Comments on Advance Indiana™: More On The Chicago Way

Greg, it's apples and oranges. This story is m...

2009-12-21T20:30:55.198-05:00

Greg, it's apples and oranges. This story is much closer to what Julia had rumored to have done when she ran for congress, in leveraging the Center Township Trustee office to force people seeking benefits to support her run. The BAGI thing is a bunch of crap the Star dug up instead of talking about Durham or Wishard. THe same non-profits that had been doing Weatherization for years are behind on their work too. There is no way they could have handled the additional funds this program rec'd. BAGI had to train their folks (as did a lot of other entities because of the expansion of the program). You can't spend money from day one if you don't have the capacity. My guess is you will see a steep increase in the # of homes done under that program by BAGI as well as the other agencies. Besides, it was a 1 year allocation to the agencies. If they don't spend it, they won't get it next year, meaning BAGI has a strong incentive here. There may be lots of things to beat Mitch up on but i don't think this weatherization thing is one of them.

This, of course, is despicable. Gary, have you co...

2009-12-21T13:29:36.017-05:00

This, of course, is despicable.

Gary, have you covered Mitch giving $20.7 million in weatherization money (stimulus funds)to his political contributor BAGI? This in spite of the fact that they had no experience in doing weatherization. They were supposed to have 834 homes done by the end of Nov. They have done 3.

Giving the money to friends instead of groups that actually know how to get this job done slowed down the approval process as well as the actual work.
Screw the poor - as long as Mitch's contributors are taken care of.

Seems that you don't have to go all the way to Chicago for Chicago style politics.

Gee...am I surprised, or what!

2009-12-20T19:43:01.563-05:00

Gee...am I surprised, or what!