Several Indiana cities have been awarded grants to hire police officers – apparently, the grants come at a 3-to-1 ratio. The federal government will pay for 3/4 of a police officer’s 4 year contract. According to a story in the Muncie Star Press by Rick Yencer, Muncie Mayor McShurley intends to decline the funds for Muncie, saying she can’t figure out how to pay for the fourth year. I haven’t been following Mayor McShurley closely enough to have a sense for whether this is a legitimate budget concern or some sort of Palinesque posturing against the federal stimulus bill. Or, maybe Muncie’s crime is low enough that additional police officers are not a pressing concern.

A sidebar to the story lists other cities and the money they are receiving for police officers:

Muncie 5 officers $1,160,175
Anderson 6 officers $1,501,434
Marion 4 officers $947,500
Indianapolis 50 officers $11,046,850
Gary 11 officers $2,076,514
East Chicago 5 officers $1,120,105
Michigan City 3 officers $592,641
Clinton 1 officer $134,136
Kokomo 5 officers $1,146,950
South Bend 13 officers $2,453,295
Terre Haute 6 officers $1,204,896
Akron 1 officer $143,176
Clarksville 2 officers $467,844
Lafayette 4 officers $915,564
Merrillville 3 officers $588,090
Lake Station 1 officer $186,183
Montezuma 1 officer $129,288
Spencer 1 officer $138,942
LaPorte 2 officers $382,154
Linton 1 officer $161,370
Nashville 1 officer $118,635

The Delphi School Board had to consider other options after a referendum saw 60% of voters say that they would rather not pay for repairs to aging school buildings that would cost $13 million.

[The alternatives] generally were, as Superintendent Ralph Walker laid out:

• A project up to $2 million.

• Several $2 million or less projects addressing different, unrelated needs or buildings.

• A project of more than $2 million but of a smaller scope than the original.

These alternatives wouldn’t trigger the referendum requirement that defeated the original plan.

I suspect that taxes for civic projects are a little like having kids. Almost nobody can afford them in advance and, if folks waited until they were financially ready to reproduce, it would be too late to have kids. Of course there is a difference between having kids when doing so means you have to forgo some luxuries and having kids when doing so means that you’ll have to depend on welfare. If the metaphor is apt, I’m not sure which situation Delphi is in.

Harold Adams, writing for the Louisville Courier Journal, has an article on the town of Georgetown’s consideration of seeking bankruptcy protection to get out of debts owed to the City of New Albany and a Jeffersonville engineering firm related to sewage treatment.

[T]he town made plans to build its own sewage treatment plant and get out of a long-term contract with the city of New Albany sewer board.

Georgetown agreed, in exchange for being allowed out of the contract early, to begin construction on its own plant within 30 months or pay New Albany a $450,000 termination fee. Georgetown also selected a site for the plant and hired the Jeffersonville firm of Capitol Engineering to design and build the plant.

But then problems arose. Residents near the proposed site challenged Georgetown’s plan to annex it. And Floyd County refused to give the required zoning approval.

The delays — Georgetown is still in the process of selecting an alternate site — triggered the termination fee with New Albany and a provision in the contract with Capitol Engineering that called for payments in the event the project stalled.

The bankruptcy code requires that municipalities have specific state authority before they are allowed to seek bankruptcy protection. A spokesperson for the Department of Local Government Finance say they don’t have any such authority. The municipality says that the Home Rule statute should be considered sufficient authority. It seems to me that, generally, when a municipality goes to the Home Rule well, that means it doesn’t have much of a legal leg to stand on.

The article is a little amusing in that it quotes Georgetown Town Council President Billy Stewart as saying that the money just isn’t there and “there’s no way for Georgetown to pay.” Later in the article, the DLGF points out that “the town could take out bonds to pay any court judgment and repay the bonds with a tax that would not count against its state-imposed taxing limit.” This is followed by town attorney, David Andrews, saying, “If a bankruptcy were possible, then that would be something that might be preferable to paying out on a big judgment.” He says that he thinks Georgetown has a strong legal case. My take (based solely on one news article) is that this has more to do with the town’s negotiating tactics in the dispute with the engineering firm than with any real belief that they’ll be able to receive much in the way of bankruptcy relief.

