The St. Mary’s Medical Center Foundation will host its 33rd Annual Heritage Open golf scramble on Monday, June 10th at the Evansville Country Club. All of the proceeds will help provide healthcare services to underserved and uninsured children in the Evansville and Tri-State communities.
Mike Head, President and CEO of First Federal Savings Bank, will once again serve as this year’s chairman.
The day will begin with a continental breakfast at 6:30 a.m. Morning golfers will tee off at 7:00 a.m. Lunch will be served at 11:00 a.m. and afternoon golfers will hit the links at 12:15 p.m. The event concludes with a memorable evening of cocktails, dinner, and the awards presentation at 6:00 p.m.
Tee times for foursomes and individual golfers are still available. To schedule your tee time or for more information, please call Brooke Wagner, St. Mary’s Medical Center Foundation Development Coordinator, at 812.485.5850 or e-mail her at brooke.wagner@stmarys.org. You can also visit www.stmarys.org/foundation.

Although there’s still a great deal to be learned about the scandals and controversies swirling around the White House like so many ominous dorsal fins in the surf, the nature of President Obama’s bind is becoming clear. The best defenses of his administration require undermining the rationale for his presidency.

“We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots. It’s actually closer to us being idiots.” So far, this is the administration’s best defense.

It was offered to CBS News’ Sharyl Attkisson by an anonymous aide involved in the White House’s disastrous response to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Well-intentioned human error rarely gets the credit it deserves. People want to connect the dots, but that’s only possible when you assume that all events were deliberately orchestrated by human will. This is the delusion at the heart of all conspiracy theorists, from Kennedy assassination crackpots to 9/11 “truthers.”

Behind all such delusions is the assumption that government officials we don’t like are omnicompetent and entirely malevolent. The truth is closer to the opposite. They mean well but can’t do very much very well.

This brings us to the flip side of the conspiracy theory — call it the redeemer fantasy: If only we had the right kind of government with the right kind of leaders, there’d be nothing we couldn’t do.

It’s been a while since we had a self-styled redeemer president. John F. Kennedy surely dabbled in the myth that experts could solve all of our problems, though much of JFK’s messianic status was imposed on him posthumously by the media and intellectuals. You really have to go back to Franklin D. Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson to find a president who pushed the salvific powers of politics as much as Barack Obama.

His presidency has been grounded in the fantasy that there’s “nothing we can’t do” through government action if we just put all our faith in it — and, by extension, in him. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, he tells us, and if we just give over to a post-political spirit, where we put aside our differences, the way America (allegedly) did during other “Sputnik moments” (one of his favorite phrases), we can give “jobs to the jobless,” heal the planet, even “create a kingdom [of heaven] right here on Earth.”

For Obama, the only things separating America from redemption are politics, specifically obstruction from unhinged Republicans and others clinging to outdated and vaguely illegitimate motives. Opposition to gun control is irrational because the “government is us.” Reject warnings “that tyranny is always lurking,” he told the graduating class at Ohio State, because a self-governing people cannot tyrannize themselves.

But, suddenly, when the administration finds itself ensnared by errors of its own making, the curtain is drawn back on the cult of expertise and the fantasy of statist redemption. Early on in the IRS scandal, before the agency’s initial lies were exposed, David Axelrod defended the administration on the grounds that the “government is so vast” the president “can’t know” what’s going on “underneath” him. Of course, it was Obama who once said, “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.”

That is, when things are going relatively well. When scandal hits the fan, he goes from the “government is us” to talking of his own agencies the way a czar might dismiss an injustice in some Siberian backwater. The hubris of omnicompetence gives way to “lighten up, we’re idiots.”

Many of his defenders now rush to insist that it’s unfair to hold him to too high a standard. He’s just a man, just a politician. Well, duh.

Meanwhile, Obama insists that he is outraged. And, if sincere, that’s nice. But so what? What the president seems to have never fully understood is that the Founders were smarter than he is or that the American people aren’t as dumb as he thinks we are. His outrage is beside the point.

A free people will have legitimate differences on questions of policy. A government as vast as ours is — never mind as vast Obama wants it to be — is destined to abuse its power, particularly in a climate where a savior-president is incessantly delegitimizing dissent (and journalistic scrutiny). Government officials will behave like idiots sometimes, not because they are individually dumb but because a government that takes on too much will make an idiot out of anyone who thinks there’s no limit to what it can do. That alone is good reason to fear tyranny. Indeed, it would be idiotic not to.

