Rokita Responds To Leftist Attacks Over Health Concern Issues He Raised From Illegal Immigration

Radical leftists and some mainstream news media reports pummeled U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN) for comments he made yesterday during an interview on Greg Garrison's radio talk show raising concerns about public health threats posed by the flood of illegal immigrants across the southern border, particularly in light of the recent outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in at least three African countries. Rokita relied on the same leaked analysis from U.S. Customs & Border Protection, which I touched on yesterday and as reported by Breitbart News. That analysis showed that U.S. border patrol agents have captured at least 71 persons entering the U.S. unlawfully at our southern border since the first of the year from the three West African countries affected by the Ebola outbreak. The Star's Maureen Groppe has his response:

Rokita said in a statement that he mentioned the virus as an example of a public health threat, not one that has been directly linked to the minors.

"The sudden spread of Ebola in Africa is merely one example of how we must take deliberate care to prevent an outbreak of any type of disease inside our border," Rokita said in the statement . . . 

Rokita's original comments to radio talk show host Greg Garrison Monday were picked up by media across the country and criticized on social media after being initially reported by the Times of Northwest Indiana.

The Indianapolis Republican was talking on Indianapolis station WIBC about a letter that Indiana Republicans sent to President Barack Obama Friday asking for more information about the Central American children who have been placed in Indiana as they await immigration hearings . . . 

"He said, 'Look we need to know just from a public health standpoint,' with Ebola circulating and everything else — no, that's my addition to it, not necessarily his, but he said, 'We need to know the conditions of these kids as well,'" Rokita said.

Rokita said Tuesday his larger point was that we need to know the medical condition of everyone crossing the border.

"It's been said that the United States has found over 70 people from Ebola-stricken African countries entering our country from the southern border since January of this year," he said in the statement.

Rokita cited as his source the conservative news site Breitbart, which said a report it obtained from a source at the Customs and Border Protection agency shows at least 71 individuals from the three nations affected by the current Ebola outbreak have either turned themselves in or been caught attempting to illegally enter the country by U.S. authorities between January and July . . .

I don't know what the hell is wrong with people who want to stand immigration laws on their head and open the borders up to anyone wishing to enter our country without restriction without taking into consideration public health concerns not to mention the rule of law. When Europeans arrived in the New World, they brought with them many diseases to which Native Americans had never been exposed. It's been estimated that as much as 90% of various Native American populations were wiped out from exposure to diseases the European immigrants brought with them, such as the measles, smallpox, mumps, whooping cough and typhus, among others. People who immigrate to this country legally are medically screened and required to have necessary vaccinations to alleviate public health risks posed by immigration.

The vitriolic attacks on Rokita and other responsible leaders who dare raise public health risks in a discussion regarding illegal immigration are meant only to silence people who want responsible enforcement of our immigration laws. How can we expect people to work as border patrol agents if we're not going to protect them from the many serious, sometimes life-threatening diseases to which agents have been exposed during the latest influx of illegal immigrants from Central America, which in a number of cases have been passed on to the agents and members of their families? And who foots the tab for the exorbitant health costs necessary to treat infectious outbreaks caused by illegal immigration? It's not as if working Americans can afford their own escalating health care costs as it is.

Center Township Trustee Caught Impersonating Law Enforcement Officer

Center Township Trustee Eugene Akers used taxpayer dollars to purchase a $37,000 Dodge Charger for his personal use as a deputy constable. Someone in his office then improperly registered the vehicle with the Bureau of Motor Vehicles as a law enforcement vehicle so it could be plated with law enforcement license plates. The BMV discovered after the license plate was issued in 2011 that it had been improperly issued and asked Center Township to return the license plate. It never did. According to the IBJ's Kathleen McLaughlin, someone working for the business publication noticed earlier this year that Akers was driving a car with a law enforcement license plate and began asking questions of Akers' office.

