A person wrote in the comments section on this site that the Obama taxes will not effect his or her million dollar bosses company and this prompted me to think about what is really happening.

When a company grosses around a million dollars and the owner only nets $40,000.00 the company cannot stay in business as no bank or supplier will even talk to them.

A corporation on the other hand is an artificial person who also pays taxes; an owner can take out $40,000.00 as payroll for himself and keep his personal tax debt under control while living off of the corporation's earnings and listing them as expenses of different sorts.

The problem is that if the corporation is written down too low then once again it loses all borrowing power and creditability with suppliers and would not have the credit to stay in business.

This is why I wrote that the statements must be concerning a corporation; now whether it is an S corporation or not I do not know although most corporations of that size are S corporations but there are exceptions, the main difference is that an S corporation normally must use the owners credit to borrow. When this happens then the personal earnings of the owner must be high enough to qualify for loans and so forth.

Although this has nothing to do with Senator Obama's tax plan forcing the cost of goods to increase in price to the middle class and poor. When you charge the man making $40,000.00 per year extra expenses, like higher taxes, he will maintain his $40,000.00 by passing along the tax increase to his customers and that is you and me.

The two candidates running right now are the weakest that was running in the primaries; apparently democrats crossed over and voted against Mitt Romney thereby caused McCain to win and the republicans crossed over and voted against Senator Clinton and thereby caused Senator Obama to win.

This election should have been between Clinton and Romney the two strongest candidates and not the two weakest candidates.

Of the two McCain is by far the strongest especially when the financial market in the world is in such a mess.

Tax increases and tariffs is what sent this country into the great depression when the market slowed and it will do the same thing again if Senator Obama is elected and actually implements his tax plans along with his spending plans; people Marxism does not work!

The strongest system to prosper has been and is always will be capitalism, people work harder when they can keep most of what they earn; start stealing from the rich and giving to the poor and eventually we will have all poor except for criminals and government officials who walk the party line.

This is exactly why the USSR collapsed; everybody was sharing whether they worked or not and so they all stopped working and the government had no income to spread around any longer.

Now Senator Obama keeps telling everybody that all of these problems was caused by deregulation of oversight controls and that is just not true there has never been any votes or movement to deregulate oversight; President Clinton allowed lending institutions to lend sub par loans and allowed Fanny Mae and Freddy Mack to absorb these loans and bundle them as viable financial packages thereby placing value on loans that had no value. Much like a pyramid, where one buys on a 10% margin 100 shares of stock quoted at 100, holds it till it rises to 105, and then uses the paper profit to buy 50 shares more.

The problem is that sometime or another this paper must be replaced with cash and the last guy in line is left holding the bag; in this case the banks and lending institutions.

The democrats had control of the finances and for the last two years Senator Barney Frank has been stonewalling everybody's efforts to place some restrictions on this practice along with Democratic Senator Chris Dodd, Democratic Senator Barack Obama and other democrats who are now all pointing at the republicans.

Indiana has good Senators by the most part with the exception of Democratic Senator Bayh who is a follower of the elite.

Bush had little to do with the current situation that the country is in but most people feel that they must blame somebody and he is the likely candidate.

To me it seems that everybody is spending too much time looking under the wrong rocks such as yelling that Governor Palin has no experience when she actually has more experience than Senator Obama; besides she is the bottom of the ticket and Senator Obama is the top of the ticket; although she will probably be the new president 4 years from now.

Most democrat politicians are constantly preaching about the failed Bush policies yet nobody ever points out a failed policy. Has there been mistakes-- of course-- but Iraq is being turned over to their own government, Afghanistan is under control and more troops are moving into the region and will defeat what's left of the terrorist. The US has not been attacked since 9/11 overall jobs are up until the democrats were elected into congress at the last election cycle and they forced the economy down in an effort to win the White House 2 years later.

John R. Stanczak

Last night I was watching the news and they were talking about the Democratic debate and they asked the people in their audience how many believe that taxes should be raised and I was shocked that nearly all of the democrats actually raised their hands.

