The budget cuts continue in Carroll County. The county cut one ambulance (leaving two where they had four a year ago), four paramedics, and two EMTs. They also cut two Sheriff’s Deputies. They still have $250,000 to cut. They are thinking about selling a park.

JP Morgan is buying Bear Stearns at the bargain basement price of $2 per share.

The Federal Reserve and the U.S. government swiftly approved the all-stock buyout, showing the urgency of completing the deal before world markets opened. The Fed also essentially made the takeover risk-free by saying it would guarantee up to $30 billion of the troubled mortgage and other assets that got the nation’s fifth-largest investment bank into trouble.

Ah, the glories of the free market. From some quarters, we hear an awful lot about the infallibility of the market, harsh as it may be, until something like this comes along where there is an entity that’s “too big to fail.” Then it’s time to socialize the risk and privatize the profits.

The hell of it is that the utter collapse of a big investment bank probably would cause more pain than will having taxpayers fund a safety net or bailout. On the flip-side, letting a bunch of ordinary folks go under when they bought into sales pitches for sketchy mortgages doesn’t hurt the rest of us severely enough to compel the government to get involved. At least, however, I would ask for an acknowledgment from the free market purists that it’s beneficial for the government to interfere with the market from time to time. With respect to where and when the government gets involved, as the joke goes, “we’re just haggling over the price.”

Update Larry Kramer (a CNBC Wall Street media personality) was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning and, in practically the same breath and without a sense of irony, spoke with apparent approval of the federal government guaranteeing some of the crap Bear Stearns loans as part of the JPM buyout, then saying that the government shouldn’t “overreact” and regulate” because “the market should be allowed to work.” Nobody jumped his shit over it either.

The Journal and Courier has an article about the dire financial situation of Carroll County. Nancy Cripe sums up the cause of this predicament:

Our revenue isn’t keeping pace with our expenses,” Cripe said. “We have no growth in Carroll County. Our population has been the same for 100 years. We have no new industry.”

The county may have to go from three ambulances down to two (they had four a year ago). Given that the county is geographically large, doesn’t have a hospital and ambulance runs have to be made to Monticello, Lafayette, or Kokomo, there is a very good chance that reducing the number of available ambulances will result in a death sooner rather than later. The Sheriff’s Department is looking at cuts that would leave times in the day when no officers are on duty.

So far this year, Cripe said the county has had to make big and small cuts.

The sheriff’s department has lost one deputy and two workers in the county jail. Emergency Medical Services has lost seven people since last year and cutting one ambulance would cost six more jobs. Several full-time jobs have been cut to part-time, and several part-time jobs are being cut or going unfilled.

Animal control has been cut, and funding for the county museum is gone. The heat in the courthouse has been turned down to 68 degrees, and space heaters in most rooms have been banned.

There will be no raises for employees this year, and the commissioners and council members are giving up their health benefits.

Those cuts have made up 2/3 of the shortfall; the county has $600,000 to go. In the comment section of the article, one of the commenters suggested that Carroll County should simply be absorbed by White, Howard, and Tippecanoe Counties.

I’m back from Florida, and the most prominent feature of the Florida landscape is not the sun and the water; it’s the toll roads. I drove around the Tampa area and off to the Weeki Wachee Springs Mermaid Show, and it seemed like I was stopping every 10 minutes to give someone a dollar. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the idea that Gov. Daniels has relegated I-80/90 to toll road status pretty much in perpetuity, but I sincerely hope toll roads don’t start popping up like mushrooms as they seem to have done in Florida.

The mermaid show, on the other hand, is pretty cool. It’s been going on for 60 years. They have women in mermaid costumes swimming around while a narrator tells the story of The Little Mermaid. The women don’t come up for air; rather there are air hoses underwater that they breathe from every so often. Great road-side attraction stuff; though my boy tells me the witch was scary.

Sorry for the lack of posts. I’ve been more or less cut off from the Internet since Monday. I’m in Florida – initially to take a deposition, but yesterday and today are just me and the family enjoying a little sun and sand. Presumably the General Assembly is doing something more or less momentous. I guess I’ll catch up when I get back.

