our roadways and sewers, increasing broadband access, expanding the county jail, or raising salaries for law enforcement and staff so they won’t look elsewhere for better-paying jobs, those projects can’t move forward unless the Council approves the funds.
And the fact is, over the decades and under the leadership of my opponent, the Council has consistently underfunded, delayed, or blocked programs essential to Vanderburgh County’s overall health. A recent study undertaken for the Vanderburgh County sheriff’s office estimated that over 70% of our jail population is dealing with mental health and/or substance abuse issues which accounts for our high recidivism rates. Aside from the recent boost in funding provided through the American Rescue Plan, our local treatment programs have been underfunded and understaffed for years, negatively impacting our county both socially and economically.
Mental health and substance abuse issues tear families apart and weaken our workforce. Businesses need to be able to count on a robust, healthy, and sustainable talent pipeline to staff their operations; family members need to be able to count on each other. To strengthen our economy, we must first strengthen our families by adequately funding treatment programs designed to address these issues.
My opponent has been the Councilmember for District 1 for thirty-two years – and no one has run against him in twelve years, which means that the voters of the west side of the county haven’t had a choice in who represents them. At a time of high levels of public mistrust in the government, we cannot afford to re-elect a politician who ignores important social and health needs, refuses to seek our input or feedback, and consistently delays and defers decisions that would address the problems we’re facing.
I grew up here in Evansville, and the values my family and community taught me have shaped my life. My parents modeled hard work and perseverance, with my dad and his brothers keeping their graphic arts business going for over forty-five years, and my mom spent graduation from Memorial High School and earned a BA from Indiana University and an MA from Georgetown. I built my own twenty-seven-year career—first with a Washington, DC consulting firm and then with Lucent Technologies, developing new telecom markets in the Middle East. After 9/11, I worked with public safety agencies across the United States to improve their communications networks. My work took me all over the world, and my travels gave me a keen appreciation of our democracy here at home.
I will bring those values and the insights I’ve gained over my career to the County Council to ensure that we have an effective, efficient government that fights for what matters most to the citizens of Vanderburgh County, and the West Side in particular. As your Councilmember, I will prioritize practical solutions and sound fiscal policy while consistently seeking your input and feedback through regular public meetings. I will support investments in infrastructure to modernize roadways, expand broadband access, create jobs, and grow the economy. I’ll push for coordinated law enforcement, mental health, and addiction recovery programs to respond to the current spike in violent crime and support those neighbors struggling with mental health and substance abuse issues. And I’ll back residential and commercial solar development to help rein in our rapidly rising energy costs.
Election Day is Tuesday, November 8. I hope that every eligible voter will turn out to vote because in a democracy, voters have the power; elected officials simply exercise that power on our behalf. The deadline to register to vote is October 11 and October 12 is the first day of early voting. To register to vote, confirm your registration status, or check deadlines, dates, and rules, visit www.indianavoters.in.gov.
If you live in Vanderburgh County Council District 1, you can vote for new ideas and vision backed by a wide breadth of experience—or you can vote for the same old way of doing things that have us poised to slip further behind. This year, you have a choice.
Sources
Eli Lilly CEO’s comments are foreboding for Indiana – The Daily Reporter – Greenfield Indiana
(greenfieldreporter.com)