A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

A seriously bad day

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Cops: Neighbor misses dog, shoots woman

A woman who was chasing her dog was fatally shot by a neighbor after the dog ran through the neighbor’s property, police said.

Posey County Sheriff James Folz said Melinda Lindauer apparently was trying to shoot the dog, which had ventured on her property near Wadesville, about 15 miles northwest of Evansville. Instead, the bullet struck 29-year-old Nicole Stroud, who was visiting her grandmother’s home Thursday.

Stroud was pronounced dead at Deaconess Hospital in Evansville. Deputies arrested Lindauer on preliminary charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide.

Charlie Averill: What they say versus what they mean

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Charlie Averill: Taking Back Our Economy-Part 9 What Do They Really Mean?

What they say:

“We need labor market flexibility to run a profitable business.”

What they really mean:

* We want to use temporary employees instead of permanent employees; we want to contract the work out to other companies.
* We don’t want to pay overtime.
* We want to schedule employees at the last minute and on irregular shifts. And, we want to mandate overtime.
* We don’t want to pay health care or provide defined benefit pension plans.
* In short, we don’t want any binding commitments to our employees. We want to use them as we want, when we want, and pay them what we want.
* And, most importantly, we don’t want a union or the government interfering with our doing so.

Bush has 28% approval rating among Hoosiers

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Hoosiers, by and large, are a loyal and relatively conservative bunch. So, George W. Bush has performed quite a task in developing a 28% approval rating among Hoosiers. The poll found that the average Hoosier supports universal health care and supports requirements to make cars more fuel efficient; with a plurality of Hoosiers planning on voting for the Democratic Presidential candidate.

I would take the poll’s information on Hoosier policy preferences more seriously than peoples’ Presidential voting plans. Presidential voting is going to be driven in some measure by the personality’s of the people running. (Hopefully “who we’d like to have a beer with” isn’t as much of a factor this time around, given how disastrous it was as a factor last time.)

One problem the Republican candidate will have to deal with is the Bush albatross:

Anti-Bush sentiment is strong and growing in Indiana, according to the poll.

Twenty-eight percent say they approve of the way Bush is handling the job of president, down from 37 percent in a February 2006 poll.

More than two-thirds of state residents disapprove of the president’s handling of the situation in Iraq, the economy, the federal budget and immigration policy.

“I’m not happy with President Bush at all,” said Georgetta Oakley, 60, Indianapolis. “The country is heading in the wrong direction. The president ought to be taking care of the people here in America, instead of draining every dollar fighting the war.”
. . .
Asked whether U.S. troops should leave Iraq sooner, instead of staying longer, even if it means disorder and potential civil war in Iraq, 56 percent said they should leave sooner. Thirty-eight percent favored staying longer even if it means potentially more deaths and injuries among U.S. troops.

Better late than never, I suppose, but I wish my fellow citizens had seen how bad of a President Bush is and has been at least back in 2004. As President Bush says, “Fool me once, shame on . . . shame on . . . you. Fool me . . . won’tgetfooledagain.” So, I can’t blame slightly less than a majority of voters for voting for Bush in 2000. But, there’s really no excuse for 2004.

Indy Star’s annoying in-line ads

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The Slacktivist has a nice post on those annoying in-line ads the Indy Star is so fond of. Among other things, if these links become the norm in online newspaper articles, that will pretty much prevent those article from ever adopting useful linking practices.

Happy Thanksgiving

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In 1620 a band of religious separatists who weren’t happy with their situation in England (Church of England) or Amsterdam or Leiden (cultural influences) departed for the New World. For some reason, they planned their trip such that they arrived in Massachusetts in December. They found land that had been cleared by a prior Indian settlement and subsequently decimated by disease — most likely smallpox — and were able to settle there during the winter.

Fortunately, a native Patuxet named Squanto who had twice been kidnapped and enslaved by Englishmen was able and willing to translate for the Pilgrims and teach them how to raise corn and catch eel. Having survived their first year by the skin of their teeth and brought in their first harvest, the Pilgrims celebrated their first Thanksgiving 386 years ago.

So, today, as you enjoy your turkey and mashed potatoes and what have you, give thanks to God and/or Squanto as your preferences dictate.

Bayh, Clinton, and Lieberman pander on video game ratings

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A woman, a Jew, and a politician’s son walk into a video game store — stop me if you’ve heard this one before. . .

Sylvia Smith has an article entitled Video game ratings draw senators’ ire. Evan Bayh is apparently disgruntled because a video game entitled Manhunt 2 was given a “mature” rating when apparently the Senators think it deserves an “adults only” rating.

“We have consistently urged parents to pay attention to the (board’s) rating system. We must ensure that parents can rely on the consistency and accuracy of those ratings,” they wrote to the president of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.

“They” in this case refers to Senators Bayh, Clinton, Lieberman, and Brownback. Umm, hello? What part of “Manhunt” is confusing to parents?

If they wanted to be nannies, maybe they shouldn’t have run for the Senate.

HB 1010 – Legalizing the illegal

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Niki Kelly has an article on the unusual action taken with respect to HB 1010 on Organization Day where the General Assembly suspended their rules to rush through a bill to legalize retroactively the actions taken by Governor Daniels with respect to property tax matters.

The bill legalized three major actions taken by the governor during the summer to help abate the property tax crisis in some areas. This includes extending the deadline for the homestead credit, extending the deadline for local governments to adopt a new local option income tax and clarifying that property appraisals are not needed to appeal a home’s assessed value.

The legislation also contains a provision that eliminates the requirement that rebate amounts first be applied to tax amounts owed by delinquent tax debtors. Apparently the process of checking tax delinquencies was going to hold up the rebate process. Local government is permitted, however, to adopt an ordinance requiring payment of delinquent taxes before the rebate check goes out.

I can’t get too riled up about the substantive changes made by this legislation, but generally I disapprove of this kind of slap-dash, after the fact legislating. The law loses its value if it’s unstable and subject to rapid change, even retroactive change.

Megachurch Scandal

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Do megachurches have more scandals than usual churches or do we just notice them more?

The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother’s wife and fathered a child by her.

Members of Archbishop Earl Paulk’s family stood at the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church a few Sundays ago and revealed the secret exposed by a recent court-ordered paternity test.

In truth, this is not the first — or even the second — sex scandal to engulf Paulk and the independent, charismatic church. But this time, he could be in trouble with the law for lying under oath about the affair.

Ted Haggard and Warren Jeffs come immediately to mind as other leaders of large religious organizations that became embroiled in sex related scandals.

I wonder if there is a cause and effect there and, if so, which is which. Do these folks end up in trouble because they repress sexuality or do they repress sexuality because they were tormented by odd desires in the first place? Or, I suppose it’s possible that, per capita, leaders of large religious organizations have sex with their brother’s wives, homosexual meth dealers, and underage children at the same rate as the population at large.