Northwest Indiana Comical Politics

By Comparing Rochester and Gary, Freeman-Wilson lacks insight for Mayor of Gary

The major problem with Indiana politicians is that they routinely insist on revealing a lack of understanding about most issues.   

In elected public servants, it creates for disastrous public policy. Sadly, they are not being called to task.

A recent quote in an interview with a local media exemplifies this negative quality in Karen Freeman-Wilson as a Gary mayoral candidate.  This complete lack of knowledge, lack of understanding of the problems, and complete incompetence in thinking power is shown by the shallowness of her ideas and capabilities.

In this recent news story, Freeman-Wilson presented Rochester, N.Y., as a city after which Gary would emulate itself under her administration.  She said the two are similar because they both have suffered from a downturn in two major industries. Freeman-Wilson never indicates what these two industries are and I don't believe she knows.  She claims Rochester has responded to this situation, and Gary needs to as well like Rochester.

Where did she come up with this idea?  Rochester and Gary have so little in common that one wants to know what is she smoking?  Or is the reality in Gary in fact where no citizens care if their candidates or elected officials can present and sensible ideas.  The fact that Freeman-Wilson is being considered as a serious candidate would indicate that Gary would accept Bozo the Clown as a candidate.  For good or bad, neither Karen Freeman-Wilson or Bozo the Clown can hold a candle to Rudy Clay.

Let me tell you about Rochester — and, by the way, this is public information.Rochester has more than twice the population of Gary, with a median family income of $31,257. Its culture is closer to New England than to that of Gary. Rochester is the headquarters and home of a number of international businesses — Eastman Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Paychex and Xerox — whereas Gary cannot get a mom-and-pop grocery store to stay open.

The number one industry in Rochester is higher education, whereas, in Gary and Northwest Indiana, higher education takes a back seat.  An example of higher education institutions in the Rochester area are the University of Rochester, Rochester Institute of Technology, Monroe Community College, the Eastman School of Music, Alfred University, State University of New York at Brockport and SUNY Geneseo.  Higher education is what one can say without question Karen Freeman-Wilson has no understanding of nor has she been able to understand the economic policy implications of any of her ideas.

Rochester has become the world capital of imaging. The University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics is ranked No. 1 in the country, and the Rochester Institute of Technology has one of the best imaging science departments in the nation.

In 2005, the University of Rochester became the largest employer in the area, surpassing Kodak.

Gary is a Lost Cause

When Scott King was just elected mayor of Gary, he was the keynote speaker for the political science honor society’s induction ceremony at Purdue University Calumet. I am sure that Mayor King’s presentation was a version of his suburban “stump speech” at the time.  He was quite articulate and at that time still had the moral authority and the ideas that gave him a level of credibility that no political leader in Gary has had for over 40 years.

Two ideas that he presented at that time struck me then as making sense.  The first one is that to solve the problems of Gary he needed to have jobs created in Gary and jobs available for the high unemployment there. Providing jobs for the unemployed in Gary would solve the crime and poverty problems of Gary. His second point was that we live in one county and we are in this “boat” together. What affect Gary affects South County and therefore it behooves everyone, the north part of the County as well as the south part, to work together for the benefit of all County citizens.

These seemed reasonable and acceptable to me because at the time I was new to Northwest Indiana politics and the reality of its economic development, or lack thereof. Although my parents moved to Hammond in 1969, I had been away in Washington, D.C., where politics was played with real consequences and in spite of the perception outside the Beltway people where the best and the brightest.

During my time in Washington I worked with the best and the brightest of this Nation even if most of them were cutthroat. Politics and life were truly lived with the idea of taking no prisoners.  But the end result was that one had to always perform. The only question was what have you done for me today or what can you do for me in the future.  At the end of the day only performance and results counted; not your ability to look like a strutting peacock.  Former Mayor King was wrong. I still believed that my experience in Washington was more universal. It was not.  King gave us the strutting peacocks in the form of Clay and the RDA.

NWI does not have the best and brightest and the main reason for it is as a good friend of mine points out the ultimate goal of the politicians and civic leaders in NWI is mediocrity. Very few people want to stand out for talent and most of those who do leave.  Let us be honest. The problem with Gary is not lack of jobs; the problem with Gary is that its citizens without jobs are generally unemployable. No matter what jobs come to NWI they will never be offered to the unemployed of NWI because no one could hire them, even if they wanted to. They lack the rudimentary skills necessary for a modern job.

This is the truth that no one will tell the people of Gary.  No amount of economic development will help you. Scott King was wrong from the beginning Gary was already lost to its citizens and ten years later it still is. Now Gary is going to be an anchor around the neck of the rest of Lake County through Rudy Clay. Clay is not only the Mayor of Gary he is also the head of the Democratic Party the defacto only party in Lake County. The man’s ability stops at selling trinkets from a store front. There is not an original idea in his head. When you add this to the one economic development body of NWI, the Regional Development Authority, where not a single member knows the first thing about economic development. This combination will drive Lake County into fiscal and developmental disaster.