We’re about out of living WWI veterans. The last British one, Harry Patch, died at the age of 111. There is apparently one remaining U.S. Veteran, Frank Buckles, 108, of West Virginia. I was a history major in undergrad. Miami didn’t really do specialties, but my senior seminar or whatever they called it, was British Society in World War I. That gave me an appreciation for a time period I had largely ignored.

I’m not a student of military history, so I’m sure I’m leaving myself open to major objection; but, for me, it was the first really modern, industrial war where our capacity for wholesale destruction really got swinging. A lot of the crap about the nobility and honor of warfare really got left by the wayside after World War I. After that war, soldiers were less noble heroes fighting gallantly for God & Country and more a form of human sausage to be ground up by the machinery of war. Some of that had, also, to do with the nature of the conflict. Where World War II had a Good versus Evil vibe to it; World War I had all the righteousness of a bar fight.

In any case, time moves on, and 100% of the survivors die anyway.

Information in a story by Daniel Lee in the Indianapolis Star suggests that the Bayh family is too conflicted from ties to the for-profit health industry for Evan Bayh to make an unbiased vote on the health care issue.

[F]or Bayh, health care isn’t just the latest high-stakes political fight in Congress. It’s also a substantial part of his family’s income.

As the debate over health-care reform intensifies, Bayh’s wife is receiving lucrative payouts from some of the companies that could be most affected by that legislation.

Susan Bayh’s rise to corporate boards was timely – starting just before Evan was elected to the Senate (but when his election was clearly going to happen.) Her board memberships and the compensation:

[Susan] Bayh’s compensation during those years:
• WellPoint $976,000: Indianapolis-based health insurer, includes Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
• Dendreon $370,391: Seattle-based biotech company focused on cancer treatments.
• MDRNA* $388,169: Bothell, Wash., biotech company developing therapeutics to treat liver diseases.
• Curis $184,001: Cambridge, Mass., drug-development company focused on cancer treatments.
• Dyax $221,692: Cambridge, Mass., biopharmaceuticals company developing treatments for use in oncology and inflammation.
Total $2,140,253

Adding to the perception of conflict is Evan Bayh’s non-committal approach to health care. Whatever his real reasons, a refusal to bite the hand that feeds him (and I’m not talking about his constituents) will lead to a perception of impropriety. To avoid being characterized as the Senator from Wellpoint, I suggest that Bayh should come out and say that he’ll support a cloture vote so a health care bill can get an up or down vote but otherwise will abstain on the issue.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has a report about a woman who is accused of welfare fraud. The woman apparently claimed that her children were living with her and, as a result, collected $17,000 in food stamps and Medicaid benefits she wouldn’t have otherwise received.

From my perspective as a debt collector lawyer – not exactly the least biased of perspectives – I think there is a lot of this going on; particularly with disability, TANF, and Section 8 Housing. I have spoken casually to township trustees – responsible for administering local poor relief – and they tend to be aware of fraud for these programs. They can deny the poor relief under their control, but can’t do much with the state administered programs.

Maybe part of the problem is that news websites are running Internet polls as “news.” But, according to a Time Magazine Internet poll run in the wake of Walter Cronkite’s death, Jon Stewart is the most trusted man in news. To the extent it’s accurate – and I wouldn’t be surprised if a scientific poll came back with similar results – I think it’s because Stewart is the nation’s court jester.

The jester has always been the person in the best position to speak truth to power. On the other hand, it bears mentioning that the traditional news media has done a lousy job. The cheerleading during the run up to the Iraq War was an eye-opening period for me. I’m sure I’m missing some fine reporting, but during that period, from the mainstream media, I remember the reporters from Knight-Ridder (now McClatchy) and Chris Matthews doing critical reporting on the administration’s claims. The New York Times was prominently running Judith Miller ra-ra pieces and the rest of the news media was dutifully regurgitating administration claims.

