Indianapolis – General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) announced plans today to invest more than $90 million to expand its operations in Grant County, Indiana.
“Here in Indiana, we continue to be a global leader in the manufacturing industry and Hoosier made products can be found throughout the world,” said Governor Mike Pence. “General Motors’ multi-million dollar investment in Indiana reaffirms that our pro-growth business environment, low-taxes, limited regulations and skilled workforce continue to be a winning formula for companies. We have more Hoosiers working now than ever before, and we will continue to adopt practices that allow job creators to thrive in a state that works.”

GM will invest more than $90 million to update equipment at the Marion Metal Center plant’s existing 2.7 million-square-foot campus at 2400 W. Second St. With the expansion expected to begin this year, the company will add new cutting-edge equipment to enhance the facility’s process capability and flexibility, requiring new dies, die alterations and cranes that move dies throughout the facility. The new installations are projected to be complete by 2017.

“This investment in stamping dies and equipment will align Marion Metal Center with GM’s future stamping strategy,” said Dan Hermer, manager of GM North America Manufacturing. “This will enable our team to continue delivering quality to our stamping customers throughout North America.”

Established in 1956, Marion Metal Center provides blanks, stampings and sheet metal assembly for cars, vans, trucks and SUVs to GM assembly plants throughout North America and employs more than 1,400 associates at the Marion Metal Center. GM, which produces vehicles under leading brands such as Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC, operates in 31 countries.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) offered General Motors LLC up to $100,000 in training grants based on the company’s economic development plans. Grant County has approved additional incentives at the request of Grant County Economic Growth Council.

“We are excited to have General Motors demonstrate their confidence in our community’s bright future,” said Marion Mayor Jess Alumbaugh. “We enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with General Motors, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and the Grant County Economic Growth Council in making this investment a reality.”

Today, one in five Hoosiers work in the manufacturing industry. Home to the highest concentration of manufacturing jobs in the nation, companies like General Motors continue to find the workforce they need to expand in Indiana. The Hoosier state is home to the second largest automotive industry in the nation. Since 2010, Indiana’s automotive industry has produced more than 5.1 million cars and light trucks.

WHATS ON YOUR MIND TODAY?

“IS IT TRUE” will be posted on this coming Tuesday.

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Most likely, though, Kaine was referring to Hillary’s attachment to the “Social Gospel.” The Social Gospel is a cheap counterfeit for the real thing that liberals conjured up to promote socialism while relieving people from any guilt associated with living life according to their own standards, not God’s. The Social Gospel crowd concentrates on scriptures that instruct us to help the poor and feed the hungry. They ignore the ones where Jesus told those he helped and fed to “go and sin no more.”

But, here’s the rub. If liberals really wanted to do things the right way, they’d do it themselves and not pass personal responsibility off to the government. Jesus never said governments are an acceptable replacement for lazy, no-good followers who refuse to do what he asks.

Obviously, Kaine was trying to paint Hillary in a softer, nicer light, while at the same time courting right-leaning anti-Trump evangelicals. It’s a political ploy. In May, Slate magazine ran a piece by Ruth Graham, “Can the Christian Left Be a Real Political Force?” — suggesting that Donald Trump’s rise in the GOP makes 2016 the perfect opportunity for the Democrat Party to win over anti-Trump evangelicals if they can find a way to lop their horns and replace them with halos to make them look like the “party of God.”

What the author, Kaine and Democrat Party strategists fail to understand is that anti-Trump conservative Christians would never vote for Hillary. Nor will they be tricked by those bearing faux religion in the name of politics. Graham did her best to make a case for liberal Christianity, writing: “It must first be said that despite the empty pews, there’s reason to believe that liberal Christianity has been dormant, not dead.”

In reality, those empty pews are what happens when we do things our way and cherry-pick the Gospel. Aa Pew poll rolled out last year found that mainline church denominations embracing the Social Gospel, like Hillary Clinton’s Methodist denomination, are in decline across the United States. In sharp contrast, the same Pew poll found that conservative Christian churches are vibrantly alive and growing.

