We hope that today’s “IS IT TRUE” will provoke honest and open dialogue concerning issues that we, as responsible citizens of this community, need to address in a rational and responsible way? 

IS IT TRUE that the Vanderburgh County Democrat Party as most people knew it before the debacles of 2010–2011 would not recognize the wreckage that the once proud party of the people has become?…there was a period of time when the Vanderburgh County Democrat Party dominated the Vanderburgh County leadership positions and elected offices totally?…that all changed with the hubris exhibited in the community meetings leading up to seeing the Ford Center crammed down the taxpayer’s throats without a referendum?…this was of course orchestrated by former Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel who was alleging measuring the windows in the Governor mansion for new curtains based on the prediction of Larry Aitken who was the voice, money and whip of the Vanderburgh County Democrat Party for many years?…it was this level of hubris and arrogance that inspired the late great Rick Davis to make an announcement that he would be a candidate for Mayor of Evansville in the 2011 election?…that was followed by the Homestead Tax Credit fiasco, the ghost employee at Gauge, Floatgate, ChickenGate, and a whole bunch of other buffoonery that culminated in Davis primary election win.  …Republican Lloyd Winnecke became the hand-picked successor of the Democratic party machine and Davis was defeated by a slim margin in the General election?  …the Vanderburgh County Democratic hasn’t been the same since?

IS IT TRUE that yesterday the Vanderburgh County Democrat party took a body blow that may reduce it to rubble when Attorney Scott Danks resigned from the leadership role?…Danks spent 3 years as chairperson after a lifetime of supporting Democrat candidates and goals?…Danks gave it his best shot to resurrect the damage done by the Democrat Machine to itself during the exit of Weinzapfel from politics?…we commend Scott for trying and wish him well as he lives his life in the excellent manner that he is known to?…Danks has been a leader in many ways but resurrecting Weinzapfel and the Machine’s folly was more than he wanted to handle and now the Party is left to its own devices?…we hope that his replacement isn’t a big supporter of all things that result in higher taxes and more free stuff?…we predict this narrative will not play well in Evansville and that the decline of the Vanderburgh Democrat Party will continue if the Democratic party of Vanderburgh County adopted a liberal tax and spend philosophy?

IS IT TRUE we are told by people in the know that embracing the fringe elements of the national Democrat platform is not likely to appeal to people in the Midwest or South and will ultimately bring about a downfall across the country in places where people still have traditional values?…Bernie, Kamala Harris, Fauxcahontas Elizabeth Warren, and other hard left progressives will be challenged to get any traction in places with common sense?…they may have the heart of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York but the rest of the country sees this pack of 24 for what they are and that is going to be bad news for them?…for one of the few times, Evansville seems to be at the leading edge of a national movement back to common sense, traditional values, and rejection of all things far left?

IS IT TRUE when Vanderburgh County GOP Chairman Wayne Parke made negative  remarks towards City Councilman Dan McGinn and he left the Republican Party?  …that he did similar to Republican County Commission candidate Steve Hammer and the former GOP party secretary Hobart Scales?  …he also sent an in your face letter to the Evansville Deputy Mayor Steve Schaefer because he supported a democratic friend who ran for a political office in another city? …he has publicly taken to task the Vanderburgh County Commission Cheryl Musgrave and now is he doing similar to the Republican At-Large City Council candidate Alex Schmitt? …its also been reported that over the years Mr. Parke has also sent less than complimentary e-mails to numerous Republicans office holders and appointed officials alike?  …we been told it would be helpful if Mr. Parke read a book entitled “How To Win Friends and Influence People”?

IS IT TRUE during the last four years Mayor Winnecke campaign committee has employed the services of an out-of-state (Washington D C) political polling  and marketing firm? …his campaign committee has spent between $10,000 to $20,000 dollars each year do a scientific polls concerning how the people of Evansville feel about his overall performance as Mayor?  …this doesn’t sound like this a “Keep It Local” business transaction?

IS IT TRUE we wonder if you would spend over a million dollars to be elected to a position that pays a little over a $100,000 a year?  …if the answer is “yes” then you should run for Mayor of Evansville, Ind?

IS IT TRUE that the Next Level Teacher Compensation Commission and Advisory Council, which includes education and business leaders, have been tasked with providing recommendations for how to achieve competitive compensation for teachers? …that this commission will deliver the recommendations to the governor and the General Assembly prior to the 2021 legislative session?  …that Dr. David Smith, Superintendent of Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation has been appointed to serve on this committee?  …we hope that he will be more objective in recommending future teacher compensation than he has done in the past?

