Light posting for awhile since I’m taking a vacation in Colorado. Enjoy yourselves!

Michael Specter, writing for the New Yorker, has an article entitledDamn Spam. It’s a nice history of spam and the ongoing war between spammers and anti-spammers.

I first logged on to the Internet in the wake of the brouhaha over Canter & Siegel’s Green Card spam in 1994, so it was a bit of a trip down memory lane to read about them again.

Via Slashdot: Indiana University Dumps Google for ChaCha.

“Come Monday, no more Indiana University searches will be powered by computer-driven Google. Only by people-powered ChaCha. The move was announced by new IU President Michael McRobbie, who until recently sat on ChaCha’s Board of Directors (5-29 SEC filing, PDF). IU will draft hundreds of librarians and IT employees to be ChaCha Guides for the university’s websites, although a FAQ accompanying IU’s press release tells librarians not to expect any checks for their efforts from ChaCha, which IU notes is backed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Compaq founder Rod Canion.”

I took a quick spin around the Chacha search site, and the first thing I noticed was that there are a lot of advertisements in the search results. Big turn off.

Paul O’Malley was kind enough to send me this link entitled Midwest Economy: Automotive wages in flux. I wanted to get a link up before I lost it in the shuffle. Basically, manufacturing wages have been stagnant since 1980. Automotive wages fare slightly better, but the Midwest’s share of automotive employment is falling.

My only editorial comment at the moment is that worker productivity has increased since 1980. Why hasn’t their earning power gone up in a corresponding fashion? The fruits of that extra production is going somewhere, I presume.

The Department of Local Government Finance has cited the assessment work in Tippecanoe County as “outstanding.” That might explain why I’ve been more detached in my blogging about the property tax issue. It’s a lot tougher to remain calm when it’s *your* house burning.

State officials found no reason to order a reassessment in Tippecanoe County. Also earning that distinction were Dubois, Hamilton, Hendricks and Washington counties.

Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an article on the “model assessing” done in Washington and Dubois Counties.

In a related matter, her article shed light on something that had been confusing me. The General Assembly had passed legislation this year allowing an increase of county income taxes for 3 purposes – #1 capping growth of property taxes; #2 providing relief for existing property taxes; and #3 public safety. But, you couldn’t do #3 without first doing #1 & #2. According to Ms. Weidenbener’s article, Marion County was given special dispensation to raise the public safety income tax if they only did one of the first two. Advance Indiana did a good job of covering the Marion County income tax debate, but I couldn’t figure out under what authority Marion County was raising the public safety tax since I was unaware that Marion County had received special treatment by the legislature.

(H/t Blue Indiana) The Muncie Star Press has an article entitled Reassessment order prompts mass confusion over tax payments. At the heart of the confusion, for the moment, is whether residents of Delaware County need to pay their 2006 level of property tax or the 2007 level of property tax in the wake of Governor Daniels statement that Delaware County needs to be reassessed and the Department of Local Government Finance’s initiation of reassessment proceedings in Delaware County.

Again, I’m no expert, but I think the source of the confusion is that the Governor is taking a “decide first, follow the decision making procedures second” approach to this. I think he’s already decided that Delaware County is going to be reassessed and DLGF will rubber stamp the Governor’s decision. However, that’s not the way the system is officially supposed to work. The Governor doesn’t have any formal role in this. DLGF is supposed to make a determination that it thinks something might be wrong, initiate a hearing to determine the facts, and then make a decision. While this procedure is ongoing, I think the presumption is probably supposed to be that the assessments are correct and that taxpayers will have to pay property taxes at the 2007 levels. However, since the Governor has made his decision, and DLGF probably knows that it will order reassessment regardless of anything that might be brought forth during the formal process, the temptation is to tell taxpayers right now that they can go ahead and pay taxes at the 2006 levels. But, I think that would almost constitute a formal admission that DLGF is just going through the motions by holding a hearing — which is maybe just a step too far. At this moment in time, I think the Delaware County treasurer is probably right that taxpayers are required to pay taxes at the 2007 level. In a week, when the DLGF holds its hearing and can then formally issue an order for reassessment of Delaware County, Delaware County taxpayers will probably be told to pay taxes at the 2006 level.

So, for the next week, I would expect the confusion to continue. But,. like I said, I’m no expert. Perhaps there is some other reason why DLGF and the County Treasurer can’t just come out and answer what seems like a simple question — 2006 or 2007 levels?

[tags]property taxes[/tags]

A little off the beaten path, but it’s technology and it’s Goshen, Indiana – two things that are near and dear to my heart. A Goshen startup called RedPost makes a Linux-based, WiFi connected, hackable “picture frame/bulletin board.”

Of the product, RedPost writes:

No one pays attention to the mess of out-dated posters, ads with tear-away phone numbers, and tiny business cards that form the modern-day bulletin board. You have the content you want on your computer already — there’s just been no way to put it on the wall, door, bulletin board, or storefront window other than clicking the print button. We’re changing that, giving you a way to publish what content you want where and when you want it.

Hey, Doug. You said something about a contest, right? Right. The jist of the contest is that participants will submit a design that incorporates the RedPost kit. John Mishler, Master Sculptor will bring the design to life, and you get a free kit.

Note that entrants will have no competition from me. I’m moderately capable at jamming words together, but shapes and color elude me. Nor have I seen a RedPost kit in action, but it sounds like a nifty gadget. But, like I said, technology and Goshen, what could be better?

I don’t feel an in-depth post coming on, so I’ll just give you some links I found to be of interest:

In an article by Sylvia Smith, the United States House has passed a bill that extends Medicare and expands health care coverage for children. Mike Pence is against it. (Read the rest for details — my knowledge of Medicare and federal coverage is too limited for me to be confident in my summaries.)

Amanda Iacone has an article about Allen County’s preference to have discretion on tax relief distributions at the local level. “Gov. Mitch Daniels has suggested a circuit-breaker approach to doling out the $300 million. That approach would benefit home owners with high-value homes. Beth Garber, the county’s lobbyist, told county officials that the governor’s plan could give the bulk of Allen County’s property tax relief portion to Aboite Township residents and likely no one else.”

The Evansville Courier Press has an editorial on how the federal debt is the Democrats’ problem now. When Bush took office, the national debt was $5.6 trillion and declining. Now, thanks to steep tax cuts and profligate spending, the national debt is $9 trillion and rising.

Greg Goode will seek the Republican nomination to challenge Brad Ellsworth in Indiana’s Eighth Congressional District.

A gunslinging penguin hacked the Delaware County website.

An inmate from Anderson escaped from the Westville Correctional Facility.

The Associated Press has an article entitled “Why have sex? Young women and men agree on reasons” discussing a recent study. Leading the reasons: physical pleasure and “it feels good”. You don’t say. The angle of the story is that the emphasis on how it feels refutes stereotypes about how women are having sex for love while men are doing it because of how it feels.

Appearing last on women’s reasons: “I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease.” The article doesn’t indicate whether this reason didn’t appear on the men’s reasons or they (shudder) ranked it higher.

The Indianapolis Star has an article entitled Disability delays lead to personal havoc. As it turns out, these disability delays increase the volume on my collections business, so I’ll keep this short. Some of the folks I run into who are claiming disability look healthy enough to work to me — but I’m not a doctor, so I couldn’t say for sure. Others are clearly in bad shape. As far as I can tell, both kinds of people are waiting in the same line. The Indianapolis Social Security office has the 4th longest average wait in the nation for a hearing on disability claims – over 2 years. In the meantime, the claimants have to fend for themselves and look elsewhere for help. The long waits on their federal claims results in an increased burden on state relief programs.