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IS IT TRUE August 13, 2012

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Congressman Paul “MONEY BADGER” Ryan

IS IT TRUE August 13, 2012

IS IT TRUE the pre-season favorite to win the NCAA Football BCS Championship LSU Tigers have tossed their most celebrated player Tyrann Mathieu off of the team for violating “team rules”?…those of you who follow college football probably know Mathieu by his nickname “Honey Badger”?…the Honey Badger had a video made by a fan last year comparing him to the powerful animal of the same name that “takes what he wants”?…that Honey Badger was forced to sit out one game last year over being caught using synthetic marijuana or K2?…the team rules for which the Honey Badger was tossed for may very well be for another round of taking what he wants?…that all things aside Tyrann Mathieu will go on to the NFL and make some good money doing so?

IS IT TRUE that Mitt Romney has now chosen Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate?…Ryan is best known for having authored and passed two budgets through the US House of Representatives?…that is two more budgets than President Obama has gotten passed through any house of congress?…this year President Obama’s budget was shot down by a vote of 414 – 0 in the House and 99 – 0 in the Senate?…that in honor of the mascot of the University of Wisconsin and playing on the tenacious football player from paragraph one that we hereby offer up the nickname “MONEY BADGER” for Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan?…all that is needed now is a youtube video like the Honey Badger has stating “MONEY BADGER GETS WHAT HE WANTS”?

IS IT TRUE the cemeteries owned and operated by the City of Evansville are now advertising their services?…we wonder where in the budget of the City of Evansville that any line item for advertising on behalf of the Oak Hill and Locust Hill cemeteries would be hidden?…the City County Observer will not be holding our breath to be getting any checks from the Winnecke Administration for a banner ad offering the services of the cemeteries as criticism is never taken well in the halls of government?

IS IT TRUE that multiple moles are telling the CCO that GAGE president Debbie Dewey is asserting that there are no clawback provisions in place that will allow the City of Evansville to recover unearned incentives that Whirlpool has benefitted from at the expense of Evansville taxpayers?…in the old days GAGE was only responsible to score the tax phase in applications but any contractual relationships were the responsibility of the Evansville City Council as the taxing authority?…it is very possible that Ms. Dewey is not the right person to ask about the contracts or lack of contracts governing tax abatements and incentives?

IS IT TRUE that clawbacks are usually included in a separate memorandum of understanding between the taxing authority and the company according to the attorney at the training session on tax incentives conducted by the Indiana Department of Local Government Finance?…it is entirely possible that the Evansville City Council does not have any contractual basis on which to repatriate unearned incentives?…if this kind of incentive is granted with a nod, a wink, or even a handshake, then some serious reform needs to be taking place?…if there is indeed no way, no will, or both on the Evansville City Council to collect money that is due the people of Evansville that this is just one more fine example of doing things like bumpkins on the banks of the Ohio?…the time to keep electing bumpkins and good old boys (or girls) to majority positions over the people’s money should have ended 50 years ago?…maybe we should send Deputy Dog, Boss Hogg, and Barney Fife to collect our money?…maybe we already have?…we wonder where is Buford Pusser when you need him?

Is Ryan Obama’s Biggest Asset?

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In the matter of Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to be his running mate, I keep flashing on images of Wallace Shawn in “The Princess Bride”: Inconceivable!

Here’s a rule of thumb: If you are the Republican nominee and The Wall Street Journal editorial page, The Weekly Standard and National Review are all urging you to do the same thing, run the other way. Romney doesn’t need the base; if they are not enthusiastically for him, they are enthusiastically against Obama, which ought to be enough.

Romney needs independents in Virginia, suburban women in Colorado, seniors in Florida. It’s not a question of whether Ryan will help him woo these voters; it’s a matter of whether Ryan — especially once the Obama campaign and associated super PACs get through with him — will make that even harder.

On the plus side, Ryan is smart, engaging, charismatic, young. He’s got good chemistry with Romney. He’s serious and committed without being off-putting or intractably partisan. Democrats who’ve worked with Ryan like and respect him.

But selecting him as the veep candidate doesn’t make sense. It undercuts several aspects of the Romney narrative.

Romney is the outside Washington candidate — now running with a sitting member of a body with a 12 percent approval rating. He’s the private sector fix-it guy-now with a career politician.

Most important, the choice of Ryan pushes against what has been the central theory of Romney’s campaign: Make it less of a choice between himself and Obama and more of a referendum on the incumbent president and the languishing economy.

Instead, substitute endless debate and wall-to-wall advertising on every last detail of every plan Ryan has ever put out: to add private accounts to Social Security, to change Medicare into a voucher program, to slash domestic spending to unimaginably bare-bones levels.

