Northwest Indiana Comical Politics

NWI's Local Culture Wars

The "culture wars" have hit NWI and Purdue Calumet in full-force.  Recently, a local paper, The Times, reported a story about a former student, a practicing Christian and member of the LDS, who is suing Purdue Calumet for religious harassment.  This story has produced considerable local interest, judging by the number of "comments" it has generated.

But, this story is even more explosive than that.  It has all the "trappings" of a national controversy.

The former student is being represented by a national organization, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).  It is speculation on my part, but I would think that the ADF has many requests for assistance and that it has real choices about what cases it decides to pursue. This leads me to surmise that the ADF thinks that there is a legitimate case here.  One needs to remember that Purdue University Calumet's decision makers are not spending their own money if they harass and behave badly; they are spending the taxpayers money.  So there is no incentive for them to minimize the negative consequences.  ADF on the other hand has many lawyers, volunteers and money; nonetheless it is theirs to manage and they only get more if they win and have an effect.

Hammond Residents Bailing Themselves Out

It was not suppose to happen.  The massive flooding of basements and houses in Hammond was suppose to be history.  It is not history. 

The City has spent in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars on redoing all the streets, including the sewer and the storm drains and pipe system.  These are suppose to be all new and capable of taking care of a "storm," such as we had.  Otherwise, why bother?  Storm drains and facilities are suppose to take care of the exact problem that happened: excess water coming from the sky, otherwise called rain.

A city is not just bricks and mortar it is also the leadership and the capabilities of the appointed people.  By these very events, the City is shown to have become completely mediocre in its functionality.  The Sanitary District, dominated by new appointments, may not even be sure where Lake Michigan is. What is the big surprise with storm water coming from Highland and Munster? That is the service that these citiies pay the Hammond Sanitary District for. But, it has done so well it is now recommended to get all the sanitation functions of the City in the new budget.  Good luck Hammond Citizens!!! 

You cannot get the half a billion dollars back and no one is going to help with the flooding.  But, soon you will be able to buy a rubber boat, and ducks, at your local Cabellas.

Hammond Budget Another Big Lie

The recently released budget of the City of Hammond constitutes what is classically referred to as the "Big Lie."  The traditional "Big Lie" says one thing but does another.  It is a classic game played by tribal politicians with their "tribe" to achieve one set of goals while seeming to be forward looking.

The City's budget big lie is that somehow this budget helps the home-owning tax payers, the citizens, and everyone else in the City of Hammond by reducing their financial burden, while being creative and innovative in how the "new" budget is structured to not be so biased against property owners.

It does quite the opposite.  That is why it is called the "Big Lie." 

• It immediately increases the tax costs to homeowners and all property owners in the City.
• It increases unemployment in the City.
• It reduces the services to the citizens of the City of Hammond.
• It expands the property tax growth for the citizens of Hammond over the next four years.

Since every piece of property in Hammond, just like other cities, partakes of sanitation and garbage services, shifting the service to the Hammond Sanitation District and having them increase their "service fee" (read tax) only expands the cost to each property owner in Hammond.  Keep in mind that this new cost has no cap and exemptions to it like property taxes do.  The City's cost right now is $5.  Under the Sanitary District it will be $15 a month; but why not $35 a month next year?

Part of this shell game is to reduce the number of employees by over sixty.  Those people will be unemployed.  Are they all going to be non Hammond residents?  What is to prevent the Sanitary District from expanding the layoffs over time?

With less employees and no accountability through election for the sanitation, garbage, etc. services, by definition this will result in reduced service.  Certainly there is no incentive, such as competition, to improve City services.

The shift of sanitation and other services from being paid directly through property taxes by the property owners to being paid directly by the property owners as a "fee" to the Sanitation District allows for the illusion that if your property taxes stay the same they are not being increased.  In reality they are.  As a property owner (homeowner, landlord, or business owner), your cost of owning property in Hammond will substantially increase without one iota of improvement in the City. 

By the way, let us not forget that there is also a shift of cost to the Lake County tax payers for things like health services.  The property owners of Hammond will still pay for the health department services but they will pay for it through the Lake County Health Service.  The service legally must continue so everyone in Lake County, including the citizens of Hammond, will have to share the cost.

Since the City must spend their "new found" money somehow, the result will undoubtedly be an increase in the hiring of lawyers and consultants.  I can assure all of you citizens of Hammond that I will not be offered one of those cushy assignments.

Chris Morrow Reminds the Tribalists Why We are a Failure

The following letter to the editor was in today's Post-Tribune Newspaper. 

Answer to Tax Mess is Less Government

Well, Lake County, here we go again. Since people really don't care that their taxes are high, you're going to get hit again.

Now that we have tapped out on property taxes, we are going to allow an income tax.

