About: Mike Sylvester
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Posts by Mike Sylvester:
Election Predictions
11/4/08 @ 8:51 am
First of all I hope everyone votes. One of the keys to a successful Democracy is an informed and voting populace.
My predictions are below:
Barack Obama (D) will be the next President. He will not win in a landslide; however he will win. I further predict that McCain will win both Indiana and Ohio.
Mitch Daniels (R) will easily win the Governors race.
Greg Zoeller (R) will win the Attorney General race by at least 6 points.
Tony Bennett (R) will win the Superintendent of Public Instruction race by at least 6 points.
Mark Souder (R) will win his next term in Congress; however, it will be close. I predict Souder will get 49%, Montagano 46%, Larsen 5%.
Sue Orth (R) will easily win the race for County Treasurer in Allen County.
County Council is the hardest race for me to predict. I project Buskirk (R) having the most votes, followed by Armstrong (R), followed by Hoot (D). I think Moss (R) will come in a close 4th and Knuth (D) a distant 5th. I would not be surprised if Moss was 3rd.
Three Fort Wayne School Board seats are up for election this year. Three candidates are supported by the Code Blue Schools PAC and their opponents are supported by the leadership of the School District. I predict: Olinger will beat Hill by a comfortable margin. Schaab will beat Pierce by a small margin. Mol will beat Corona by 10 votes. In other words, I am predicting that the citizens will elect all of the Code Blue candidates in an effort to take their School District back.
What are your predictions?
Filed Under 2008 Local Elections, 2008 National Elections, Featured | 4 Comments
Where is the government accountability?
11/3/08 @ 10:48 pm
When the Federal Government “bailed out” AIG a couple of months ago it cost the taxpayers 85 billion dollars. This was the largest bailout of a private firm in history. Those who supported it said it was necessary to save the financial industry. Those who opposed it said it was unwarrented socialism.
Three weeks later the Government approved another 38 billion for AIG.
Three weeks later (Last week) the Federal Government approved another 20 billion dollars.
The taxpayers have poured 143 billion dollars into AIG.
When will it stop?
Mike Sylvester
Filed Under National Politics | Leave a Comment
Fort Wayne pension costs
10/30/08 @ 9:01 am
Due to some discussion on this blog with a commentor I talked to Fort Wayne City Controller Pat Roller about the outstanding liability for the old police and fire pension plans.
Last year the city had an outstanding liability on these pensions of almost one quarter of a billion dollars. The Indiana Legislature changed the rules and took over this outstanding liability this year. This was one of the many changes that occurred with the changes in property taxes.
Per Pat Roller this is not going to benefit the City financially because at the same time the State lowered the amount that could be appropriated by the City to make pension payments by about 8 million dollars per year. The State basically lowered the amount that the City could pay via property taxes by this 8 million dollar figure.
Per Pat Roller this has a net effect of close to zero. She feels that the City most likely will have a small pension liability for these older pension plans (Maybe one million dollars) due to the death benefit and the administration costs.
So while the State of Indiana did take esponsibility for paying the bulk of these old pension plans; at the same time they lowered the amount the City could levy via property taxes by eight million per year.
The net result is close to zero.
Mike Sylvester
Filed Under Local Politics | 2 Comments
How Mike Sylvester plans on voting next week
10/30/08 @ 8:46 am
I have decided how I am going to vote next week.
President: Bobb Barr/Wayne Root, Libertarian. This race was simple, I cannot vote for McCain and I definitely cannot vote for Obama. With the addition of Palin I almost decided to vote for McCain.
Governor: MItch Daniels/Becky Skillman, Republican. This race was tough for me because I almost voted Libertarian; however, I voted for Mitch Daniels because he has guts and is willing to change things.
Attorney General: Greg Zoeller, Republican. This one was easy.
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Tony Bennett, Republican. This one was easy.
3rd Congressional District: William Larsen. This one was easy as well. I cannot vote for Souder for reasons often posted on this blog. I cannot vote for Montagano because he has no experience, is afraid to take stands on the issue, and moved here just to run for Congress. I can vote for William Larsen because he is a small government type and a social conservative. William Larsen would be a Republican today if the Republican Party still stood for smaller Government.
County Treasurer: Sue Orth, Republican. I am impressed with Maria Parra’s willingness to stand up the the Wayne Township Board; however, I feel Sue Orth is more qualified.
County Council. Susan Hoot, Democrat. Paul Moss, Republican. This was the toughest race for me; in fact, I still have not decided if I will vote for a 3rd person or not. County Council has five candidates all of which have some strengths. Susan Hoot is a no-brainer for me. I have been impressed with Paul Moss in the past; however his recent desire to put public money into our zoo turned me off as has his stance on the Canyon Cliffs Development. That being said; I still think he stands for smaller Government in general.
There are a lot of other uncontested races and I do not see a reason to list them.
