IS IT TRUE that we are amazed to hear that the Evansville Fire Chief is planning to remodel an office space located in the administration building so he could relocate the Assistant Chief’s office for a mere $35,000?…that Chief Connelly’s reason for spending this large amount of taxpayer dollars is to 1) Improve security/efficiency and 2) Allow more storage space for Quartermaster system and staff?…this comes on the heels of learning that if consolidation should pass that there is a plan to do roughly a $1 Million remodel to assure that a combined council of 15 members has a place to do business as no such place currently exists in the Civic Center?

IS IT TRUE that it seems like Fire Chief Connelly would like to spend $35,000 to provide the Assistant Fire chief with a “plush office” instead of purchasing much needed washers and extractors to put in every fire house so reduce the threat of our fire fighters getting cancer from chemicals on fire fighter clothing? …that the CCO totally agrees with City Councilmen Adams and McGinn that the Washers and Extractors should be included in this year’s budget?

IS IT TRUE that the Evansville taxpayer are paying 2 people $160,000 a year to make sure take the scoreboards and message center at the Ford Center works?..that the Ford Center pays 2 firemen $30 per hour to do a fire watch during events?…that the Evansville Zoo lost $3.2 millions of dollars in 2012?…that City Controller Russ Lloyd Jr. estimates that the Zoo will lose $3.4 million of dollars in 2014?

IS IT TRUE that Mayor Winnecke was looking into increasing city benefits for “partners/significant others” but decided he didn’t have time to see if the city can afford to add it to this year’s budget?…he promised to address it in the 2014 budget?…that the Mayor gave a speech at” PFLAG Candidate” night in 2011 that he would look into extending city benefits to “partners/significant others”?

IS IT TRUE that it was reported last year in the Wall Street Journal that 105 referendums were held in the United States between 1902 and 2010 to consider proposals to consolidate cities and counties?… only 27 of these proposals were approved by voters?… Evansville, Indiana and Vanderburgh County, Indiana are set to vote on consolidation on November 6, 2012? This is the fourth time since 1959 that this issue has been brought up including discussions in 1974 and 2002?…that some are saying that consolidation will bring local governance “into the 21st Century”?…that seems a bit melodramatic as it was the 20th Century when centralized planning on a national level came crashing down with the failure of the USSR?…that the fact remains that few places have consolidated and that a darn small number of them can point to tangible improvements?…the CCO will be putting together a printed pre-election PAPER as opposed to our daily online publications?…that we would like to solicit scholarly articles of up to 1,000 words from local people who wish to share their thoughts on this most important referendum?

IS IT TRUE the Columbus Dispatch of the capital of the uber-swing-state Ohio has endorsed Republican Governor Mitt Romney for President of the United States?…this endorsement was made the day before the third and last presidential debate?…the whole premise behind the endorsement has to do with the perceived abilities to “lead the nation out of economic malaise” better than President Obama has demonstrated in his four years on the job?…the entire text of the editorial is on the following link and is as strong in its assessments of the President’s record on the economy as the CCO has been on the Weinzapfel Administration’s bumbling over the downtown hotel, the McCurdy and enough GATES to lock down the city?…given the location of Columbus and the significance of Ohio in the election, this cannot be good news for President Obama?

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2012/10/21/for-president.html

IS IT TRUE that the Obama campaign has come up with another cute little word worthy of sitting alongside SNEGAL and that word is Romnesia, signifying forgetfulness of past positions as Republican Mitt Romney is regularly accused of?…that this is funny and has some ring of truth to it even for stauch supporters of Romney?…there should be another form of forgetfulness that is pretty much the same thing and it is spelled OBAMANESIA?…the definition of OBAMANESIA is the degree to which President Obama and his supporters are rationalizing away or forgetting the wide gap between what the President pledged to do in his 2008 campaign and what he actually did during his time in power?…the following three paragraphs identify some very clear performance metrics that come up very short of what candidate Obama campaigned on and what President Obama did?…what is good for Romnesia is also good for Obamanesia?…as some wise people have said in the past, we must NEVER FORGET and our prospective leaders should not be allowed to do so either?

IS IT TRUE between 2008 and 2011, federal welfare payments have jumped 32 percent, food stamps have surged, with 71 percent more spending on the program in 2011 compared with 2008 and health payments, principally Medicaid, have climbed 37 percent?… in fiscal year 2012, ending Sept. 30, the government spent nearly $11 for every $7 of revenues taken in?…the exact figures are $2.5 trillion in tax revenues and $3.5 trillion in spending, in other words, it spent 44 percent more than it had coming in?… the government under the Obama administration received $6.8 trillion in taxes and spent $10.7 trillion — 56 percent more than it had available?

IS IT TRUE that massive amounts of capital are being drained from the private sector and transferred to the government?… this is one reason why American businesses have gone on a virtual capital-investment strike?… small businesses, in particular, can’t get the capital being drained by Uncle Sam because banks and the Chinese have no incentive to loan money to small businesses with our own federal government loaning them money at ZERO PERCENT and borrowing it back at an average of 3%?… after four years of trillion-dollar deficits, both businesses and individuals have held back investment because they fear massive tax increases are on the way?… that’s a big reason why the so-called recovery has been so weak?

IS IT TRUE in our new entitlement nation, growing government dependency is ruining the very moral fiber and backbone of America’s traditional work ethic?… that increasingly, the feds are paying more to notwork, rather than providing after-tax incentives to go back to work?… Mitt Romney has taken a lot of flak for raising the issue of growing government dependency?…however inartfully he may have expressed his view, his basic story is correct that the sheer volume of spending going on in this country is bringing us ever closer to bankruptcy?… that it may be cynical but the explosion of people who are getting some kind of subsidy from the federal government lends credibility to the assertions of some people that the Obama campaign is trying to buy the election with this entitlement explosion?…the only real plan that we know for certain with respect to the next four years is that President Obama wants to raise taxes in order to spend more on government unions and entitlement programs?… this is not only redistribution, but it could be vote-buying, too?