Where was State Representative Pryor when “old City” residents were paying for IPD plus the Sheriff’s police protection in the suburban townships…for 30+ years?

This probability was on Mitch’s plate during the last election, brought to the attention of the public by the Indiana Manufacturer’s Association via the Indianapolis Star (who gets most of their information from outside their walls). The Legislature’s logrolling created this mess when they decided to loot the fund by “paying off” certain vocal elements in the Dumbocrap Party. The R’s, of course, looked the other way, including their titular head (why stir crap-it only stinks worse)and rather than deal with the problem when it was more easily dealt with, the small head found the nearest sand pile and ducked their small unders under the sand. Then, the D’s decided to totally ignore the bankruptacy in the House (as usual, balancing books isn’t a D habit-see all previous recent D guvs). It is best to look at our elected officials as incompetent swine.

“Law of Unintended Consequences”?
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That’s completely bogus, Abdul. Even a no-account, uneducated schmuck like me could see that consolidation, when combined with tax caps, would require reduced budgets for municipal services. I’ve been saying it here for a long time.
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These are “intended” consequences. They are the anticipated consequence of an unrevealed agenda.

Abdul,

Somehow I can’t believe that we have the whole truth and nothing about the truth about the Mayor’s cell phone incident.

To me the story has some real holes. Considering the total number of people at that event and no one else saw anything plus his wallet and credit cards remained intact.

A wallet would be mucj better picking and reap more rewards. I also would have thought Greg would have deligated someone to attend this function and then prepare a trip report.

Has anyone seen his trip report and most of all is there a section on lessons learned?

Pascal, if you had any sense of reality or history, you’d realize Dems aren’t the only ones who have trouble balancing budgets. For starters, try Steve Goldsmith, the first Bush, et al. Try to think before you type, huh?

As for Ms. Cherrish–she only did what the township folks told her to do. She’s very obdient in that regard. Old vestiges of power die hard. It’s funny because, if some of those Center folks would check the landscape, they’d figure out, time has passed them by.

I would bet the reason the bad guys ran like hell is that Greg Ballard is a recent ex marine and also qualified in martial arts and if the truth was known the bad guys were most likely getting their asses kicked.

Hopefully, however ephemeral and fleeting, there’s bipartisan agreement that spending money we don’t have has become a bit of a problem. You think that’s a tough one to nail down, how about how to reduce the spending or tax cuts? Depending on where, you’re either a draconian-racist-zenophobic hater, or a utopian pollyanna that’s going to stifle all economic output which funds entitlements in the first place.
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Reducing spending dollar-for-dollar with raising taxes to pay-off debt would elicit universal howls. Next, we’d be expecting our Federal officials to send their kids to war first, and abide by the laws they pass for the rest of us….
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Sorry. Brief daydream there. We now returning to our regularly scheduled program of spending money we don’t have- and explaining to our children later why we did.

Not to worry the House can’t pass any legislation that deals with consolidation or any change in the status quo.

Taxpayer – here’s how I’ve explained it to my oldest, and how I’ll explain it to the rest when they’re old enough:
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“No matter what anyone else tells you or what you hear on the news, the people in government who are spending all of our money and destroying our country ARE NOT OUR REPRESENTATIVES. They operate independently from the needs and will of the people in order to serve themselves and private interests.
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One day there may be a lot of people who wake up and realize the same thing. By that time, we’ll have very little chance of making any difference without organizing, but the government has recently passed laws that allow them to classify people who disagree with them as unlawful, so it will get very ugly. And that’s exactly what the people who control government want, so that they can justify deploying the military by classifying patriots as insurgents or anarchists or domestic terrorists.”
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I tell them that because they deserve to know what’s really happening, and to be prepared for it.

FYI – Obama is now looking for an additional 1/2 million soldiers as part of next years defense budget. I hope everyone’s happy with the change that they’re getting.

Abdul,

That cut to IFD’s budget would be between 11 and 14 million. See how the Center Township residents feel when an IFD engine rolls up on a fire with only two firefighters on it. If people think that it won’t affect manpower then they don’t understand the budget. The current budget is made up of almost 90% for personnel. You do the math.

Shore, step back from the cocktails. The Obama FY2010 budget does not include an additional half million soldiers.

It does, however, include adequate funding for the VA. Which is something the immediate past prez never got a handle on.

Speaking of “meltdown”… it doesn’t take much when property taxes, Kernan-Shepard, lobbyist reform, and illegal hiring are on the docket and your assembly is fixated with sugar cream pie and puppy mills, but our illustrious assembly has just been bettered by California. An even more polarized state legislature, the emminent domain of fruit, nuts, and flakes itself, apparently agreed to redistricting in 2012 as part of a barter to finally get a state budget passed. Other than weather, it’s not often I look with envy to California.

TA – I watched a news anchor report that the 2009 budget will increase the size of the military by 532,400. I did about 2 minutes of digging and I stand corrected – the military will increase “to” 532,400, not “by”. I’m not sure if the reporter was wrong or if I heard wrong, but I stand corrected. The plan is to increase active duty forces by 65,000 by 2010 (mostly by increasing the percentage of reserve and NG deployments), not to increase the size of the military by over 500k.

Shorebreak,
We have over 2 million active and reserve members of the military with it split about 63/37 respectively. http://siadapp.dmdc.osd.mil/personnel/MILITARY/Miltop.htm