Source: RCP

Beginning in 2009, state mandated property tax caps were implemented locally to provide tax relief to property owners in Vanderburgh County and the City of Evansville. These caps were set at 1%, 2%, and 3% of the gross assessed value, with the type of property dictating which cap each property receives. In 2012, the total reduction to property tax bills equaled nearly $10.5 million. In 2013, the number climbed to an estimated $22.5 million. This increase indicates that many more taxpayers are receiving either an increase to their tax cap credit or they are receiving a first-time credit on their bill. These credits are calculated after the tax rates have been certified by the state and given to the county auditor’s office, and represent revenue that cannot be collected and distributed to the taxing units which includes Vanderburgh County, the City of Evansville, the EVSC, the Levee Authority, Library, Airport Authority, Town of Darmstadt and township trustees.
Tax cap credits increased primarily due to an increase in tax rates throughout the city and county. For the first time since the caps have been in place, tax rates for residents within the city limits are over 3%. In the past, non-residential or commercial/industrial property within the city did not receive a tax cap credit because these properties were part of the 3% category, and the actual tax rate had been below 3%. For 2013, the tax rate within the city limits climbed above 3%, and resulted in credits in this category going from zero to over $5.3 million. The increased tax rates also affected those properties that received a homestead deduction within the city limits. Homes with an approximate assessed value above $100,000 received a cap credit on their bill. Last year, the assessed value threshold to receive a cap credit was $119,000. The increase within the city for the 1% tax cap category is $1.9 million for 2013. These two categories equal 60% of the overall increase to tax caps for 2013.
House Enrolled Act 1344-2009 also affected the tax caps. This law requires all Indiana homeowners who receive the homestead standard deduction to submit verification of their eligibility. Taxpayers with a homestead deduction on file in the auditor’s office received a Homestead Verification form, also known as the “Pink Form”, the last three years with their tax bill. This form required the taxpayer to provide certain information, sign off that they are the owner of record, and reside in their home as their principal place of residence. If this form was not received in the Auditor’s office by December 31, 2012, the homestead deduction was removed per statute, and the taxes due in 2013 reflected an increase accordingly. There are nearly 2,800 homestead deductions that were removed for 2013, which put them in the 2% tax cap category where they may have received additional tax cap credit. However, removing the homestead deductions increased the net assessed value for these properties, which could increase the tax base within the city and county, and help lower future tax rates.
The impact of tax caps beyond this year is difficult to predict without having total assessed values throughout the city and county and future budgets from each taxing unit. However, if property values increase and additional assessed value through the construction of residential, commercial and industrial property is created, coupled with reduced tax levies, overall losses due to tax caps could be reduced over time.

Second graders in Tracie Stafford’s class at Evans to learn about firefighting and ride on a fire truck; have cookout with Leadership Evansville

Tuesday, May 21, fire truck rides begin at 10 a.m.

Evans School

2727 N. Evans Ave.

This event is planned following ongoing leadership opportunities throughout the school year through Leadership Evansville and its servant leaders.

Wednesday, May 22

Evans 6th graders leave for Disney

6 p.m., Wednesday May 22

From Evans School Parking Lot

2727 N. Evans Ave.

Sixth graders at Evans school will leave Wednesday for a fun and educational opportunity at Walt Disney World.

Interviews available with Brynn Kardash, principal.

Glenda Ritz, superintendent of public instruction, will be visiting two Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation Schools Wednesday morning to learn more about the EVSC’s Early Childhood Education Program.

9:30 a.m. Cedar Hall; 10:45 Culver Family Learning Center

Background:

9:30 a.m.: In the EVSC, she will first go to Cedar Hall Community School. B-roll and photo opportunities will begin around 9:45 a.m.

10:45 a.m.: She will also travel to Culver Family Learning Center where several different types of Early Childhood Programs exist, including special education and inclusion classrooms, and the Mind in the Making classroom.

The EVSC began offering PreK classes in 2010 for Title 1 qualifying families. Classes have grown throughout the corporation and the EVSC is beginning to see the results of the early learning taking place in preparing students to be ready for the educational opportunities in kindergarten. The EVSC funds Early Childhood through a variety of mechanisms, grant programs and other partnerships. The State of Indiana is one of just a handful of states that does not fund early childhood programs, and Supt. Ritz has indicated she wants to learn more about the importance of the early classes for children.

Recently, the EVSC has undertaken training with Mind in the Making. Mind in the Making is a new approach to how children learn, and is a way that teachers, parents, and others in a child’s life can help reinforce. The classroom at Culver is based from suggestions by Mind in the Making, and the book of the same name by Ellen Galinsky. Collaborating with top researchers in the science of childhood brain development for the past decade, she identifies seven life skills that help children reach their full potential and unleash their passion to learn. http://mindinthemaking.org/article/high_quality_preschool_for_all_what_its_so_important/