Indianapolis City-County Council Begins Spending Public Safety Tax Increase Dollars On Other Priorities

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.