Akers told the IBJ that he has a side job working as a deputy constable for Center Township Constable Tony Duncan, which raises an entirely different question: Can the elected trustee, a full-time job paying $92,000 a year, hold a second job working for another township official? The township constable is responsible for serving civil court papers filed in the Center Township Small Claims court. Akers had a lengthy and costly legal battle with the Small Claims Court judge over attempts to move the court out of the City-County Building into the Julia Carson Government Center, a township-owned building on Fall Creek Blvd., that went all of the way up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court sided with Judge Michelle Scott. Akers and Duncan retaliated against Scott by backing her opponent in this year's primary election, Brenda Roper, who easily defeated Scott.

Ethical lapses in the Center Township Trustee's Office is nothing new. Akers' predecessor, Carl Drummer, used township property to store his collection of Corvette racing cars and conduct business for a hobbyist group of black Corvette owners. Drummer's Chief Financial Officer, Alan Mizen, was recently charged with the theft of more than $340,000 he acquired by overpaying his services to the township. Akers claims he didn't complete the application made out to the BMV which misrepresented the Dodge Charger he drives as a law enforcement vehicle. The BMV redacted the name of the person who completed the application according to the IBJ; however, the person's name had a title that began with the word "chief." After the IBJ told the BMV about the license plate, a member of the BMV's fraud unit went to the township offices and recovered the license plate from Akers' car.

In Indiana, township constables earn their salaries from fees they charge for each civil document they serve. So why is Center Township paying to furnish Akers with a car he uses to moonlight as a deputy constable serving court papers for Tony Duncan? Akers told the IBJ that his "safety officer" also works part-time for Duncan as a deputy constable. Akers told the IBJ that township-owned vehicles were already licensed with law enforcement plates when he took over the trustee's office from Carl Drummer, who resigned to become a lobbyist working for Ice Miller's Lacy Johnson. The BMV stopped issuing law enforcement license plates to township constables in 2009 after the bribery scandal involving Perry Township Constable Roy Houchins. Houchins sold law enforcement badges to various members of the downtown mafia out of the Columbia Club for about $2,000 a piece. Houchins dropped dead in March, 2010 as he walked out of a southside pub just days before he was scheduled to appear in federal court and cop a plea with federal investigators on racketeering charges brought against him in exchange for his cooperation in an ongoing investigation. Houchins' convenient death effectively ended the investigation. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the investigation of Akers to go any further.

Ballard's Long-Term Recycling Agreement With Covanta Is Criminal

Many Democrats could not be happier to learn that Mayor Greg Ballard will face a formidable foe in Joe Hogsett in next year's mayoral election. Some of us who care more about good government wonder why Hogsett didn't use his position as U.S. Attorney to send Ballard, key members of his administration and his roomful of political cronies to federal prison where they belong for the plundering and theft of public assets they've been perpetrating on Indianapolis taxpayers for the past six and half years. God knows he looked the other way at more than ample evidence turned over to him to mount the biggest public corruption cases in decades in the southern district of Indiana. A 14-year contract Ballard inked with Covanta to handle recycling for the City exclusively is the latest such example.

A one-sided agreement worth well over $112 million to the New Jersey waste disposal company is currently being rammed through the Public Works Board controlled by Ballard stooges. A memo by the counsel for the City-County Council, Fred Biesecker, lays bare just how bad of a deal the Covanta deal means for Indianapolis taxpayers. If approved, the City will essentially be locked into a single provider of recycling services through the year 2028. If any new technology or better recycling opportunities comes along during the next 14 years that the City might choose to implement, it will be required to pay liquidated damages to Covanta equal to $333,333.33 a month for the rest of the contract's term. That's a staggering $4 million a year penalty. "This provision clearly protects Covanta from future competition, but it is hard to see how it benefits the city," Biesecker opines.

The recycling agreement with Covanta doesn't apply to any existing recycling efforts, including the curbside subscription services offered to city residents by Republic. Expanded use of curbside services, however, is discouraged under the agreement with Covanta by reducing the city's portion of steam revenue if curbside collections increase by more than 5% over the preceding year. "DPW will probably say that the city may continue to operate and support existing programs, but they probably won't admit they have a financial disincentive for doing so," Biesecker observes.

