Category: Government & Politics

Posted on

End “Home Rule” of D.C.

With all that has gone on in Washington, D.C., it is time for Congress to take serious action. All of you and I know the governance of the District of Columbia is corrupt and incompetent. It is time to revoke “Home Rule” for the District; something Congress has the full power to accomplish.

Now we even have D.C. judges trying to over rule decisions made by the President of the United States. The worst of them is U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. He even ordered President Trump to turn plane loads of illegal criminal aliens around and bring them back into our country when they were headed for prison in El Salvador. I am thinking, “Just who in the Hell do these judges think they are???”. And this comes on the heels of J6 decisions a couple of years earlier that jailed American citizens for years when they peacefully stepped foot in the U.S. Capital in January 2021. Thankfully, President Trump pardoned most, but D.C. judges are responsible for incredible injustices and even suicides. And now those judges want to be President. They even resisted the release of citizens who had been pardoned. The U.S. Marshalls had to be sent in.

If I read things correctly, the establishment of “Home Rule” for the District of Columbia took place on December 24, 1973 under the President Richard Nixon administration. I’m not sure it has ever worked. The U.S. Constitution provides Congress has plenary (total) legislative authority of the federal district (District of Columbia). Home Rule delegated some of the day-to-day work of municipal government to local entities.

We know as of today, the governance is abysmal. We know the physical maintenance is terrible. We know crime is out of control. We know actions of judges and the courts are not only bad, but may be illegal themselves. And I was surprised to learn the D.C. judges are specifically appointed by the President of the United States.

It is time for Congress to take back control of and governance of the District of Columbia. I have no idea why this has not been done before now. If Congress does not take back control of the seat of the federal government, it is derelict in its duty. As for the federal judges; maybe they cannot be summarily removed, but Congress has total control of purse strings that support their courts. Time to bring those budgets to zero. And, frankly, Judge Boasberg should be impeached immediately.

We cannot have a country where the balance of power between the three branches of the United States federal government has been bastardized to such imbalance as presently exists. Federal District courts cannot rule over the Presidency and every decision coming out of the Executive Branch. My biggest issue is with the U.S. Supreme Court that has allowed all of the overstepping to happen. Too long Supreme Court justices have remained silent or cowards. The Supreme Court could stop all of the nonsense, but has not.

The Executive Branch through the President cannot act by itself to stop all of the roadblocks being put its way. The Congress and the Supreme Court have the power to correct all. It is time if we want to have a strong, healthy Constitutional Republic. Article II of the Constitution states, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”…… not in Congress or the Courts.

Posted on

Tax $$ and NPR/PBS

It is long past time for taxpayer dollars from the federal government to be sent off to the Public Broadcasting System and the National Public Radio. We are not talking a few dollars but hundreds of millions of dollars annually. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting takes federal tax dollars north of $500 million a year. Time for it to come to a screeching halt.

As one who drives a lot for business, I do a good deal of radio listening. An Indianapolis PBS station is one I frequent from time to time. I finally had to give it up. The reason was I became irritated with the politically left Democrat messages that came through either explicitly or subtlety in even the words or the slant of reports much too often.

Then I did a bit of research. I ran into an OpenSecrets report that 100% of political donations from PBS employees went to Democrats during the 2024 political cycle. And since 1996, going back nearly 30 years and more than $85,000 in donations, according to OpenSecrets data, there has only been one cycle (2004) in which Republicans received more in campaign contributions than Democrats from PBS employees.

Among NPR employees, the imbalance is even worse. OpenSecets NPR data of nearly $60,000 in donations goes back 33 years to 1992. There has never been an election in that period in which NPR employees donated more to Republicans than Democrats. OpenSecrets states in fact, in those 16 political cycles, Republicans only received any funding at all in just two cycles, and that includes a paltry $1 — yes, one buck — last year to then GOP presidential candidate Doug Burgum.

Do you think something is amiss? NPR/PBS are Democrat political propaganda arms and have been forever.

I come from a journalism background in newspapers. I don’t think any newspapers ever were supported with tax dollars from the government — state or federal. Newspapers in their day were supported by subscription dollars and dollars from advertisers. The lived by being relevant to their subscriber readers. Their time passed for several reasons, which I intend to write about in the future, and new media, primarily electronic, means are and have been emerging.

