One thing you learn when playing poker is that there comes a time when continuing to bet is just throwing good money after bad -- you have to be willing to fold your hand. Bad poker players tend to fold much later than good ones. I used to be amazed at how few pots professional poker players actually get involved in.
One of the lessons I learned early is that once you toss money in the pot, you cannot keep thinking it as 'yours', because that will keep you involved long after you should have folded and waited for the next hand. Personally, I think that's what happened to little kennie ham, of the ark park, creation pseudo-museum, and answers-in-genesis ministries. He should have folded a long time ago.
Of course kennie probably doesn't see it that way. He doesn't recognize the ill-will his gamesmanship may end up costing him with the local community and even the State of Kentucky. Only time will tell, in the meantime, kennie has engaged his chief spin doctor, Mark Looy, who had lots to say, including a few incredulous things. Here's the report from WBIW.com: "Statement Regarding Safety Tax And The Ark Encounter".
The important thing, at least what I feel is important, is the kennie seems to be agreeing to pay the $0.50 tax. I think that's good for the local community. The bad thing is kennie's not paying it, his visitors are. Check out this image from kennie's ark park website. Actually it's two separate images from the same webpage, I just put them together to save room and I also added the black arrow showing the part I wanted you to see:
If you can't read it, it says:
"Ticket prices do not include Kentucky sales tax or Williamstown Safety Assessment Fee."
He's simply passed it right to his customers. It does make me wonder what he was complaining against in the first place. Did anyone think anything else was going to happen? Little kennie was never going to pay it out of his own pocket, so all the shenanigans with claiming to be a religious ministry instead of a for-profit business . . . at least until the State threatened with pulling that sweetheart sale tax rebate deal . . . was just a waste of time.
Mark went on to talk how the park was always willing to pay what they considered 'fair'. Sure . . . everyone who gets taxes gets to determine their own level of fairness, right? Plus everyone tries to get out of it by claiming a religious exemption, don't they? This is the funny bit to me. Here, let me quote Mark:
""The filing for an exemption as a religious non-profit (as permitted in the ordinance), was done in an attempt to get the county to change the wording as it currently stands, which would exempt the Ark Encounter. It was not to avoid paying its fair share, as some articles have suggested."
Right, claiming a religious exemption had nothing to do with not paying, they just wanted the wording changed. Anyone actually believe that? I'm suuuuurrrreeee that if the county had said, "Oh OK, you don't have to pay." Mark, or kennie, would have jumped right up and said "Oh no, we just wanted you to change the wording, we have every intention of paying . . . oh yea, and the check's in the mail!"
Mark goes on and says that there have only been about 2 emergency calls per week since the ark park opened. That's kind of a worthless phrase, because it doesn't really matter how many calls there have been, the equipment and trained personnel need to be in place when the call comes, not a year or two out pending funding, equipment, or training. Mark also added another 'nothing' phrase:
"It should also be noted that a user fee is often charged to an individual's personal insurance for the cost of local medical emergency services' response to the Ark."
While this is more than likely a true statement, that's become the norm because very few places have the resources to front the charges for every call. If the person has insurance, that's what usually happens. The fee is for the manpower, equipment, and training to be able to respond. How the further costs are handled on a per call basis is up to the locality. The point I find the funniest is kennie is passing the fee through to his customers, but when any locality passes on the costs associated with a call to the person's insurance company, there's a problem there?
OK. enough on what Mark has to say. What I am going to be most interested in is whether or not kennie's ticket sales reporting will be accurate. On the one hand if he gives the State high numbers, he gets more of the sales tax rebate deal, but if the numbers are low, he pays the locality less in the emergency fee? Funny how we have yet to hear anything authoritative about attendance, only vague references. Hopefully there is some objective way to determine those numbers.
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