Could it get any worse? Believe it or not it does. City taxpayers will be forced to reimburse Covanta for certain "additional costs," which is defined to include any real and personal property taxes levied on its recycling operations. The City will wind up reimbursing Covanta 70% of the taxes levied on its recycling operations up to a cap of $4 million. Biesecker describes this provision as "a sham intended to avoid the requirements of the abatement statute, which include council approval if the abatement property is located in a TIF district." "My recollection is that the Attorney General would not allow either type of provision to be in a state contract," Biesecker said. Under the terms of the agreement, Covanta is required to recover just 18% of waste for recycling, without glass. Critics believe a recovery rate of only 18% is inadequate, although Covanta says it will be its goal to achieve higher rates of recovery.

The deal inked by the Ballard administration with Covanta, in short, couldn't have been worse from the standpoint of the taxpayers if it had signed an agreement with Tony Soprano's Barone Sanitation. Does anyone believe someone was holding a gun to Ballard's head when he approved this one-sided agreement?

Hogsett Dodges Answering Questions About Worthiness Of $750,000 No-Bid Contract Ballard Awarded To His New Firm

Now former U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett was still unpacking boxes in his new office at Bose McKinney & Evans today when he told reporters that he was going to be forming an exploratory committee as the first step in launching his campaign for the Democratic nomination for Indianapolis mayor next year. While other reporters treated Hogsett with kid gloves in interviews today, radio talk show host Amos Brown wasted no time in putting Hogsett on the spot over news reported in the Star this weekend that incumbent Mayor Greg Ballard has awarded a $750,000 no-bid contract to a member of the public affairs arm of Hogsett's new law firm who formerly served as a top aide in the mayor's office to handle public relations for a proposed half billion, privatized criminal justice center being pushed by Ballard on behalf of the downtown mafia, whose members stand to profit in the tens of millions from insider real estate deals made possible if the proposal moves forward.

Brown could not have found a more difficult question to toss at Hogsett on his first business day as a private citizen working at a large downtown Indianapolis law firm. Naturally, Hogsett skirted answering the question directly. Instead, he deflected attention away from the issue by discussing his record of reducing the size of his office budgets each year when he served as Indiana Secretary of State and U.S. Attorney. He said he had always been an advocate for transparency and openness in government when Brown pressed him on whether more information should be made available to the public to explain exactly what services Bose Public Affairs Group performed for the outrageously large $750,000 consulting contract, a figure some public relations representatives thought was probably as much as five times higher than what would have been a reasonable fee to charge for similar services.

Hogsett did hit on a theme I've emphasized to readers of this blog in noting that the past three tax increases enacted by the City of Indianapolis all promised more money to hire additional police officers. Yet the number of police officers has actually shrank rather than grown despite taxes being increased for that purpose. He hinted that his support for raising taxes to hire more police officers at this time is not a given until he is convinced all is being done to squeeze enough revenues from existing sources to adequately fund IMPD.

Hogsett wisely cancelled an interview he was scheduled to give later today to radio talk show host Abdul-Hakim Shabazz, who is nothing more than a paid mouthpiece for Mayor Greg Ballard. Marion Co. GOP Chairman Kyle Walker was quick to take a swipe at news of Hogsett forming an exploratory committee to run for mayor. Walker criticized Hogsett as "a career politician" who broke his pledge to serve the remainder of his term as U.S. Attorney. "Just a few months ago, Joe Hogsett declared he had a 'moral obligation' to serve his full term as U.S. Attorney and now he turned his back on that commitment," Walker said. Hogsett told Brown that he decided to step down as U.S. Attorney and run for mayor because he thought he could do more to address the city's crime problem, which he saw getting increasingly worse during the past few years, as mayor rather than as U.S. Attorney. 