I find it difficult to believe that these people could be serious; why would anyone want to

1/10/2007
Well thankfully we are in the last year of what was a new administration and city council that ran on “change” three years ago. Unfortunately during the last election cycle we forgot to ask “what changes they were talking about?” There hasn’t actually been much of a change or possibly not any changes at all unless you count the changes for the worst for Bicknell residents. Remember when the mayor and the city council voted into being a 136% sewer rate increase? Well what else has actually taken place since this administration was sworn in? Bicknell hired an engineering firm without getting bids and has paid them around $300,000.00 to date, I am told, for what I have no idea. Bicknell spent $36,000.00 to clean the wells; again without getting any bids. Bicknell lost its license branch and neither the mayor nor the city council attended the meeting in Indianapolis to make an attempt to reclaim it. The mayor and the city council chose not to change the districts so that each district would only be voting for their representative because they thought that there was plenty of time; well times up and it’s too late. This group chose not to change the voting date to coincide with the state and national elections for the last three years which would have saved Bicknell around $4,000.00 at this city election, now it is too late. The mayor chose to ban any questions at the council meetings when they all campaigned on an open door policy. The mayor decided that the Bicknell city council should have no say over his bad spending habits. This administration was quick to raise the sewer fees but very slow in saving the money for sewer work; Mayor Trowbridge has spent enough money on paper work to have repaired the entire Bicknell sewer line system; when asked about saving the sewer monies the mayor answered “why? We have 20 years to pay for the sewer plant. Bicknell received a grant for the amount of $500,000.00 to do sewer line repairs and in my opinion the administration wasted about a third of it on unnecessary repairs so was unable to complete the necessary work. This administration made a deal with the engineer to rebuild the Bicknell sewer plant even before the thought of repairing the excess water flowing into the sewer lines ever crossed his mind. I’m still not sure that it has crossed his mind.
It appears that Mayor Tom Trowbridge is planning on running again with the hopes of serving or I might say getting paid for another four years.
Well mayor maybe you should actually think about getting something done for Bicknell before you make plans to be paid by the Bicknell residents for another four years.
Here are a couple of things that you can do to start Bicknell on the road to recovery. Allow the new ordinance to go into effect, ordinance #7, which gives the

