“LEFT JAB AND RIGHT JAB†JUNE 19, 2019
“LEFT JAB AND RIGHT JABâ€
“Right Jab And Left Jab†was created because we have two commenters that post on a daily basis either in our “IS IT TRUE†or “Readers Forum†columns concerning National or International issues.
Joe Biden and Ronald Reagan’s comments are mostly about issues of national interest.  The majority of our “IS IT TRUE†columns are about local or state issues, so we have decided to give Mr. Biden and Mr. Reagan exclusive access to our newly created “LEFT JAB and RIGHT JAB† column. They now have this post to exclusively discuss national or world issues that they feel passionate about.
We shall be posting the “LEFT JAB†AND “RIGHT JABâ€Â several times a week.  Oh, “Left Jab†is a liberal view and the “Right Jab is representative of the more conservative views. Also, any reader who would like to react to the written comments of the two gentlemen is free to do so.
FOOTNOTE: Any comments posted in this column do not represent the views or opinions of the City-County Observer or our advertisers.
“IS IT TRUE” JUNE 17, 2019
We hope that today’s “IS IT TRUEâ€Â 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 Jail is causing lots of controversy these days?…the jail which was built on the north side less roughly 15 years ago is now overcrowded to the point that more cells are needed to keep up with the people who are being sentenced to jail?…there are even some highly placed people who are posturing by asking “why is the jail overcrowded?” as though this has happened in the last few months?…overcrowding in the local jail is nothing new and was used as the compelling reason to build the new jail in the first place?…after building the new jail the old one which had served for years was shut down?…if these dimwits really want to answer the rhetorical question on “why is the jail overcrowded?”, they don’t need to look any further than the rising crime rate in Evansville?…this is a simple demand and supply model where the supply is fixed but the demand is rising due to the lawlessness of the population?…the easiest way to solve the overcrowding problem at the jail is to reduce crime?…that would mean doing things to make this a nicer place to live where people believe they have a future?
IS IT TRUE it was recently announced that the Evansville Water & Sewer Utility Department hired a new Communications Director, whose role is to inform the public about the millions of dollars worth of upgrades projects citywide?  …that the former head of Mayor Winnecke’s communications staff was hired by the Evansville Water & Sewer Utility Department?  …her hefty salary is now being paid out of the Water and Sewer Utility department budget? …so far the CCO hasn’t received one (1) news release from her? …we are now hearing in order for the CCO to get any news releases from the Water and Sewer Department we must file an official requests with the Mayors office?  …that the only request that the CCO will be filing is with the State Of Indiana Public Access Officer in order to forced the Evansville Water And Sewer Department to send us future news releases generated from that Department?
IS IT TRUE that the well known and popular Perry Township Trustee Rick Riney is being encourage and is considering running for Vanderburgh County Commissioner during the next election cycle? …if he does his worthy opponent will be none other than the current County Commissioner Cheryl Musgrave?
IS IT TRUE that Steve Ary a Constitutional Conservative and local pastor is running as an Independent for the office of the Mayor Of Evansville? ..that Pastor Steve Ary stated; “he believes that after eight years of elitist Lloyd Winnecke politics, the forgotten men, women and children of Evansville deserve better than the current physical and financial condition of our city, and that the people of Evansville deserve a real choice this election”?  …that Pastor Ary is aggressive, focus, intelligent and well spoken? …we predict the Rev. Ary will demand that Mayor Winnecke defend some of his questionable business decisions that he made during his eight years in office during the campaign?
IS IT TRUE we wonder if anyone in the Winnecke Administration or members of the Evansville City Council can explain to us the rational of increasing the Local Option Income Tax and taking away our Homestead Tax Credit while spending $750,000 on Penguin exhibit art the Zoo?
IS IT TRUEÂ we wonder if you aware that the taxpayers are paying off an annual bond debt payments for the new downtown medical school ($2.7M) and downtown hotel ($1.26M) without having any ownership position? …we also wonder who are the owners of the hotel and medical school buildings that the taxpayers are paying off the bond notes on?
IS IT TRUE back in 2017 the Vanderburgh County Council  voted to raise the County Wheel Tax by a 5-2 vote? …the five Council members that voted for the County Wheel Tax increase were all Republicans?  …the two County Council members that voted NO to raise the County Wheel Tax were Democrats?  …we were told the rational for this vote was to help fund a new additional to the Vanderburgh County jail?
IS IT TRUEÂ we hope that Mayor and officials of EVSC will come came up with way to to fund building a new pedestrian bridge across Highway 41 so the Bosse High school students can cross that road safety?
IS IT TRUEÂ we are extremely pleased tom hear that the Mayor has decided to to pay down the serious shortfall in the employee health plan this year? Â …now it’s time fir him to put out a RFP request to area insurance carriers for a more affordable employee health care plan? …sometime the practice of “Peter Borrowing From Paul” can work in the short term?