Leaked Border Patrol Memo: Illegal Immigrants Worldwide Exploiting Southern Border Breakdown, Including Ebola-Affected Countries

Most media reports give the impression that the recent influx of illegal immigrants across the country's southern border are primarily from Mexico and Central America. An internal Customs & Border Protection analysis leaked to Breitbart, however, paints a much different picture. Identified illegal immigrants who were either captured entering the country at the border or voluntarily turned themselves into CBP officials since the first of year have come from 75 different countries, including aliens arriving from far away countries in Africa and Asia. Most alarming is a claim in the analysis that at least 71 aliens taken into custody since the first of the year came from the three countries on the African continent currently affected by the deadly outbreak of the Ebola virus that has claimed nearly a thousand lives in recent months.

According to the analysis, most of the human smuggling from Syria and Albania is occurring through the southern border. More than 1,400 individuals from China have been caught sneaking across the border in the past year, and more than a thousand have arrived from India. Dozens more have been captured in nations with a high terrorist risk, including Egypt, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Immigrants from Africa and the Middle East are exploiting routes through the European Union to enter Mexico and then cross the American border according to the analysis. That's in addition to the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors expected to arrive this year from Central America, many of whom are carrying infectious diseases.

Comments U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita (R-IN) made this morning on Greg Garrison's WIBC radio talk show has been garnering media attention. Rokita raised concern about whether the arriving unaccompanied children from Central America might be carrying the deadly Ebola virus of which there is no evidence currently. News reports indicate that children are arriving from Central America with a host of diseases and health ailments, including a dangerous and difficult to treat form of TB, measles, H1N1, scabies, hepatitis and lice, among other health problems that could prove deadly to vulnerable Americans and become very costly to treat. Rokita's comments didn't reference the Breitbart report that indicates dozens of illegal aliens have arrived in the country from the African countries affected by the current Ebola virus outbreak.

A Police Officer Doing More Than Just Getting Out Of His Car

IMPD officers recently started a campaign that has gone national vowing to always get out of their cars after the family of a man accused of slaying IMPD Officer Perry Renn suggested nobody would have gotten hurt if the police officer had stayed in his car. WRTV has a different kind of story about an IMPD officer who took it upon himself to acquire and train a dog that has become a valuable resource for law enforcement in helping find missing persons. Sgt. William Carter's bloodhound, Grace, helped successfully track down a missing four year-old boy with autism in Hancock County over the weekend who was had gotten lost in a cornfield after wandering away from his home. Grace has helped track missing toddlers and elderly persons for several years now. Sgt. Carter receives no additional compensation for the 16 hours a month he spends training Grace. Some of you may recognize Sgt. Carter as the officer who does yeoman's work helping to protect the public from problem liquor license holders.

Report Says Pence Is Relying More On Campaign Donors For Travel Expenses

The Journal-Gazette's Niki Kelly has a story today discussing Gov. Mike Pence's travel expenses since taking office in January 2013. She found that he spent more taxpayer dollars his first year in office than his second year because he's relying more on campaign donors to pay for his travel expenses. He took flight on 40 trips around the state in 2013 at a cost of $69,700 compared to 14 trips costing $57,200 so far in 2014 according to Kelly. His campaign paid for 13 trips at a cost of $18,210 in 2013 compared to 12 trips at a cost of $14,000 for the first six months of 2014.

Pence decided to sell the state's King Air plane for about $2.5 million at the end of last year that he used for state air travel to save on travel expenses. Yet the cost of far fewer privately-chartered flights have cost close to what travel on the state-owned plane cost. The travel expenses don't cover the overseas trade missions Pence has taken since becoming governor. He relies on undisclosed private donors to pay for those expenses just like Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard has done on nine of his overseas trips over the past six and a half years.

One of Pence's out-of-state trips included an in-kind contribution from Koch Industries, which paid for a $4,600 trip to fly Pence, his wife and security detail to Palm Beach, Florida for a campaign fundraiser for big donors. In addition to the trip to Florida, Pence has taken several campaign trips this year to New York and D.C. Kelly's story make no mention of Vitesse Aviation owned by Jerry Slusser, the mysterious Las Vegas businessman who in the past has provided private chartered aircraft to a bunch of Indiana Republican politicians.

