The Indianapolis Star has a nice bit of reporting on the lottery. The short version: it’s played mainly by low-income individuals, the payout is something like 60%, and the benefits are distributed mainly upward along the socio-economic scale. One of the main mechanisms of this upward distribution is the fact that a lot of lottery money is distributed based on a formula associated with excise taxes — in other words, if you live in an area with more expensive boat and auto registrations, your area gets more lottery money.

This strikes at a fundamental precept in some political circles: that individuals make better spending decisions with their money than government would. The lottery phenomenon goes a long way toward demonstrating that this simply is not so in a great many cases. Leaving aside, for the moment, the issue of whether it is fair for the government to tax and take your money, the lottery is a miserable spending decision, and a lot of people make it — a lot of people, I would bet, who can be found protesting vigorously that another nickel in taxes would absolutely kill them. In effect, they are making a spending choice that they are better off with a shitty chance at riches than they are at having their sidewalks built or fixed or living in a neighborhood without lead in the soil or whatever.

I know I’m coming dangerously close (if I’m not already there) to throwing out the “everybody but me is stupid” political argument. But, it’s awfully frustrating to engage in political discourse where one fundamental premise is that the citizenry is informed and making rational decisions and then be confronted with the lottery as evidence that the foundation might be a bit shaky if not completely illusory.

Maybe lottery players are buying more than a crappy chance at a lot of money. Maybe they’re buying hopes and dreams which they lack on account of the daily heaping of abuse the world is delivering. (After all, I’ve been known to throw away money at the craps table — not because I view it as a good way to make money — but for the fun I have while playing.) But, somehow there has to be a better way of seeing their resources devoted to obtaining their aspirations.

And, maybe I’m just in a bit of a mood right now. I have visions of a guy bitching about the government while using his disability money to buy a pack of smokes and a lottery ticket.

Above the Law has more on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to let the bankruptcy court’s decision stand in the Chrysler bankruptcy over the challenges of Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock and the Indiana funds.

A key piece of information I don’t think has been made too clear in most news reporting is that Indiana bought the debt it now holds for $0.43 per dollar in July 2008. Under the plan it is challenging, it will be paid $0.29 per dollar. Given what happened economically in this country between July 2008 and the present, it’s hard to view that decline in value as somehow unconscionable. I know a lot of people with reasonably safe investments who would have been thrilled to see a decline of only 14 cents on the dollar for their investments over the past year.

The sale will remain stayed until 4 p.m. on Monday to give the Indiana funds a chance to try to get the Supreme Court to look at the case.

Mike Kole has some great thoughts about Andy Horning on the occasion of his departure to Texas.

Even though, party politics being what it is, Andy never had a great shot at winning the offices for which he ran, he was always worth listening to. Mike expresses that thought better than I can, and elaborates on Andy’s significance to the Libertarian Party of Indiana. His departure is Indiana’s loss. Even if he wasn’t elected to office, we were all better off being educated by his thoughts.

Farewell Mr. Horning.

That was fast. The New York Times is reporting that the Second Circuit is rejecting Indiana’s Appeal of the bankruptcy court’s decision to allow the sale of Chrysler. The sale will be stayed until Monday afternoon to allow the funds to attempt to get the Supreme Court to take up the matter.

Maybe he had concrete solutions to offer, but from this Maureen Groppe piece, during a speech to the right-wing Hudson Institute think tank, Gov. Daniels mostly had platitudes to offer as conservatives’ way back to power. His recommendations:

#Forward-looking;
#Constructive
#Friendly
#Patient
#Espouse Freedom
#Anti-mass transit, small cars, or “homogenized” health care
#Stress deficits when analyzing plans
#Don’t be negative, backward looking, or bereft of new ideas
#Have big ideas on the table and major changes underway
#Talk to people as adults and take risks
#Feel average Americans’ hopes, dreams, concerns, and fears

He also suggested that people chose Obama as a fashion statement. Which is funny considering Daniels’ admonition against being negative, backward looking, and bereft of new ideas; and for having big ideas for major changes. The Republicans in 2008 were a litany of old ideas. If we had a nickel for every time a Republican candidate longingly looked back to Ronald Reagan, we probably could have paid back the debt Reagan exploded. But probably not the debt generated during Daniels’ tenure in charge of the budget. I guess there was always “Drill Baby, Drill” — that was certainly a big idea delivered to people as if they were adults.

