O.k., so it’s not really “another” round (and, yes, I was looking for an excuse to use ‘quixotic’) — but, the Second Circuit which rejected Mourdock’s challenge of the Chrysler bankruptcy from the bench issued its written opinion (h/t Indiana Law Blog) explaining the rejection. Mourdock’s $2 million windmill tilt failed because Indiana, through an agent, had already waived its standing to challenge the bankruptcy sale and because, (and this is important) there was no scenario in which Indiana would get more money. (I’m almost tempted to see if the html “blink” codes still work because Mourdock seems to fail to address this point when he’s asked about the bankruptcy.)

Chrysler was a wasting asset – it was not producing cars and yet it was paying rents, overhead, and salaries. It was hemorrhaging cash. Chrysler had been shopping itself around for the prior two years without success. Fiat was the only game in town. Liquidation was valued at $800 million. So between the $2 billion under the challenged plan and $800 million under the only alternative, the bankruptcy court chose the option that gave creditors $2 billion. Understandably, the Circuit Court didn’t think this was an abuse of discretion. This had the further consequence that Indiana didn’t have an “injury in fact.” In other words, Indiana couldn’t show that it was actually harmed by these actions because it would have received less money under the available alternative.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, Indiana had contractually waived its ability to object. To participate in this investment, Indiana had agreed to be bound by decisions of majority creditors, acting through an agent. (Indiana’s stake was a small percentage of the total.) That agent consented to the agreement. Indiana protested that the mean old government made these creditors enter into the agreement (which got them more money than the alternative). The court said that these proceedings weren’t the proper place to bring this sort of challenge, essentially claiming that their fellow investors breached a fiduciary duty. The court declined to consider whether Indiana could maintain an action against those fellow investors in a separate proceeding.

How is that for an acronym-rific title! Anyway, I encourage you to check out IPOPA’s (“Indy’s Painfully Objective Political Analysis”) post on the IBM (“International Business Machines”) and ACS (“Affiliated Computer Services”) contract with the state to provide welfare application and verification services previously performed by the FSSA (“Family and Social Service Administration”). The short version: the project is FUBAR (“Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition”).

Mainly, it seems that the project was too big, IBM/ACS couldn’t or wouldn’t deliver, there is little transparency, there was little competition, and the situation is rife with cronyism. Paul Ogden has a handy list of when privatizing government services might be the thing to do. The IBM/ACS FSSA deal is pretty much the antithesis of a good privatization prospect.

If Gov. Daniels has national ambitions in 2012, this ought to be an albatross around his neck.

The South Bend Tribune has an editorial chiding the Indiana General Assembly for failing to pass meaningful lobbyist disclosure rules and then complaining that anyone would think anything untoward was occurring. I’m not generally a fan of the “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about” line of reasoning; but, it makes more sense when it comes to public officials.

My brief (and probably naive) experience with the General Assembly led me to the impression that most of the influence of lobbyists came, not from quid pro quo transactions, but just from familiarity. Legislators have to be jack-of-all trades when it comes to the law, and when they need someone to educate them on the fly, the lobbyists is going to have expertise. And, while they can be expected to frame things in a light favorable to their client, the lobbyist who flat out lies to a legislator gets black listed pretty quickly.

Judge Posner has an interesting discussion on the links between education, income, and obesity as part of a larger discussion about health care and obesity. A detail that surprised me a bit is that there is a correlation between education and obesity. Less educated people tend to be more prone to obesity, and this is apparently true even in cases where people are highly educated but make a low or moderate income.

If the part about high education with low income is true, that sort of controls for the fact that people with more money have more options for keeping the weight off — they can afford healthier foods and they can afford more time for exercise. As an explanation for high education, low income people also being less inclined toward obesity, Posner suggests poor impulse control as a potential explanation: getting an education suggests an understanding about the potential advantages of delayed gratification. I would guess (and he may well say this) that parenting plays a factor here as well: people who get a good education are probably people whose parents put an emphasis on the value of education. Such parents are probably also more likely to have a better understanding of good eating habits and teach their kids accordingly.

It occurs to me that, while the discussion about obesity is probably necessary to have, it’s also one of those things that is likely to be used as a red herring in the larger discussion about health care and how to fund it. Weight is a complicated thing — the inputs and outputs between human bodies varies wildly. For example, I have what an old friend described as an “irate metabolism.” Other people eat right and exercise religiously and still fight to keep the pounds off. Even with these wide differences in body types, the topic seems to lend itself to simplistic moralizing. Rather than figure out how to pay for and deliver health care to the general public, there is a certain political faction who would much, much rather stand on a soapbox and lecture about a person’s moral failings as evidenced by their extra weight. (I’m not lumping Judge Posner into this category, by the way — in case my transition away from his piece was less than clear.) The line of moralizing goes something like, “You’re sick, poor, and dying without health care because you’re fat. You’re fat because you are lazy and stupid. Why should we pay for you? Loser.” And then, abracadabra, you can largely ignore figuring out the vast majority who are having problems despite not fitting into that particular narrative.

Former Justice David Souter is urging that Americans improve their civic education. He cites the fact that 2/3 of citizens don’t know that there are three branches of the federal government. (State and local government is probably similarly not understood). Without knowing the basic composition of government, it’s no wonder they are so easily stoked into a rage about what this or that judge is doing. If they don’t understand that there is a judiciary or its relationship to the executive and legislative branches, they have no real metric for determining whether the judge is acting within his or her proper authority.

