INDIANAPOLIS – Today a federal court in Florida heard the arguments of a group of 20 states – including Indiana – in their legal challenge to the new federal health care law. Attorney General Greg Zoeller, who joined the lawsuit on behalf of Indiana in May, issued this statement:

“Indiana and 19 other states who brought this legal challenge ask the court to decide a fundamental question: Can the federal government require individuals to purchase a private health insurance policy or face a penalty? This individual mandate is unprecedented, and raises the specter of what other financial products the federal government might seek to compel individuals to buy regardless of whether they want to or can afford to. Our bringing a respectful legal challenge is the means by which this question about the proper role of federal government eventually can be asked of and answered by the United States Supreme Court,” Zoeller said.

“We also are heartened by the fact that Virginia was successful this week in its separate legal challenge to the federal health care law. Virginia’s challenge had raised legal arguments similar to those in our case in Florida: that the individual mandate to purchase insurance is unconstitutional. The federal court that heard Virginia’s case agreed, and struck down the individual mandate. Although our case is heard in a different court and raises other issues, the same line of legal reasoning has withstood a crucial test,” Zoeller said.

In today’s case in federal court in the Northern District of Florida, U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson heard arguments on the merits of the case. The plaintiffs include Indiana, Florida and 18 other states as well as two private individuals and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). The U.S. Department of Justice represents the federal government defendants. The court is expected to rule sometime early in 2011. From there, the case is likely to be appealed to a federal circuit court of appeals, and from there potentially to the United States Supreme Court.

From the start of the litigation, Zoeller has spent no additional tax dollars on the legal challenge beyond his office’s regular budget that the Legislature previously approved in 2009. Indiana did not pay a legal fee to join the lawsuit. No outside legal counsel was used; Indiana’s legal work has been performed by a salaried employee of the Attorney General’s office who would have been paid the same regardless of whether Indiana participated. No one from the Attorney General’s Office traveled to Florida today for the courtroom arguments; instead, Solicitor General Thomas M. Fisher monitored the court proceedings by phone from Indianapolis through a court teleconference.

Before announcing in March that he would join the multistate legal challenge to the new federal law, Zoeller in February prepared a 55-page report on and analysis of the federal healthcare legislation at the request of U.S. Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana. The Attorney General’s report to Lugar is found here:

http://www.in.gov/portal/news_events/files/IN_Atty_Gen_Impact_Analysis_of_the_Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act.pdf

\Tickets On-Sale Monday, December 13th at 10:00AM
Prices: Adult $20.00 & Children $5.00 + Additional Fees

Tickets available at the Roberts Stadium Box Office, All Ticketmaster Outlets,
www.ticketmaster.com, charge by phone 1-800-745-3000

Evansville, IN- Feld Motor Sports℠ announced today that tickets are now on sale for Advance Auto Parts Monster Jam® Thunder Nationals®, coming to Roberts Stadium Friday and Saturday, Jan. 7 and 8 at 7:30 p.m. both nights. The event will feature Monster Jam monster trucks Maximum Destruction® and BatmanTM, who are making their debut appearance in Evansville this year. Also featured will be Raminator, Rammunition, Quadzilla and Stomper.

On Saturday, Jan, 8, from 4:30 – 6 p.m. join us for the Party in the Pits. Fans with a Saturday night ticket will have the opportunity to get a view of the trucks up close and meet the drivers of the massive monster trucks. Pit Passes are available at select Dairy Queen locations.

Follow us on . Also, sign up on our web page www.smgevansville.com to receive our E-blasts containing concert announcements, discounts and group sales offers!

Spencer County and Southwest Indiana to Benefit from Jobs Created from Investment

ROCKPORT, Indiana – After four years of planning and negotiation, Indiana’s program to become a national leader in homegrown clean energy production took a big step forward today.

Governor Mitch Daniels made the announcement after the Indiana Finance Authority (IFA) Board voted unanimously to approve a $2.65 billion project to build a new generation substitute natural gas plant in Spencer County, bringing hundreds of permanent and 1,000 construction jobs to southern Indiana and providing savings to energy customers.

“We’re out to pay Hoosiers instead of people elsewhere for the energy we need. We’re out to protect ratepayers against the likelihood of higher long-term gas prices. We’re out to put people to work in rural Indiana. And we’re out to become a leader in the high-tech field of cleaner energy. This project does all that, and it was worth all the work of the four years it took to get here,” said the governor.

The proposed substitute natural gas (SNG) plant would:

Bring $2.65 billion in private investment to southern Indiana for the plant.

Guarantee at least $100 million of savings in today’s dollars but likely be substantially more based on existing public forecasts.

Produce 1,000 construction jobs, 200 full-time jobs at the plant, and 300 mining jobs.

