Maureen Groppe, writing for Gannett News Service has an article entitled Bill targets Indiana welfare overhaul. Apparently there is a provision stuck into the emergency spending bill, primarily concerning funding the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, that would require closer federal monitoring of Indiana’s welfare privatization.

The bill says the federal government approved the state’s contract with The IBM Group “without a clear understanding of the details of the program, including its implementation, effect on state employees, daily operation of the program or even whether the program complied with federal law.”

Curt Slyder, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, has an article on property tax relief. At the moment, property tax relief proposals are mostly dead, but such things can generally be resurrected with enough legislative effort.

Everybody’s favorite economist, Larry DeBoer (follow “Capital Comments” link), explains why this is a big issue:

The reasons why property tax reform is on people’s minds go back a few years, said Larry DeBoer, a Purdue University professor of agricultural economics.

The Indiana Supreme Court decided in 1999 that the state’s property tax assessment methods were in need of reform.

“Since then, there have been many changes,” he said.

A reassessment in 2002 shifted property assessment to a market-value basis. In 2006, properties were assessed again to show market value changes since the initial Supreme Court decision.

This year, counties will complete elimination of the business inventory tax, which will shift taxes to homeowners. At a recent meeting of county treasurers, DeBoer predicted residential taxes will go up 15 percent on average this year compared to last.

Those tax bills are due out in the next few weeks and could increase pressure on legislators before the session ends April 29.

Senator Kenley has a plan that consists of three components:

The state would pick up local governments’ share of funding for juvenile incarceration, 100 percent of the child welfare expenses and 100 percent of general fund expenses for public schools.

The State would use money from the property tax replacement fund to pay for the state’s new obligations. So, on the one hand, counties would lose a significant amount of income, but on the other hand, they would lose a significant amount of liability. The state doesn’t necessarily need to rely on property taxes to meet its obligations. Counties are limited by the General Assembly as to their taxing authority and, therefore, they have less flexibility in how they can pay for their obligations.

Reliance on property taxes is problematic. The property has value, but it doesn’t necessarily generate the wealth needed to pay a tax. On the other hand, the taxes are going to come from somewhere. If we shift it to an income tax, are we unfairly adding to the burden of wage earners who own no property while unfairly benefiting owners of large amounts of property? I guess that’s for our elected representatives to decide.

Mary Beth Schneider, writing for the Indianapolis Star, has an article entitled Picking up the tab, but at what price? on the subject of lobbying reform, or the lack thereof. It’s apparently legal for lobbyists to give legislators whatever they want so long as the gifts (in excess of $100) are disclosed. According to the legislators, the lobbyists are deeply stupid individuals for giving the legislators all this free stuff because, say the legislators, the free stuff doesn’t gain a thing. Absolutely no influence at all. Poor, dumb lobbyists.

In my mind, the way it typically works is this. The legislators aren’t corrupt. They probably don’t even consciously favor a generous lobbyist when considering policy. However, legislators are ordinary people asked to shape policy on a bewildering scope of subjects. Inevitably, they are going to have to make decisions on subjects they know little about. When they need more information, as it turns out, they know someone who knows a lot about a particular issue — the lobbyist working for an affected industry. And, because they’ve created a relationship through donations and gift giving and going to a ball game or dinner or two, it’s really, really easy to pick up the phone and ask the person for information. The lobbyist is probably going to even shoot straight as far as the information provided — lying to a legislator really is a dumb thing to do for a lobbyist — but the information is going to be framed in a way that benefits the industry represented by the lobbyist. Subsequently, the information is probably not going to be balanced out with opposing information coming from the point of view of an amorphous public who is affected by the issue, but not terribly well-defined as a constituency. And, suddenly, the playing field has been tipped just a little bit more.

Julie Creek, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has an informative column on the subject of health care entitled Critical condition. Among other things, it lays out the difference between a “single payer” system, a socialized system, and the current “system” of health care. Some interesting statistics:

The amount the federal government’s Medicare program spends on administrative costs: 3%.
The amount the health care system over all spends on administrative costs: 30%.
The amount, per capita, Canadians with their single payer system spend on health care: $2,998.
The amount, per capita, Americans with our “free market” system spend on health care: $5,711.

We’re paying for it. We’re just not getting it. Friday afternoon, as I was driving up Meridian Street toward Carmel in the low 100s, I looked at the buildings on the street corners and thought to myself, “they’re pretty much giving away the game here, aren’t they?” Seemed like every big, lavish building was either an insurance company or a hospital. For myself, if I was taking an obscene rake off the health care dollars of the American people, I’d probably try to conduct my business from unassuming structures in strip malls. Because, if you have an opulent building, seems to me, when Americans finally get riled up, after they stop off to get their pitch forks and torches, they’re going to know exactly where to go.
[tags]health care[/tags]

I don’t have the official result yet, but we finished the Shamrock Run. I don’t have the official results yet, but I think I finished 10 5 miles in something like 51 minutes. My wife, Amy, and I went down to Indy where we ran in the race with her sister Suzie and her friend Leslie. Amy & I’s first race. Fun.