Ballard Blows $750,000 On PR Contract With Former Aide To Promote Foreign-Owned Criminal Justice Center

Mayor Greg Ballard's administration is moving rapidly through the process of outsourcing the construction, operation and maintenance of a new criminal justice center by a foreign-owned consortium. The goal of the plan is to move the two jails, the criminal courts and other criminal justice agencies out of the downtown area to free up prime real estate for redevelopment by Ballard's campaign contributors. Despite the City's claims of poverty when it comes to funding for public safety and other basic city services, leading to Ballard's call this past week for another $25 to $30 million a year tax increase, Ballard handed out a $750,000 no-bid contract to a former top aide in his office to perform public relations work on the criminal justice center project. The Star's John Tuohy reports on the obscene no-bid contract Ballard awarded to his former aide.

The surge is spearheaded by a government relations consultant and former Ballard aide who landed a $750,000 contract from the city to see that the project gets approved.

The one-year contract with the Bose Public Affairs Group instructs the firm to keep the Democrat-controlled City-County Council updated on the project’s progress, organize community meetings, seek media coverage, schedule news conference and maintain an e-newsletter.

“The ultimate goal of these efforts will be to gain Council approval of the project,” the contract’s scope of services says.

The amount of the contract stunned some City-County councilors, as well as a former public relations consultant.

“Lord have mercy, what a waste of money,” said Democrat Councilor Joe Simpson. “This is ridiculous. This tells me they know they don’t have any support for that center.”

The mayor’s office said the contract was part of doing business for a project as large as the planned justice center.

“Many big projects like this use outside assistance, and it is not unusual to include that as part of the project cost,” said Marc Lotter, a spokesman for Ballard.

The point man for Bose is senior public affairs consultant John Cochran, who managed Ballard’s 2007 mayoral campaign and was a special counsel to the mayor. The firm is a subsidiary of the law firm of Bose McKinney, which traditionally has received little city business under the Ballard administration . . .

I'm not sure which is more absurd: the size of the contract; or the fact that John Cochran, an attorney who has never practiced law, has absolutely no training or experience in public relations work. Even Councilor Jeff Miller, a fake Republican who never saw a tax increase or new government regulation he didn't like, had trouble defending the size of the contract. "That is a big number. Now I know why he’s so easy to get a hold of," Miller said. “I knew he was not doing it for free, but I did not know (his firm) was getting that much.” Miller said the meetings had been helpful in generating support on the city's near west side where the administration planned to build the nearly half billion dollar criminal justice system. Area residents see it differently. "Resident Rahnae Napoleon said the neighborhood near the proposed site is far from supportive," Tuohy writes. "We were basically told it was coming whether we like it or not," she said. "We never had voice. We are now trying to make the best of what they are serving up to us."

Does anyone else see the irony in Ballard throwing away $750,000 of our taxpayer dollars on a politically-connected firm which has just hired his likely Democratic opponent next year, Joe Hogsett, and which will in turn invest that money in doing all within its power to ensure that Hogsett defeats Ballard in next year's election?

Paul George Suffers Compound Leg Fracture During Exhibition Game

The Indiana Pacers' Paul George suffered a gruesome compound fracture to his right leg during a USA Men's Basketball scrimmage game in Las Vegas. Both the tibia and fibula bones snapped when it collided with the basketball goal post. George underwent surgery overnight to repair the compound fracture. George's injury was reminiscent of a similar injury Louisville's Kevin Ware suffered during the NCAA tournament in Indianapolis in 2013. Ware remarkably returned to the basketball court six months later. George tweeted early this morning: "Thanks everybody for the love and support . . . I'll be back ok and be better than ever!!! Love y'all." Officials decided to call the game following George's injury. Team USA coach Mike Krzyewski said George "appeared quite stoic" in the face of the injury.