Around three or three and a half years ago I warned the administration that to raise the sewer rates would cause severe damage to the Bicknell residents in both the equity in their homes and property as well as take a large chunk of their spending money away from them. I also told them that the extra cost would force many Bicknell residents to look for other places to live. At the time many of, or I might say most of the city administration and many city employees said and wrote that I was 100% wrong and the raise would actually help Bicknell grow.
Well the votes are in and unfortunately I won.
Our city is shrinking, our home values are dropping, and Bicknell is one of, if not the most expensive place to live in Knox County. The Bicknell water department’s income from the excessive sewer rates is dropping just as I had warned and the extra cost that would have no effect on Mayor Tom Trowbridge and Councilman Gary Goodwin’s living style is destroying many of their neighbors and is forcing many to pass on medicines and groceries that they should have.
The mayor and the radio station along with Councilman Gary Goodwin spent a lot of time advertising how well the new sewer rates would work out for the Bicknell residents; after all, according to them, Bicknell has had the lowest sewer rates in the county since forever. Well they were wrong; Bicknell was in fact higher than Vincennes in sewer costs even before this administration’s excessive sewer rate increase and this should have been evident even to people like Mayor Tom Trowbridge and Councilman Gary Goodwin. Of course I would like to add some other names of those who were hell-bent on raising our sewer rates as soon as they possible could. So other than those I have named above I would also like to give my special thanks to Councilman Steve Volling, Councilwoman Lydia Duncan, and Councilman Jack Parker because without them none of this could have been done. Also let us not forget Brenda Flickinger and our esteemed City Attorney who worked feverously with the mayor to quiet opposition to their sewer rate increase plans; remember when they called in an IDEM representatives to threaten us at a council meeting?
People are telling me that they are considering just walking away from their Bicknell homes because it just costs too much to live here and nobody in the city government seems to care. A lot of people are simply having trouble paying their excessive sewer/water bills and today have in hand disconnect-notices from the city that they will not be able to pay.
Sometime back I had a lady tell me that she was getting tired of reading about the same things in the paper every week and couldn’t I write about something else; the short answer is no; I believe that I must keep the pressure on this administration until the next city elections when the Bicknell voters can decide to notify this administration whether or not they believe that they have done a good job.
So once again I am advising the mayor and the Bicknell city council members to cut the sewer rates for the benefit of Bicknell, stop all forward progress on the Bicknell sewer plant and start concentrating on the multi-sewer line leaks so the plant flooding can be stopped. This administration has about one year left to actually do something to help Bicknell; their mindset in the past was that all of the damaging decisions that they have made were actually good things that would actually help the residents of Bicknell even though the Bicknell residents didn’t understand it yet. They actually believed that they would be praised as the ones who stood up against a biased public opinion and took control of a situation that nobody else had the guts to do. Well they were and are wrong; they stood up and turned over their jobs to IDEM and United Engineers with little regard to Bicknell’s plight. I told them to ask the people to remove their sump pump connections from the sanitary sewer system and to hook them up to the storm system because these pumps will multiply the amount of water going to the Bicknell sewer plant many times more than what is normal but they did nothing and in fact threatened one resident on South Main Street with a fine if he didn’t hook up to the sanitary sewer system when, I believe, Councilwoman Lydia Duncan complained that he was pumping the ground water out of his basement and it was running into the street, which I might add the street is part of the Bicknell storm sewer system. These things as always are my opinions but these opinions are quickly becoming the opinions of many of the city employee’s and most of the Bicknell population.

This week I just have a couple of things to write about; Saturday I received a telephone call from a Bicknell resident who was upset and rightly so I might add because of a water problem that she was having.
As she told me; she got up in the morning and was preparing to make a drink and when she ran the water from her faucet the water in her cup foamed.
As anyone would do she simply dumped the water into the sink and refilled the cup and to her surprise the water foamed once more. Now dumped the water out into the sink and she rinsed out the cup then refilled it and once again the water foamed up in her cup.

Of course when a person needs to contact the city officials their not around because it’s always on the weekend so she called the police who helped her by contacting the proper representative of the water department or at least gave her their telephone number but in any event they did manage to talk to one another. She told them her story and they more or least told her that it must be her fault. Well in any event they did nothing to assist in solving her problem; so she called me out of shear frustration because she reads my articles “In My Opinion” in the Bicknell paper.
Now by the time that you are reading this I will have taken the water sample from her third refill to the health department to have it checked for her.

Now it is true that I don’t actually know why the water foamed at this time no more than she knew why or the water department representative knows why but in my opinion here is the way that it should have been handled because I really cannot think of anything that is more important than the Bicknell water purity.

First the representative should call the person who is reporting the problem then they should actually go to the home or business where the complaint originated and take a water sample and not simply tell the person with the problem that it is their fault. Next the representative should have taken the sample to have it tested. The home owner should have been told that they would be given an allowance on their water/sewer bill so that she could flush out all of her water lines without being stuck with extra cost on an already

Why is the sewer plant costing Bicknell so much and why are the council members so hostile to one another? Why does Mayor Tom Trowbridge do one thing after another to benefit special interests?
This is the council’s problem as I see it; there is no benefit to have a couple council members reporting to the other three council members; this created the current problem that has split our current city council member into two factions. One being the mayor and two council members who are included in the inter-circle of the Bicknell’s city affairs because they side with the mayor when they sit on the Bicknell Board of Public Works; the other being the other three council members who are not included in the inter-circle of the Bicknell’s city affairs. This creates either continuing disagreement, a mayor who believes that he is a dictator, or both; in any case in my opinion this causes the city to be run by special interest such as United Engineering and creates only hardship to the residents of Bicknell.

