When Fools Rush In to Diagnose Your Health

It is a real sad state of affairs when fools are elected to office who make up stories to explain their decisions.  The only worse fools are newspaper editorial writers who out loyalty to a job or political party close their eyes to this stupidity and support the fools. 

This is the case with the babbling of the Mayor of Hammond, McDermott, Jr., about getting rid of the Hammond Health Department.  His arguments are basically two fold.  One, it is a unique state of affairs in Indiana that a City has a health department.  In the whole State, only the Cities of Hammond, Gary, and East Chicago have city health departments, which they fund.  Two, the health department, like all services should be shared by all the citizens of Lake County because everyone benefits and there is a "county" health department duplicating the service.

The first point is factually correct; but, meaningless, even deceiving in the context of the argument to shift the Hammond Health Department to the Lake County Health Department.  Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago used to be, the largest cities in Indiana.  In no other county in the State did you have two, never mind three, of the largest cities in one county.  Marion County has the City of Indianapolis, Allen County has the City of Ft. Wayne, and St. Joseph's County has the City of South Bend.  In each county there is only one large city.  So when one speaks of the health department of the county it is synonymous with the health department of the one large city in the county.  As a matter of fact, today Marion County and the City of Indianapolis are just about synonymous with unigov.

Further there are no cities in Indiana like Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago with its industrial history and significant minority populations since the 1900s.  (A possible exception is Terre Haute.  But again that is one city within a county.)  These three industrial cities with their minority populations have always and continue to have unique health requirements that most rural and suburban areas of the county do not. 

The second point has already been answered to a great degree.  There are unique requirements and therefore costs associated with the needs of Hammond, Gary, and East Chicago.  The citizens of those cities uniquely benefit from their own health departments.  Those benefits do not accrue to the citizens of the rest of the County.

It should also be noted that the citizens of those three cities receive unique financial benefits that the rest of the citizens of Lake County do not.  They each receive gambling boat revenues for one.  How much are they increasing their sharing with the rest of the County?  How about the sanitary district?  Why not share with the rest of the County the control of Lake Michigan's water? 

No other Mayor is following in Mayor McDermott's footsteps.  Why is he coming up with this idea?  The simple and most straight forward answer is that all health departments have State and Federal Standards that he cannot breach, like hiring his father.  So the money is not in his control to misuse and abuse, consequently why bother having it.

Out of all the possible reductions and sharing plans the fools have decided on the only one that is truly unique to Hammond and the only one which they cannot easily misuse for their own gain.  Now do you really wonder why the Hammond Health Department has been on the block for three years?

Comments

[Hammond Citizen]

The fact that McDermott is again pushing to get rid of the Health Department shows exactly what political party he lies with. This is a republican move by a true republican. Wake up Hammond!! HE was born a republican, raised a republican and is still a republican. He is pushing his republican agenda with the help of the democratic ticket and he won't stop until he has taken every last dime he can from the city of Hammond. VOTE HIM OUT.