Howard Schneider, writing at the Washington Post has a column entitled An amazing mea culpa from the IMF’s chief economist on austerity. The IMF has determined that it underestimated the “fiscal multipliers” at work in Greece, such that the austerity measures imposed actually seemed to increase the country’s fiscal problems even as it imposed more pain.

As I’ve suggested before, we seem to have this almost subconscious view of the economy as a morality play. If people aren’t suffering under government economic policy, we’re at least distrustful that it’s encouraging sloth or one of the other deadly sins. It’s like we think medicine can’t possibly be effective if it tastes good.

Anyway, the IMF seems to be acknowledging that Greek austerity has actually weakened its economy. Nobody could have predicted.

Sen. Banks has introduced SB 35 which makes a law enforcement officer liable in a civil suit if the officer interferes with an individual’s videotaping or photographing an officer while the officer is engaged in his official duties. It creates an exception if the officer reasonably believes that the interference was done to enforce the law, protect public safety, preserve a crime scene or criminal investigation, or enforce a court rule against video taping court proceedings.

First, this bill should clarify whether it intends individual liability or municipal liability. Under the Indiana Tort Claims Act, you can’t sue a government employee directly, you have to sue the governmental entity the person works for. There are exceptions for when the person was clearly acting outside their scope of duty and the plaintiff sufficiently alleges the individual liability of the government employee. This statute kind of looks like it’s creating personal liability, but I sort of doubt that’s really the intent.

Second, I’d recommend a specific exception for where the officer has probable cause to believe that the recording device contains evidence of a crime or is being used to commit a crime.

Third, I’d suggest consideration of an objectively reasonable officer standard such as they use in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence instead of the subjective reasonable belief standard that seems to appear in this statute. This gets you away from the whims of individual intent a little bit, and it gets you away from the need to have a jury trial every time you want to determine whether a seizure or interference constitutes reasonable police behavior; a process that is resource consuming and inconsistent.

I like the idea of protecting law abiding citizens who are just video taping the proceedings. But, people who are committing crimes shouldn’t get extra protection just because they jam a camera in the officer’s face.

Sen. Holdman has introduced SB 32 concerning the requirement that the County Board of Commissioners establish a schedule of regular meeting dates on the first meeting in January of each year. Instead, the provision would be amended to simply say, “The executive shall hold a regular meeting at least once each month and at other times as needed to conduct all necessary business.”

I don’t suppose there is anything magic about the first meeting in January. I know that a lot of organizational stuff has to get jammed into that first meeting or two and maybe it would be good to give the Commissioners flexibility to take care of such business in the manner that best suits their needs.

Bishop Senator Kruse has introduced SB 23 which would allow schools to require the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of each school day. If it decides to impose this requirement, the school board is directed to select the version it wants recited.

Students are generously allowed to draw attention to themselves by not participating if they or their parents decide they don’t want the student to participate.

On the one hand, this is clearly unconstitutional and would burden a participating school with court mandated legal fees. On the other hand, Mike Huckabee has said, “We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools. Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?” So, maybe proponents of this legislation envision that the legal fees would be offset by reduced security costs.

Sen. Banks and Tomes have introduced SB 97 which expands work done last session to allow the public to carry firearms on government property. Currently IC 35-47-11.1 restricts the ability of local government to prohibit members of the public from carrying firearms on local government property.

SB 97 would extend this restriction to state government and its agencies. I note, however, that firearms could still be restricted at the State House because there is an exception for “the enactment or enforcement of a provision prohibiting or restricting the possession of a firearm in any building that contains a courtroom used by the supreme court, court of appeals, or tax court.” I can’t remember if the tax court is there, but “any building that contains a courtroom used by the supreme court” means the State House.

I don’t think firearms would be permitted in either of the Indiana Government Center buildings either, under section 5(6) because they use metal detectors, are staffed by law enforcement officers, and require the inspection of each individual and their bags.

So, this would seem to be meaningless for a huge chunk of state government operations.

