White People Amusing Themselves With Tax Money

Lose 10 lbs. This Weekend, Guaranteed: The Sweat and Spasm Diet. I think it's got potential. In the event I doubt I lost more than five; I weigh myself about once a decade just to see where the new baseline is. Thanks for all the good wishes in the meantime.

I felt well enough yesterday to spend 120 bucks at the nursery, actually enjoy a meal (dinner, romaine-and-red-leaf with chicken breast), and read the Sunday paper:

Just north of the extent to which our fair city could annex property in the 60s lies The County Named Appropriately for Alexander Hamilton. It is serving, at only a moderate cost, as an open-air laboratory of Republicanism, something which isn't publicized much; for all I know this puny blog may be the outside world's only source of its progress. Thirty years ago the county was a large pasture speckled with old farming communities, a solid Lincoln Republican land. Noblesville, the county seat, was notable for the two-story chicken that stood on the edge of town. Oh, and there's Geist Reservoir, Indianapolis' Chinatown. There's the remains of a village underneath the water. We don't know where all the other bodies are buried.

In the late 60s the Army Corps of Engineers wanted to flood half the county to increase the size of the reservoir. Personally, I'd like to see them bring that up again.

One of those little villages is Fishers. We lived there for awhile in the late 70s, just at the beginning of the housing boom. The population was just under 2,000. It's twenty-five times that now, nearly wall-to-wall strip malls and McMansion "communities". I used to ride my bike all over that place and the only dangers were the occasional farm dog and excessive bucolic cheeriness. Today you take your life in your hands just driving on those roads. Fishers is also the location of the municipal airport, which is how it found its way into the Sunday paper.

Thanks to Fishers' laissez-faire (French for "greedheads devouring each other") development "program", that airport now sits smack in the middle of "town", meaning on 450 acres of prime strip-mall fodder. Last December Hamilton County asked the Indianapolis Airport Authority, which owns the airport, for permission to move it, which was granted, supposedly provided everyone agree on a new location by June.

Behind closed doors (where else?) they settled on a 1000 acre site in an unincorporated part of the county. The Fishers board agreed. The Hamilton County Commissioners okayed it. The Noblesville City Council votes tomorrow night. Noblesville gets to vote on the grounds that it's the closest annexing (French for "tie down and consume like a roasted pig") authority. Meanwhile, the actual current owners of the land are up in arms and have hired an attorney to fight the takeover.

I thought you might enjoy the dueling quotes:

"This is all about Fishers sitting on beachfront property smack in the middle of their town where the airport is. If this airport is such a great thing, then why isn't Fishers moving the airport to another location in their town?"

--Noblesville Council President Terry Busby

"If this is such a big problem, then why doesn't Noblesville let us annex [the land]? "We'd be happy to put the airport in Fishers and wouldn't think twice about it."
--Fishers Council President Scott Faultless

Meanwhile, the veritable font of Hamilton County incontinent Republican civic boosterism and unchecked economic rapine, Carmel--somewhat quiet on the liebenstraum (German for "obtain the water rights to in exchange for other considerations") front since it got its ass kicked by a bunch of toothless hillibilies*--has decided to arm "stay at home moms and part-time community activists" with radar guns in an effort to combat speeding. Violators aren't ticketed; they receive a friendly letter from the Carmel PD.

No word yet on whether the volunteers are provided with grocery bags in the fight against Carmel's other long-term traffic problem.**

That's it for today. Remember, you can't run an open-air laboratory without the chance a few rats will escape.

* I kid. Home Place, a small unincorporated area now surrounded by Carmel. One of Carmel's actual legal arguments was, "But they get to drive on our streets!"

** For you younger readers, a reference to Driving While Black.