Steve Ary Announces His Candidacy To Run For Mayor Of Evansville
Steve Ary Announces His Candidacy For Mayor Of Evansville In The 2019 General Election
Ary is a Constitutional Conservative running as an Independent, and he believes that the city of Evansville needs to replicate the State of Indiana’s outstanding financial stewardship to get Evansville out of the red and into the black.
He has a twenty-two year history of successfully working in and managing national retail chains and local businesses, managing profit and loss, decreasing spending while increasing revenue. He is innovative and solution-oriented. He is a pastor at CityGate Indiana, a non-denominational church located at 1511 N. Royal Ave. on the East Side of Evansville.
Using his strategic budgeting analysis and procedures, he has turned money-losing businesses and churches around from running in the red to running in the black.
Ary plans to tackle important Evansville issues such as:
- Unnecessary government spending
- Affordable housing
- Gang violence
- Drug activity
- Homelessness
- The pedestrian bridge at Hwy 41 and Washington Ave.
- Energy independence
- Ending local cronyism and corruption
- Pay-to-play in professional service contracts
- School bullying
- Urban blight and abandoned houses
- Real code enforcement
- Clean neighborhoods and public safety
- Alleys, local flooding, and watershed
- Abandoned neighborhoods
Steve Ary believes that after eight years of elitist Lloyd Winnecke politics, the forgotten men, women and children of Evansville deserve better than the current physical and financial condition of our city, and that the people of Evansville deserve the “real choice†this election.
For more information, to sign petitions, or to donate, please contact the Committee to Elect Steve Ary at: ary4evansville@gmail.com or call him at 812.549.0885.
The Conservative Movement Still Lacks a Political Vehicle
 The Conservative Movement Still Lacks a Political Vehicle
By Richard Moss MD
A year ago I was locked in a political race for the Republican nomination for Congress from Indiana’s 8th district. I was running against then 4-term incumbent, Larry Bucshon. I had also run in the prior election cycle in 2016. And I had run in 2014 against Mike Braun (now US Senator for Indiana) for state representative (HR 63). Â
Among issues popular among conservatives, I also had what I thought was a compelling matter regarding the incumbent: Bucshon and his family had moved to Washington DC. That combined with his generally weak voting record could, I hoped, propel me to an upset victory, never easy against an incumbent. I started early and ran hard. I had raised money and traveled extensively throughout the 18 counties of Indiana’s 8th district, meeting and interacting with voters.Â
Despite a vigorous, hard-hitting campaign, we came up short – actually worse than the prior election. I had dropped from 35% to 26%. I also observed that many in the 8th district county level GOP establishment were upset over my criticism of Bucshon for moving to DC. I contended, however, that a representative and his family must live, work, and attend schools in the area he represented. In this era of an increasingly centralized federal government, far removed from its constituents, Bucshon’s decision to move to Washington exemplified a DC-centric mentality that defined perfectly what was wrong with our political system – and why I had run.Â
Having lost in three political campaigns, I can report that it is wonderful not to run for office. I return home at night. I have more time with my family. I no longer have to suffer the slings and arrows of detractors. I can observe the political machinations and comment from afar.Â
The reasons for running in three separate campaigns, however, have not disappeared. Our “one party†system in Washington remains profoundly corrupt and self-serving. It consists of career politicians from both parties, special interests, donors, and lobbyists, all of whom agree on one thing: growing the size of government.Â
The Republican Party, in its budgeting and voting, is a left of center party; it is, as I often referred to it as, the Republican wing of the Democrat Party. With an increasingly Marxist Democrat Party, and no serious conservative opposition from “soft-progressive†Republicans, the trajectory of the nation is all to the left: more spending, more programs, more socialism, and ultimately more tyranny. Â
Rather than promote a constitutional, limited government agenda that would actually expand liberty and shrink the power of the federal government, the GOP, in effect, embraces the tenets and policies of the Democrats (other than occasional, meaningless rhetorical flourishes to the contrary). Thus, there is no active force to thwart the mortgaging of the nation and future generations by politicians seeking short-term political gain. Â
Thanks to our federal government, for example, we have annual trillion dollar deficits, a national debt approaching $22 trillion (larger than our GDP), and $200 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities. The actuaries of Medicare and Social Security indicate both programs will be bankrupt in 2026 and 2035 respectively. The Republican Party, allegedly a stronghold of fiscal prudence, is, in fact, handmaiden to profligacy and insolvency.