I just returned from a trip to Hilton Head, South Carolina where family tradition has us gather for Christmas every couple of years. I know they aren’t perfect, and there are not necessarily an unmitigated good, but I wanted to take a moment to appreciate our Interstate highway system. What a remarkable piece of work. That a sleep-deprived schmuck like me can barrel across a third of the continent while my family snoozes at my side is kind of breathtaking when you really stop to think about it. And I more or less take it for granted.

I’ll let Louis CK speak to this phenomenon (salty language):

Mike Kole has a pair of good posts on our evolving media and the progression of two outlets that are going from dying to dead. Newsweek is dead, and WXNT is dying.

For me, the wildcard is knowing the economics of these efforts. Are they entirely unprofitable or are the profits just lower than they have been traditionally? Kole’s description of WXNT, in particular, reminds me of the progression I’ve seen in local newspapers. They are confronted with the increasing fluidity of the Internet mediascape. And, by this, I don’t just mean that things change more quickly. I also mean that, since media has become digitized, content behaves more like a liquid than a solid. When something was fixed in a book, you had to labor to copy and/or transport it. Now, content can mostly just flow from place to place.

Confronted with this new challenge, it seems to me that newspapers have reacted in exactly the wrong way; and WXNT seems to be doing the same. Rather than focusing on the content least likely to be outsourced, they let that content go and offer the content that looks most like a commodity. They let go of the local content that requires shoe leather and effort and, instead, offer opinion, wire services, and – in WXNT’s case – nationally syndicated talk shows. (Now nationally syndicated sports shows, apparently).

The profit margins may well be better for that easy to produce, easy to obtain content in the short term. But, in the long term, you’re going to get undercut time after time with that stuff. Someone will offer it for less (or free), and margins will continue dropping. The locally produced stuff may be slower and more expensive, but it’s less replaceable. I don’t know whether you can make a profit producing that kind of content, but I have a strong suspicion it’s the only real bet for long term viability of our local papers and radio stations.

TPM had a post entitled “Tactical Reality” about the Connecticut mass murders that has had me thinking for the last couple of days. It refers to the subculture with these sort of “Red Dawn” fantasies where they will some day, soon likely, be called upon to heroically fight off the faceless terror with their weapons.

Apparently this subculture likes to use the adjective “tactical” a lot: “tactical” weapons, “tactical” scenarios, “tactical applications.” There is a tendency to deck out their weapons in “matte-black finish, laser site, flashlight mount, and other “tactical” accoutrements.”

The contributor, familiar with gun culture over recent decades, tells us that the prominence of this subculture in the overall gun culture is relatively new.

Most of the men and children (of both sexes) I met were interested in hunting, too. Almost exclusively, they used traditional hunting rifles: bolt-actions, mostly, but also a smattering of pump-action, lever-action, and (thanks primarily to Browning) semi-automatic hunting rifles. They talked about gun ownership primarily as a function of hunting; the idea of “self-defense,” while always an operative concern, never seemed to be of paramount importance. It was a factor in gun ownership – and for some sizeable minority of gun owners, it was of outsized (or of decisive) importance – but it wasn’t the factor.

They’ve constructed a reality for themselves in which the threat is imminent, and it seems as if their reality is bound to spill over into ours from time to time.

A friend of mine on Facebook made a very understandable observation about how hard the Connecticut shooting makes it to enjoy relatively mundane and insignificant but ordinarily happy events or occasions. From what I can tell about him, he’s a level-headed, clear-eyed individual, not typically given to sentimentality. Nevertheless, this one rattled him. I think it rattled everyone. I mean, a lot of the bad news you hear about you appreciate as negative on an intellectual level. But, a lot of it doesn’t slip through and hit you in the gut.

My response was that we have to try and let it go if we can. Not because of that kind of silly “if we don’t do ‘x,’ the terrorists win’ rationale that was overused after 9/11. But, because, at the end of the day, we’re tiny people on a tiny speck of rock for a comically short period of time in a soul crushingly vast universe. Any realistic perspective on the nature of the universe leads to madness or, at least, incapacitating depression.

So, we have to let our brains work their filters. Hopefully the brain lets enough of the bad stuff through for you to make rational decisions about how to go about your day and your life while letting more of the good stuff through so you can at least enjoy yourself from time to time.