Posted without opinion, edit, or bias by the City County Observer.

Provided by a Republican who is friendly to the City County Observer

GOP Friend — I hope that you will be able to attend the Vanderburgh GOP caucus on Saturday to elect our party leaders. I can not say enough about what great leadership Wayne Parke has given the party since his election as Chairman of the Vanderburgh County Republican party. We have control of both City and County Executive branches and the majority of City Council. We also have many County offices. Thanks Wayne for all your hard work to make this happen.

I wanted to take a minute to share with you my support for Michelle Mercer for Vanderburgh County Vice Chair. As you know, Michelle ran for City Countil at large and worked very hard during the City election. She is familiar with what it takes to be a good candidate and will work with Wayne to recruit candidates and help coach them to be successful in their efforts. Michelle Mercer has remianed as an active volunteer working very hard for Richard Mourdock and Alan Leibenguth in last year’s election.

I believe that Michelle has what it takes to help Wayne continue with the success of the local Republican party and I hope you will decide to support her in this Saturday’s caucus.

Take care and I hope to see you soon.

—

Carol McClintock

Two Evansville Police Officers were assaulted while trying to remove a man from his burning trailer this afternoon. The man’s identity is not being released at this time because he has not been charged with a crime at the time of this release.
Officers were dispatched to 1913 Rhode Island to do a standby while a female removed some belongings. After the officers exited the trailer, the man locked the door.
When the officers were outside, the female told them the man had put lighter fluid on the couch and she was worried he might try to hurt himself. The officers then tried to talk to him again to make sure he was not going to harm himself. When the officers got to the front door, they saw smoke in the trailer. He would not come to the door so the officers were forced to kick the door in to get in. When the officers entered the trailer, they saw several fires in the front room. The man had gone to a back room and was found lying on the floor.
When the officers tried to remove him from the burning trailer, he began assaulting them. The officers were able to get him under control despite his resistance and the growing fire around them.
The officers were able to get him out of the trailer safely. The man was treated at the scene for injuries he received during the struggle. One of the officers was treated for smoke inhalation at the scene.
Any charges will be determined pending a mental health evaluation.

Involved Officers:
Zach Dickason
Josh Doane

Please join Mayor Lloyd Winnecke and the Latino Advisory Committee for a news conference to announce plans for a new cultural festival in Evansville. The news conference will be Thursday, February 28, at 10 a.m. in the Mayor’s Conference room, Civic Center Complex Room 301. The news conference will be immediately followed by the regular meeting of the Latino Advisory Committee.

During this year’s “long session” at the Indiana General Assembly, we are constitutionally obligated to pass a biennial budget. I am pleased to report this year that our House Budget is structurally balanced, and continues to protect Hoosier taxpayers while also restoring much-needed funding to education. Thanks to our state’s strong fiscal position, we were able to provide helpful tax relief in the form of an accelerated inheritance tax phase out, but we also made restorations in education and other services.

As an educator, I am very pleased with the greater investments in education funding. Our new budget includes the following education spending increases:

•$354 million in school operating funding over the next two years
•$197 million in fiscal year 2014 for full day kindergarten
•$203 million in fiscal 2015 to fund full day kindergarten
•$150+ million each year of the biennium will be transferred to the Tuition Reserve Fund
•$10 million over the next two years to recruit STEM teachers to schools that need them most
•$6 million to fund dropout prevention programs

The $354 million in school operating funding will assist school corporations with their essential day-to-day operations. The allocation of $400 million dollars over two years for full day kindergarten will give young Hoosier children a great head start to their educational career.

Transferring over $150 million each year of the biennium to the Tuition Reserve Fund will provide every Hoosier student the financial support they need to get a good education. When striving to provide an excellent education, it is absolutely crucial to give every student the same opportunities to learn, grow and succeed all the way to the finish line. The $6 million being used to fund dropout prevention programs is an important part of our education investments.

I am particularly excited that our House Budget includes $10 million over the next two years to recruit Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teachers to be placed in the school that needs them most. These areas of education are fields that are in high demand and will help give Hoosiers the opportunity to receive a job and help contribute to our growing economy.

Our House leadership has taken a prudent conservative approach by maintaining healthy reserves and protecting taxpayers while also restoring education investments. I am proud of our House Budget, and I believe it will be very beneficial for Hoosiers.

GLEN ALLEN, VA On Wednesday, March 6, 2013, the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) with the College of William and Mary Police Department will host a one-day Outreach Training Event focusing on the use of online social media in criminal investigations.

Attendance is expected to exceed 400 state, local and federal law enforcement and military personnel representing more than 100 agencies from four states and the District of Columbia. This timely event will provide information that criminal investigators, criminal intelligence analysts, special agents and prosecutors need to know to more effectively protect their communities in this digital age.

Social media has quickly become the “go-to” means of communications in our society. The ability of law enforcement to use all resources, including social media, is vital in their prevention, investigation and prosecution efforts as well as to increase public awareness on how the use of social media affects our citizens from the youth to the elderly.

Indiana State Police Lieutenant Chuck Cohen, a noted cyber crime expert, will teach how to take advantage of these often overlooked and under-utilized resources and cover the “need-to-know” social media facts from understanding how networking sites work to new investigative techniques.