It is long past time, again, for tax dollars to stop going to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR, and PBS. If they are to live, they must earn the support of listeners and advertisers. If enough want the kind of biased news and messages they broadcast and will pay for it, they will prosper. If not, they will fold up and fade away.

Our nation is in a financial crisis and this funding is certainly one that is no longer justified, if it ever was. And this is not over. The next look needs to be at the “Voice of America” which received over $250 million in 2023. It needs to be axed as well.

Posted on

The Penalty of Leadership

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity.

Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work.

In art, in literature, in music, in industry; the reward and the punishment are always the same.

The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction.

When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work be merely mediocre, he will be left severely alone — if he achieves a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a-wagging.

Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting.

Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build; no one will strive to surpass or to slander you, unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius.

Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious continue to cry out that it cannot be done.

Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius.

Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all.

The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by.

The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership.

Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy — but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant.

There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as the human passions — envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass.

And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains — the leader.

Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman; each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages.

That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial.
That which deserves to live — lives.

[From an advertisement in the Saturday Evening Post, January 2nd, 1915, by the Cadillac Motor Car Company]

Posted on

The Rise of “Immigrant” Culture in France

France is dying. It is a piecemeal death. One business district at a time. One neighborhood at a time. A restaurant, a business, a theater, a hotel here and there. Each death so sad but survivable. But as the piecemeal deaths mount, they become an aggregate, and now France is dying.

Jean Raspail, a French writer, warned the French in clear language in 1973 that the open borders acceptance of immigrant-invaders meant the death of France.

Enoch Powell, a British politician and writer, warned the British. It proved to be impossible to warn the indifferent populations imbued with racist guilt from decades of propagandistic indoctrination. Enoch Powell was denounced and Jean Raspail ignored. Marine Le Pen, the only politician in France who stands for the French people, may be headed to prison for standing up for French ethnics against the immigrant-invaders.

The same destruction of nation is happening all over Europe, especially in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the UK, countries in which the ethnic female population has no protection against gang rape by immigrant invaders. Women are discouraged from reporting their gang rapes, because it is considered racist against immigrants.

This is Europe today. A cultural dead zone or a rising new culture based on immigrant, largely Muslim mores.

European and English friends friends say: “Don’t come back. It will break your heart. It is not like you remember it.” But still the tourists go. They are shown around the still safe areas and kept from seeing the encroaching barbarity. It is like a sponsored trip to Israel. You are not shown the bad stuff, only the good stuff.

Trump is right. Europe is a basket case. Why are Americans supporting an alien culture in Europe to the point of possibly having nuclear war with Russia, a Christian nation that protects its citizens even though under a dictatorship? The United States should no longer align with the decadent and declining countries. None in Europe are any longer ethnic nations.

European governments, who refuse to protect their citizens from immigrant-invaders, appear to want war with Russia. Any war won’t last long. Europe is dead just like the dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, or is it the Gulf of America, where the Mississippi River dumps chemical fertilizer runoff from commercial agribusiness and other pollutants killing life.

The United States has the same anti-Western intellectual class as Europe. How can Trump address our vulnerability from our internal enemies, which is where our vulnerability lies? With an estimated 20 million illegal aliens (foreign invaders) in the United States, the potential for very negative social and cultural change is here.

The United States of America is a melting pot with tradition, history, common values and loyalty to the Constitution. It must not allow the changes seen in Europe to infect this country. All illegal immigrants (aliens) must be sent home. For any chance of resurrection, Europe should do the same.

[Revised and Edited from the Internet]

Posted on

The War Goes On

Contrary to the claim by columnist Brian Howey in his March 1st writing, the United States is not preparing “to switch sides to Russia”. That is a ridiculous claim.

President Trump wants the war to stop. He wants the killing of the young on both sides to end. This was a war never started when Trump was last President. It began under the US regime of President Joe Biden. Old Joe may have even given the green light to military action with his remarks on January 20, 2022. I quote: “I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades (Ukraine). And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do.”

