By Jim Redwine

BLISS

Hurricane Sandy knocked out twenty-five percent of the cell phone coverage in New York City. Land lines were immediately elevated from anachronisms to necessities. People who had never used a pay phone were converted from techies to dummies.
The national media reported numerous instances of people standing non-plussed in front of artifacts reminiscent of Easter Island. As one twenty-four year old man continued to pour quarters into a slot and berate the telephone for not responding, he failed to lift the receiver, other people encouraged him to push buttons and try different passwords.
My initial reaction to those reactions was to wonder how anyone could be so obtuse. Then I recalled a shower I attempted to take at a retrofitted motel in Reno, Nevada. After about fifteen minutes of standing in a tub type shower with hot water splashing only on my toes, I stepped out and called the front desk. The night clerk politely, but with barely hidden disdain, instructed me to pull down on the nozzle of the faucet.
That experience was not as humbling as the first time I made the acquaintance of a Turkish latrine in Volgograd, Russia. If you have had the pleasure of straddling an open pit without ready access to Charmin, you may be able to relate to my situation.
While bodily functions are involved in many of these out of touch dilemmas, we live in a modern world where numerous new devices have removed us from the ability to use older, albeit perhaps more reliable ones. I remember unlocking my 1956 Mercury with a key. Now my car locks are electronic and integrated with an alarm system. Ergo, about once a week I press the wrong button and a shrill alarm will awaken the area within a mile of where I am parked. So far, I have managed to shut off the alarm before I get arrested for stealing my own car.
These instances and a host of others have led me to wonder if instead of wasting our time and money on such conundrums as peace in the Middle East we should develop a federal agency whose charter is to catalogue all the arcane items that once were state of the art and have an 800 number, with a back up system, so we can access it in emergencies. You know, an emergency such as running out of gasoline in a storm and being unable to operate an electric gas pump. Some federal bureaucrat could explain to us how to put gas in a plastic boot then pour it out into our cars.
Such things as record players, televisions without remotes, mimeograph machines, recorders with plastic belts and tools without power cords may soon be as enigmatic as pay phones to modern society. Instead of studying the ancient pyramids for clues to past cultures, anthropologists need only go to the trash bins outside the Apple stores for clues to our ancient past of ten years ago.

EVANSVILLE (Nov. 12, 2012) – Vanderburgh County Treasurer Rick Davis reminds taxpayers that the Civic Center is open on Monday, Nov. 12, and property tax payments can be made at the Treasurer’s Office until 4:30 p.m. today and Tuesday. The property tax deadline for the Fall Installment of taxes is Tuesday, Nov. 13. In addition to going to the Civic Center today, taxpayers may still make payments using the county’s web site, pay by phone, or use the drop box in front of the Civic Center in order to avoid enhanced Civic Center security.

On Tuesday, the final day of property tax payment, taxpayers may use any one of 18 local Old National Bank branches. To pay at Old National Bank, you must have the bill that was mailed to your home in the spring. If you do not have your bill, you cannot pay at the bank.

The traditional property tax deadline, Nov. 10, fell on a Saturday this year. Due to the fact local banks observe Veterans Day today, Indiana property owners were given an additional 3 days to make their fall payment. That means the Indiana property tax deadline is Tuesday, Nov. 13 this year.

The Treasurer’s Office will open at 8 a.m. on Tuesday and will accept payments until 4:30 p.m. To avoid potential long lines, parking issues, and enhanced Civic Center security, Davis strongly recommended that property owners make their payments at any Old National Bank branch in the Tri-State Area on Tuesday.

Davis also suggested using the convenient drop box in front of the Civic Center or by mailing checks, made payable to the Vanderburgh County Treasurer, at PO Box 77, Evansville, IN 47701-0077. So long as your envelope is postmarked on or before Nov. 13, your payment will be considered on time, said Davis.

