Evansville Council Approves $20 Million Taxpayer Subsidy For Downtown Hotel

Proving once again that public officials in Indiana are the most corrupt and ignorant in all of America, the Evansville city council unanimously approved giving $20 million to an out-of-state developer from Branson, Missouri, HCW, to build a new downtown hotel the city's mayor, Lloyd Winnecke, claims will leave the city in ruins if it is not built. Mayor Winnecke originally planned to give the private developer $37.5 million for the downtown hotel project, an amount he lowered to $20 million after some city council members balked at such a large contribution to the project and after the county commissioners coughed up $2 million for the project. Winnecke believes that by building this Hilton Doubletree Hotel the city will become a mecca for hosting conventions. Hah.

These people are so incompetent it is beyond belief. This private developer refused to produce a business plan or share any financial data about its business with Evansville officials. The developer isn't required to share a penny with the city in consideration for its investment. Why should they when the local media in Evansville was clamoring that council members were making the city look like the laughing stock of the Midwest by requesting to see the information and get answers to their questions before voting on it? Yeah, they're the laughing stock of the Midwest. Just not for the reason they're thinking.

I don't know what it takes before taxpayers start taking to the streets and protesting all of this crony capitalism taking place in this state. Time and time again, taxpayers are asked to pay higher taxes only to see our elected officials pass out large subsidies to private developers to finance their development projects in exchange for campaign contributions from the few, well-heeled persons who benefit from these deals. If the legislature doesn't start enacting state laws that put a stop to these ever-increasing public subsidies to private developments, the people of this state are going to become nothing more than slaves working for an elite chosen class which gets to grow and expand their business empires on the backs of the rest of us. This isn't capitalism. This isn't free enterprise. This isn't a representative democracy. This is a dictatorial, fascist government picking who wins and who loses. We have morphed into Nazi Germany.

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