Just when fairness was becoming reality, the wealthier communities will be pitching in to support the neglected northern communities. Our taxes aren't out of control. Our spending is in the Twilight Zone.

We keep adding layers of government, but the citizens see fewer services. We blame industry for paying less, but we never ask the politicians to spend less.

Apathy increases with the electorate and, in return, our taxes increase. We will continue to be a community of haves and have-nots because the have-nots continue to elect the same folks who aren't helping the situation.

The local media also is to blame as they continue to endorse the same people who created this mess.

People claim I'm a blowhard, but this blowhard debated the issues that needed to be discussed: less school spending, more government consolidation and more qualified individuals running for office.

I'd like to see an article on the number of college graduates who happen to be politicians, so we can see if we have intelligent enough people to find solutions for our serious problems.

Real leaders make difficult decisions; they don't just watch our communities crumble.

You need only look as far Highland and Griffith to see we are taxed too much. They are asking the hard questions.

Chris Morrow, Dyer

Universities Smug About Tax Woes of Hoosiers

I recently posted about how Purdue University is giving the finger to the Hoosier Tax Payers at the very time when many Hoosiers are facing the prospect of loosing their houses because of rising taxes.  Purdue Foundation, under the guise of being Purdue University a Hoosier institution, raised over $1.7 billion from private sources, none of it to help Hoosier tax payers such as myself.

Now it comes to light(according to The Chronicle of Higher Education), that Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis a year ago completed raising over a $1 billion in private funds, this in addition to what was raised by the Purdue Foundation and what is currently being raised by the Indiana University Foundation.  Not a single penny of all this money has gone to relieve the burden on Hoosier tax payers.

For example, over $160 million of Purdue's fund raising was dedicated to paying faculty salaries.  Now to any normal person that would indicate a lowered need for faculty money for West Lafayette and therefore a lowered State funding.  But no!!!  In the last legislative term, West Lafayette asked for, and received, substantially more money for the West Lafayette campus. 

It is also not like that the "foundations" are spreading the wealth, at least that would justify their actions to the Hoosiers taxpayers from the perspective of the whole State.  Almost none of the money is going outside of a small circle of friends around Indianapolis.  Purdue University Calumet is getting $5 million (that is with an "m").  Indiana University Northwest and Purdue North Central are getting significantly less, just enough to run the lawn mowers.  This by itself could be considered racist and it is.

By the way let us not forget the rest of the State and the Hoosier Tax Payers that are being left in the cold: South Bend, New Albany, Fort Wayne, Richmond, etc.  All pay taxes and have campuses and students that deserve a share of the pie without breaking the Hoosier tax payers who are now fighting for their very homes.

This elitist behavior by the State Universities must end and the Governor and State Legislature must retake control over them.  Let us not forget that there is no evidence that these large campuses, West Lafayette and Bloomington, have done very much to improve the conditions, economic and social, in the State,  As a matter of fact, most evidence is the other way.  Most states, e.g. Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin, are moving in the other direction, sharing the wealth.

It is now time for action, if not, Indiana will sink to the bottom five states in the United States, even below all the Southern states.  All that will be left is to assign someone to turn off the lights on their way out.

Purdue's Finger to Hoosier Tax Payers

When I was an undergraduate student at Purdue University, West Lafayette, the one outstanding symbol of the University's attitude was its mile-high smoke stack. This smoke stack built of bricks seemed to rise to the heavens and represented the swashbuckling attitude of the University and its Boilermaker students. It was affectionately known by all as Purdue's "finger-to-the-world."

The smoke stack was a vestige of the decades in which the coal fired heating plant was in the center of campus with the world's shortest train line to carry the coal to the plant. Our attitude, which the smoke stack represented, is that not only were we engineers and scientists and other type of brain heads we could still party with the best of them, our men were the most handsome and our women were smarter and prettier.  Even though our courses and degrees were the toughest in the Big-Ten, our teams, football under Coach Jack Mollenkopf and Basketball under Coach George King, would beat any of them.

The smoke-stack was Purdue's finger to the world because in spite of what everyone thought, we Boilermakers were a great contribution to the State of Indiana. Most of the people associated with the University were committed to the Hoosier State and believed in it; not the carpetbaggers we have today.

The smoke-stack was such a point of pride for decades of alumni, that when it was torn down for the more politically correct clock tower, the bricks were sold to alumni and friends to raise money for scholarships.

Now the carpetbaggers have given a new meaning to Purdue's finger-to-the-world. Purdue has flipped the proverbial finger at the very Hoosier taxpayers who support it and for whose benefit Purdue exists. It accomplished this by throwing a lavish over one million dollar party on itself in the middle of the worst tax crisis that Hoosier taxpayers and public officials are going through.