The pretense of objectivity has crippled news reporting in a lot of cases – at least in the way it’s mostly practiced these days. It basically consists of quoting people on opposite sides of some arbitrarily chosen point on an issue. “Moon is made of cheese, some say. Others disagree.” The extra digging necessary to provide readers with something approximating the objective truth is harder work, will piss off those on the wrong side of an issue, and won’t sell any more advertising. So, you get superficial coverage of important issues, more coverage of fluff issues, and, ultimately, teleprompter readers who can’t earn the level of respect given to a basic cable comedy channel host.

I’ve posted previously about Roseland which, for me, is Indiana’s archetype for a dysfunctional community. Southport seems to be moving into that territory.

Police are resigning in droves; the mayor is spending thousands on civil litigation; and council members are resisting the mayor in part over a rift about whether to open city meetings with a prayer.

The council apparently isn’t approving payment of claims for legal fees because they don’t like that the mayor is pursuing legal action against a man who intentionally disrupted council business.

Council Harrison went on to explain her disagreement with payment of this claim for legal services rendered and her specific disagreement that city resources were used to pursue action against Southport citizen, Charles Lynch for unreasonable disruption of council meetings, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. She further expressed an intention to continue delaying payment for these services ignoring that such delay could lead to increased expenses required to defend against non-payment of services claims.

Lynch, you might recall, is the man who took it upon himself to loudly disrupt the Council’s moment of silence because he apparently figured he should be able to pray out loud any time, anywhere, and particularly at a secular government function.

Lynch was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct Monday after praying aloud during an official “moment of silence’’ during the City Council meeting, bringing to a boiling point an issue that has divided Southport since January. At the onset of the meeting, Mayor Rob Thoman read a statement warning against disorderly conduct and stated that anyone who talked out of turn would be in violation, according to an incident report from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.During a moment of silence, Larry Tunget, wife of former Mayor Nannette Tunget, began reading a prayer out loud.Lynch also began reciting the prayer. When Thoman asked Lynch to be quiet, he began to pray louder, according to the report. Lynch then was asked to leave the meeting. He refused and grabbed a chair, prompting Southport Assistant Chief Mark Myers to forcibly pry Lynch’s hands from the chair, according to the report.Lynch continued to resist Myers, according to the report, and refused to place his hands behind his back. He eventually was removed from the building and handcuffed.

The mayor reportedly isn’t worried about the police resignations because he has more applications on his desk right now. Others don’t seem worried because Marion County is providing police services. I wonder if folks will take a close look at Southport wonder if that particular unit of government is providing them with any indispensable services at all.

Earlier today, the inimitable Mike Kole suggested that “it is inherently unjust to require someone else to pay for another’s expenses- for any reason.” This, in turn, brought to mind my Mom’s timeless admonition that “life isn’t fair.”

So, we’re talking about health care. At the moment, we have a system that flat doesn’t work very well. As a group, we pay more dollars toward health care and get worse outcomes than countries who have taken a more honestly socialized approach to paying for medicine. I’ve said it before, but I’ll mention it again, that health care doesn’t seem to respond well to market forces. For starters, you’re often effectively negotiating with a gun to your head. Even if you could get all the data, assessing it is a specialized skill and average citizens can’t effectively analyze the information for themselves. And, brother, you aren’t getting all the data. Call up your local hospital and ask them if you could, pretty please, get a copy of their charge master. That won’t happen. Lack of transparency, lack of knowledge, and lack of negotiating leverage puts sand in the gears of the market machinery. It’s just not very good at allocating resources efficiently in this situation.

O.k., so the current system sucks. Can’t the government screw it up even worse? All things are possible, but we do trust these people with nuclear weapons, perhaps a little faith is warranted.

Back to Mr. Kole’s proposition – it’s just not fair to take from one person to pay for the needs of another. And here is where my utilitarian impulses really go to war with my libertarian impulses. As I age, for some reason, the utilitarian is winning most of the ties. Utilitarianism, at its root, is the idea that the “right” course of action is that which will result in the greatest good for the greatest number. This isn’t necessarily at odds with libertarianism in a good many situations because, it seems, simply letting people alone to go about their business — so long as it doesn’t break the bones or pick the pockets of someone else — *does* result in the greatest good for the greatest number.