President Putin has always wanted as much of Ukraine as he could get. The fighting now has become a standoff with little movement east by Ukraine troops or west by Russian troops. And President Zelenskyy of Ukraine has become an overbearing tyrant for that country. For example, he banned all independent TV media with a collapse of all media into one state controlled one. He suspended multiple opposition political parties. He has banned the Russian Orthodox Church which has had a century’s long presence in Ukraine.

Then when President Trump thought there was an agreement for the United States to have access to Ukraine rare earth minerals which would both benefit Ukraine and the United States, Zelenskyy queered the deal when demanding more from Trump. We all saw that on national TV.

And, again contrary to Tribune reporting, President Trump did not “walk out” of the meeting with Zelenskyy. Trump threw Zelenskyy out of the White House and sent him and his entourage packing. No lunch.

All Zelenskyy had to do was agree to what had been negotiated by others ahead of the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting. This would have given the United States access to much desired rare earth minerals and other natural resources in Ukraine. This would have meant both a financial interest of the US in Ukraine and the presence of people from the United States there in significant numbers. Clearly, this would be an enormous deterrent to Russia to do anything more militarily.

President Putin is not going to give up the territory it currently occupies which reportedly contains largely Russian speaking people. This is a given. So, if fighting stops with lines as they are, the killing stops and the Ukraine-US mining agreement becomes an indirect way of stopping any further incursions by Russia into Ukraine.

One more thing — we learned that the USA has funded multiple biological laboratories in Ukraine. Why? One has to wonder if this is yet another evil action taken by Dr. Anthony Fauci. That is a whole other possible story.

Posted on

The Musketeers with Bloodhound

Brian Howey in a Feb. 10th column in the Kokomo Tribune states in his opening paragraph that the federal government is bloated, wasteful, and inefficient. Then in the closing paragraph he states that President Trump, via Elon Musk, is causing “….a constitutional crisis in the making. These are emerging dictatorial powers replacing the lawful order that has served Americans well for nearly 250 years”. Really!

America (the USA) is in deep debt to the tune of about $35 trillion dollars. The current financial course is not sustainable and has not been for years. At some point, the wall will be hit and catastrophe will follow unless drastic change occurs.

Howey writes about all the wonderful things USAID is and has been doing in the world. He does not write about all the corruption, perverted programs and organizations that USAID has been funding in the USA and around the world. Musk and the Musketeers have exposed corruption, fraud, and outright stealing of taxpayer money in billions of dollars.

Howey quotes the Washington Post… now there is sure a credible source of news. We know better. He says the Post reported Musk’s DOGE staffers accessed sensitive internal data systems, including those of the U.S. Treasury. DAAAAAA! And exactly how does one review what has been historically done without viewing records? President Trump runs the Executive Branch of which the Treasury Department is a part. He has authorized the Musk DOGE probes.

What scares the crap out of those who want to hide nefarious acts is that “Follow the Money” has taken on new meaning when the bloodhound is an algorithm-powered web crawling bot designed to drill through internal government firewalls and map out redundancy, waste, and longstanding hidden internal influence networks established over decades. This is called transparency; something many do not want.

I, for one, am all in for Elon Musk and his Musketeers. They need to keep going through every government agency that disburses taxpayer money. They need to report to the taxpayers exactly how they have been cheated and robbed…. and how the USA has gotten into $35 trillion dollars in debt.

Maybe full transparency will change the course of the USA. Maybe we will realize we cannot be the ATM for the world and that other countries must take care of themselves. Maybe we can stop the funding of domestic graft and nonsense. Maybe we can finally honestly make “America First”.

Posted on

DOGE and the Big Dog

Elon Musk and his small cadre of geniuses are causing tidal waves and they have just gotten started. The incredible stink that has come out of USAID is almost beyond comprehension. The waste of US taxpayer dollars is more than huge; it is monumentous.

Is there any wonder why major new media were so far anti-Trump when in a short period of time the news organization Reuters got $9.1 million, Associated Press some $19.5 million, New York Times three grants totaling nearly $50 million, BBC $2.6 million and finally, Politico $8 million. It goes on and on.

There were too many to count grants to organizations promoting LGBTQ and transgender programs and activities around the world. Then all sorts of crazy projects and organizations both domestically and worldwide.

President Trump has shut down USAID nearly completely. What is left will be absorbed into the State Department, but even that will be a small skeleton of what it once was.

