Bill Butcher of Port City Brewing speaks to what is important.

Butcher endorses a "competitor," and yesterday, I doubled my 2008 campaign donation to Barack Obama in the hope that we can keep beer in the White House, and avoid the carnage of another teetotaler at the helm.

Four more years, because Bain-think is Budweiser-think with fewer letters.

Somewhere Ayn Rand is fondling a bracelet made of Reardon Metal.

Teabagger poison?

Indiana's property tax caps get counties moving toward income taxes, by Lesley Stedman Weidenbener (Courier-Journal).

When the Clark County Council passed an income tax increase last month, it joined two dozen other Indiana counties working to shift their budgets away from property taxes, a move the General Assembly has encouraged for two years.

Expect immediate comment from my fellow local columnist, Debbie Harbeson, who yesterday took a scathing Libertarian cudgel to State Representative Ed Clere's Nov. 3 piece in the Tribune, Grant will boost entire community, in which Clere wrote:

Federal stimulus money is flowing into Georgetown. As a result, the town’s sewage will stop flowing down the hill to New Albany. It’s a big win for both communities - and a benefit to the rest of Floyd County and Southern Indiana.

Yesterday, Harbeson issued a challenge: Let’s clear the rhetoric.

Wow, it must really feel good to be federally stimulated. At least Indiana Rep. Ed Clere makes me think so. I’m sure he’s right because the deal he recently brokered as paid political middleman would certainly make some people feel good. I do have friends and family who will benefit from this forced transfer of funds from one group to another so it’s nice to know someone locally is being stimulated.

I feel like I should be reading these at a sports bar ...

It'd take more than $3.5 million to clean up that stinking mess.

Now that he's intervened with the Feds to provide monies unavailable from Indiana to spend on local projects that none of us can afford because of the state of Indiana's peculiar Norquistian fiscal starvation fetish, can St. Rep. Clere assist the city of New Albany by obtaining economic stimulus funding to help the city clean up its most dangerous and threatening toxic waste problem?

I'm speaking of Dan Coffey's career on the city council.

Just curious: How many Republicans out there would have voted (or actually did vote) against the economic stimulus package? Just tweaking, mind you.

Meanwhile, read all about Georgetown's day in the sun, sewer-wise: Stimul-yes! Georgetown gets $3.5 million for wastewater treatment facility (News and Tribune).

Federal funds for Greenway come as a surprise.

Coming soon as a result of the economic stimulus package ...

Greenway gets $3.6M in stimulus money, by David A. Mann (News and Tribune).

The Ohio River Greenway — an effort to join riverfronts in New Albany, Clarksville and Jeffersonville via a pedestrian trail along the Ohio River — will get $3.6 million in federal stimulus money.The money is coming through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction of the waterway. The funding was announced in a press release earlier this week, much to the surprise of local officials.