The GOP remains hapless on the issue of immigration. It has done nothing to curtail and reform legal immigration to reflect the national interest (i.e. to make it meritocratic, limited, and diverse; to end chain migration, the “diversity†visa, birthright citizenship, and lawless “sanctuary cities,†among many critical issues); it has not secured the southern border nor prevented the influx of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens, virtually all of whom are impoverished, uneducated, and unskilled, and who will burden our schools, hospitals, courts, and public systems. Many of them are disease carriers, drug dealers, criminals, and terrorists. Thanks to feckless Republicans, our immigration system has become a giant welfare magnet for the world, a threat to our sovereignty, the rule of law, and national security. Â
The GOP has failed abysmally on the cultural front; it has feebly accepted the cultural Marxism of the left rather than pushing back against the nihilism and degradation of our popular and politically correct culture. It has failed to promulgate a conservative “narrative†to confront the anti-Christian, anti-family, anti-American narrative foisted upon us by our cultural overlords. Â
Today’s Democrat Party, overtaken by the radical French Revolutionary Left, is not the Democrat party of your grandfather or father, of Truman or Kennedy, or even Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. This bunch, should they come to power, is preparing the ground for future gulags not unlike their Marxist predecessors of the 20th century.
In effect, the conservative movement lacks a political vehicle in which to enact its agenda, policies, and narrative, hence the nation is at the mercy of liberaldom. Absent effective and principled resistance from a fighting Republican Party, the leftward tilt of the nation, its decline into socialism and bankruptcy, its fragmentation into tribalized, warring identity groups, and the continued breakdown of its culture, is unavoidable. The Trump years, like the Reagan era, will represent temporary but minor respites in the downward spiral of the country.
We live in treacherous times and the fault lines dividing us may be insurmountable. But conservatives must continue to uphold our priorities that the nation may return to its foundational principles and beliefs. We must reassert the religious and cultural underpinnings of the country, the central role of the two-parent family, faith, and the Judeo-Christian tradition; we should foster an appreciation of our unique history and heritage, of liberty, individual rights, the rule of law, free markets, and the principles of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. We, the believers, must remain the vanguard defending Western and American civilization – with or without the Republican Party.Â
Footnote: Dr. Moss is a practicing Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon, author, and columnist, residing in Jasper, IN. He has written “A Surgeon’s Odyssey†and “Matilda’s Triumph†available on amazon.com. Find more of his essays at richardmossmd.com. Visit Richard Moss, M.D. on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Evansville Heliponix Won “The People’s Choice Award” in New Orleans
Heliponix was co-founded by Southern Indiana natives, Scott Massey and Ivan Ball. Although they did not know each other before completing their respective engineering degrees at Purdue University, they met each other as co-working on a NASA funded research study at Purdue.
There, there research energy efficent LED lighting spectrum optimization to reduce the energy consumption of the hydroponic growing systems on the International Space Station. As undergraduate students, they had the idea to create an IoT (internet of things) appliance that would automate the complex process of hydroponics so every-day consumers would have the ability to grow their own produce at home. They then competed in business plan competitions at various universities and research institutions to raise several hundred thousand dollars in funding to commercialize their proprietary technology. Purdue University was among their first investors through their venture division focused on innovations within the agricultural and biological engineering domain.
Heliponix won first place in the Evansville Regional Pitch Competition after debuting considerable traction bringing the GroPod to market as well as the their first production model from their manufacturing facility that will have the capability to produce several thousand GroPods.
Scott Masey said: “We considered many other cities when deciding where to locate a high-tech appliance company such as Heliponix. Fortunately, the Ohio River Valley is fertile in engineering talent and manufacturing plants to produce our exact product. We will continue creating high-paying jobs as we define an entirely new frontier for agriculture. In the not so distant future, the majority of culinary herbs, micro greens, and leafy green vegetables will be grown indoors as consumers favor the flavor, health, and food safety benefits of fresher food. That’s why we are excited to advance to the state finals since our company truly has so much growth potential for our region.”Â
Reversal: Wife Was Wrongly Denied Protective Order Hearing
A woman alleging domestic violence at the hands of her husband will have another chance to make her case for a protective order against him after the Indiana Court of Appeals ordered a trial court to conduct a new hearing.
In N.E. v. L.W., 18A-PO-2514, wife N.E. filed a petition for protective order against her husband, L.W., alleging physical and verbal abuse on four occasions between December 2017 and August 2018. The alleged abuse included L.W. grabbing N.E. by the neck, throwing her, knocking over furniture and intimidating the couple’s granddaughter, prompting their 12-year-old grandson to call police.
Rather than granting or denying the petition ex parte, the Marion Superior Court set the matter for a hearing and encouraged N.E. to seek counsel regarding a divorce. N.E. was not permitted to present evidence or testimony during the hearing, and the trial court denied her motion after learning that a no-contact order had been issued in a criminal matter involving L.W.