In addition, a luncheon program on the impact of tobacco trafficking will be presented by Mr. Ray Rowley, Law Enforcement Engagement Manager, Altria Client Services.

The Outreach will be held at the College of William and Mary, Sadler Center, located at 200 Stadium Drive, 23185, from 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. For the complete agenda, please visit http://outreach.nw3c.org.

If you would like to schedule an interview with Lieutenant Cohen or Mr. Rowley, please send an email to jeverett@nw3c.org.

Washington’s Sequester Hysteria Obscures A More Tragic Unseen

By John Tamny

This Friday marks the day that automatic federal spending cuts will take place thanks to an incompetent political class willfully blind to constitutional limits. Though reductions on the order of $86 billion are truly microscopic, politicians and their media enablers are predictably predicting economic Armageddon thanks to a tiny cut in planned spending increases.

As USA Today put it on Monday, “Coming soon, the lines at airport security might get longer, the hours of service [horrors!] at Head Start centers might get shorter and the FBI might have fewer agents tracking down bad guys.” Fearful of “fewer teachers, reduced medical care, idle defense workers and other job-killing reductions in all 50 states,” our economically obtuse President in Barack Obama has naively asserted that “The longer these cuts are in place, the bigger the economic impact will become.”

First, let’s all relax. If we ignore that even under the sequester that federal spending is expected to soar to $5.9 trillion annually over the next ten years, the hysteria is wildly overdone.

Indeed, lost in all this talk if the economic burden that is our federal government is even slightly restrained is what it means for all of us who shoulder the aforementioned burden. Put plainly, can any reader honestly say he or she doesn’t have better things to do with the income our federal minders take from us in order to run the favor factory that Washington has become? Might we have paid off loans, purchased for our basic needs, and possibly invested our disposable income in profit-disciplined companies that actually have a clue about productivity?

As for the false argument along the lines of “Who cares, China is paying for our waste,” have we ever considered the tautological reality that absent all this nosebleed spending, that those dollars spent by foreigners on U.S. Treasuries would still cycle back to the U.S. (to save dollars is to lend them); only to businesses in need of loans and investments? Unseen amid all the federal jobs and programs supported by all of us (yes, the federal government is “WE”), are the companies that never form thanks to a lack of plentiful capital, not to mention those that can’t continue operating thanks to the feds vacuuming up so much credit for consumption over real investment. Unseen, in short, are the Microsofts, Intels, and Googles whose productivity enhancements would enrich us, and also employ us.

Taking this further, many on the right regularly talk about dependency – on food stamps, unemployment benefits and welfare – wrought by heavy federal spending. They have a point here, and unseen is the pride-enhancing work success that Leviathan takes from those who choose government handouts over economy-boosting work. The seen here is people doing little to nothing, while the unseen is the real work they would be doing if the need to survive and feed one’s family forced the unproductive to find jobs. If the feds were taxing and spending less, private sector companies would have access to more funds to expand and create real employment the markets actually desire.

Of course too many on the right ignore the other sick-making dependency that is all too apparent to anyone living in Washington, D.C. The capital’s suburbs are full of some of the highest average incomes in the U.S. Sorry, but dependency on government isn’t just the property of the poor; rather it’s arguably bigger among middle and upper middle class earners fully reliant on a bloated federal budget.

Unseen here is what these arguably talented individuals would be doing if they too weren’t taking part in the false enjoyment that is near permanent federal employment. If laboring under the frequent stress that defines always uncertain private sector employment, there’s no telling what today’s federal salary takers might be achieving. The seen is the comfortable lives of Washington bureaucrats, but the unseen concerns what they might be doing in a more dynamic world marked by success and failure. We hear about jobs that will be lost should federal spending decline, but we never hear about the jobs never created thanks to all the spending; the latter robbing individuals of the success and dignity that comes from working in a profit-motivated private sector.

What this tells us is that the political class must grow up. For the left who think any reduction of the myriad federal programs is tantamount to cruelty, they must ask themselves if it’s not exponentially more cruel for the federal government to addict the unsuspecting to handouts that are barriers to the realization of the potential that exists within us all.

As for the right, it’s no longer credible as so many conservatives claim that minor cuts in our defense budget ensure much greater weakness in same such that defense costs will soar down the line. Instead, the right need to soul search, all the while asking themselves if our national defense is truly enhanced by military bases in 175 countries around the world whereby we pay for the defense of some of the richest countries in the world. It’s quite simply not realistic that all of this largesse makes us safer, and then with dependency in mind, it’s hypocritical for the right to addict so many able-bodied to a federal paycheck that ultimately robs them of their ability to make the most of their lives.

Back to the looming sequester, it’s surely embarrassing that we’re led by political types so deluded with their importance that they think we can’t survive absent their dollars. Lost on them, and sadly by too many of us, is that those dollars are ours. In that case we must learn to love a sequester that has the living, breathing definition of dependency – Washington, D.C. – so on edge. Indeed, it’s time for us all to get to know the beautiful unseen that would reveal itself amid a reduction in the certain austerity that is big government.