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.

I’m in the process of scanning in pictures from my pre-digital camera days. The one of Hoosier Pass isn’t necessarily the most exciting, but topically the most relevant to this blog. I’ll probably be scattering pictures from this project into the blog, but if for some reason you want to see the rest, they’re available here.

Someone referred me back to this article from the year 2000:

President Bill Clinton said Monday that the United States would pay off $216 billion in debt this year, bringing to $355 billion the amount of the nation’s debt paid down in the three years since the government balanced the budget and began running surpluses.
Clinton debt

In a written statement, Clinton said the $216 billion payment represented the largest debt paydown in American history, and he said that the federal government’s long-term debt is now $2.4 trillion lower than projected to be when he first took office.

However, the U.S. government still has a long way to go before it pays down the entire national debt, which now stands at $5.7 trillion.

I remember when Bush was considering his tax cuts, I was mainly concerned that we would stop making progress paying down the National Debt; concerned that Bush II would follow in the fiscal footsteps of Reagan and Bush I. Tax cut proponents spun me a line of crap about how we should be cautious about paying down debt too quickly — something about it making more sense to wait until the bonds came due or whatnot. Of course, now in 2007, we know that Bush II has pursued a particularly egregious form of Red-Ink Republicanism – spending and the size of government have increased under his reign; and yet, he did nothing to modify his tax cuts (or shrink goverment) when he was provided with evidence that the revenue from his tax cuts were insufficient to pay the bills.

The Evansville Courier Press has an article talking about one of Gov. Daniels’ “Big, Bold” ideas: A Constitutional Convention. The article suggests that this isn’t anything Gov. Daniels is pushing hard for; rather it’s part of his “everything’s on the table” approach. Maybe I don’t trust the passions and attention span of my fellow citizens, but this strikes me as a spectacularly Bad Idea. Such a convention wouldn’t have to limit itself to property tax reforms or any other particular charge. Just a gigantic can of worms.

I had a slight hiccup with the site. We changed servers but then hadn’t changed the name server and, so, the posts I made between changing the host and changing the name server were lost. I recovered those, but have been unable to do so for the comments. My apologies.

ManFromMiddletown has an extensive and well done entry on property taxes at Blue Indiana. Much better than the drive by stuff I tend to do. And, it has graphs!

(Via MyDD) It’s a good thing for the GOP that young people don’t tend to vote. In a poll by Democracy Corps (PDF) , young people (age 18-31), when asked to choose between Republicans and Democrats on a variety of issues chose Democrats by a fairly large margin.

(Image shamelessly stolen from MyDD and will be taken down upon request. More insights at the MyDD post.)

If things go according to plan, I’m about 3 weeks out from doing a little mountaineering. I’m going to take a Colorado vacation that will be half family, half goofing off in the mountains with a buddy. With respect to the second half, we don’t have too many firm plans, but it looks like we’re going to start with a climb of La Plata peak in the Sawatch range near Leadville. It has an elevation of 14,336, making it the 5th highest peak in Colorado.

It’s been awhile since I got some mountain time — last climbing I did was in Yosemite in 2003 — so I’m really looking forward to this.

The Department of Local Government Finance gets a new commissioner and, about 10 days later, 71 counties get letters demanding assessment data. According to an article by Lesley Stedman Weidenbener, the letters threatened to “withhold tax-relief payments, block construction projects and take other action” if the data is not received. First of all, if it’s 71 counties, it sounds like it’s a state problem and not particularly a local problem. Secondly, according to the article, many of the counties appear to think they’re either in compliance or had worked out new deadlines with the State due to having to cope with big changes in the assessment system. County officials appear to be expressing some frustration with the State. But, as they say, it all runs down hill. The Governor gets it from the public. The Governor kicks it down to the DLGF. The DLGF kicks it down to the Counties. Now we’ll just have to see if the Counties can keep it moving. Sooner or later, it’ll probably get back to the public like a big old property tax assessment ouroboros.

Hunter: Please, Bill O’Reilly, Have Mercy