Some of you might recall the short-lived show Armed & Famous. It was the show featuring celebrities trained as police officers then filmed as they went on patrol in Muncie. I frequently represent my county’s Sheriff’s Department against various claims and, therefore, couldn’t help but cringe on behalf of the attorney for the Muncie Police Department when this show aired.

The Muncie Star Press has an article on the filing of a tort claim notice in relation to one of the Armed & Famous raids. Apparently the Muncie Police searched the wrong apartment. The subject of that mistaken search, by her attorney Michael Sutherlin, has filed a tort claim notice claiming the Muncie P.D. “committed an illegal search and seizure, used excessive force and battered Clements, which are violations of rights guaranteed by the constitutions of the United States and Indiana.”

When my wife & I were watching this, I commented that if I were in Muncie, it’d almost be worth getting shot by one of those people. The basis for a lawsuit is almost the premise of the show — inexperienced cops set loose on the city. And everybody involved has fairly deep pockets.

For those not familiar with the process, filing a notice of tort claim is the necessary prerequisite for filing a lawsuit against a political subdivision. It’s not the same as filing a lawsuit, but it must be done to preserve the person’s right to sue. My understanding is that the claimant’s attorney, Michael Sutherlin, has something of a specialty in these cases. Could be interesting.

I’ve been seeing a lot of references to the Greeks these days. It wouldn’t really qualify for Plate O’ Shrimp status if it were all about Thermopylae. That would just be evidence of marketing for the movie. But what I’ve seen is evidence of how deeply the Ancient Greeks are embedded in our culture. Like Christianity, the Greek memes took advantage of the Roman organism for dissemination.

Anyway, here is what I saw within a 24 hour period. The History Channel put on a documentary about Thermopylae tied into the new movie, The 300. The documentary contains commentary suggesting that the stand-off at Thermopylae and a similarly daring naval encounter at the Battle of Salamis was critical for the continued existence of Western Civilization. If the Greeks lose those battles, Persia conquers Greece, and *poof* there goes the idea of democracy and self-governance. It’s all imperial rule from there on out.

Doghouse Riley had a post questioning the veracity of Frank Miller when he grouses about being taught by ex-hippies and Viet Nam vets. Miller is the comic book author who apparently wrote 300 upon which the new movie is based. (The number “300” is significant because that’s the number of Spartans who defended the pass of Thermopylae. They were initially supported by several thousand other Greeks. When the battle was lost, about 1,000 other Greeks remained behind with the Spartans to fight to the death and give the other soldiers a chance to escape. But, it’s the 300 Spartans who get the bulk of the glory.)

I saw a discussion in Howard Bloom’s book, The Global Brain where he compares populations under stress to Spartans and populations in good times as Athenians. The short version is that Spartans tend to unify and penalize deviation during times of stress. In human populations, one technique to make this happen is a culture that glorifies conformity through appeals to religion, ancestors, and a mythological Golden Past. During more prosperous times, populations tend to act more like the Athenians, glorifying innovation and tolerating deviations from the norm.

There is a similar discussion in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon where he talks about ongoing cultural battles between followers of Athena and followers of Ares. Some of that is available online here. The short version is that, though both are nominally gods of war, they go about it in very different ways. Ares’ main tools are fear, terror, and strife; and he’s generally incompetent. Athena, on the other hand, is very competent, and her tools tend to be along the lines of cunning and technology.

Let’s face it, Randy, we’ve all known guys like Ares. The pattern of human behavior that caused the internal mental representation known as Ares to appear in the minds of the ancient Greeks is very much with us today, in the form of terrorists, serial killers, riots, pogroms, and agressive tinhorn dictators who turn out to be military incompetents. And yet for all their stupidity and incompetence, people like that can conquer and control large chunks of the world if they are not resisted….

Who is going to fight them off, Randy?

Sometimes it might be other Ares-worshippers, as when Iran and Iraq went to war and no one cared who won. But if Ares-worshippers aren’t going to end up running the whole world, someone needs to do violence to them. This isn’t very nice, but it’s a fact: civilization requires an Aegis. And the only way to fight the bastards off in the end is through intelligence. Cunning. Metis.

It’s just a bit amazing to me how influenced we still are by a rather small population of Athenians and Spartans. How big were these cities? A couple hundred thousand? Can you imagine if every city of a couple hundred thousand were contributing as much to the culture as those two cities did? Part of it is simply lack of opportunity — the Athenians, generally, got there first and have occupied the field. A Plato operating today would have a tougher time being heard above the din. New inventions are tougher to come by because most of the easier stuff has already been taken care of.