I was pondering the question, “what do I want in a politician?” Really, I just want someone I can forget about after he or she gets into office. The best government is probably one where you don’t notice its presence or its absence, leaving you free to do and think about other things.

A new blog on the block – “Indy’s Painfully Objective Political Analysis.”

I’m an Indy attorney who spends his spare time on political ventures. Back when I was younger and more idealistic, I managed some successful statewide races and then served with the Indiana Democratic Party. As I get older, I find that I’m more concerned about getting the right result than I am about who gets credit for it, which keeps me objective. I’m a bit disillusioned with my party at present, but I still have great hopes for what it can return to if cajoled (by conscience or guilt or blunt force of reason) to become better. Because I do not owe my party my existence (nor do I really need anything from it) I can say what others fear to say. It is a blessing to have this freedom, and I don’t intend to waste it.

Looks to be worth a read.

Nancy Nall has a post that thoroughly takes down White House Aide and Fort Wayne News Sentinel columnist Tim Goeglein for plagiarism (most likely copyright infringement too, given the extent of the copying).

Goeglein has apparently served in the Bush White House as an “ambassador” to the Christian Right and assistant to Karl Rove. According to Nall, he also has a sideline writing schmaltzy Hoosier-oriented columns for the Fort Wayne News Sentinel.

Turns out, for a recent column in the Fort Wayne News Sentinel, Goeglein lifted a 1998 Darmouth Review article by one Jeffrey Hart, more or less verbatim. Oopsie. Fear the Google.

Leo Morris, of Opening Arguments fame and, not so incidentally, editorial page editor for the News Sentinel, has posted that they have found plagiarized material in 20 (so far) of Goeglein’s 38 guest columns.

With new information, by the way. Twenty (so far) is how many of the 38 columns we checked for which it is possible to say that Goeglein lifted whole chunks of somebody else’s writings. Hart twice. A writer for the New York Sun twice. Numerous people one time each. It’s hard for me to fathom this. If somebody lifts a line or two once, maybe it was an accident. Two or three times, somebody thinks he can get away with something. But 20 times, and not a line or two each time but whole passages? The only thing I can think is that there is some crossed wiring that causes the person to think that plagiarism isn’t really stealing.

(I always get a bit muddled up when talking about plagiarism and copyright infringement. This seems to fit clearly in both categories.)

Good old Feb. 29th – the day when The Man steals labor from salaried employees.

Random items:
William F. Buckley died. His was the sort of conservatism my family was steeped in. I drifted from the GOP when it looked less and less like a party championing that sort of conservatism. Neocons and social conservatives were never really his thing. I suspect that, were I to review Buckley’s positions again today, I would find that I’ve spent too much time associating with dirty hippies to really agree with him anymore. Be that as it may, his influence on American political discourse was significant. No doubt to his chagrin, he will forever be associated with a counterpart on the Left, Gore Vidal. Apparently Vidal was not feeling overly sentimental at Buckley’s passing:

“I was never on his show,” Gore Vidal, with whom Mr. Buckley had a famous feud, said on Thursday. “I don’t like fascism much.”

For all of Buckley’s eloquence, possibly his most memorable quote is with respect to Vidal and is not urbane:

Now listen, you queer, you stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.

Update Someone clued me into another winning quote from Buckley:

“The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”
–William F. Buckley, National Review, August 24, 1957

The more I learn, the less I like him.

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Ruth Holladay has an interesting view from the grassroots of the Obama campaign where she is volunteering in Ohio. She contrasts the bottom-up Obama campaign from the top-down Clinton campaign. That’ll be one of the big stories if Obama pulls this thing off – Obama’s ability to effectively organize on the ground and the ability of a strong ground game to knock out the Clinton’s air campaign.

I figured I’d mention I’m on the umpteenth day of this flu. I mention this not so much to whine about it as to apologize for not keeping this site up any better than I have. I see you guys have been having lively discussions amongst yourselves which is excellent. Someone recently asked me why I blogged. I told them, primarily because I like writing. But, also I like the idea of a “third space” –not family, not work– where people can casually discuss the issues of the day.