Dan Stockman, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has a nice write up about the Mad Anthony Brewing Company. I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting one of their restaurants, but occasionally I can find a store in Lafayette that sells their beer, and it has always been fine stuff. Mad Anthony, along with Three Floyds and Oaken Barrel are probably my three favorite Indiana brewing companies. (This is probably a betrayal of my own Lafayette Brewing Company, but I’m still recovering from the Tippecanoe Common Ale which I really didn’t like — the Black Angus Oatmeal Stout is really good though.)

In today’s New York Times, Paul Krugman argues that St. Ronald started the financial deregulation ball rolling that left us vulnerable to the current economic crisis.

The immediate effect of Garn-St. Germain, as I said, was to turn the thrifts from a problem into a catastrophe. The S.& L. crisis has been written out of the Reagan hagiography, but the fact is that deregulation in effect gave the industry — whose deposits were federally insured — a license to gamble with taxpayers’ money, at best, or simply to loot it, at worst. By the time the government closed the books on the affair, taxpayers had lost $130 billion, back when that was a lot of money.

But there was also a longer-term effect. Reagan-era legislative changes essentially ended New Deal restrictions on mortgage lending — restrictions that, in particular, limited the ability of families to buy homes without putting a significant amount of money down.

The deregulation led to an explosion of debt, public and private. Essentially, I think, we’ve been mining the economy for the past quarter century instead of growing it. Now we’re left with the economic equivalent of a Superfund site.

To be a little bit fair, I’m not sure if continuing to grow the economy was a viable option as the rest of the world began to catch up to us. But, by mining the economy instead of conserving it, we’ve probably multiplied the resulting problems. Guess we’ll see.

Now that the legislature has to go into a special session, Gov. Daniels finally joined the budget conversation in earnest. The AP has an outline of his budget cuts:

Financial aid (+3%)
K-12 (+2%)
State police (flat)
Prisons (flat)
College (-4%)
State parks (-8%)
“Faith based & community initiatives” (-10%) (In quotes b/c I don’t know what these programs are.)
Homeland security (-10%)
Environmental Management (-11%)
BMV (-11%)
Health (-12%)
Libraries (-15%)

I wonder what this means for the state’s Medicaid appropriation. As I recall, it’s usually one of the (if not the) highest single line item in the budget, but I’m not sure how much control the General Assembly has over it.

Incidentally, Everybody’s Favorite Economist, Larry DeBoer had a Capital Comments column in April about Indiana’s revenue shortfall, the stimulus, and what it means for Indiana’s budget. It’s either pain now or pain later, or both. When it’s time to cut, we can really identify our priorities as a community. I’m not sure I’ll enjoy what the true priorities of our leaders are, but it’s probably time to find out.

“I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you… I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good… Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.“

—Randall Terry, Operation Rescue (Fort Wayne News Sentinel 8/19/93)

Terry most recently surfaced to protest President Obama’s speech at Notre Dame.

In an unrelated matter, lone gunman and unhinged nut, Scott Roeder acting completely alone and independently of anybody and everybody shot Dr. Tiller, the physician who provided late term abortions to women whose pregnancies put them at risk of serious harm or whose children had birth defects that would cause short, pain-filled lives.

Randall “Wave of Hatred” Terry declared that the pro-life movement bears no responsibility for Tiller’s slaying. Glad that’s settled. Militia groups and “sovereign citizen” groups will also presumably be disclaiming any responsibility for Roeder.

Roeder, if he’s guilty of what he’s been accused of, took the step of turning ideas into action and, as such, is entirely to blame. We can’t run a free society if we presume that our citizens are so weak minded that they can’t hear certain things lest they go around murdering people. That said, guys like Terry have to realize that when you preach hatred and intolerance, bad things are going to happen. And movements and ideas associated with hatred and intolerance are going to be tainted with the stain of the actions of guys like Roeder.