Anyway, I can go weeks without hearing anything about the Greeks, so it caught my attention when a bunch of references cropped up within the past day or so.

Abdul Hakim-Shabazz, contributor to the Indiana Barrister, made an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor (link is to the YouTube video of the appearance.) The Indiana Barrister’s post is here. The topic of discussion was the Warren Township middle school students (6th graders, apparently) having sex in the class room while a couple of other students watched them and the teacher was distracted.

Funny how perspectives change. When I was in middle school, I would have been jealous. Just before I had kids, I probably would have been indifferent or mildly amused at the story. Now that I have a couple of little kids, I’m pretty much horrified.

I just stumbled across a Then and Now site about Richmond. For example, here are then & now pictures of the Wayne County Court House.

Also, Kemplog has a post about an upcoming documentary film 1:47 on the subject of the explosion in downtown Richmond at 1:47 p.m. April 6, 1968. Morrison-Reeves has posted page images of the book Death in a Sunny Street by Esther Kellner that documents the explosion. A gas leak coupled with the gun powder in the Marting Arms sporting goods store caused the blast. Vigran’s Department store and Holthouse Furniture were leveled. MacRaven recounts his near miss at being the 42nd person killed that day. Apparently the blast blew out my Dad’s office window (this was about 3 years before I was born). Luckily he’d taken a long lunch or something that day and was not at work. I asked my Dad (also a lawyer) about it a year or so ago. Mostly he just remembered who got the legal work that resulted.

Update: I edited the title to reflect what has become the main subject of the post. My Mom just e-mailed me with her recollections of that day, and I thought she gave a good description of what she had been doing:

I remember it well. It was a Saturday. Your dad and I had gone to Civic Theatre with Dick and Cathy Brantner the night before and then out for some beer. It was a beautiful warm Sat., the day before Palm Sunday. We had lived in Richmond for 8 days and your dad went into the office for a short time on Sat. morning and then came home for lunch. Since we had been out late the night before your dad, Cindy and I all took a nap. We were still unpacking and getting settled and had dinner at home still unaware of what had happened.

Bert Keller called around 9:30 that night and told us what had happened, we were stunned. I still can’t believe that we didn’t see smoke from the down town and didn’t hear the sirens, etc.

We did see the horrible result of the explosion the next day and lived with the reconstruction of the downtown as well as meeting many people whose lives were effected by this tragedy.

. . .

[T]he window in your dad’s office blew in and as I recall glass was on his desk where he had been sitting not too long before the explosion. He was fortunate that he came home when he did.

Seems to me that’s a big thing to have happen to a fairly small town.

Rebecca Neal, writing for the Indianapolis Star has an article entitled Richmond bidding to host national debates in 2008. Apparently Richmond’s mayor, Sally Hutton, sees this as an economic development tool. The price tag for a debate is cited at $1.4 million. A host site is also required to have about 3,000 hotel rooms within a 30 minute drive of the debate site. Dayton, Ohio is probably close enough to fit that bill. (In fact, I once knew some girls in high school who drove from Richmond to Dayton, picked up some lunch, and got back during our lunch our. Though, I’m fairly certain they seriously exceeded some posted speed limits.)

I’d be tickled if Richmond landed a debate. I was born there, and I think the city has some great history. (But, I repeat myself!) I doubt having a Presidential debate is much of an economic development tool. The article cites the little town of Danville, Kentucky, a town of about 17,000 that hosted a 2000 vice-presidential debate. I’m a political junkie, and I didn’t recall there having been a debate there. In fact, I’m usually all but oblivious as to where the debates are taking place. That could just be me, of course.

From reading the Star article, you’d almost get the idea that Richmond was some sort of far-flung province, foreign and mysterious to its readers.

“We want people in Indianapolis to know where Richmond is,” [Mayor Hutton] said.

The article goes on to provide a “Richmond at a Glance” sidebar:

RICHMOND AT A GLANCE
(U.S. figures in parenthesis)
• Population: 39,124.
• Median household income: $30,210 ($41,994).
• Median home value: $73,000 ($119,600).
• High school graduate or higher: 74.6% (80.4%).
• Bachelor’s degree or higher: 13.8% (24.4%).
• White: 86.8% (75.1%).
• Black: 8.9% (12.3%).
• American Indian or Alaska native: 0.3% (0.9%).
• Asian: 0.8% (3.6%).
• Native Hawaiian: 0.1% (0.1%).
• Some other race: 1.1% (5.5%).
• Hispanic, of any race: 2% (12.5%).

Ah, but what sort of language to they speak in Rich . . . mond (stumbling over the word)? Do they have any arcane rituals of which I should be aware? Are their people perhaps inverted, having their head at their feet and their feet at their head?

Richmondites?