Davis reminded last-minute taxpayers that the drop box will be open until midnight on Tuesday, Nov. 13. Missing the Nov. 13 deadline will add a 5% penalty to your amount owed if you have no previous delinquencies. That amount increases to 10% after 30 days. If you miss the Nov. 13 deadline and already have a delinquency that penalty is an automatic 10% fee.

Payments can also be made online at www.vanderburghtreasurer.org with a major credit card for a 2.6% convenience fee or by using the office’s E-Check feature for a flat $1.95 fee. Payments are also accepted over the phone by calling 1-800-2PAYTAX (use the following “jurisdiction code” – 2405) with a major credit card and by paying a 2.6% fee. Visa Debit users are able to pay a flat $3.95 fee. Davis noted that the Vanderburgh County Commissioners recently signed a new contract with the county’s credit card provider that reduced credit card fees from 2.75% to 2.6% and reduced the E-check fee from $3 to $1.95. The new rates took effect on Nov. 1, just in time for the fall payment period rush.

If you cannot find your bill, visit the Treasurer’s Office web site and look up your information online. You can mail your check in with the correct payment amount so long as you put your parcel ID number in the memo section. You may also contact the Treasurer’s Office at 435-5248 for any questions concerning your property tax payment.

Below are the Old National banking centers accepting the Vanderburgh County Property Taxes on Tuesday, Nov. 13, with lobby hours from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

1. Evansville Main
2. Evansville North Side
3. Washington & Kentucky
4. West Side
5. 41 North
6. Hebron
7. University Square
8. North Brook
9. Darmstadt
10. Red Bank
11. Burkhardt Rd
12. Lakeside Commons
13. Bell Oaks
14. Boonville
15. Princeton
16. Mt Vernon, IN
17. Henderson, Ky., Main
18. Henderson, Ky., North

(EVANSVILLE, IN) – It was a saloon before Prohibition, and then it was converted into a restaurant. Over the years it alternated between serving food and liquor, eventually becoming a pet grooming business and most recently an eyesore.

On Tuesday, Mayor Winnecke will use a sledgehammer to take the first swing at the old Paddock Tavern, as demolition crews begin to raze the dilapidated structure at 1510 N. First Ave.

The building was recently purchased by Bootz Manufacturing, which opened a distribution center at 1600 N. First Ave. in 2010. Bootz President and CEO Pete DeSocio said the company completed extensive landscaping around the distribution center and was recognized with the 2011 Community Improvement of the Year Award by Keep Evansville Beautiful.

DeSocio said the company views purchasing and tearing down the old tavern as a community improvement project and a way to enhance safety. He said the building blocks the line-of-sight for truck drivers making deliveries to the distribution center off First Avenue, causing drivers to miss the entrance and have to turn around.

Floyd Staub, Inc., has been contracted to raze the structure. The work is set to begin tomorrow, Nov. 13, at 8 a.m. Staub will be closing the inside southbound lane of First Avenue for one hour. According to Historic Preservation Officer Dennis Au, the structure was built sometime between 1905 and 1910. Before Prohibition, it was Emerson B. Baldsdon’s Saloon. During Prohibition it was converted into a restaurant. One of the eateries was owned by Abraham Schick in 1929.
After Prohibition, in 1939, William Kirsch ran a tavern at the location.

Au said during World War II, George Kirsch (1942) and Nellie Piper (1944) operated restaurants in the building. In 1983, it was listed as Art’s Post and Paddock Tavern. After that, the building was vacant for almost a decade. In 1997, Country Charm Pet Grooming opened at the location. The building was purchased by Bootz Manufacturing in 2012.

Excerpts:

“Barack Obama’s victory this week was hoped for, and celebrated, in Canada as a triumph of Canadian-style Americanism.”

“This was an historic election, but not in ways that Americans or the Canadian left will celebrate. Mitt Romney was never a strong candidate, and any serious incumbent would have sent him to the proverbial dust-bin of history”

“A shocking $3-billion was spent to keep a failed administration and mediocre congressional leaders (House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) in place, operating a system that is very corrupt and is almost completely dysfunctional. Almost nothing worthwhile was said during the campaign about anything substantial. There is nothing in any of it to celebrate. An incumbent president was re-elected to a second term with fewer electoral votes than he had the first time — the first time this has happened.”