Why would Romney take on a fight that President Obama has been itching to have? Here was Obama in April, running against what then seemed his pipe dream ticket of Romney-Ryan: “The Republicans running Congress right now have doubled down, and proposed a budget so far to the right it makes the Contract With America look like the New Deal. In fact, that renowned liberal, Newt Gingrich, first called the original version of the budget ‘radical’ and said it would contribute to ‘right-wing social engineering.’ … This is now the party’s governing platform.

“This is what they’re running on. One of my potential opponents, Gov. Romney, has said that he hoped a similar version of this plan from last year would be introduced as a bill on day one of his presidency. He said that he’s ‘very supportive’ of this new budget, and he even called it ‘marvelous’ — which is a word you don’t often hear when it comes to describing a budget.”

This is the fall conversation that Romney wants to enable?

I don’t get it. The argument for going bold, shifting gears, throwing long balls — insert cliché here — would be if the Romney campaign has concluded that it has lost the campaign-as-referendum-on-Obama argument and is panicking. But a spate of problematic national and swing stage polls notwithstanding, that seems way, way premature to me. It seems way, way premature to many Democratic strategists I’ve spoken to since the announcement.

The Ryan choice means I get to wallow in Congressional Budget Office analyses and Tax Policy Center distributional tables. It should make for a more interesting and more substantive campaign — one that may better prepare the country for the difficult fiscal choices facing the next president. I just don’t see how it helps Mitt Romney secure that job.

Source: R. Marcus

Is Paul Ryan a Game Changer for the Romney Ticket

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A failure to act. A terrible, stunning legacy for any leader. But far worse when it is the president of the United States. And that’s the point driven home by Mitt Romney’s selection of the young Paul Ryan as his running mate. For Ryan dared to lead when Barack Obama did not.

After more than three years of what promised to be a historic, transcendent presidency, the nation still faces record unemployment, with nearly $16 trillion in debt and the looming insolvency of Social Security and Medicare. Yet Congress is paralyzed. And the president appears powerless to heal divides or change the direction of the country.

Through it all, Ryan stood alone, attacked from the left—and even the right.

He spoke not only of balancing the budget but also of rescuing entitlement programs through real reform. And it was more than “just words.” He actually came up with the plans to do so.

His reward? To be vilified. Branded a granny killer. (A desperate theme now repeated in a ludicrous charge against Romney as a murderer.)

In his remarks this morning following the announcement, Ryan spoke with his signature sincerity of “turning ideas into action, and action into solutions.”

“Politicians from both parties have made empty promises,” he said, “which will soon become broken promises—with painful consequences—if we fail to act now…We have a critical decision to make as a nation. We are on an unsustainable path that is robbing America of our freedom and security. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“If we fail to act now.” Those are the words on which this election will hinge.

The 2012 race just got real, and the focus will be where it needs to be.

No more silly spectacle about Michelle Obama’s $6,000 jacket or Ann Romney’s dressage horse. The race will now be about something.

And that something is important: the economic future of the country.

“If we fail to act now,” Ryan said this morning. Those are the words on which this election will hinge.
Oh, sure, the hounds of hell will be unleashed by the left to inflame fear. And the attacks have already begun.

But a smart leader surrounds himself with even smarter people. Romney has done that.

He’s made the right choice in Ryan. For the Republican Party and the nation.

Let the battle of ideas begin. We can no longer fail to act.

Source: Daily Beast

The Ryan Budget in Congressman Ryan’s Words

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Facts and Summary

The President and his party’s leaders refuse to take action in the face of the most predictable economic crisis in our nation’s history. The President’s budget calls for more spending and more debt, while Senate Democrats – for over 1,000 days – have refused to pass a budget. This unserious approach to budgeting has serious consequences for American families, seniors, and the next generation.

House Republicans refuse to ignore our generation’s greatest domestic challenge: reforming and modernizing government to prevent an explosion of debt from crippling our nation and robbing our children of their future. We’re advancing a budget that builds upon a bipartisan consensus for principled solutions: real spending discipline and restored economic freedom; patient-centered health care reform; and pro-growth tax reform. The House Republican budget – The Path to Prosperity – offers a clear choice of two futures. We’re putting our trust in the American people to choose a brighter future for generations to come.

_____

For years, both political parties have made empty promises to the American people. Unfortunately, the President refuses to take responsibility for avoiding the debt-fueled crisis before us. Instead, his policies have put us on the path to debt and decline.

We reject the broken politics of the past. The American people deserve real solutions and honest leadership. That’s what we’re delivering with our budget, The Path to Prosperity. House Republicans are advancing a plan of action for American renewal.