I propose that the Bicknell Board of Public Works be made up of the mayor and two private citizens who are picked by the mayor and approved by the Bicknell City Council. Because it is a volunteer position I would suggest that the volunteers only serve a six month term so that we can keep rotating in new ideas; I believe that this new Board of Public Works should then report their findings and suggestions to the full council at which time I believe that it is the council’s responsibility to act on spending and ordinance matters as allowed by the Indiana Code.

Under my administration there will be new council rules in place that have already been voted on and passed by the current council and is being blocked by the mayor that will allow Bicknell citizens to step forward at the city council meetings to speak their mind about what they see as problems in their neighborhoods; In my opinion public input is a good thing because it is an indicator of possible

The history behind my experience with the mayor and the city council members just in case someone does not know.
The mayor, Jack Parker, Steve Volling, and Lydia Duncan and I were of the same mind set prior to the election but within a month or two of being elected each of them began dropping the plans (changes) that we had talked about for helping Bicknell. I will tell you that I did not have any meetings with either Bill Kitchens or Gary Goodwin prior to the election.
At the first City Council meeting I tried to explain to them that they needed to begin work on the things (changes) that had been discussed and their positive responses should actually be recorded in the minutes of that meeting but because I am not a council member I never received a copy so I do not actually know.
 
Some of the plan was:
 1. To change the council districts so that each Bicknell resident would be represented, Gary Goodwin did not appear to like this idea and called until he found a state employee to disagree with it; Lydia Duncan had I believe changed her mind sometime shortly after the election because that is when she found that she had actually lost in her own district. She told me that if the districts had been changed prior to the election she would not have won. I believe that Jack Parker and Steve Volling were still in favor. At this time the mayor was simply lost and really had no opinion on the subject but being afraid of the State people he withdrew his backing shortly afterwards, I have always believed that the mayor changed with the encouragement of Gary Goodwin and Lydia Duncan.
My source in Vincennes had already set up the change but was receiving a lot of pressure from the State people who Gary Goodwin had contacted in an apparent effort to stop the district change so I told her to let it go until later
; this is were Lydia Duncan gets her belief that I had changed my mind and actually agreed with her which of course is not true.

2. Change the election date to coincide with the state elections so that Bicknell would no longer be required to pay the entire cost of the county’s expense of setting up a city election. That year because of all of the problems that the county was having getting the tax money out to the individual towns they dropped the charge and absorbed it themselves so Bicknell did not have to pay the fee of somewhere around $3,000.00. This one time gesture caused the council members and the mayor to drop the idea because; I don’t know why but there was never a vote taken on the subject.

3. Every member of the Bicknell City Council agreed not to raise the sewer rates and to insist on procuring grants to build and/or repair the sewer plant. Except, I believe, for Gary Goodwin who later said that he only ran for city council to build a new sewer plant and was not willing to wait for grants or at least that was what he implied. The State (IDEM) threatened them with personal fines which of course is nonsense and is beyond the State’s powers but every council member folded except Bill Kitchens who was against the sewer raise so they had the vote when he was at his brother’s funeral. They raised the rates by 136%. Keep in mind that the actual suggested increase was 135% but the mayor wanted to add 1% for reasons that I do not understand.

