Fishers shoots for a new Tax

Fishers claims to have the lowest tax rate. I just love this fake claim; they make it up with fees and other hidden taxes. Such as the Stormwater Fee (tax) we all had to just pay. Now here comes another hidden tax, House Bill 1070 would authorize the Fishers town council to adopt, on or before December 31, 2013, an ordinance to impose a town food and beverage tax of not more than 1% on taxable food and beverage transactions in the town. Specifies that the revenue from the tax must be used to reduce the town's actual property tax levy (but not maximum permissible levy) or for economic development purposes, including the pledge of money to bonds, leases, or other obligations for economic development purposes. Since the Town's actual levy is above the 1% cap it means the Town can impose a 1% tax on your restaurant bill. What is very interesting is only two towns in the entire state are trying to get this. Fishers and Cloverdale. So behind our backs the Town Council is once again at it, raise taxes, sort of keep it hidden, but still claim to have the lowest tax rate. Hopefully the State Senate will stop this nonsense.

Tme to tax bullets

The NRA has proposed that armed officers be placed in every school as a solution to the gun problem. This is a wonderful sound bite but not a real solution nor did the NRA come forward with the funds to achieve this process. This solution places a burden on the taxpayer and even has resulted in proposals in the current session of the legislation. Yet at the same time the Governor want to lower taxes. The police protection of schools is just a transfer of cost to the local level and in essence a tax against all of us to the benefit of gun owners. I believe the State of Indiana should at once impose a bullet tax. Apply a tax for each bullet sold in the state or shipped into the state by a mail order vendor. The citizens of this state should not have to raise school taxes to pay for this protection the gun users should. We tax other direct usages or apply fees in this same manor. So it is time to tax the gun owners with a usage tax on bullets. This in no way violates the 2nd amendment or limits their rights to own guns.

Time Passes Histories Lost

As time passes on much is lost and history becomes more and more condensed. How many times have you wanted to ask a loved one what happened? Or someone who live hundreds or thousands of years ago what happened? But even in a short spam of time much can be lost. Sometimes we can get lucky and find an old document that sheds light on a question. Recently I found out when and where my maternal grandparents were murdered by the Nazi’s. It took 70 years to find out and a slip of paper in an archive in Switzerland provided the hint to start a trail that led to a forest where they were machine-gunned down. My father’s family was much luckier. A great uncle came to this land in 1905 and prospered and so in 1935 he returned to Europe to start the process to save the Weingarten Family and bring them the United States. But even mush of this has been lost to time. My father would never speak of what happened or how they managed to survive, I have been able to get some of the relatives to speak and put their accounts in a book, but the book is more than just about the survival of family. My father wrote 100 hundreds of poems and always hoped they would be published. I have taken all the poems, added pictures of family, some from long ago and placed them in a book. Today the book was published by Amazon. The following is the description from the book and should you wish a copy the ordering information. The title of the book is one letter, it is the nickname of my father, very simple and a name he was called by all who worked for him and all his friends: H Herman H. Weingarten A Collection of Poems And A Family Holocaust History "Herman Weingarten was born in Vienna during WWI, the oldest of three brothers. The family did well in Vienna until the dark cloud of Hitler came and the hardships for many Jews and almost certain death. With the help of an uncle who came to America in 1905 much of the family was brought to the land of liberty. “H” as he was known worked as the chief chemist in a pharmaceutical factory, was drafted seven times and sent back each time to continue war production. He worked in that same factory until he retired. His middle brother was unable to go to medical school because of quotas against Jews so he became an engineer and invented the color picture tube and his youngest brother went into service to his nation moving up the ranks to a high position in the Census Bureau. But it was in retirement that “H” found a new love, poetry. This book is a collection of his poems along with family pictures not in any order but a cross section of both European and American snapshots. He always hoped some day his poems would be published but unfortunately he will never see his words in actual print. Many of the relatives and friends shown in photographs in this collection will never be able to see themselves. But a new generation can and they will be able to read, see and keep alive the words. The poems capture the twinkle in his deep blue eyes and happiness in family and living in a free nation. The Holocaust and World War II killed 50 million people, yet many names will not be remembered, many stories of survival will not be known and much of what happened will be forgotten. Presented here some of the stories from just one family. How many other family’s histories will vanish in the next few years. It is time to record as much as we can. It is time to never forget." List Price: $10.00 6" x 9" Black & White on Cream paper 290 pages ISBN-13: 978-1481866569 ISBN-10: 1481866567

The cart before the horse or how not to plan a downtown.

The Fishers Town Council is once again placing the cart before the horse. They are moving full speed ahead with a downtown redevelopment plan but forgot to do a town wide plan first. Plus the plan sets up districts within the downtown instead of one district called “downtown” so if we view these small districts as the criteria for the rest of the town we should have at least 100 districts by the time they are finished. Then they are giving away green space in front of he Town hall and Post Office for an apartment building. Just what we need more cars and congestion on 116th street and the loss of green space. Once again it shows a total lack of vision and planning by this council.