Honestly, I do not see the case for any tax dollars going out of the United States of America to others until and only until we have taken care of our homeless folks, our veterans, those hurt by hurricanes and fires, and any who are without shelter and food. We must be America First. All that and taking care of the mountainous national debt the USA has. Only then should be thinking about sending funds out of our country to others.

The list of the handouts of taxpayer money is endless. USAID was acting like the largest philanthropic foundation on the planet with taxpayer money. That and it had favorites on the left and woke side of the political spectrum.

USAID is largely now gone. DOGE will move on to the Defense Department, Medicare fraud, and other departments. What eventually results will the saving of billions of taxpayer dollars.

The big dog has come off of the porch!

Posted on

Hanson and Illegal Aliens

[Article by Victor Davis Hanson, Classicist and Historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University for the Daily Signal]

I want to talk about illegal immigration. You know, this is the point in our history that we’ve never been before. We have not a porous border, but no border at all. We’ve had somewhere between 10 to 12 million illegal entrants since the Biden administration began.

There is no real corpus of immigration law. It’s been destroyed. We’re at a historical period in our country, where 55 million people, never such a large number of people born ourside the United States, that are residing here. In terms of percentages, almost 16% of the population was not born in the United States.

That’s an enormous task of assimilation, integration, and civic education, and we just haven’t been doing any of that. So, what are we going to do? Well, this first thing is : We need to stop “catch and release”. We need to make entrants, legal entrants, go back to their country if they’re applying for refugee status. You cannot come here, and then say you’re a refugee. You must ascertain that and prove that at the consulate overseas.

We’ve got to finish the walls. It’s a 2,000-mile border, and we’ve never quite been able to continue. We’ve got a wall of fence or somehow obstruct the entire 2,000-mile border. That will save manpower. It will save time and cost, and it will have an enormous deterrent effect.

The next couple of things are a little bit tricker. I think that whatever your status is, if you are sending money back to a foreign country from the United States that is singled out as a source of illegal immigration — Mexico, Latin America, for example — then the United States government should put a 10% to 20% tax on all the remittances. That would earn us up to maybe somewhere around $20 billion (per year). And that would also deter Mexico, to take one example, that depends on remittances as its largest source of foreign exchange — greater than tourism, greater than its oil revenues. And yet, so often the American taxpayer — state, local, and federal — through generous subsidies, free up the cash so that the illegal resident can send it back for social necessities that the Mexican government itself is responsible for, so we’re subsidizing everybody but ourselves.

I think it’s very important that we start looking at the countries that are the source of illegal immigration in terms of security. A Sudan, a Syria, terrorist countries that support, countries that support terrorism like Venezuela, the Middle East, especially Iran, Russia, as well.

Why would we let them send people here that we have no background checks, have not adjudicated their status? So, we should have a travel ban, an immediate deportation, and immediate consequences for the mother country that knowingly sends these people here. And that, too, would be a deterrent.

We’ve got to also look at anchor babies.

The 14th Amendment didn’t really ever say, as sometimes is alleged, that if you’re born in the United States, then you’re an automatic citizen. It says if you’re born in the United States, and not subject to the laws of another country. All the people coming, in some sense, are subject to the laws of another country. So, we have to redefine that, either through legislation or renewed attempt in the courts.

Europe, the Left always looks for guidance — 17 European countries don’t even allow it. And the other 13 or 14 have restrictions that qualify it. So, we’re the only country in the world that gives unqualified citizenship to people who happen to be born here and then anchor the entire family.

Why not also put a 10-20 year ban on people who have been detained here illegally and stop them from applying for a green card or legal readmissions for 20 years? That would be a powerful deterrent.

In other words, we would announce sometime in February and say, “We want all of you to know, all 12 million who came here during the Biden administration, to take the first iteration of cohort, you have 30 days to go back. If you do not go back to your country, and you are detained, arrested here in the United States, you will be deported, but you will not be given any chance to get a green card for 10 to 20 years,” depending on how the courts or legislation adjudicates it.

And finally, I think it’s time to look at how we deport people. The first 500,000 who have committed a crime, it will be no problem. There’s unanimous consent. They should be deported immediately. They’re wreaking havoc on the American population.