Operate with 99 percent fewer pollutants than a traditional coal plant.

Be designed to capture 90 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions.

According to the agreement, IFA will enter into a 30-year contract with Indiana Gasification, LLC, a subsidiary of Leucadia National Corporation, to purchase 38 million MMBtus of substitute natural gas – approximately 17 percent of the total used by non-industrial customers in the state—when SNG production begins in late 2015.

Among the benefits of the plant:

IFA will purchase gas at a formulaic price for 30 years, providing Hoosier energy customers an insurance policy against jumps in the price of natural gas. The plant will be built and operated by Indiana Gasification, which will assume the entire risk for construction and operation.

Indiana Gasification is required to provide a $150 million reserve to protect Indiana ratepayers during times when the price of SNG goes above the market price for natural gas. Indiana’s coal resources will be used to produce SNG, essentially the same as the natural gas which is currently used to heat many Hoosier homes.

In addition to SNG sold under contract to the IFA, the plant will produce additional SNG and other byproducts (sulfuric acid, argon, and other rare gases) that will be sold to generate incremental revenues, half of which will be passed on to benefit the ratepayer. Vitreous slag, which is one of the byproducts of the facility, will be given to the state for free and used for other processes such as building roads.

In a state emergency, the IFA has the right to direct the physical gas for use anywhere it deems necessary in the state.

The plant is designed to capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide it produces as a co-product with the SNG. Indiana Gasification intends to sell compressed carbon dioxide as a liquid and transport it to the Gulf Coast to be used in enhanced oil recovery.

In 2006, Daniels began discussions with a group about constructing a SNG facility in Indiana. Subsequently, legislative sessions of the general assembly enabled the contract, which was announced today. The enacted legislation authorizes the IFA, on behalf of the state, to enter into negotiations for 30-year contracts for the purchase and sale of SNG for the benefit of Indiana customers.

The IFA has now completed its negotiations and will file a petition to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC) for approval of the agreements related to this project. Indiana Gasification is in the final stages of negotiating its loan guarantee with the U.S. Department of Energy, which is critical to meet the terms established in the agreement. Depending on the completion of the IURC process and the federally mandated environmental impact study, construction is set to commence in early 2012.

An executive summary along with the forms of agreements may be found on the IFA’s website at: http://www.in.gov/ifa

Audio from today’s announcement, which the governor participated in live via Skype, can be found at the following link: http://www.in.gov/gov/files/Audio/121610.mp3

Included is a question and answer session with Governor Daniels and Indiana Public Finance Director Jennifer Alvey.

Source: Office of the Governor

Breaking the Poverty Habit with Disruptive Innovation

Al Doerksen, CEO
International Development Enterprises

The thing about poverty is that people get trapped for generation after generation by expectations of same old same old. “We are poor, we have always been poor and it is our destiny to be poor. It is our caste. It is our class. It is our future.”

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote about this in The Nature of Mass Poverty, first published in 1979. He wondered why some groups had stayed poor for centuries. He found that many poor societies simply accommodate their poverty. He found that many of the poor found it easier to accept the status quo than to contemplate an alternate better future.

He used these observations of expectations also to explain why post World War II injections of Marshall Plan cash were so successful but why subsequent injections of foreign aid cash in developing countries have not always been successful.

In Galbraith’s experience, only a minority of the poor were able to imagine a better future and make the positive moves to get there.

Times have changed, to a degree, since the 1970’s. More of the poor have received an education. More than that, the widespread availability of television, cell phones and the internet have allowed millions of poor people develop new expectations, new visions and new hopes.

Innovation, at least the right kind of innovation, can propel these hopes to reality. We are speaking, in fact, of disrupting generations of hopelessness and misery, and creating the opportunities for changing the rules, changing the expectations, changing the measures, changing the outcomes, changing the future. These technologies are rightfully named “disruptive technologies”. They properly disrupt the expectation traps of the past and replace them with well-founded expectations of improved incomes and livelihoods along with accelerated hope and visions for the future.

Creating such “disruptive innovations” is both a privilege and our duty, especially if we believe that the poverty traps faced by too many millions is both reprehensible and unnecessary. In some contexts, “revolution” is a negative experience. At other times, it is entirely positive. (It might depend on how many people get hurt!) Likewise, some disruptions are also negative, but at other times, many disruptive innovations are nothing but positive, and we should embrace them.

I’m thinking of a small scale farmer we just visited in Ziway. His family had been poor for a long time. Along came a disruptive innovation, a rope pump. Not exactly intended for irrigation, it worked just fine anyway. What came out of the pump wasn’t just water, however. New hopes came pouring out. Within months this farmer had increased his land under production/irrigation, and had acquired a diesel pump. The rope pump had disrupted generations of despair, and had rewritten the future. It made me proud to be with IDE. It made me believe in the power of disruptive innovation. Without apology.