Field Guide to US Paratrooper Badges

I am proud to announce that my book is finally in print. It took about a year to put this together and I am very happy with the outcome. While it won't make the NY Times best seller list it will help collectors of insignia and it fills a void on these badges. I started my engineering career in the Aerial Delivery and Air Cargo Branch of the US Air Force. This is the research and development group charged with design of delivering cargo by both parachute and cargo aircraft. I spent my first 10 years of engineering in this branch which included four years in uniform. So I am coming full circle with this book and paratrooper badges back to my first job. One of these days I will put together a posting of my Air Force days. It was rather unusual and maybe even fill in the details on the flying saucer (Secret) blueprints I found in the history vaults. A Field Guide to United States Paratrooper Badges is a comprehensive illustrated guide to hundreds of paratrooper badges to aid the collector community. All paratrooper badges are the same but to the collector they are not, small details can provide information as to when they were manufactured and by who. This guide shows the various manufactures and the details of the badges. Hundreds of photographs provide both the details of the badges and the hallmarks of the manufacturing companies where ever possible. While not 100% complete it provides the most comprehensive guide ever produced on paratrooper badges. In addition un-official badges are shown as well as badges for supporting roles to the paratrooper. A history of parachutes dating back to Leonardo da Vinci in 1495 provides the reader a sense of how parachutes came into being and the start of combat operations in WWII. A list of United States combat jumps is also provided. As is a section on un-official awards granted to people who lives were saved when jumping from a disabled aircraft such as the "Caterpillar" award. If you collect United States military insignia this book is a must for your reference library. 155 Pages, 100’s of color photos. Ordering info: Just do a search on the following at www.Amazon.com The site will let you look at inside pages, etc. In the USA - ISBN:148118105X In Europe - EAN13:9781481181051

Townepost - censorship at its best

You have been suspended from townepost.com Sorry, Joe Weingarten, you can not access townepost.com as you have been suspended. If you think you've been suspended in error, you can contact the administrator. Message to the Administrator Dear Tom You have shown that you believe in one sided journalism and censorship. In the October 2012 issue of your magazine you showed your true colors by writing an article backing the Town of Fishers Reorganization Committee. It was one sided and full of the same false and misleading statements that the committee issued. When it came to light about how much money they paid I had to question the article. I do love the last line in your article “My vote is for “yes” on question 1.” To bad you didn’t actual vote since you don’t live in Fishers, if you had we could had some fun about election fraud. You also forgot to include that you listen to “treasurer for the HSE School district” that he is a paid consultant of the town. Now that would have been news, not he approved this strange form of government. Back to censorship, when I posted a note about following the money on the Reorganization Committee and pointed out the large payment to you on Townepost – bingo it was removed like a very hot potato and I was suspended from Townepost. It appears you can’t handle the truth. Maybe people will ask the question anytime in the future you recommend anything – “How much is he being paid?” By the way instead of saying a city yes supporter was yelling – their lying, maybe you should have found out what really happened. But then again in your style of journalism it does not matter what the truth is, you never asked the other side. You just took the word of the person who was not telling the truth. The folks of Fishers defeated this plan by 62 of the vote, the voters of Geist defeated it by just over 67%. They understood and figure out the real truth even if you tried to lead people down a false path. You owe a number of us a written apology as well as all the people of Fishers in at.Geist but I am willing to bet you don’t know how to write one. Joe

Confusion in Fishers

This election day the voters of Fishers will face an extremely important election and both the Town and their supporters have been issuing false and misleading statements to attempt to convince voters to approve a new type of government. They have out and out mislead the citizens of the Town on this subject. They claim a second-class city cannot hire a professional manager. Yet under Home Rule they can. Further they cite four cities that have a Council-Manager form of government and forgot to inform the voters that all four of these have directly elected Mayors and Council members that Fishers would not have. They have claimed a million dollars in savings mostly from removing the Public Safety employees from Social Security, yet the Social Security Administration has confirmed that the Town has never contacted them nor has any government unit in the State been released from Social Security in at least the past ten years. In their new form of government they want to appoint a Mayor instead of allowing the citizens of the town to elect their Mayor. It appears the Town leaders don't trust the citizens to elect their own Mayor, why should we the citizens trust the town. They made the statement "Give Fishers residents the ability to vote for EVERY locally-elected official and hold them all accountable." They forgot to add except the Mayor who we appoint. All the council members would be elected at-large removing another layer of "locally-elected." They make the statement about keeping the taxes low, yet according to the County Auditor Fishers has the highest overall tax rate in Hamilton County. The Town Council placed questions on the ballot to make it as confusing as possible to trick the voters. It's time Fishers with 80,000 residents becomes a traditional Indiana city. To achieve this you have vote no on Question one and yes on Question two. See how confusing.