IS IT TRUE if the Governor would spend less time in raising money for his re-election and more time trying to find money for the proposed addition to the Vanderburgh County jail we would now be breaking ground on a 700 bed facility?

IS IT TRUE that Steve Lacy and Joe Fisher co-owners of BEC BROWN Equipment are doing a phenomenal job in taking their firm to the next level?  …these individuals are a prime example of why we started the “Working Outside The Box” speakers series? …that we would be honored if both gentlemen would agree to attend on next  “Working Outside The Box” speakers series on July 25, 2019?

Commentary: Eva Kor And Hard Art Of Forgiveness

By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com 

INDIANAPOLIS – Eva Mozes Kor took me to task on a spring afternoon.

She taught me something when she did.

The Holocaust survivor and I talked in March of 2018. We were on the air with filmmaker Ted Green and publisher Peggy Tierney discussing Green’s superb documentary, “Eva.”

John Krull, publisher, TheStatehouseFile.com

At one of the breaks, I described Kor as one of the world’s leading voices of forgiveness and reconciliation. She shot me a look.

I asked her about it.

She told me I had said something that was “not correct.” She was a voice of forgiveness, she said, not reconciliation. They were two different things.

I pressed her: Wasn’t forgiveness a prelude to reconciliation? Wasn’t forgiveness essential to reconciliation.

Kor was polite but adamant in her response.

Forgiveness was hers and hers alone to give. It asked nothing of the Nazis who had oppressed and tortured her as a child. It gave her the means to liberate herself from the horrors she had experienced at Auschwitz, when the infamous Josef Mengele experimented on her and her twin sister, Miriam.

Forgiveness was something she could control. Something no one could take from her.

Her courteous adamance said a lot.

When Kor died July 4 in Krakow, Poland, where she was on a visit to Auschwitz, the remembrances that flowed after her passing focused on her work as a spokesperson for Holocaust survivors and as an ambassador for forgiveness.

Every word of those remembrances was true, but they didn’t tell the whole story.

The fact is that the woman had a lot of pepper in her makeup. She wouldn’t have survived if she hadn’t.

Too often, we think of forgiveness as something soft, yielding, effortless. It isn’t. Forgiving someone for a wrong done is hard, wrenching work. The greater the wrong, the harder the work.

Kor had so much to forgive.

Because at the end of her life she was such a small woman and enchanting presence – not much taller than a coffee table with a smile that was incandescent – she made it easy to think that getting past what she had endured didn’t cost her much.

But it had to have.

Stripped from her parents when she was 10 years old and then treated as a kind of twisted science project, she must have had reservoirs of pain and rage as vast as the universe. What she endured must have burned within her, with the sort of heat that can consume and scorch anything it touches.

More humane researchers these days have come up with a way to assess how early-life trauma affects children. These traumas go by one of the most misleading acronyms around. They’re called ACEs – short for adverse childhood experiences.

Kor’s ACE score would have been off the charts.

What it must have cost her not to let her suffering broil her and her life down to nothing. Many people never would have been able to escape moments that horrific, never would have been able to find either security or comfort in a world that would allow such things to happen.

But she did.

It’s no wonder asserting control over what her experience meant was so important to Kor. So much of what children depend on, what they need – the love of parents, a sense that the world has a place for them – had been ripped away from her before she would have graduated from the fifth grade.

So much had been taken from her so young, that it must have seemed essential to her to assert ownership over the things no one could take from her.

Her heart.

Her will.

Her forgiveness.

When Kor and I debated – gently, politely – the relationship between forgiveness and reconciliation some 15 months ago, she did what she’d been doing since her childhood. She was asserting that her life was her own and that no one had the right to shape or determine it for her.

Eva Kor took me to task on a spring afternoon.

She taught me something when she did.

May she rest in peace.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

Global media company Forbes Magazine ranked Evansville Teachers Federal Credit Union as Indiana’s top credit union in its listing of 2019 America’s Best-In-State Banks and Credit Unions. This was Forbes’ second year surveying for the Best-In-State Banks and Credit Unions, and the second year that ETFCU earned recognition. 

To compile the list, Forbes partnered with market research firm Statista which independently surveyed more than 25,000 customers across the country to gather opinions on their current and former banking relationships. Forbes said that the banks and credit unions were rated and scored on overall recommendations and satisfaction, as well as five additional factors: trust, terms and conditions, branch services, digital services, and financial advice.

Also ranked among Indiana’s top five credit unions were FORUM Credit Union of Indianapolis at No. 2, Interra Credit Union of Goshen at No. 3, Indiana Members Credit Un