Ironically the only solution that I can foresee for this problem is to make Tom Philpot chair of the Lake County Democratic Party. To this day he is the only person I have talked to in public life who actually understood politics and economic development sufficiently and had the native intelligence to perform beyond mediocrity which should be a revelatory goal for Mayor Clay and the members of the RDA.

The Final Joke: Rudy Clay as Mayor of Gary

Rudy Clay has now been officially selected to be mayor of Gary, Indiana to finish the term of the unprincipled previous mayor, Scott King.  The one thing that will be true is that Gary will have the best dressed mayor in Indiana -- but that is all.

This individual does not have a clue of what is going on.  The main factor that he is missing is gray matter between the ears.  There is absolutely no evidence that Clay has any idea of what is going on.  This is not the result of his age, there are many intelligent and issue aware seventy year old; Rudy Clay is not one of them.

There has not been a single idea over the past ten years that Rudy Clay has presented that addresses any of the issues of consequence to NWI.  As a matter of fact on any complex issue facing the Lake County Commissioners he would look to see how Commissioner Fran DuPey would vote and vote the same way because he was clueless.

His big promise is to hire, and pay, for a new grand puba of cleanliness for Gary.  We are now going to scrub the streets and that will improve the City.  Clay has no idea of economic development or what it is.  He sufficiently clueless that he would not even know who to hire to make decisions.  The fact is he is going to select his cronies who are going to continue emptying what ever is left of value in Gary.

This is exactly why Gary is a joke and an embarrassment to the whole nation.  It selects as mayor someone who looks like a 70's GQ leftover, has the nickname of "the pimp", and is so completely clueless about getting Gary out of it quagmire.

King Personifies the Worst of NWI Politics

Finally, it has become clear the the real culprit of bad government in NWI for the past decade has been Mayor Scott King and his negative legacy will continue to haunt the region for years to come.  For the past decade the problem of unethical and incompetent behavior on the part of public officials is not the purview of Mayor Bob Pastrick or Robert Cantrell.  In many ways they just said what they were and what they did, like it or not, you at least knew what they were about.

With King you just receive a lie after lie.  He has now specifically admitted to reporters that the scam about higher education was just that, a scam.  He pointed how now he had to shop for a new car with his daughter because for the past 11 years he has had a car and a driver.  The cost of a car, gas, insurance, maintenance, etc. is more than enough to offset the one new college tuition he says he has coming up.  Adding the car cost to his income of $200,000 + per year would unquestionably indicate that his family are liars and the most insensitive people in the City of Gary.  Knowing that it is a lie, how could his family be with him during the announcement?  That can only be explained by their low moral values that go along with the former Mayor.

It is also fair to say that in his years as mayor of Gary he accomplished absolutely nothing; but warmed a chair.  Mark Keisling has the best description of his tenure as Mayor:  "(King) has taken a cesspool of urban decay with the nation's highest murder rate and in 11 short years has turned it into a cesspool of urban decay with one of the nation's highest murder rate and an air show."

Where I disagree with Mark Keisling is that King tried to make a difference.  The only thing he tried to do after his first couple of years in office was to make sure the his cronies, such as Jewel Harris, were taken care of.  Even the RDA, the Gary Airport, the Marquette plan, etc. are all meant to put money into his and his cronies pockets.

He has now come out to collect his share of the "pay to play" scheme that he has pulled on NWI.  I want to hear for all the ethical "know it all's" about the unethical behavior that he is promoting.

Mayor Scott King Pulls Another Scam on NWI

Mayor, excuse me, former Mayor Scott King of Gary has now pulled the ultimate scam on NWI.  Every word out of his mouth is either a lie or a self serving unethical put-on the citizenry of NWI.

He has set up Gary, and by association NWI, to come under the control of the most incompetent and corrupt official, Dozier Allen, the former Trustee of Calumet Township.  Some people will say that the naming of Dozier Allen is better than former East Chicago Mayor Robert Pastrick; but that is not true.  First, Allen was directly rejected three times by the voters of Gary and like a bad penny he is back through the back door as a slap in the face delivered by the thief King.  Second, Allen ran the most corrupt and bloated organization in NWI even surpassing East Chicago in its prime.

Scott King's explanation lacks the ring of truth and is the most insensitive and grotesque explanation to give to a city such as Gary.  What was explained with a straight face and was uncritically reported by the press is the he cannot afford to get his three children higher education on the $107,000 per year he was making as mayor of Gary.  This is a slap in the face of the majority of hard working people in Gary who are providing for their children, including higher education, while making a lot less than the mayor's salary.  One has to remember how insensitive, or drunk, Scott King must have been when one realizes that Gary probably has the lowest median family income in the State.