3. Everybody agreed that the Bicknell police should only patrol the streets of Bicknell and this included the mayor who even wanted to go some steps further and fire a patrolman; at the time that I was talking to the mayor on the subject of the police I did not know that he appears to carry grudges and looks for ways to get even with those that

I read the second ½ of Lydia Duncan and Jack Parker’s letter to the editor in the Bicknell paper on October 11th. Like the first ½ of the article they did leave out some important things so I will include one of the missing parts that was actually included at the end of the email that Lydia Duncan received. Jodie Woods wrote: “This is my belief on how the system should work but the council can approve claims under the law and be responsible for making sure that the claims are properly itemized, goods/services are received and that there is an available appropriation” and “Please be advised that the information you receive from the IACT (Indiana Association of Cities & Towns) office is not legal advice.  In addition you must consult your local city or town attorney to make sure that any of the material you receive from IACT is in accordance with current state law and your particular facts and situation.  (Signed) Jodie Woods, General Counsel, Indiana Association of Cities & Towns 200 S. Meridian St., Ste. 340 Indianapolis, IN  46225.”
In other words everything that she wrote and sent to Lydia and Jack was in fact only Jodie Woods’ opinion and she did not pretend to infer that it was actual Indiana Code. The Bicknell City Council does in fact have the

There have been people who have asked me about my facts and I was going to present them but when I read the Bicknell newspaper, “The Independent”, I noticed that Lydia Duncan and Jack Parker have listed a lot of the Indiana Codes that would be of concern to the residents of Bicknell regarding the actions of the City Council and the Mayor’s administration so there is really no point to me repeating them.
Even though I have not compared each Indiana Code that they quote in their letter-to-the-editor with the Indiana Code that is in the code book that I use they appear to be accurate; although some are not complete, but it says that the balance will be in next weeks paper. In my opinion it is an informative article; that will help people understand that the mayor and the city council are not actually doing their jobs properly.
It appears when I’m reading their article that at least Lydia and Jack are aware that they do in fact have the right to control expenditures along with a lot of other legal council duties; although they do seem to get side tracked easily.
It would appear that they are writing that the Council Rules Ordinance did pass and that the Board of Public Works no longer has the right to spend Bicknell’s money because that right is now the duty of the full council; but I don’t think that they actually say that.
It is true that the hold up for not recognizing or enforcing the new rules ordinance is Mayor Tom Trowbridge who is trying to find loop holes to stop it.
He has used several different reasons, actions, and/or rules to keep it from becoming Bicknell Law. First it was too early to introduce it and vote on it (December 2005), then it had to be written by the City Attorney, next it was not on the agenda, then it never had a number, then it took a 2/3 vote or 4 council members to change council rules, and the last time it was not binding because of the authority given to him by passed practices. Right now I suspect that the mayor is using his “veto” clause in an attempt to stop it, most likely a pocket veto so he does not have to tell anyone or the council why he does not want it. But this also seems to be nothing more than a delaying tactic as well because of the following Indiana Code: 36-3-4-14 (b) all ordinances and resolutions of a legislative body are subject to veto, except the following: #5) a resolution prescribing rules for the internal management of the legislative body.
Of course this part of the code may be included in next weeks ½ of Lydia and Jack’s letter-to-the-editor. I would also like to thank ‘The Independent newspaper’ for printing their letter; most news papers like the Vincennes Sun-Commercial will not allow a letter that actually covers a subject thereby forcing everyone to limit their writings so much that the point of the letters are often lost.
When it comes right down to it all of this has been academic when for the last 3 years everything the

I read in the Vincennes newspaper that the Bicknell City Council should stop being negative; I have heard this from several people and it is true that there is a lot of disagreement among the current Bicknell administration and the current City Council members. The question is should the council members fight for what they think is right and resist what they do not agree with or not?  Maybe the following facts will shed some light on the subject of the cause of disagreement. The bid amount to complete the Mary Street Project by Kieffer Brothers was $483,734.30 but the bill that they presented to the Bicknell Treasurer was for $518,787.91; this is an overage of over $35,000.00 which is higher than most home resale values in Bicknell. No part of this bid was ever presented to the Bicknell City Council for approval.
Since February of 2006 the sewer rates at the new inflated rates has brought in around $608,000.00; the administration has spent around $354,000.00 not counting payroll, fuel, chemicals, and plant upkeep with nothing being set back for future plant construction. No part of this spending was ever presented to the Bicknell City Council for their approval. This translates to