YWCA Seeking Nominations for its “100 Years, 100 Women” Honors

(Evansville, IN) The YWCA of Evansville today announced that it is seeking nominations from the
community for its 100 Years, 100 Women honors.

The YWCA of Evansville was founded on March 3, 1911. Next spring the YWCA will celebrate 100 years
of service to women and children in the Evansville community. To commemorate this historic
milestone, the YWCA will honor 100 women who, over the past 100 years, have made significant
contributions to the community in the areas of Women’s Empowerment, Social/Racial Justice, Arts,
Education, Business/Professions, Philanthropy/Volunteerism, Education, and Government/Public Service.
This special recognition will be the cornerstone of the YWCA’s annual Tribute to Achievement dinner in
2011. The YWCA invites the community to nominate a woman whose contributions to the community
have made a lasting impact in her field.

“There are so many incredible women whose hard work, passion, and generosity have created and
supported institutions, reforms and social services that have molded Evansville into the great city that it
is today,” says Erika Taylor, CEO of the YWCA.

Forms are available at www.ywcaevansville.org and at the YWCA. The deadline for submitting nominations for the 100 Years, 100 Women honors is February 1, 2011. Posthumous nominations are welcomed.

To inaugurate its centennial celebration, the YWCA is also inviting 100 women to join the Women
Empowering Women giving level by contributing $100 towards the YWCA’s mission of eliminating
racism and empowering women.

Attorney Gayle Gerling Pettinga was so inspired by Women Empowering Women that she offered to
match the first 100 women who donate $100 by January 31, 2011. These gifts combined with Gayle
Gerling Pettinga’s match will help the YWCA continue to empower women for another 100 years.
“When I heard about the YWCA’s novel fundraising challenge to celebrate its 100 year anniversary, I
knew immediately that I wanted to be part of it. 100 women each giving $100 to celebrate 100 years of
women empowering women is more than fundraising, it is symbolic of what the YWCA stands for – a
solid block of women giving the gift of opportunity to other women, ” says Gayle Gerling Pettinga.
Donations may be sent payable to the YWCA at 118 Vine St., Evansville, IN 47708.

The YWCA is also looking for YWCA photos, memorabilia and stories from the past 100 years. Those
who wish to share a special story about the impact the YWCA has made in their lives or the lives of
others may send their stories to 118 Vine St., Evansville, IN 47708 or via email to
etaylor@ywcaevansville.org.

The YWCA is planning several events to celebrate its 100th Birthday and is proud to announce that Old
National Bank will be its lead centennial sponsor.

The YWCA is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice,
freedom and dignity for all. The YWCA has been serving the Evansville area since 1911 and from its
inception has provided housing and services for women and girls. The Evansville YWCA is a member of
the YWCA of the U.S.A., the oldest and largest women’s membership movement in the country.
Over the years, YWCA programs have changed to meet the evolving needs of women and girls. In
1979, the YWCA opened the first domestic violence shelter in Evansville. Other current programs
include a Transition Housing Program for women in recovery, Emergency Shelter for homeless women
and children, an after‐school and mentoring program, called Live Y’ers, for at‐risk girls in grades three
through 12, Summer Fun day camp for school‐aged children, a Food Pantry station, and a warm water
swim program for those coping with arthritis and other physical difficulties. Special programs and
events for the general public are also offered. Visit www.ywcaevansville.org for more information

Stark Differences in City and County Exposed along with the Myth that Evansville is Keeping Pace with Other Places

The census data is out an we found a wonderful interactive map that is on the New York Times website. To access Evansville information first type an Evansville zip code in the box provided then click on the word “go”. After that you can resize the map to suit your own purposes by adjusting the scroll bar to the right of the zip code input box. You can then click on the “view more maps” pull down and study economic, educational, housing and race data as much as you like.

This is quite captivating but also terrifying from a perspective of the educational and economic condition of in particular the City of Evansville. Of the over 30 census tracts in the City of Evansville only 5 saw income gains from 2000 to 2009 and those were in very low income areas. One census tract registers ZERO for college graduates and ten others have less than 10% college graduates living in them. The housing data is typically flat over the 10 year period with the exception of tract 17 where the new Evansville Arena is that saw a 22% drop in values and the historic district that has seen much reclamation work that enjoyed a 38% increase.