“The administration couldn’t run on its record, and so resorted to a smear campaign against Romney with a fear-mongering leitmotif about “reproductive rights.” None of the leading figures seemed able, right down to the nauseating treacle on election night, to stop the clap-trap about “the greatest power in human history’s greatest days are ahead of it” long enough to notice what a basket case America has become.”

“Public health and education standards have collapsed (though not those in the private sector); the whole country is being terrorized by a fascistic prosecution service; and the number of food-stamp recipients and the number of people with criminal records are coursing neck and neck toward 50 million apiece, a shocking figure in each case. The wealthiest country in history is bankrupt, with 50 million citizens in poverty and the entire middle class on an economic knife-edge.”

“Historically, when America has needed leadership, its greatest leaders have come forward. Not this year.”

“Lest any reader fear otherwise, I am not partisan, nor, overall, to the right of Obama. But I support a more consistent definition of American security interests than has been shown by his feckless attitude toward almost everything — including Iran’s Green Revolution and nuclear program, the failed “reset” with Russia; Libya and Syria. But at least he has avoided the open-ended adventurism of his predecessor.”

“I favour low income taxes and less regulation than the administration. But, as I wrote here on Wednesday and especially after spending three years in American prisons, I am a strong leftist on protection of human rights and liberties, restraint of rabid prosecutors and a radical effort to address poverty. Yet Obama’s “sharing the wealth” approach won’t accomplish anything.”

“This president has converted the $10-trillion of national debt accumulated in 232 years of American history (from 1776 to 2008) into $16-trillion now, and has financed most of it by selling bonds to the Treasury’s 100% subsidiary, the Federal Reserve, in exchange for bogus cyber-notes. This violates George Washington’s injunction to defend an indissoluble Union militarily and with a strong currency.”

“It isn’t debt at all; it is just a money supply increase of incendiary inflationary consequences, with a delay-fuse provided by the proportions of the economic slow-down the official extravagance has failed to alleviate, in which the 25% annual gasoline price increase and double-digit food and milk price increases are disguised by collapsed housing prices and minimal interest rates, and the recessionary pricing of manufacturers. It is a giant shell game, but there is nothing under any of the shells.”

“this President has added $17,000 of new debt for every man, woman and child in the country, and given no hint of how he proposes to prevent the U.S. currency from becoming toilet paper. And there are five million fewer Americans working than four years ago. The greatest and wealthiest nation in history is sliding into a more profound bankruptcy than any serious country has had since Weimar Germany, and almost the whole country seems to be in a delusional fantasyland.”

“Nothing short of higher taxes on discretionary transactions to shrink the deficit, lower income taxes to promote growth and recovery, a serious spending review including entitlement reform, a bi-partisan assault on medical costs (more than twice what they are in other advanced countries such as Canada, while providing inferior care for a third of Americans, a state of affairs that will not be much altered by Obamacare); and a radical reconstruction of the education and justice systems, will restart the long-inexorable rise of America. There is no sign of any of this being considered or that it is even politically possible.”

“For the first time, a combination of non-white minorities and whites who are invested personally, either emotionally or more often for tangible reasons, in the redistributive side of the political civil war between advocates of growth and of direct transfers of resources from those who have earned them (or inherited from those who did) to those who haven’t (regardless of mitigating circumstances), has eked out a clear victory. If American politics continues along these lines, the social strains, piled onto the funeral pyre of the national accounts, will put the fate of what has long been the world’s greatest nation in acute doubt.”

“the geopolitical vacuum incarnated by Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and the Republicans who sat the race out, will create a powerful and dangerous vortex. These will be perilous times.”

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/11/10/conrad-black-the-obama-disaster-part-ii/