The next iteration, the 1.5 to 1.7 million people who have already gone through the system, they’ve been adjudicated, they fail to show up for the court hearings. Or they left detention when they were facing deportation. Those would be the next group that would face deportation.

The third group of people, as I said earlier, from terrorist countries or terrorist-supporting countries; no one is going to sympathize with their residents here.

The fourth group is a little tricker, but I think we could pretty easily find hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of able-bodied residents who are on public assistance and who have not been here five years. If you haven’t bee here five years, you came during the Biden open-borders era. You were on welfare of some sort, and you’re able to work. You should go back home.

That would leave a large group of people who have been here five years. They’ve never committed a crime. They’re not on public assistance. And they want to get a green card, not citizenship, a green card.

I think if we had won public opinion and support by deporting the most egregious offenders, say 10-12 million, then I think in a bipartisan fashion, we could work out a system for the law-abiding, the productive, and the long-residing American residents and allow them to pay a fine to recapture legality and stay in the United States.

It’s going to be a tough road to restore border security, because the prior administration didn’t believe in it. But I think now that the White House, the Senate, and the House are in Republican hands, it’s absolutely possible. It can be done rather quickly.

Thank you very much. I’m Victor Hanson for the Daily Signal.

Posted on

Who’s on First

The letter in the Kokomo Tribune on January 6th by residents concerning the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) and the Kokomo electric vehicle battery plants, StarPlus, points out several issues. The primary one may be the functioning of the IEDC in Indiana. This “Corporation” is a child of the Indiana General Assembly. The President of the Corporation is Indiana’s governor, now Governor Mike Braun. All of the board members are appointed by the governor alone.

This “quasi-private government” entity has a lot of power and can operate quietly with millions of dollars. That is, make decisions that seriously affect communities without full and open knowledge of all citizens therein well ahead of time. The Stellantis-Samsung StarPlus electric vehicle battery plants and the Jaewon plant in Kokomo are prime examples.

Now, late in the process, citizens are asking questions. There are questions about the available water supply, surface and underground, and what a draw of about 2.5 million gallons per day per battery plant might mean. The water needs of the Jaewon plant are not presently clear. There are claims the most recently released water shed study by the State of Indiana showing plenty of water is available is flawed.

There are questions about how waste water will be transported and handled and what chemicals such waste water will contain. A report is water used for cooling will be recycled. Water for industrial processes will be containerized and sent off site for treatment and not to the local waste water treatment plant. Water used for human waste will go to the local waste water treatment plant. Storm water off of buildings and parking lots will go to holding ponds, but there is a question as to whether the ponds will be lined to prevent leakage to ground water. Given the above, one must wonder why over 2 million gallons per day of utility provided water will be consumed.

We have already seen the expenditure of millions on the extension of a gas line to serve the battery plants which reportedly is to be paid for by the gas consumers. We have to wonder about what electricity needed and where it is to come from.

There is another company, Jaewon, that is building a plant next to the StarPlus plant. Jaewon is to handle certain chemical waste products from StarPlus. How much water will this operation require and what is to become of whatever products and/or wastes it will generate? Answers are not clear to the public. And now, there are questions about construction quality practices going on in the building of this plant. Reports are that shoddy workmanship has resulted in project shutdown at times by Kokomo Fire Department officials only to be overridden by some State agency. Reports are that complaints will be submitted to OSHA.

Unrelated to the battery plants, there was a proposal for a lithium electric battery plant nearby to store electricity for feeding back to the power grid in high demand times. It was denied so far due to serious safety concerns centered around possible lithium fires.

Cost numbers of all of these projects are in the billions with more to come. What is the cost per job generated? We already know at least a few hundred of the jobs at the battery plants will be held by Koreans, not US citizens. How many US citizens will actually be continually employed when all is done?

There is a residential and commercial development proposed just south of the battery plants and the Jaewon plant. Now, questions about the elevation of ground levels compared to the 100 year flood level were raised by the City Engineer. The development has been put on hold. There is land requested for rezoning to intensive industrial zoning for Jaewon immediately adjacent north to the land with elevation questions. How about the Jaewon land? Is it, too, of insufficient elevation above the 100 year flood height? What restrictions may be the result?