Our budget:

Cuts government spending to protect hardworking taxpayers;

Tackles the drivers of our debt, so our troops don’t pay the price for Washington’s failure to take action;

Restores economic freedom and ensures a level playing field for all by putting an end to special-interest favoritism and corporate welfare;

Reverses the President’s policies that drive up gas prices, and instead promotes an all-of the-above strategy for unlocking American energy production to help lower costs, create jobs, and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Strengthens health and retirement security by taking power away from government bureaucrats and empowering patients instead with control over their own care;

Reforms our broken tax code to spur job creation and economic opportunity by lowering rates, closing loopholes, and putting hardworking taxpayers ahead of special interests.

At its core, this plan of action is about putting an end to empty promises from a bankrupt government and restoring the fundamental American promise: ensuring our children have more opportunity and inherit a stronger America than our parents gave us.

Link to the Full Document “The Path to Prosperity

http://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/pathtoprosperity2013.pdf

Romney Chooses Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as Running Mate

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Republican VP Candidate Paul Ryan with his “Path to Prosperity” aka the Ryan Budget

In a move that has widely been seen as bold and to carry some risk Republican candidate for President of the United States Mitt Romney has selected Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his candidate for Vice President.

Ryan who has been visible as a champion of sustainable limited government is the author of the republican budgets in the House of Representatives. His budgets have put forward solutions to the federal financial problems by modifying entitlement programs that have been a target of conservatives since they were passed by the Johnson Administration during the Great Society days.

If nothing else, the selection of Ryan should focus this election on the American economy and away personal attacks. The opponents of Mr. Romney who have been asserting that he has no plan will realize soon that he has one now. Mr. Romney has defacto endorsed the Ryan budget. It is now up to the voters to learn what the Ryan budget is (see link below for a small overview) to compare it to President Obama’s budget ideology and to make a choice between the two.

For those who have been looking for substantive differences between what a Romney Administration would be and what the Obama Administration has been and would continue to be, the Ryan Budget is the answer.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/story/2012-08-11/paul-ryan-budget-medicare/56963864/1

BOARD OF PARK COMMISSIONERS REGULAR MEETING

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BOARD OF PARK COMMISSIONERS

REGULAR MEETING
KEVIN WINTERNHEIMER CHAMBERS
ROOM 301, CIVIC CENTER COMPLEX
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2012
12:00 NOON

AGENDA

1. CALL TO ORDER

2. MINUTES August 1, 2012

3. CONSENT AGENDA N/A

4. OLD BUSINESS
a. Request Re: Approve and Execute Change Orders for Additional Work for the Gresham
Home Renovations. – Boberg
b. Request Re: Approve and Execute Changer Orders for the Pigeon Creek Greenway Passage –
Phase 3. – Boberg
c. Request Re: Approve Bid Documents and Advertising the Request for Bids for Stadium
Demolition. – Johnson

5. NEW BUSINESS
a. Request Re: Approve and Execute Gateway Service Agreement with Element Payment
Services, Inc. for Swonder Ice Arena/DPR. – Nadeau
b. Request Re: Approve Budget Transfers and CIP Reprioritizations. – Boberg
c. Request Re: Any Other Business the Board Wishes to Consider and Public Comments.

6. REPORTS
a. Denise Johnson, Executive Director

7. ACCEPTANCE OF PAYROLL AND VENDOR CLAIMS

8. ADJOURN

IS IT TRUE August 10, 2012

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The Mole #??

IS IT TRUE August 10, 2012

IS IT TRUE the City County Observer has confirmed with Mayor Winnecke’s office that Earthcare Energy has once again made the monthly interest only payment to the City of Evansville on the $200,000 loan that was made to them without so much as telling the Evansville City Council?…the outstanding balance remains at $184,000 in spite of the scuttling of the deal for an additional $4.8 Million loan that is still to this day authorized by the City Council?…no one should be surprised when this situation raises its ugly head again?

IS IT TRUE that last night’s Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner had a small fraction of the attendance normally seen at such events?…that many of the normal corporate table sponsors were either not invited or declined an invitation?…that unlike the normal swanky atmosphere, this one was held at Marina Pointe with a far more casual tone?…that we wonder whether the Democratic party chairman purposefully ignored corporate donors or merely forgot to ask them?….that surprisingly absent from much conversation was the issue of consolidation?…that emcee, Vanderburgh County Sheriff Eric Williams was wearing a “Yes” button and Rick Davis a “No” button but otherwise few activity related to that issue?….that we look forward to how the Republican Reagan Day dinner this fall will compare in size and atmosphere?

