It is now official. The members of the NWI Regional Development Authority have officially proven that they know absolutely nothing about economic development. They have shown to be either complete morons or completely on the take of the political people who appointed them. Thank G-D they showed their true colors, incompetency, on their first substantive decision they have to make.
Now NWI, I have told you over and over that selecting buffoons on the RDA, and the RDA itself, is created by buffoons, called NWI State Legislators is going to sink this area to oblivion.
The first decision these incompetents made was to give their millions of dollars to banks, NONE of which are locally owned. Now since economic development at its core means that you achieve more money coming in, in exchange for goods or labor, than is going out, they flunk the basic economic development 101 rule.
This cannot be solved by hiring consultants. That would be like hiring a private tutor for someone who is brain dead. Their second program is to spend millions of dollars on consultants, before they do anything. This is the usual way NWI politics works and in the end it achieves nothing but making alot of people wealthier; but not you or me.
So our illustrious RDA has decided to send money to NEW YORK CITY (JPMorgan Chase), CHICAGO (Harris Bank, Merchantile) and a third out of area bank (Horizon, South Bend). The two locally owned banks People's and Centier were completely left out. So the RDA in their first decision made good economic development decision for New York City, Chicago, and an eastern Indiana. None for NWI. These people are true imbeciles. You do not compete issues of economic development. This would be like competing to see which airport, Chicago's or New York's or Gary's will get the construction done. This is the kind of idiotic none economic development thinking that has gotten us into this mess in the first place.
They do not know economic development, they do not know banking, they absolutely know nothing past 1980. The best economic development for NWI is to boot them out of the area and the dumb politicians they rode in on. It can only go down hill from here.
At this point only a miracle can save us in NWI from the double talk of our own politicians and the politicians in Indianapolis.
It is time to vote all these people out of office and get them off our backs.
Maurice --
You bring up a good point regarding investing in Northwest Indiana banks, however, it is lost in the senseless derision.
On another note, you really should open up responses to your articles in an unmoderated fashion that way a fair debate can be fostered.
Posted by: John Mahoney | Friday, February 24, 2006 at 04:31 AM