N.E. also asked the court to evict L.W. from her home, but the court likewise declined that motion because he was already subject to the no-contact order, and because he was not present at the hearing. Instead, the court told N.E. to put her estranged husband’s belonging in boxes, give the boxes to family members “and just be done with it.†If L.W. tried to return to the house, the judge told N.E. to call the police.
N.E. appealed, and the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Battered Women’s Justice Project filed amici briefs in favor of a “fair and full hearing on the merits of a petition for a protective order … .â€
The Indiana Court of Appeals likewise determined the hearing “did not meet the minimum requirements of Indiana Code section 34-26-5-9 and that the trial court erred when it did not allow Wife to testify, present evidence, and call witnesses before denying her petition.†Judge Margret Robb, writing for the panel, relied on Essany v. Bower, 790 N.E.2d 148 (Ind. Ct. App. 2003) to support reversal of N.E.’s protective order petition.
The case was, thus, remanded for a new hearing, so the COA declined to determine whether N.E. had met her burden of proving that domestic violence occurred. However, the appellate court agreed with N.E. and the amici that the denial of the PO based on the no-contact order was “wrongly based on the existence of a pending criminal court order and not on the merits of [Wife’s] allegations.â€
“Furthermore, we remind the trial court that a protection order and a criminal no-contact order are not interchangeable, and that a criminal no-contact order cannot provide Wife all the relief that a protection order can,†Robb wrote.
Finally, noting Indiana’s Civil Protection Order Act does not require a respondent to be present before ordering an eviction, the appellate court ordered the trial court on remand to consider whether the additional relief N.E. sought — including attorney fees and expenses related to the violence — should be granted.
Names Released Of 3 Charged With Animal Cruelty At Fair Oaks Dairy
Names Released Of 3 Charged With Animal Cruelty At Fair Oaks Dairy
The Newton County Sheriff’s Office says officers are searching for the suspects in the alleged animal abuse at Fair Oaks Farms. Police identified the men Tuesday as 31-year-old Santiago Ruvalcaba Contreros, 36-year-old Edgar Gardozo Vazquez and 38-year-old Miguel Angel Navarro Serrano.
The misdemeanor charges for the beating of animals come amid a public backlash against the popular agritourism destination Fair Oaks Farms, which is also the flagship farm for Fairlife, a national brand of higher protein, higher calcium and lower fat milk.
The video released last week showed calves being hit with steel rods and burnt with branding irons by farm workers.
Newton County Prosecutor Jeff Drinski said those charged didn’t include the investigator for the Miami-based animal rights group Animal Recovery Mission who secretly recorded the video last year while working for several months at Fair Oaks.
“But he has been identified and will be interviewed,†Drinski said. “The video footage is being translated and further interviews will be conducted to determine if allegations of complicity by the planted employee or others are in fact true.â€
The sheriff’s department has said its investigation would include any witnesses to abuse at the farm’s dairies about 70 miles south of Chicago. Many of the conversations in the video involved people speaking Spanish.
Fair Oaks Farms founder Mike McCloskey said in a statement last week that four employees seen in the video had been fired and actions have been taken to prevent further abuse. A fifth person shown in the video was a third-party truck driver who was transporting calves, he said.
Drinski said Fair Oaks Farms “has cooperated completely in our attempts to identify and interview all persons involved in the videos that we have all viewed over the past week.â€
Fair Oaks, which said it draws about 500,000 tourists a year, has temporarily suspended its home delivery service of milk, cheese and other products, in part to protect drivers it says are facing harassment over the video.
Some retailers have also pulled Fairlife products from their shelves. Those included Chicago-area groceries Jewel-Osco and Strack & Van Til and Family Express, which operates convenience stores across Indiana.
Prosecutors charged the men Monday with misdemeanor beating of a vertebrate animal. Arrest warrants were issued for them. It’s unclear if they have attorneys who could speak on their behalf.
“LEFT JAB AND RIGHT JAB†JUNE 17, 2019
“LEFT JAB AND RIGHT JABâ€
“Right Jab And Left Jab†was created because we have two commenters that post on a daily basis either in our “IS IT TRUE†or “Readers Forum†columns concerning National or International issues.
Joe Biden and Ronald Reagan’s comments are mostly about issues of national interest.  The majority of our “IS IT TRUE†columns are about local or state issues, so we have decided to give Mr. Biden and Mr. Reagan exclusive access to our newly created “LEFT JAB and RIGHT JAB† column. They now have this post to exclusively discuss national or world issues that they feel passionate about.
We shall be posting the “LEFT JAB†AND “RIGHT JABâ€Â several times a week.  Oh, “Left Jab†is a liberal view and the “Right Jab is representative of the more conservative views. Also, any reader who would like to react to the written comments of the two gentlemen is free to do so.
FOOTNOTE: Any comments posted in this column do not represent the views or opinions of the City-County Observer or our advertisers.