The party, reminiscent of French royalty just before the French revolution, was held in Mollenkopf indoor football arena to celebrate the completion of the $1.7 Billion fund-raising campaign. The party was first reported by the Lafayette Journal and Courier Newspaper (click on the link to see the original story), and it outlines what other items of educational value this money could have been spent on.

The newspaper article only reports $576,778 being spent. But this is very misleading. This amount is only the direct contracts that are known to be signed. This did not include indirect costs and direct State taxpayer funded costs that were included in the festivities but are lumped with other regular payments from State tax money. For example, once a contract is signed a group of people have to administer and manage them. Purdue knows that because it has many contracts with the Federal Government and it knows that there is about a 20% internal administrative cost added to these contracts for "running" them. This would right away add an additional $115,000. We are now up to $700,000.

Who paid for the electricity, water, telephones etc.? The money for these all comes from the University utility bill paid by you and I as Hoosier Tax Payers. Who paid to resurface the arena and the parking lots?  Who paid to direct traffic and handle the traffic jams?  The parking costs, and most of all the thousands of dollars of tax payer funded people time that was utilized, like those people needed to direct traffic, can not be separated from non-direct State funds. As a matter of fact the whole thing was paid by public money.

The University said that half the money came from the Purdue Research Foundation and half from the money raised in the fund raiser. All of the money is public money and belongs to Hoosier Tax Payers. Purdue University Carpetbaggers are somehow renaming monies raised in the name of Purdue University as private money because it was written to the Purdue Foundation. Most of the donors did not know of this scam. When they write their check to the Foundation it is a slush fund for the elite of the University; not to be confused with monies used for the good of the State of Indiana or even Purdue University. This in spite of the fact that the funds were raised solely under the name of Purdue University and under the banner of supporting a great Hoosier institution and consequently the people of that great State.

But no, the Foundation money is for the benefit of the Foundation. It is one of those trick organizations, such as they have in East Chicago, that the Indiana Attorney General is trying to get control over information and mis-spending in these quasi-private entities. Essentially they receive all of their money under the guise of being a public institution with public fiduciary responsibility; but, they spend their monies like a private for profit organization and insist on privacy and lack of transparency in their dealing because they claim they are "private".   The major activity of the Purdue Foundation is owning land and property in the State and remember they do not pay property taxes.  Guess who is stuck with the bill?  Me and you, the Hoosier Tax Payers!!!

The party that was thrown was for only 600 people.  You can do your own math at how elitist these people are for what they cost us Hoosier Tax Payers for each person.  The most common "rationale" for why the party was needed is that the people who gave the money expected it.  Nonsense.  People who give money in the millions do not expect a party; they get their names on buildings and endowed professorships.  In reality, the party was for the University higher-ups.  Why?  Because they could.  Just like the French Royalty before the revolution.

By the way do not be mistaken, not only was this party an embarrassment to Purdue and Indiana, it was an international embarrassment as it was even covered in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Party Tab for Purdue.

The money that was raised is doing nothing for the Hoosier Tax Payer because not a penny is going to reduce the burden placed on us.  For example, over $160 million was raised to pay for endowed professorships.  Did any of that reduce the demand Purdue made on the Hoosier Tax Payer at the legislature?  NO.  Purdue's endowment, the money it has to invest and use the interest for anything it wants, was over $1.5 billion in 2006.  Why has Purdue's burden on the Hoosier tax payer not been reduced, ever?

The reason is that the Purdue Foundation, like its sister the IU Foundation, are there to serve the "private" interests of the people in power in the Universities.  There is no accountability either in the Foundations nor for that matter on the Board of Trustees of Purdue or IU.  What have they done for you, Mr. Hoosier Tax Payer, lately?  Nothing, except have fun themselves at your expense. 

The numbers show that Purdue and IU have done nothing to stem the brain-drain out of the State.  They have done nothing to stem the employment exit out of the State.  To be realistic, the amount of tax dollars they consume, West Lafayette and Bloomington may very well be an overall drain on the State's economy.  The first quarter of 2007, Indiana was number two in the country in states loosing jobs.  Where were the big Universities?  Oh, I forgot, planning their million dollar party.

The number one state in job loss was Ohio.  They realized that this was occurring to a great extent because the universities were out of control and contributed to themselves and not to the state they were a part of.  As a consequence the Ohio Governor and legislature revamped the whole State of Ohio's higher education system of 36+ campuses into a more coordinated, responsive, and transparent system responsive to the people of Ohio.  This is their new web site: The University System of Ohio.  Indiana now has a chance to become number one in the Country in job loss while our universities party away.

Whether you think the universities are thumbing their noses at us Hoosier Tax Payers or "just" giving us the finger, it is time to take control back and make them accountable in totality; for every penny spent and how it benefits the Great State of Indiana, period.