I became a Republican this year and certainly am voting for a majority of Republicans in contested races. In contested raced I am voting for:
- Two Libertarians
- One Democrat
- Five Republicans
Mike Sylvester
Filed Under 2008 Local Elections, 2008 National Elections | 32 Comments
My political predictions from Nov 2006
10/29/08 @ 12:52 am
After the Democrats took control of Congress in November of 2006 I made 22 predictions. Many people chimed in and posted their predictions as well including our own Jeff Pruitt. These prediction involved Democratic campaign promises, items conservative talk radio “claimed” that the Democrats would embrace if they took the majority, and other items I was interested in.
You can read my predictions here. You can read Jeff Pruitt’s response to my predictions here.
Without a doubt; the Democrats completely failed to follow that majority of their campaign promises; however, the media and voters are not holding them accountable for this!
Several of these promises have been passed in the House; however, the Senate has failed to pass them. I think it is fair to say that House Democrats WOULD (And did pass i many cases) have passed many of these items if not for the senate. The Republicans have done some filibustering in the senate; however, the senate Democrats have COMPLETELY failed to accomplish anything.
Below are my predictions and how accurate Jeff Pruitt and I were:
Filed Under 2008 National Elections, National Politics | 5 Comments
Question for Obama supporters
10/27/08 @ 9:47 pm
Senator Obama has ran a lot of local television ads advertising that “John McCain has voted in favor of tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas to China.”
Does anyone know how Senator Obama proposes to fix this problem or is it just empty rhetoric?
Mike Sylvester
Filed Under 2008 National Elections, National Politics | 13 Comments
Three stupid Democratic Senators
10/23/08 @ 6:13 pm
You just have to read this Reuters story.
Per this story three Democratic Senators want to do the following:
These three Democratic Senators want the “U.S. Treasury Department to set guidelines saying that banks receiving government capital injections should use the funds to restore their lending activities to levels prior to the credit crunch.”
How stupid are these three Democrats?
The credit crunch happened in part because banks made loans to people they should never have loaned money to. These three idiots want to force banks to keep lending money at the same pace they lent money at prior to the credit crisis. This of course means the banks will have to keep loaning money to people who cannot afford to pay it back.
This is STUPID.
If there is one person reading this post who thinks this is a good idea, please leave a comment.
How on Earth do these people get elected to the US Senate? Heck, how do they balance a checkbook?
Mike Sylvester
Filed Under National Politics | 4 Comments
My 10 minute talk with Mayor Tom Henry
10/22/08 @ 7:34 pm
In my opinion the best item that Mayor Henry has implemented is “Mayor’s night in.” Basically the Mayor meets with citizens for ten minutes each and discusses their concerns and opinions.
Earlier today I met with Mayor Henry and we discussed my concerns with the Fort Wayne Budget. Here is what I took from this meeting:
1. Several enterprising readers of this blog had already sent my proposed budget to the Mayor so he had already seen it.
2. The Mayor feels that our City Council is the fiscal body of Fort Wayne and that if they want to cut the budget; they will have to cut the budget themselves.
3. The deadline for an approved budget is December 1st, so the City Council needs tomove quickly.
I enjoyed talking to the Mayor. I re-iterated to him that I would be happy to volunteer my time to helping with budget cuts.
We briefly discussed the shortfall in the fire and police pensions from the old pension plans. He stated that it was still “pay as you go” and that no provision has been made for the current liability.
We also briefly discussed the recent property tax cuts. We both agreed that all the recent property tax decrease did was shift taxes from one group of taxpayers to another group. Mayor Henry said that he thought the Indiana Legislature would address this in the next session.
I enjoyed talking to Mayor Henry
Mike Sylvester
Filed Under City Council, Featured, Local Politics | 19 Comments
What is Mr. Montagano thinking?
10/21/08 @ 10:29 am
As anyone reading this blog knows I will not be voting for Mark Souder in the upcoming 3rd Congressional race. I will be voting for Libertarian BIll Larsen.
That being said, the Democratic candidate, Mike Montagano, does not seem to have a strong grasp of politics. Please read this piece in a local newspaper.
Please realize that this bill as passed will increase the National Debt; possibly by as much as 850 billion dollars. It likely will increase the debt by at least a couple of hundred billion dollars. The bill also gives the Secretary of the Treasury unprecendented powers and authority to spend 700 billion dollars of tax payer money. This is a very big deal.
Mark Souder voted the wrong way on this bill. He voted in favor of socialism.
Mr. Montagano has backed away from the bill and does not want to second guess Mark Souder.
Why not?
Mark Souder voted wrong on this bill and should lose his seat in Congress.
Mike Sylvester
Filed Under 2008 National Elections, Local Politics, State Politics | 3 Comments
Proposed Budget cuts for City of Fort Wayne
10/18/08 @ 1:58 pm
I would like to start this post by thanking Jeff Pruitt for taking the time to attend these meetings.
Next I would like to thank our current City Council for their views on the budget; I feel they have been responsible and I am impressed that they want the Mayor to cut 4.5 million from the current budget request. I think 4.5 million dollars is appropriate and I am glad that our City Council has recommended this amount be cut from the budget.
I am disappointed in the Mayor’s office. The budget they proposed is completely unacceptable. It forces us to cut about 9% from the budget next year or to increase the county income tax significantly. I am also disappointed that the Mayor’s office waited until October to submit a budget; the budget should have been submitted months ago.
