Before the first dollar has been collected from the 10% increase in Indianapolis taxpayers' local income tax to support public safety, duplicitous council members have already started the process of spending the money on things other than what they promised taxpayers the money would be spent. Tonight, the City-County Council passed on a 19-8 vote Mayor Greg Ballard's plan to start a brand new entitlement program for pre-K education, which is neither constitutionally nor statutorily the responsibility of municipal government, and which will cost city taxpayers at least $5 million a year to provide government-funded pre-K education supposedly meant for the most at-risk children.
According to the meme, if tens of millions of taxpayer dollars are made available for pre-K education, the City's poor, mostly-minority children will stop growing up to be professional criminals. The proponents can't explain why the billions in federal tax dollars spent on that very group of children through Head Start since the late 1960s failed to keep children growing up in poverty turning to a life of crime. The only discernible, immediate winner from tonight's vote is the household of Star political columnist Matt Tully, whose wife is surely guaranteed a huge bonus this year from her employer, Eli Lilly, thanks to all of the shameless lobbying her husband did for her company's legislative agenda in his newspaper column over the past several months, and the Day Nursery, now known as Early Learning Indiana, whose board is chaired by Tully's wife and which is scheduled to get the bulk of the funding for the Mayor's pre-K spending program.
Does anyone believe Eli Lilly supports yet another locally-funded pre-K spending program because it will benefit children living in poverty? Given that Big Pharma targets school-aged children for peddling its multi-billion dollar anti-psychotic drug industry, one can only surmise it sees a benefit in getting more kids into publicly-financed education at an earlier age as new doping targets. Poor kids qualify for Medicaid. Get them in a school setting where day care providers will suggest doping as a way to control difficult children as they already do with other school-aged children. Pharmaceutical companies like Lilly know that there is an increased rate of mental health problems in children in families with low incomes compared to those in better-off households. I suppose if you believe doping kids with Prozac, Zyprexa and Strattera, is a beneficial to them, then you have no problem with Lilly driving the local debate on pre-K education.
UPDATE: Since the list of council members voting no is much shorter than the list of those voting yes, here are the eight no votes: Cain (R), Clay (D), Gray (D), Jackson (D), Oliver (D), Pfisterer (R), Scales (R) and Simpson (D). Angela Mansfield (D), who was absent from the meeting, would have voted no had she been able to attend the meeting.
9 comments:
Grand Jury?
Nice theory there but Adderall is a Shire product.
Education is NOT a local government function.
Public Safety is a local government function. Ballard has depleted public safety, lowered police staffing and removed fire apparatus as if he is ignoring the most important function in local government.
-But we have that Cricket Field
Remember when Lilly used Indianapolis' homeless population as human guinea pigs?
"When The Wall Street Journal reported in 1996 that the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly was recruiting homeless alcoholics for research studies, Lilly responded by hiring an expert bioethics panel led by Tom Beauchamp of Georgetown University. The panel argued that not only was testing drugs for safety on homeless people reasonable, provided proper procedures were followed, but also that “it would be unfair to exclude homeless persons categorically as a group.” Beauchamp and another panelist, Robert Levine of Yale, went on to become paid ethics consultants for Lilly." https://medium.com/matter/did-big-pharma-test-your-meds-on-homeless-people-a6d8d3fc7dfe
I must have read or viewed at least 50 stories in the local media about this pre-K proposal, and I don't recall a single one that did more than restate the talking points of the advocates. It's not a public debate when only one side of the issue is discussed. You would think we were living in a totalitarian dictatorship operating under strict media censorship rules.
This isn't about Tulley or Lilly-it is about the council overstepping their bounds in approving this which had an air about it of "the fix is in". There is something illegal about this and that is where taxpayer legal lawyers are needed. There aren't any and Carl Moldthan is no longer alive.
This is supposedly a 4 yr. pilot program but logic says that success can be only gaged if you track these children for 18 yrs. It also selects children but not all children some of which qualify but will be rejected. Regardless of the merits, Pre-k is the job of the state which also will be noted pre-k has not been approved but there are applications being taken and they too have nice children in t-shirts appearing. Where does that approval leave the city of Indianapolis. Excluded?
Last but not least, somewhere in here are the rules of the 1-2-3 about schools and funding and referendums. I suspect that is ignored as well.
This council is wrong and remember their names when voting.
Gary, you are absolutely correct in every point you make regarding this ludicrous move by the world's worst politicians.
Democrats prove they are owned by big transnational corporations and by big money and RINO Republicans without an ounce of sense prove they can be manipulated by pay to play brokers.
The literature evidences a growing body of evidence that these social programs do NOT work and actually devastate families than help and nurture them.
Ballard will go down as the very worst mayor this City ever had the misfortune to twice elect.
Democrats and Republicans know it's all about the money and the CONTROL... damn the State Constitution and the State laws.
Please list the voters for this taxpayer fraud.
Give WCTY about a week to put the meeting online. The live streaming of the meeting last night wasn't working, and now they're waiting long periods of time before they put the archived video of council meetings online. They used to be up within an hour of the end of the meeting. It infuriates some council members when I post clips of their bad form online.
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