A person without the proper grounding of a civic education is more susceptible to incitement by whatever the passion of the hour might be. They are more receptive to the demagoguery of the likes of John Cornyn who asserted that “judicial activism” (a term which inevitably boils down to not much more or less than disagreeing with whoever is using the term) was the root cause of the slaying of a federal judge in Georgia. Or Tom DeLay ominously saying that judges would have to “answer for their behavior” when they refused to intervene in the Terri Schiavo matter after a bill was rammed through Congress purporting to give the courts new jurisdiction over her particular case. And the efforts to delegitimize and/or intimidate the judiciary in recent years has gone on and on and on.

“There is a danger to judicial independence when people have no understanding of how the judiciary fits into the constitutional scheme,” Souter said in his keynote address to the American Bar Association’s annual meeting.
. . .
Souter said a rebirth of civic education that teaches the lessons he learned at those New England town meetings is needed to ensure the nation has “judges who stand up for individual rights against the popular will.”

And, it’s typically the enforcement of the rights of the few against the passions of the many that really honk off the types of folks who would engage in the intimidation tactics against the judiciary. Americans have to get beyond the bumper sticker knowledge of government limited to “majority rules” to understand that this isn’t always the case and why it is absolutely appropriate that individuals should have rights that are not subject to the whims of the majority.

(H/t Politivolve) – The AP has a story out of Wisconsin about a man on trial for failing to get medical assistance for his child.

Dale Neumann told the jury he didn’t seek medical help for his child because “I can’t do that because Biblically, I cannot find that is the way people are healed.”

He added: “If I go to the doctor, I am putting the doctor before God. I am not believing what he said he would do.”

These stories about parents too religious to seek medical treatment for their children come up from time to time, and I’m always reminded of the following tale:

A devout Christian heard an urgent news report on his radio that a flash flood was within minutes of entering the valley where he lived. Immediately he went to his knees and prayed for safety. The words were still on his lips when he became aware that water was gushing under his door. He retreated to the second floor and finally onto the roof of his house.

While he sat on the roof, a helicopter flew by and the pilot asked over the loudspeaker if they could lift him off. It’s not necessary since I have the Lord’s protection, he replied. Moments later the house began to break up and he found himself clinging to a tree. A police boat, braving the waters, approached him for rescue, but he assured them that the Lord would save him. Finally, the tree gave way and the man went to his death.

Standing before the Lord, he asked, Lord, I’m glad to be here, but why didn’t You answer my prayer for safety? The Lord responded, ‘Son, I told you over the radio to get out of there. Then I sent you a helicopter and a motor boat!’

The girl had diabetes and the father didn’t take her to a doctor or get her insulin. There was a group of people standing around her praying as she died. It’s exactly like watching her drown in the bathtub, praying instead of pulling her out. I don’t get the sense that this guy was acting out of malice, but where is the line separating faith from batshit insanity? Wherever it is, I think this guy is well over the line.

Ryan Liedtky had some friendly words for this blog at the Libertarian Party of Indiana website, and I appreciate it. I’ve become less libertarian in my views as I’ve gotten older, but I’m awfully glad the Libertarian Party is around. Even if I am more and more coming to conclude that I probably wouldn’t like a society governed by purely libertarian principals, I like a society where the Libertarians are around to form a throttle on our statist impulses.

Senator Gary Dillon (R-Columbia City) will not run for re-election to the state Senate in 2010, according to an article by Niki Kelly in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. He says he wants to slow down and spend some time with his grandkids.

Already Thursday, several politicos had either expressed interest or decided not to run.

•Rep. Bill Ruppel, R-North Manchester, said definitively he is not interested in the Senate seat because the thinks the House Republicans have a good shot at taking back control of the House.

•Rep. Dan Leonard, R-Huntington, said he is considering the move but is concerned about giving up his seniority in the House.

. . .

•Whitley County GOP Chairman Jim Banks, who is also a county councilman, said he will run for the Senate seat if Leonard does not. If Leonard does, then he would seek the House seat.

Deanna Martin, writing for the Associated Press, has an article on stimulus money being spent on Indiana’s bridges. Apparently a relatively small percentage of those bridges in need are slated to be repaired with stimulus money. The problem was the “shovel ready” requirement. Apparently a lot of the bridges in need of repair didn’t have plans ready to go. So, only one in four made the cut. Instead, some of the money is going to things like road paving projects which were ready to go, but probably aren’t as necessary as the bridge repair. The Indiana Department of Transportation seems to suggest that this isn’t a big deal because money spent now on one project probably frees up money later for things like crumbling bridges.

Kelli Cheatam, reporting in the South Bend Tribune, writes that Berrien Springs police officer Ryan Venno fell off a bridge suffering a compound fracture in his leg while trying to find a spot that wasn’t conspicuous to motorists.

First, let me say that I don’t wish anyone to get hurt and I’m glad he wasn’t hurt more than he was. Second, my tendencies these days are to be very pro-police officer, working as I often do to defend some of them against lawsuits. Those things said, the fact that he was setting up a speed trap really mixes up my inclination toward compassion.

Maybe there are statistics out there that demonstrate the current level of speed enforcement is necessary to keep motorists reasonably safe. But, from my uninformed perspective, speed traps generally look more like revenue tools than safety tools. While driving, I tend to follow a simple rule that one should never speed through a municipality with no obvious source of income. I don’t know if Berrien Springs, Michigan fits that bill, but I find it difficult to believe that their traffic enforcement needs called for six police units at that location.

But, like I said, I’m glad that Officer Venno wasn’t hurt worse than he was, and hopefully his recovery will not be too difficult.