Secondly, it was factually just a big fat lie because he really makes about $200,000 per year in his capacity as mayor.  He seems to have conveniently forgotten the approximate $70,000 his wife is paid annually from his campaign funds as a "consultant".  So now he cannot afford higher education when he is making $200,000.  No one who has had three children  believes this.  One of his children is attending Indiana University Northwest.  That costs about $7,000 per year.  His son goes to a small school in the South.  His youngest daughter does not start school until the fall when he would have only a year left to be mayor and be able to leave his position with honor rather than as the slithering eel that he is perceived.

One also needs to ask as to the moral character of the children that he and his wife have raised.  By example, his wife would not let him fire her friend the deputy mayor who was charged with lying to the FBI even after King fired two other people who broke the same law.  What kind of children would let their father quit as mayor so that they can get supported when they are adults.  I guess part of that is explained by the fact that one of his daughters has a child floating on stage with no father in sight.

It is beyond all reason that neither Scott King nor his wife nor their pampered children could not feel the insensitive irony of this so-called leader telling the poorest of the poor that we, the Kings, cannot get by on $200,000 per year.  What kind of human beings are these?

Scott King has shown himself to be the personification of unethical behavior.  His flippant rejection of his responsibility to the people of Gary when he took this office of Mayor, including the fact that he always knew what the salary was going to be and how many children he had, speaks volumes about his incapability of moving Gary ahead during most of his three terms in office.  He has also admitted that he is going to pursue the benefits accrued to him by his public service.  He is now going to the other side and collecting his payback as a consultant.  This keeps him consistent with the unethical tradition of NWI politicos.

Where are all the so called ethical specialists?  Who has their tongue now?  The problem is they want part of the action that Scott King is going after.  So why criticize?  Scott King made all of his connections and created all of his value as a public servant.  That is where he developed the Marquette Plan, the Gary Airport, and the Regional Development Authority (RDA).  These were ostensibly created for the benefit of Gary and NWI; not for the financial benefit of Mr. Scott King.

Now King is going to turn that so called public good into a private gain as a consultant to the RDA on all of these programs.  Let us be clear -- the RDA has no need for a consultant whose only experience is as a lawyer and as an incompetent mayor.  In spite of what lawyers think, a law degree does not qualify you to do everything.  The only reason to hire King as a consultant is to give a "legal" payback.  That is completely unethical and it should be called on the carpet by all those individuals who have been shoving ethics down other public officials throats.

At its very basic tenant, ethical behavior as a public official requires that you do not privately benefit from your public training and responsibilities.  That is exactly what Scott King is doing.  If he did it while he was mayor he would be in jail because it would be illegal, doing it after suddenly resigning is unethical.

Scott King remains a renowned scoundrel for being incompetent as mayor and then holding his position hostage for pay to play after he leaves office.

As Predicted: Gary Airport is Dead

It is difficult being right most of the time when being right shows that morons are running NWI.  It is also difficult because these morons are spending the people's hard earned money and deceiving them into believing that there is some benefit to those very citizens who are paying the bill.

I indicated a long time ago that Paul Karras was a fraud and should be removed and that the "Gary/Chicago International Airport" was nothing but a name to which corporate welfare could be attached.  I was right on both counts.

Now the airline that cannot fly out of anywhere but Gary is quitting during the prime flying season to Florida and Las Vegas.  The big lie is Paul Karras who has no idea what he is doing.  Although he does know how to spend the six figure consulting fee he is getting.

Paul Karras is a lackey of Chicago.  The only value of the so called airport is a holding mark for Chicago to expand O'hare and Midway.  No one ever really intended for Gary to be an airport it was never in the cards

As technology expands there is even less of a reason for a third airport.  Technology within the next couple of years will allow planes to land at ever closer distance reducing the airport landing congestion problem. 

Finally the ground problem is a none-existent one for true travelers of which there are a rare few in NWI.  I am also predicting that once O'hare and Midway are on their way to expansion, Boeing will also move their planes from Gary.  That was a favor to Mayor Daley to keep Gary in the game as a holding chip while O'hare was expanded.

Understand Gary is a pit.  That has not changed and there is not going to be anyone who is going to be willing to stake their corporate future on this so called airport.

Your politicians, "dufus" Dobis, John "know nothing" Aguilera, Scott "I have done nothing for ten years" King, Tom "I am a lunatic" McDermott, Jr. and so on are useless and always have been.  The citizens of Lake County need to start listening to what I see or they will find themselves as useful as an airport without Hooters.