(H/t Ben and Derrick). About eleven miles north of Richmond, near Bethel, tower the commanding heights of Hoosier Hill. At 1,257 feet, the hill stands an imposing 30 feet or so above the surrounding country side.
But this proud land feature is in danger of being usurped.
Indiana’s new high point?
Atlas Obscura reports:
Hoosier Hill was also the final state high point visited by A.H. Marshall, the first person to ascend all 50. However with the land being as flat as it is in Eastern Indiana, there was been some controversy in recent years as a landfill in neighboring Randolph County has requested permission to stack its garbage above Hoosier Hill’s elevation, thus potentially making the highest point a peak of refuse. It is unknown whether the garbage pile has bested Indiana’s natural peak, but it certainly is not as well cared for.
Instead of constructing that monument to Mitch Daniels suggested by some legislators, why not simply rename it “Mitch Mess” or “Daniel’s Accomplishments”, with the other called “Pence’s Thoughts” or “Pence’s Pencees”? They should serve as the source for gas and acrid smell for the next quarter of a century.
Or better yet, just call it Mount Mitch Daniels. It’d perhaps be the most fitting monument we could have for him considering the state he has left our state in.
Many people in IL are envy of the political state of IN. I don’t think you have any idea how lucky you are. Keep whining
I can see where you might be “envy” of Indiana because the former governor was so damn good at getting his message out that Indiana was/is doing so well all because of his leadership (also called propaganda). Indiana sure became quite a utopia under the Daniels’ administration. I’ll quit “whining” when you stop buying into bull—-.
You might check out the data to see how Indiana ranks, relative to the other states. Down the line, it’s pretty much in the lower ten: healthcare, education, all the quality of life indices. If you are interested in some support for that, I’ll send it. Indiana ranks among “the most miserable places to live” and in a number of areas, is equal with Mississippi. Meanwhile, remember that when the taxes are low and the state spends no money on quality of life for its residents, there is still a cost.
A Gallup poll released last week shows Indiana ranks 42nd in well-being index score, life expectancy, household income and adult education. It is 2nd from the bottom in healthy behaviors. Indiana ranks among “the most miserable states”. (http://247wallst.com/special-report/2013/02/28/americas-happiest-and-most-miserable-states/), Healthcare? Forget it: 43rd (http://datacenter.commonwealthfund.org/#ind=1/sc=1). In almost every index, Indiana ranks in the bottom ten of all the states, not an inviting climate for prospective high-quality businesses, and NOT a place you want your governor to emulate unless you want to share the bottom with us. Forget the hype. That’s all it is.
Duly noted. I would want our governor to emulate your former governor is some respects. I would just be happy if our governor Quinn doesn’t go to prison like the last two did. I also think people in IL would appreciate lower taxes and a less CORRUPT government. The quality of life is what you make of it.
Like most stories, the complications come in the total telling. Hugely important not to believe what is not true when you have to make a decision, but there are some people who have a genuine interest in the public not understanding the true or whole story in both states.
Corruption occurs in one part states. Indiana is as corrupt as Illinois, it’s that Indiana politicians and business leaders long ago made sure a) the local media is complicit (I’m looking at you, Jim Shelia), b) the state laws on bribery are pretty wide open, and c) there is no one important who not part of the graft.
Illinois’s problem — in Hoosier terms — is that your media is too nosy.
And, his physical stature?
I drive past this landfill often. Of more note to me is that it gets so much traffic that Indiana 1 (the main way to get there) fell apart and is currently closed.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/40%C2%B005'05.9%22N+85%C2%B007'01.8%22W/@40.084977,-85.117154,2494m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0?hl=en
Totally appropriate that you would drive to the Daniels/Pence monument on a broken road, itself a monument to Daniels/Pence.
I’m just trying to get to the Chocolate Moose in Farmland. I mean, I’ve got priorities here. (Though we did once stop outside the landfill for… well, a child-related emergency that couldn’t wait 30 minutes until we got to our destination. Good thing they’ve got trees to “hide” the landfill. Parenthood… good times.)
People don’t want to pay taxes, this is what they get. People want cuts to affect someone else but not them, this is what they get. You get broken-down infrastructure because people want great roads for free. It’s not possible.
Don’t blame Mitch Daniels. Don’t blame Mike Pence (even though I think he’s awful). Tell your local legislator you want to pay more in taxes for better roads, you want to take money from X and give it to fixing roads, or you want to stop building new roads. (Though I’m not certain “no new roads” would help…)
“People don’t want to pay taxes, this is what they get.”
People pay an assload of taxes every time they buy gas or pay for a license plate.
And, yet, outside of libertarian anarchists, they still demand more services than they are willing to pay AND elect the sort of people who exempt rich folks and businesses from paying taxes. When all you have to tax is a disappearing middle class and an underclass, you get the Third World state we have.
>> People pay an assload of taxes every time they buy gas or pay for a license plate. <<
Yet the roads are falling apart. Where are the concrete places the money is going besides into roads?
