(Welcome back from a long holiday weekend. We all need time to catch up, so I’m leaving this posting on the marquee for now)
Just in case you missed it during last week’s predictable Thanksgiving rush, the senior editor contributed a Tribune guest column culled from a posting here at NAC:
BAYLOR: 1SI’s involvement with ROCK is sticky
Having concluded a revealing week during which One Southern Indiana unabashedly promoted a partisan Republican campaign stop for Mike Sodrel conducted by sitting and failed president, the regional “economic development” agency has inched further down a very slippery slope by aligning itself publicly with an anti-pornography lobby group, Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana.
1SI’s president, Michael Dalby, has been sent all pertinent links to recent NAC articles on the topic of his organization’s newfound affiliation with an evangelical lobby group that opposes abortion, stem cell research and gay marriage, to name just three ROCK planks that have nothing whatsoever to do with economic development.
Here is Dalby’s only response to date:
Thanks for the link, though I’m not certain what actions or goals of the organization you are referring to. We are a regional economic development organization, and our actions and goals seek to expand the economy, raise the per capita income and expand the tax base, thereby lessening the burden of government on individual tax payers. If there are efficiencies that can be gained by consolidating public service delivery systems (for instance, multiple 911 systems which today’s technology can consolidate), we do encourage those efforts as a means of getting the most from taxpayer dollars.
The dictionary provides this handy definition for assistance in interpreting Dalby’s sidestep:
dis·in·gen·u·ous adj.
1. Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating: “an ambitious, disingenuous, philistine, and hypocritical operator, who … exemplified … the most disagreeable traits of his time” (David Cannadine).
2. Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated; faux-naïf.
3. Unaware or uninformed; naive.
We await Dalby’s and 1SI chairman Kerry Stemler’s clarifications, and gently suggest to them that any response take the form of addressing the actual question and specific issue rather than insult the intelligence of the reading public by reciting mission statements by rote.
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Meanwhile, our local bookseller cooly and capably called our local political charlatan’s latest bluff:
Let’s examine those crime statistics from Coffey, by Randy Smith (guest column in the Tribune).
I read, first with amusement, then with genuine concern, the deceptive letter to The Tribune from District 1 Council Member Dan J. Coffey …
… With help from my bride, I quickly found the Department of Justice’s Web statistics page, managed by DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. As Mr. Coffey was brazen enough to try (yet again) to pose as an expert and to (yet again) mislead the public and especially The Tribune’s readership, we both thought it might be instructive to report to you the actual and official numbers on crime in New Albany.
Yet again, it looks like the Wizard of Westside has no clothes. It’s a telling commentary on the times that 1SI joins Coffey in the act of conceptual disrobing.