The most sobering statistic that jumps out after looking over all of the maps is the stark differences between the state of the City of Evansville as compared to the state unincorporated Vanderburgh County. The County has sharply higher incomes, housing values, and levels of education. The County added a couple of thousand people while the City of Evansville continued to experience declines in population in spite of a couple of annexations.

http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?hp?hp

IS IT TRUE that the City of Louisville held a planning session in 1997 to set goals for the first decade of the new millennium?….that there was a written goal for the University of Louisville to increase the graduation rate?….that the graduation rate increased from 32% to 49% during that time?…that there was a written goal to increase the Research Funding at UL?…that the goal was exceeded?….that there was a written goal to raise the high school graduation rate to national levels?…that the goal was achieved?…that the written goal of expanding the job base in the healthcare and logistics fields was achieved?

IS IT TRUE that Louisville did not meet all of its goals?…that the written goal that called for 10% population growth in 10 years was not achieved?…that the written goal of raising the percentage of college graduates in the general population to national averages was not achieved?…that raising the average wage to a level that exceeds the national average by 10% was not achieved?….that it has been cited that Louisville’s failure to expand the number of college educated workers as it planned to do is the biggest impediment to achieving the last decades goals?….that the gap in educated professionals with respect to peer cities is seen as the biggest hurdle faced by Louisville in the coming decade.

IS IT TRUE that the City of Louisville spent the money and took the time to develop goals for the decade?….that only by setting goals and using continuous feedback can progress be planned and measured?….that Evansville should be taking the opportunity of the new decade to do some real, measurable, and transformational planning and goal setting?….that the Downtown Evansville Master Plan still includes a baseball stadium where The District now stands?…that there has been no continuous feed back with respect to that plan?….that many things have happened downtown with some in the plan and some not?….that a downtown plan neglects the 98% of the population that does not live downtown?….that there are no publicized goals to achieve for the entire City of Evansville for the next decade?…that if there ever was a plan for the decade ending now, that it was not given a second thought and is gathering dust on a shelf somewhere?

IS IT TRUE that data from the new census is just becoming available?….that the 2010 census will show that the City of Evansville has once again lost people with a population drop of about 4%?….that educational attainment has seen little change in the last 10 years?….that the median earnings adjusted for inflation have decreased slightly?….that the poverty rate has increased by 20%?…that a male with a professional degree in Evansville earns 22% more than a female with a professional degree?…that when all wage earners are considered males over 25 with earnings are paid 42% more than females in Evansville?….that Evansville should follow Louisville’s example of setting goals that lead to proactive actions to increase our population, increase our earnings, attract or retain more educated professionals, establish some venture capital fund, and reward our female wage earners as we do our male ones?…that having a 42% gap between the average earnings of males and females just seems wrong?

IS IT TRUE that it has now been 1,313 days since the announcement was made on May 14, 2007 that the McCurdy Hotel was to be refurbished into luxury apartments?…that it has now been 1,168 days since the Evansville Redevelopment Commission at the request of Mayor Weinzapfel approved the spending of $603,000 to purchase the parking lot.

IS IT TRUE that there are now 697 days remaining in the two years that the EPA had given the City of Evansville to present an acceptable solution to the Combined Sewer Overflow problem?…..that this plan is an expensive and complex endeavor that needs immediate attention to avoid the embarrassment and expense of another round of fines?

IS IT TRUE that this is a link to Louisville’s report card on its goals?
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20101213/BUSINESS/312130013/-1/extras10/Louisville+area+lost+24+600+jobs+from+2000-2009+as+plans+for+prosperity+falter

IS IT TRUE that the City County Observer will look further into what Evansville’s performance has been relative to the nation?….that we will be soliciting goals for Evansville for the next decade?

Goal Setting Exercise Leads to Measurable Accomplishment

The United States has set a goal of acquiring twenty percent of energy needs from wind power by the year 2030. More intensive aims have the United States obtaining twenty percent of the Eastern grid (or nearly half the country) energy by the year 2024. Whether or not the country as a whole will meet these goals is yet unknown, however, the State of Texas has already exceeded their energy targets.
The State of Texas aimed to have 2,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2009. By 2015 the state intended to have 5,000 megawatts of energy from renewable sources. Finally, by the year 2025, Texas aimed to have 10,000 megawatts of energy from renewable sources. The state has managed to exceed each and every goal early.

The original goal of 2,000 megawatts for the year 2009 was actually met by the year 2006. The 2025 goal was reached in 2010, fifteen years earlier than aimed for. Today, Texas has more than 10,000 megawatts of renewable energy capacity. The majority of this energy capacity has been met through wind power which will enable the country as a whole to meet their target by 2030 if growth continues.

Overall, wind power contributed 9,915 megawatts of energy as of 2009. Other renewable sources also contributed, including hydropower which added 33 megawatts of energy. Biomass sources also contributed, including 80 megawatts from landfill gas projects and 40 megawatts from assorted other projects. Solar power contributed the least with only 1 megawatt of energy coming from solar facilities.

The renewable sector in Texas continues to expand and will be a pivotal player in the nation’s renewable energy progress.