Mitch Daniels, for better/worse, traded 75 years of Toll Road revenue to try to paper over the issue for a few years. But that will run out soon enough.
“Where are the concrete places the money is going besides into roads?”
Whole Foods, the new Hoosierdome, the Colts, the Pacers, cop pensions, etc.
Except for the last line about cops, which we sort of need, Freedom is dead on about the crony capitalism (he forgot about the IMS) in this city. However, doesn’t explain why state funding sucks.
Give cops their paycheck, and let them worry about their own retirements, like everyone else.
That money is gone. Hell, in order to preserve a budget surplus for his aborted run for President, Mitch spent our I-69 money on other stuff.
We have nothing to show for Mitch’s short-sighted lunacy….he gave up an estimated 11 billion in revenue for 3+ billion….
Mitch Daniels gave up 11 billion for 3+ billion because the other option was inaction.
What was the other option? Count on the Indiana Legislature to raise taxes for road funding? Yeah right. The roads didn’t just start falling apart overnight.
There is plenty of blame to be shared. Blame Republicans for voting for it, blame Democrats for absolutely falling down when it came to opposition or a better plan.
Last time I checked, Mitch Daniels wasn’t among the legislators who was raiding the money that was supposed to be saved for the future. That happened this past year… to again, paper over the deficit in road funding.
I’m still trying to make sense of the flowcharts in this link, but I did find it interesting. Not for his conclusions, not against his conclusions, he’s just spent more time thinking about this than most.
http://www.finplaneducation.net/gas_tax_reform.htm
Uh, yeah, he could not have made a bad deal that and his cronies did NOT put back into roads. Yeah, I think he could have skipped that idea
“And, yet, outside of libertarian anarchists”
You communists are funny. A government 10% the size of the combined governments in the United States would still be easily the largest government, on Earth. Yet, if you try to repeal a single law or regulation, the statists run about in a histrionic panic that anarchy is at the door.
You seriously believe the united States has the most government in the world? in a world where Chinese totalitarians and Scandanavian countries exist, you want to tell us the non-military government of the United States is BY A FACTOR OF 1000% larger than any government in the world?
Care to produce ONE stat?
In 2013, all state, federal and local spending was $6,100,000,000,000*. There are 310,000,000 people in the country. All government spending was $19,677, per person.
Each person has to give $19,677 to the government, every year, just to run at break-even.
Do you have skill at appreciating size and scope of large numbers? If you do, think about that figure.
At what level of total government spending, per person, would you say anarchy begins?
* http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/breakdown_2013USrt_15rs5n
And of course as all “right-thinking” people know, all of that money disappears into a black hole never to return, ever, anywhere in any form, or do anything positive or productive whatsoever, since it is “gubmint”.
Yeah, sure, that’s right, that’s why all these hospitals want Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement, these old people are rioting in the streets for their Social Security, and the soldiers are quitting becasue they don’t get paid. Saddest, are the military contractors who have abandoned Northern Virginia because their private security and intelligence contracts are never paid….
Dang it, I need to read people’s names more closely. It sounded like something he would say….that’s my only defense
So, your answer to what is the biggest in the world” is not to talk about intrusiveness, totalitarian control over media, theocracies areound the world….no, it’s to take a undigested figure (which calls all government outlays, spending) and declare that the “biggest government” is the one with the highest per capita spending (which, by the way, you did not do, since spending by government is financed by borrowing, fee and fines receipts, corporate taxes, tariffs, and a million other ways) without showing it’s the highest per capita.
You compared an apple to an orange and used the comparison to denounce grapefruit. Perhaps, if you knew anything about how government functions you wouldn’t be so clueless?
Dude, really? This is all you have? $19,677 for each and every person, and all you have is throwing a bunch of dust in the air while running for cover?
Here are all the countries in the world. Name the anarchies.
Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
American Samoa
Andorra
Angola
Anguilla
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina
Armenia
Aruba
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium
Belize
Benin
Bermuda
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Botswana
Bouvet Island
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cape Verde
Cayman Islands
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Christmas Island
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
Colombia
Comoros
Congo, Democratic Republic of the (Zaire)
Congo, Republic of
Cook Islands
Costa Rica
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Falkland Islands
Faroe Islands
Fiji
Finland
France
French Guiana
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Gibraltar
Greece
Greenland
Grenada
Guadeloupe (French)
Guam (USA)
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Holy See
Honduras
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Ivory Coast (Cote D`Ivoire)
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macau
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Martinique (French)
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mayotte
Mexico
Micronesia
Moldova
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Montserrat
Morocco
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands
Netherlands Antilles
New Caledonia (French)
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
Niue
Norfolk Island
North Korea
Northern Mariana Islands
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Pitcairn Island
Poland
Polynesia (French)
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Reunion
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Saint Helena
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Saint Vincent and Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome and Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands
South Korea
South Sudan
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Timor-Leste (East Timor)
Togo
Tokelau
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Turks and Caicos Islands
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Venezuela
Vietnam
Virgin Islands
Wallis and Futuna Islands
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe
You missed one. Go back, correct and repost, please. We’re waiting.