The Slate magazine author accidentally answered why “liberal Christianity” is little more than an oxymoron when she wrote: “There’s a cost associated with membership…churches that ask more from their followers tend to be stronger…Many progressive churches, by contrast barely demand a pinky toe…They don’t pressure me when I skip; the sermons rarely suggest it matters whether I believe the creeds…By contrast, when I visit conservative churches…they feel alive: People are there because they think it matters for their everyday lives and for their eternal souls.”

Those churches “feel alive” because they are…alive. It’s impossible to be truly excited about something that isn’t there. And it’ll never be there if it’s about politics rather than a personal, saving faith. Graham concludes: “If there is to be a resurgent Christian left, it will need to learn a trick or two from the very movement [conservative Christian] that overtook it a generation ago.”

Tricks cannot revive that which never existed in the first place. As C.S. Lewis wrote: “Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means…it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.”It’s a slippery slope, that road to Hell we’re headed, that American politics has deteriorated to this.

Fewer Americans are watching the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro than they did prior Games. I offer a solution.

According to The Christian Science Monitor, only 26.5 million Americans watched the Olympics opening ceremony —- “a 35 percent drop in viewership from London’s ceremony four years ago and the lowest rating for the event since 1992.”

Why the low ratings?

For starters, fewer people are watching TV. Anyone under 30 is too busy snapchatting and Facebooking to sit in front of something as outmoded as a television set.

America’s waning interest in the Olympics could also be because too many events have been added by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which may be diluting the Olympics brand.

Consider: During the very first Olympics in 1896, there were only nine sports. The Rio Olympics are featuring 28, two of which were newly added: golf and rugby sevens.

Now I played rugby at Penn State. In my book, its toughness qualifies it as a genuine Olympics sport.

But golf? Sure, golf requires precision and smarts. But that’s about it. The better golfers don’t carry their own clubs or even walk. Their caddies do most of the work.

Besides, if you can smoke a cigar, sip gin and flirt with your mistress on your smartphone while in the throes of competition, I don’t think that qualifies as an “Olympics-level” event.

Nonetheless, the IOC, eager to appeal to younger audiences, keeps expanding its list of sports. In fact, the IOC just announced that it will add five events to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. In addition to the return of baseball/softball, there will be karate, rock climbing, skateboarding and surfing —- to which I respond”Cowabunga, dude!”

It seems to me that if the IOC wants to draw in American viewers in bigger numbers, maybe it should add other key “sports” that appeal to our national sensibilities —- “sports” that have long been trying to make the Olympics lineup, such as bowling and ballroom dancing.

Sure, bowling doesn’t require the speed and physical stamina long associated with Olympics sports. But it does require a stamina of sorts: Only a true professional can drink three pitchers of lager and still roll a perfect 300.

Keeping track of the “athletes” will be a lot easier, too —- since bowling is the only “sport” in which each competitor has his name stitched onto his shirt pocket.

Proponents of ballroom dancing have been trying like mad to have their “sport” added to the Olympics event list and I say why not.

Such dancing does require the finesse of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. And I don’t care how difficult traditional sports, such as swimming and track, may be. Only ballroom dancers run the risk of blowing out a knee by tripping on a buffet table.

That brings us to pole dancing. Its proponents are hoping that this “sport,” made popular by ladies who shed their clothes in dark, smoky bars, should join the esteemed list of Olympic Games, and I couldn’t agree more!

Now I know that the games are —- or are supposed to be —- about excellence, sacrifice and commitment. I know they’re supposed to be about athletes pushing themselves beyond their physical limits.

But Americans have gone soft over the years. We’re no longer as interested in “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” as we are about instant gratification, junk food, adult beverages and figuring out new schemes by which we can get “the rich” to fund more “free” government goodies.

If the IOC wants Americans to tune back in, it needs to include more “sports” that appeal to what we have become.

Which is why the IOC should add Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest to the Olympics lineup.