IS IT TRUE that missing in action at last night’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner was Joe Donnelly who is challenging Republican Richard Mourdock for the United States Senate?…Donnelly made an interesting choice in selecting someone to speak in his behalf was performed by former Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel?…Mr. Donnelly has stated early in his campaign that he could not win the upcoming election unless he carries Vanderburgh County?…that his close association with the former Mayor may just put an end to that possibility?

IS IT TRUE there are according to a few good CCO Moles some serious impasses in the City of Evansville budget that are not very close to being resolved?…one of the considerations on the table is to have more session to the budget hearings and to schedule them over a couple of months due to the difficulties anticipated with these impasses?…the idea of changing the traditional August budget hearings to “preliminary” budget hearings or even planning sessions has been floated?…that it seems as though material packets are still being handed to the City Council members a few minutes before meetings rendering the discovery process moot as the members do not have even close to enough time to read them before being asked to make a judgment?…that politics does not have an emergency room and that taking the time to read the bill before passing it is a good attribute?…that passing without reading as the US Congress was instructed to do by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on the Obamacare bill, should not be tolerated in the Evansville City Council?…that this practice is why Pelosi is now the FORMER speaker and contributed to the election in 2010 of Congressman Larry Buschon to the Bloody 8th’s seat?

IS IT TRUE that the closing of the Dental Clinic for the indigent is sparking a feeling of disgust and confusion among nearly everyone who is asked?…even some members of the board of directors are getting into the fray for not having seen financial performance of the clinic during their time on the board?…the Evansville way with things like this is typically to seat a board of directors for ceremonial purposes but to let the executive committee run the show?…there are many instances where complete boards had the wool pulled over their eyes by their own executive committees?…that someone somewhere knew what the financial situation with the Dental Clinic was and either kept it quiet or was ignored?…waiting until there is a crisis seems to be standard operating procedure in the area and that someone was not as surprised by the closing as the other 117,000 of us were?…there are lots of ways to raise $200,000 through private channels and that with good full board involvement this may have been done without drama or closure of the free Dental Clinic?

Nationally Syndicated Political Cartoons – 8/10/2012

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These nationally syndicated cartoons are sponsored by Guthries Pharmacies


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USI breaks ground for state-of-the-art Teaching Theatre on Tuesday

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USI
The University of Southern Indiana will break ground for its highly-anticipated $16.7 million Teaching Theatre at 4 p.m. Tuesday, August 14.

A brief groundbreaking ceremony will include a performance by USI alumni (and spouses) Kensington Blaylock Eck ’08 and Brandon Eck ’10, followed by remarks from Dr. Linda L. M. Bennett, president, Ted C. Ziemer Jr., chair of the USI Board of Trustees, and Elliot Wasserman, chair of Performing Arts and director of Theatre. The ceremony will be held at the future site of the theatre, next to University Center East on University Boulevard.

After the ceremony, a reception will be held in the newly renovated Loft on the second level of University Center West. USI alumni and friends are welcome to attend.

The Teaching Theatre will be constructed using locally-sourced and recycled materials such as those utilized in the construction of University Center East – clay pipe from Can Clay Corporation of Cannelton, chair legs from Jasper Chair Company, and Bedford limestone. In addition, the theatre will include a sound baffle system with acoustic panels created with Toyota Sienna dashboards donated by Princeton-based Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Inc.

The Teaching Theatre’s red sandstone exterior is an homage to the Smithsonian Institution’s Castle. Built in 1855, it is the oldest building on the National Mall. Congressman Robert Dale Owen (son of Robert Owen, founder of the second utopian experiment at New Harmony) was chair of the Smithsonian Building Committee. His brother, geologist David Dale Owen, recommended it be built from red sandstone. Both Owens resided in New Harmony for a time, and USI is one of the sponsors of Historic New Harmony, an initiative to create and retain interest in the history and current life of the village.

Like UC East, the Teaching Theatre was designed by Holzman Moss Bottino Architecture of New York. It will have a thrust stage with additional staging areas incorporated into the walls, a shallow proscenium to allow for greater sightlines, exceptional natural acoustics, and state-of-the-art light and sound technology.

“We will become the premiere theatre program in the state and region,” Wasserman said. “We already have the programs and now we’ll have the facilities to match.”

View a virtual tour of the new Teaching Theatre.

The general contractor is Empire Construction, mechanical contractor Deig Brothers Construction, and electrical contractor Alva Electric with mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering by Hafer Associates. Estimates are that more than 100 construction jobs will result from the two-year project.

The Teaching Theatre is scheduled for completion in the fall of 2014. Plans are also in the works for a theatre support building with costume and set shops.

The last USI groundbreaking was for University Center East in spring 2009.