Finally, there is yet another $7 billion in loans either offered or already taken down related to the battery plants. It appears billions and billions of dollars are being risked in the development of all projects related to the EV battery plants. This is at a time when President Trump may well terminate the mandates of the Biden administration regarding electric vehicles.

Our new governor and the Indiana General Assembly need to take a careful look at the IEDC and what it has done here and elsewhere in Indiana.

Posted on

The Rest of the Story

There was a radio newsman long ago, Paul Harvey, that ended his daily broadcast with a saying: “And now you know the Rest of the Story.” The problem in Kokomo is we don’t know the rest of the story.

One has to wonder who thought it a good idea to bring a huge EV battery plant or two to Kokomo. Was it the Indiana General Assembly or the Indiana Economic Development Corporation or Stellantis and Samsung…. Or who? Who was it that brought a large diameter gas pipeline down Highway 35 from the Logansport area and north to Kokomo to serve two EV battery plants? Who was it?

And who was it that bought up large numbers of private properties at highly elevated prices, many of which were personal residences and most of which were highly fertile agriculture lands? And who was it that benefited financially from these purchases? And where did all the money come from and go?

And who was it that promised as many as 1,400 jobs per battery plant or 2,800 for two plants only to have it turn out that 700 of 1400 or 1400 of 2800 of those jobs would be for imported Koreans who would work for a time, then be recycled back to Korea? The result is the cost per job for US citizens is through the roof.

And who is it that did the planning for the operation of the EV battery plants? What materials would be inputs? Are any toxic and dangerous? What electricity is needed and where is that to come from? And maybe most importantly, what water is needed. It has been reported that over 2.5 million gallons of water per plant will be required. Where is that to come from? The excess availability of both surface and ground water to serve one plant let along two plants appears not to be available. The Indiana American Water Company is already casting about for one or more additional well drilling sites. What effect is to be expected on the water table below us? Has this been analyzed? There are already plumes of contaminated water underground from past industry such as Continental Steel Corp and General Motors operations. EPA remediation is ongoing.

Where is the water for proposed commercial and residential development to come from? We see expansion of all sorts of residential areas, hotels, meeting centers, and stores proposed everywhere around Kokomo.

What products are to be produced from the battery plants? Where are they to be shipped or stored? What waste products will result as well? Are any toxic or poisonous? What is to be come of the 2.5 million gallons of water per day required? Word has it that it is to be processed by our local Waste Water Treatment plant which is primarily designed for treating human waste, not industrial waste water. And how is that water to get from the battery plants to the treatment plant? Word has it that existing sewer lines are not adequate to handle such load on a daily basis. And what toxins or chemicals, if any are in the waste water? How would any be handled?

Why is there proposed a waste recycling plant near the battery plant as a separate company and operation? What waste and what toxic chemicals are to be handled and/or required? What is the final destination of waste? The Kokomo Plan Commission just recommended to the City Council the rezoning of a parcel to high intensity industrial zoning to add to land already zoned that for a waste recycling facility without concern about whether such land was suitable for such use. Word has it that there is exposure to potential ground water contamination from such use of this particular land.

And we know that there recently was turned down a proposed electric battery storage operation to be located east of the Lincoln Road and Goyer Road area due to concerns about safety of such a facility. Word has it the company will be back in six months with a new request.

Finally, a mention of the Engie Emerald Green solar panel farm is called for. The Drainage Board continued a vote for the water drainage plan that was submitted late. More incompetent planning, it seems, for a project that will begin to deteriorate the day it is put into operation. And it turns out Engie revised the proposed grading of 350 acres of fertile top soil to 17 acres after objection from Greg Lake, the county surveyor and stormwater administrator for the Howard County Stormwater District.

Both the approved solar fields and the approved EV battery plants appear to be hysterical moves and totally incompetently planned projects focused around the Biden mandates for so-called passive electricity and electric vehicles. What accompanies both is financial greed and power on the part of the State of Indiana, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, local officials and others. It is likely President Trump will pick a different direction.

The bottom line is we do not know the “Rest of the Story”. That will unfold in days to come. My prediction is that more and more incompetency will be revealed and more and more greed and seeking of power will come to light. Considering all, there is a deep concern our county may become unlivable. That would be the “Rest of the Story”.