To me, therefore, liberty is a means, not an end in itself. The extreme example is suggesting that the government has no business imposing speed limits or rules about stopping and going on red and green lights respectively. Sometimes liberty has to be restrained in the interest of a well-ordered society in a way that tends to maximize the well-being of its citizens. That said, there is plenty of haggling to be done over the point at which order should yield to liberty. We — at least those of us outside of the private prison industry — don’t want to be a nation of prisoners, no matter how orderly a place that might be.

But what about taking my money to pay for someone else’s health care? Isn’t that unfair? Maybe. But, it’s unfair that some people contract diseases through no fault of their own. It’s unfair that people who live near heavy industrial plants have more respiratory problems than those who do not. It’s unfair that some people are not born to families who can give them educational resources that give them an edge in earning power when they grow up. It’s unfair that some people are born smarter than others. Life is rife with inequities. If we can fix some of them, but choose not to, we’d probably better have a reason. Economic inequality, to an extent, powers our economic engine. People working for their lives and people working to chase dreams of riches can be very industrious; particularly when compared to people who won’t fall behind if they don’t work hard and won’t get ahead if they do work hard. And the industriousness achieved through the carrot of wealth and the stick of poverty tends to result in increased prosperity overall.

I can even see calling for society to turn its back on the obese, diabetic smoker who ignored opportunities and information telling him to eat right, exercise, and stop smoking while choosing not to work and pissing away his resources on cigarettes, booze, and electronics instead of saving or paying for health care. Even if this strawman were representative of those who are sick without health care in this country, we could only save money if we steeled ourselves to simply letting such people die. Letting their health deteriorate with lack of care until they ultimately wandered into an emergency room on death’s door and then providing them with catastrophic health care services would end up being more expensive than providing care at some earlier stage.

In any case, I don’t think this is representative of the kind of people who can’t afford health care. The human body can fail a person in an amazing variety of ways. And I have my suspicion that environmental factors — namely the pollutants we breathe and processed chemicals we eat and drink — are leading to ever more exotic breakdowns. Other countries have shown that these risks can be managed without turning those countries into unlivable hellholes. We’re Americans. Maybe we can get the job done too.

“Back in the 1970s we didn’t have the space shuttle to get all excited about. We had to settle for men walking on the crummy moon.”

It has been 40 years since a graduate from a Tippecanoe County school first walked on the moon. It’s hard to overstate the achievement. Zach Wendling quoted Megan McCardle with a good one: “The most magnificent single feat our little tribe of East African Plains Apes has ever managed.”

It’s a counter-example to those who claim that government can never do anything. Whether it was worth the price is obviously a policy debate reasonable people can have. I think it was. As a people, more than our basic needs for food and shelter are necessary. We need to dream and have aspirations. And getting to the moon was a dilly of an aspiration.

It’s tough for me not to draw parallels between the space program and European voyages of exploration. What I hoped for is that NASA was running a Prince Henry the Navigator kind of operation. At the moment, however, it looks more like Leif Ericson’s flirtations with Vinland.

One question I remember from history class was the one of why the Norse didn’t end up colonizing North America. They simply didn’t have the population, technology, or other resources necessary to sustain the effort. Prince Henry, on the other hand, devoted a substantial amount of resources on behalf of Portugal to explore the African coast and ultimately find a route around Africa to the Pacific. Eventually they had Dias rounding the Cape of Good Hope, da Gama making it to India, and Portugal benefiting from the spice trade for years to come. The European gold rush that followed has shaped the world to this day.

It may be that we don’t have the resources to sustain space exploration. It may be that there is no outer space equivalent to the profits from the spice trade. But, I’ve always been of the mind that we ought to figure out the whole space colonization thing so that, when we inevitably screw up this planet irretrievably, the human race has some options.